whirlingmerc
Well-Known Member
For the world? for the generation entering the promised land? for the church?
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What is the purpose of Genesis
For the Jews, I believe.
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
What is the purpose of Genesis
Purpose of human like is to acquire attributes of G-d, as much as possible in one's own self which is done through worship of G-d and the meaning of the worship. In other words to be in image of G-d.
Quran mentions it like this:
[51:57] And I have not created the Jinn and the men but that they may worship Me.
[51:58] I desire no sustenance from them, nor do I desire that they should feed Me.
[51:59] Surely, it is Allah Himself Who is the Great Sustainer, the Powerful, the Strong.
http://www.alislam.org/quran/search2/showChapter.php?ch=51&verse=56
Please
Regards
Purpose of human like is to acquire attributes of G-d, as much as possible in one's own self which is done through worship of G-d and the meaning of the worship. In other words to be in image of G-d.
Quran mentions it like this:
[51:57] And I have not created the Jinn and the men but that they may worship Me.
[51:58] I desire no sustenance from them, nor do I desire that they should feed Me.
[51:59] Surely, it is Allah Himself Who is the Great Sustainer, the Powerful, the Strong.
http://www.alislam.org/quran/search2/showChapter.php?ch=51&verse=56
Please
Regards
Native
Free Natural Philosopher & Comparative Mythologist
The purpose of the biblical Genesis is the very same as with the numerous other cultural Stories of Creation from all over the world. They all speaks of the very same:
Creation Myth - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_myth
Humans live on the same planet Earth, in the same Solar System, in the same Milky Way galaxy and in the same local part of the visible Universe. This is the very essence of all creation stories. Of course all stories of creation are very similar since they describe the very same cosmological conditions.
"The beginning" in these stories doesn´t mean "the beginning of the entire Universe", but is just a telling of the beginning and the specific creation of our Milky Way galaxy.
List of Creation Myths - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_creation_myths
Creation Myth - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_myth
Humans live on the same planet Earth, in the same Solar System, in the same Milky Way galaxy and in the same local part of the visible Universe. This is the very essence of all creation stories. Of course all stories of creation are very similar since they describe the very same cosmological conditions.
"The beginning" in these stories doesn´t mean "the beginning of the entire Universe", but is just a telling of the beginning and the specific creation of our Milky Way galaxy.
List of Creation Myths - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_creation_myths
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interminable
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To know God
Native
Free Natural Philosopher & Comparative Mythologist
To "know" god is to know everything . . . and yourself.
interminable
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Native
Free Natural Philosopher & Comparative Mythologist
I can´t see any opposition in this. The statement goes both ways, really.
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
Thanks for the links.
There are several verses in Quran, the truthful, secure and pristine Word of Revelation about Creations:
[2:117] And they say, ‘Allah has taken to Himself a son.’ Holy is He! Nay, everything in the heavens and the earth belongs to Him. To Him are all obedient.
[2:118] He is the Originator* of the heavens and the earth. When He decrees a thing, He does only say to it, ‘Be!’ and it is.
http://www.alislam.org/quran/search2/showChapter.php?ch=2&verse=117
*The world used in Arabic is specific for creating something first time and without any anything existing.
Please
Regards
Genesis is quite important for Christianity. Luke 24:27 says Jesus explains about himself "Beginning with Moses and all of the prophets." That includes Genesis. NT authors reference symbols in Genesis frequently. This is mainly because Genesis has many Torah cases about mercy, and these find their way into expression in Christianity. It may not seem obvious to ask this at first, but why isn't Cain put to death, why doesn't Adam destroy the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and why isn't the serpent destroyed? Why are the animals saved on the ark when they can simply be recreated instead? These are examples of a principle of preservation, a principle without which Christianity would have no basis.
Native
Free Natural Philosopher & Comparative Mythologist
In the first place one could also ask into the purpose and logics of a supreme being creating a serpent in order to tempt the created humans? What kind of creater is this?
