Well the professor didn't disappoint because she continued with the Adam and Eve story as well as the Cain and Abel story as well as the Noah/flood story. On top of that we were given information on the Mesopotamian story of Gilgamesh from which many parallels to the Biblical stories can be found.
I find the story of Adam and Eve so fascinating because this myth influenced the main religions of our time. Not only does it try to explain the existence of evil and the imperfections of humans but it also has set us on a quest for immortality, a quest that I am not so sure is worth the effort.
Death of course sucks. But what would a world be like if death did not occur. What if Adam and Eve had not eaten of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil and God had not punished them for this disobedience by denying them not only access to the Garden of Eden (and a life of toil and childbirth) but also access to the Tree of Life - of immortality. Apparently it was ok to remain ignorant and presumably eat of the tree of life but it was not ok to have knowledge. I am willing to accept the tradeoff.
As a side note, the quest for immortality after death is a difficult concept for me to accept as well. Perhaps my imagination is too simple but what are we supposed to do in this blissful afterlife? Will there be a need for teachers or doctors or engineers or writers, actors, artists, musicians or anybody with a "god-given" skill to help others? Will there be a need for inventors or explorers, in fact a need to challenge and overcome our limitations? Can we play sports (without ever losing) or run (without getting tired) or find comfort in cuddling with a loved one or experience the joy in the birth of children or by viewing their successes?
Yes death sucks. But the alternative doesn't seem much better.
The Cain and Abel story is equally fascinating. I am wondering at what point in our evolution did humans realize that killing our own species was wrong. The professor pointed out that there appear to be certain actions that have always been considered moral or immoral. Killing another person except in the rarest of cases is immoral. And in the story God tells Cain that he is capable of rejecting the decision to do something wrong, that he (we) can master sin. This occurs after God has shown more pleasure toward Abel's offering of some meat from his flock than he did for Cain's offering of fruits from his field (herder vs farmer). Who knows why God did that? Who knows why that made Cain not just upset but murderously so? But the story goes beyond fratricide. After Cain kills Abel and God asks Cain where his brother is, he replies, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Well, Cain, as a matter of fact, you are. We are all our brother's keepers and not just the one we are related to.
And the Noah story is also interesting. In the story of Gilgamesh, the gods destroy the world in a flood because they find humans annoying. So while the story is extremely similar in most of its details (the ark ends up on a mountain, a bird is sent to find land), the Biblical story has a moral reason behind it. The people are not behaving properly and Noah as the only righteous man is chosen to be the sole survivor (with his family and animals). What I found intriguing here is God's motivation. I can see him saying to himself that he made a mistake and that he should start over (although that would be unusual for a perfect god), but he doesn't start over completely. He is still using the flawed humans that caused the problems (in fact, Noah gets plastered which leads to more problems) and we are still doing bad things to each other. So what was God's point again?
The other idea I found interesting was the covenant that God made with Noah (humans) after the Flood. We are all familiar with the rainbow and the fact that God promised never to destroy the world again. (Where was this covenant when that lunatic predicted God's destruction of earth in 2011?) But on top of that, God hands over to humans all the animals of the land and the birds of the air. According to the professor, humans were supposed to be vegetarians in the Garden of Eden. Lions lying down with lambs etc. Now we can eat meat as long as there is an accounting of the blood spilled. The blood (life) was to be given to God. I wish I could be in one of the discussion seminars because my question would be why Abel's animal sacrifice was more pleasing to the Lord than Cain's plant sacrifice if prior to Noah we were supposed to be vegetarian?
This is why Bible study is so fascinating. Way more questions than answers.
Which leads to the last of the ideas in this lecture. The professor listed of couple of what she called doublets - retellings of the same events - as well as some contradictions, pointing out that multiple authors, revisionists etc. were involved in writing these earliest of Bible stories. In other words, it becomes extremely difficult to accept that the first five books were written by Moses or in fact that they were divinely inspired.
Not that that matters. The stories are still entertaining and enlightening.
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