Original Sin and pagan gods

b sharp · 10 Aug 2006, 03:16 · from 2006-August.txt.gz

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From: bsharporflat at hotmail.com (b sharp)
Date: Wed, 09 Aug 2006 23:16:40 -0400
Subject: (urth) Original Sin and pagan gods
Message-ID: <BAY103-F33351B4FF60C5179F08747D74A0 at phx.gbl>

There is a lot of good input lately on this subject I think.  James B. 
Jordan, your gentlemanly responses and personal expertise are very welcomed, 
by me anyway.  I don't see it as pulling rank.

Personally I hadn't ever heard of Nephlilim a month ago. I just wanted to 
figure out what the giant Nod might mean in the play so I Googled Genesis + 
Giant and found all kinds of stuff about giants and demons and floods which 
fit the play quite neatly.

I hadn't heard of Sethites either before P. Nutria mentioned them.  A Google 
search of Sethite+Nephilim conjures up a number of sites but almost all of 
them mention the controversy between a fallen angel interpretation and a 
human Sethite interpretation of the Nephilim.

The first search hit yielded this site: 
http://www.khouse.org/articles/1997/110/  which is very critical of the 
Sethite view seeing it as revisionist.  An excerpt:

>It was in the 5th century a.d. that the "angel" interpretation of Genesis 6 
>was increasingly viewed >as an embarrassment when attacked by critics. 
>(Furthermore, the worship of angels had begun >within the church. Also, 
>celibacy had also become an institution of the church. The "angel" view of 
> >Genesis 6 was feared as impacting these views.)

This jibes with an observation about Judeo-Christianity which I've long 
noticed, that being that Monotheism as the defining theme came later in 
religious history. The early Bible actually seems to acknowledge there being 
other gods.  I think Baal and maybe Astarte are depicted not so much as fake 
gods but as rivals to Jehovah.  As a kid, I was always confused by the First 
of the Ten Commandments:

>I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of 
>the house of slavery;  >you shall have no other gods before me.

I used to think, "other gods? what other gods? I thought He was the only 
one" and "well, would it be okay to worship one of these other gods on the 
side if I always put the Big Guy first?"  Seemed like it was allowable.

I really have to give credit to all those faithful monks who hand-copied and 
translated the Bible for 2000 years and resisted the temptation to do a 
little revising, to make the text more Monotheisitic.

Anyway, I get the strong impression Gene Wolfe is more interested in the 
earlier parts and interpretations of The Bible, where the pagan gods and 
demons and monsters and such were not just dismissed as a mythology of 
primitives.

-bsharp

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