"Genesis" means "the origin or coming into being of something" i.e. the Creation itself. The Creation is neither god or evil, it just follows the eternal natural and cosmological order of creation, dissolution and re-creation.
The Noah Ark story cannot be interpreted and understood literally as a ship "once upon a time sailing on the Earth". This telling STILL belongs to the creation story and it is a mytho-cosmological telling of "how the creation looks like". The whiter looks of the Milky Way is in several cultures named "The Milky Way River" and this river can be observed running up in the night Sky and all around the Earth.
If having no knowledge of this Milky Way connection, theologians and scholars interpret this heavenly river as "a Flood running all over and ON the Earth" as a "divine revenge over humans", which of course also is "divine nonsense".
Links:
Divine Serpent - http://www.native-science.net/Divine_Serpent.htm
The Mythical Ship - http://www.native-science.net/Ship.Mythical.htm
Milky Way River Myths - http://www.native-science.net/Milky_Way_Flood.htm
Thanks for your comment on my post. Your profile says you are shaman! This book is Jewish, not shaman and also not Christian. I'm Christian and so I understand your protestant Christian assumptions, but I am leaving those assumptions out and returning to basics. Genesis is not a protestant Christian book. Genesis is not useful separately from the other five books in the Pentateuch. I think your question about Genesis injects an alien purpose into the book and also is pulling us off topic.
The word "Genesis" does not appear in the book and is merely a title concocted by a monk working in Latin, perhaps a monk who misunderstood it or was just getting some copying done. Who knows what cushion that monk was sitting upon?
Well...you can presuppose that it is a copy of Gilgamesh, but it doesn't matter to the topic. The story of Noah (not of Gilgamesh) is an integral part of the Pentateuch and only makes sense in that context. As user Nietzsche points out it is originally a Jewish book. Its for Jews, people who live their lives by these 5 books, not by one or two of them. If it relates to Gilgamesh all the names have been changed, times, circumstances and just about everything. Its not the same story.
Its got little to do with Genesis and doesn't help interpret. I see the similarities, but Genesis is not focused on cosmology. It is part of 5 books of Moses and is focused on the other 4 books and upon laws and justice. If you would understand a verse in Genesis you must ask the other 4 books what they think about it first, plus other resources. Its not cosmological, not impractical or ethereal. It part of a practical discussion of how to live in a reasonable way and sometimes uses imagery and examples. This is where Christianity comes from and borrows a lot of its ideas about mercy.
Native
Free Natural Philosopher & Comparative Mythologist
"Cosmology/Creation"- call it what you want. Genesis = Creation and your stands are clearly theological/psyhological and not cosmological.
The book does not actually have a title. The first phrase is 'In the beginning', but it is a protestant Christian assumption to make it the beginning of the Earth as we know it. I cannot begin that way as it just leads in a circle. For all we know it is about the beginning of the law or the beginning of Israel. This is not an idea I pulled from my bum. The Christian gospel of John borrows the imagery to describe the beginning of Jesus ministry. Jesus is described as the light of creation. Hence Genesis is not necessarily about the beginning of planets and can be about other things. I suspect that there are enough clues in its story to let the reader consider that as a possibility. It has days before the Sun. It has light before the Sun. Its all very fanciful with talking animals and a tree that changes your intelligence. I highly doubt that the original readers thought of it as scientific -- although they could have I suppose. It just isn't the point of the book which has to be considered an appendix to the Torah. That is its daily function.
It's a just-so story to explain why the world is the way it is and what the Jews' place is in that world.
Basically, it's a treatise to illustrate to a Bronze-Age Jew that the key aspects of his life and society have been ordained by God.
Unveiled Artist
Veteran Member
jonathan180iq
Well-Known Member
Genesis is an attempt by a nomadic people to establish their converted pagan deity into a supreme being, giving him dominion over all of the other gods of the region where their faith was established.
