Fire: origin stories

[polaris93]

Fire is so central to human existence that it would be impossible to find a living culture today that is without it. And every culture seems to have its origin stories about fire, how it came into the world, and what happened because of that.

For example, the Greeks told the story of Prometheus, the Titan who brought fire to Earth and gave it to

Comments

[level_head]

And that transition in Genesis is fairly abrupt-they go from the ideal life in Eden to kicked out and raising crops (involving, it seems, fire-created tools) immediately.

It may not have occurred to those setting down this account that the discovery of fire was all that remarkable. (Though certainly Greek and Roman legends of sun gods and fire-stealers were well-developed during the thousand or so years BC.)

The book of Genesis has intrigued me for a long time. It seems to have a rather different "voice" compared to other sections, even to the point of using the plural for God. And it attributes some surprising attitudes and imperfections toward God, such as jealously about knowledge, and God getting tired and having to rest. When the Constantinian editing went on, probably between 325 and 331, I suspect this portion was edited too much. Or perhaps not enough.

Polaris attracted my attention to this post in part because I had created a culture for a series of SF novels that never did discover fire. It was tricky to build a civilization without it. I'm interested to hear what she thinks of the result.

Perhaps my world-building efforts will get me "fired." ];-)

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[polaris93]

Then, too, Genesis seems to comprise at least two different documents, from two different sources and two different times, that were combined into Genesis much later than either. The story of the creation of the world and all its life, ending with "and God found it very good," comes from one document, and that of the fall of humankind comes from another -- the two styles and the attitudes behind them are clearly different, and they don't synch well with each other, as if they were just thrown together without any attempt being made to make them seem as if they were part of one longer narrative. (Though that last is understandable -- the original editors who put together the Old Testament, like those who finally wrote down the Greek oral traditions about the Gods and Heroes and stories such as the fall of Troy, wanted to make sure they didn't omit something important, so they just gathered it all in and let the chips fall where they might, for a later generation to try to unravel and interpret.) Since old legends from Babylon and other parts of the Middle East figured in to some of what is included in the Old Testament or corollary sources (e.g., the Tree of Life and what it means), it's curious that they never added any origin stories about fire from those other lands they wandered through before settling down in Judea/Israel. It's possible, however, that there were no such origin stories about fire from those areas. I'm no archeologist or anthropologist. Anybody know about that?

[brezhnev]

The Jewish manuscripts are pretty much the same, even the original Hebrew version before the Septuagint came out. So the editing happened long before the Roman days.

[level_head]

It's interesting how different the translations are from each other today. We know the history of the KJV and the eighty-years-earlier version that most of it came from. I've found "Young's Literal Translation" to be useful, as it tries hard to get the original sense of the words.

For example, in the KJV and many others, God "rested" on the seventh day, implying that He could get tired and need rest. (An extraordinary attribute of an omnipotent being!) But in the YLT and presumably the source material, he simply "ceased" -- i.e., the work was done with nothing further to do. Other discrepancies are larger.

Here's an online version of Young's (and many others):
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+1&version=YLT

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[polaris93]

An honest reading/translation of the original Hebrew version of the OT is quite different in many respects from the KJV and even more modern translations of it. The lovely thing about the KJV is its poetry, which is gorgeous, and when it comes to quoting biblical passages that are meant to be impressive, that's the one to go with if you're an English-speaker. But if you want to get at the mind-set of those who actually wrote the books of the OT and put them together, go with a good literal translation of it, because it makes it clear why the OT is used as a sourcebook for the most practical of things by modern Jews in israel, and makes it clear how they see the world when it comes to politics and social reality.

[polaris93]

Quite possibly it's something connected with the Babylonian captivity. Either that resulted in destruction or other loss of source documents, or the Jews who returned to the Holy Land at the end of their exile voluntarily tossed some of those because they had been connected with their exile.