Genesis is a social experiment as well, a hail-mary attempt by a wandering bunch of loosely associated groups to centralize their cultural identity into a cohesive unit.
Oh, it looks like you wanted to go a different direction with this thread?
Native
Free Natural Philosopher & Comparative Mythologist
The phrase "in the beginning" or "before the beginning" can be found in several stories of creation and it surely belongs to Genesis whether you like it or not.
I am aware of the "two times creation of the Earth"-problem, which isn´t a problem at all when taking the creation story as a concrete cosmological telling as I do.
The big interpretative problem is that theologicians and scholars interpret the term genesis "soil" as the Earth but it just means "firm matter" or with a scientific expression "particles".
When speaking of genesis or creation, it is important to underline that this creation doesn´t speak of the entire Universe, but just of the ancient know part of it, namely the Milky Way galaxy and our Solar System. The cosmic area which is observable for all humans.
When the beginning of our MIlky Way galaxy takes place, "rivers of gaseous and metallic elements" flows together in a swirling motion which heats up until it ignites a light in the swirling center, This light forms everything in the center and it creates stars out of the gaseous fluids and planets of the metallic particles.
This formational proces logically explains the "two times creation problem". First the metallic elements "soil or firm particles" is mentioned in genesis and secondly the creation of the Solar System and the Earth is mentioned.
One can find quite a similar telling in the Egyptian Creation Story, the Ogdoad. Read this here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogdoad_(Egyptian)#The_Egyptian_Ogdoad - and it can easily be understood in modern scientific terms if one knows something of the Milky Way Mythology. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way_(mythology)
It is a huge underestimation of the spiritual skills of our ancestors to think they didn´t know of the creation, and to make it all into psychological matters and all kinds of dualistic interpretations.
The Creation is logically and naturally the very same for all humans, simply because we all live on the same created Earth, in the same Solar System, in the same Milky Way galaxy and in the same local part of the observable Universe. This IS the global and cosmological Story of Creation or Genesis.
This is the the Story Creation for all of us and it is GOOD and it is NOT filled with revengeable gods or goddesses and all that dualistic jazz and doctrines we are taught to believe in. Creation Stories are concreate cosmological knowledge.
Its possible that the ancients were able to see or to deduce some astronomical facts, and I cannot comment on the shamanist view of the cosmos.
The ancient descriptions are kind of interesting, and they are also annoying! I can't imagine being a student in ancient times and doing calculations in binary or trying to make sentences -- not just plain sentences but graphical works of art. The way they describe things is very pretty, not so practical. They like the awe factor a lot, and stars are very awesome. The sky is awesome, and everything out there in space is. They probably did things like measure the amount of the star light to guess at the true number of stars etc.
Native
Free Natural Philosopher & Comparative Mythologist
My basical religious approach is Shamanism because in this tradition initiated individuals can connect with everything in the Creation and get spiritual knowledge of the creation. Shamanism was the first and natural religion for humans all over the world. But I am working with both Comparative Religion and Comparative Mythology as well as with astronomy and cosmology.
I don´t differ between religion and science. On the contrary, I´m trying to compare both and see if they complement each other, which they really do. But I don´t think our ancestors made "binary calculations" and other modern things. Their way of calculating was to mark the seasons by observing the Sun throughout the year and to notice the nocturnal celestial motion of stars, star constellations, planets and the motion of the Milky Way band around the celestial poles.
Our ancestors told the stories of creation and made numerous symbols which described their cosmological knowledge. Their knowledge were based on both direct physical observations of everything and on spiritual visions and experiences, which provided a genuine and very precise knowledge of everything.
This is why I underlined earlier that it is a huge misjudgement to underestimate the knowledge of our ancestors.
You wrote: "The ancient descriptions are kind of interesting, and they are also annoying!"
I know. But if you can find the natural approach and take the descriptions of Genesis/Creation as concrete cosmological knowledge and descriptions of cosmos, the ancient descriptions become even more interesting than the creation theories of modern cosmology.