Stories and things

So as we established before, I am a big nerd. (glad we are all on the same page there) I have a particular interest in mythology and like to collect stories, like the epic of gilgamesh, and sigurd the valsung (or any story where Odin pops up is worth reading) so on and so forth.
Last class we talked about Lilith, Adam's first wife. As I said I first learned of her through knowing of vampire fanfiction and...such. yeah...well anyway, I noticed we didn't go over what the story was, So here it is. The source on this is supposedly "The alphabet of Ben Sira" (my sources are the internet so take it with a grain of salt) and this is the story as I know it

After God created Adam, who was alone, He said, 'It is not good for man to be alone.' He then created a woman for Adam, from the earth, as He had created Adam himself, and called her Lilith. Adam and Lilith immediately began to fight. She said, 'I will not lie below,' and he said, 'I will not lie beneath you, but only on top. For you are fit only to be in the bottom position, while I am to be the superior one.' Lilith responded, 'We are equal to each other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth.' But they would not listen to one another. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced the Ineffable Name and flew away into the air.Adam stood in prayer before his Creator: 'Sovereign of the universe!' he said, 'the woman you gave me has run away.' At once, the Holy One, blessed be He, sent these three angels Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof, to bring her back.Said the Holy One to Adam, 'If she agrees to come back, what is made is good. If not, she must permit one hundred of her children to die every day.' The angels left God and pursued Lilith, whom they overtook in the midst of the sea, in the mighty waters wherein the Egyptians were destined to drown. They told her God's word, but she did not wish to return. The angels said, 'We shall drown you in the sea.’'Leave me!' she said. 'I was created only to cause sickness to infants. If the infant is male, I have dominion over him for eight days after his birth, and if female, for twenty days.’When the angels heard Lilith's words, they insisted she go back. But she swore to them by the name of the living and eternal God: 'Whenever I see you or your names or your forms in an amulet, I will have no power over that infant.' She also agreed to have one hundred of her children die every day. Accordingly, every day one hundred demons perish, and for the same reason, we write the angels' names on the amulets of young children. When Lilith sees their names, she remembers her oath, and the child recovers.

So there you have it then. Lilith was pretty much the opposite of Eve. Aggressive, domineering, stubborn. Though after reading more about Adam, and his lack of spine (particularly the pat where he rats out eve right of the bat) I am surprised he didn't submit.
There's more to Lilith more or less, different stories and attributions. I have seen her called the wife of Asmodeus, the mother of vampires, succubi, or just demons, but the sources on that is even less clear and only worth mentioning so if you ever see such a story you can think back to this and go "oooh yeeeah"
The more you know ------* (you can tell i'm tired)

The other thing I mentioned was the Grigori, also known as The watchers. A group of angels that were meant to watch mankind, but got a little too...personal. They've been attributed with the fathering of the nephilem. Supposedly they pop up in the books of Enoch which i think is part of the apocrypha. My sources again are internet based, so I don't take them with deadly seriousness, but i just wanted to show that this story is another one that exists and is a fairly popular tool in fictional, slightly biblical based story telling. (I'm just glad i'm not crazy)

~Sigh~

I find this to be very...disapointing. I know that i need to do these blog posts twice a week, and yet i still can't get into the habit. It's aggrivating to say the least, knowing that i can do this, and i should do this...frankly i have to do this for a good grade, and yet I can't really remember to keep it up. I haven't really had time to read the bible anyway >.> I mentioned this before but since the beginning of the school year all my time has been wrapped up in work, sleep, and a major project I've been working on for the past month. I suppose I should be entirely forthright in these explanations, you should know Professor sexson why i am doing so abysmally on this blog thing.

Well the project for the past month was to make a full body costume (seen in action above). I started with a box of fur and absolutely no knowledge of sewing besides the skill of threading a needle. Over the past month I have basically designed and hand sewn the costume from stratch in order to make a deadline which came and went this past weekend and I am rather happy with the result.

I suppose i ought to feel guilty, especially considering that if i put as much effort and time into reading the bible as I did this suit, i could probably have been done with it by now. However at the end of the day I did get to run around in a big fox suit, and that is it's own reward really.

It's been hard getting into the bible, Genesis is so...dreary. It's not the foundation for a kind loving religion where you feel wanted and loved. It's quite a few stories of violence, rape, murder, trickery, and some all together evil things. Not really my cup of tea to be honest. Though I must admit Joseph's story was a nice come back. He has character development! He starts as a whiney little taddle tale that's daddy's favorite, and through his many life trials, which he overcomes with human perserverance with the blessing of god (nothing superhuman) and becomes a powerful man that actually does what's right GASP! he forgives his brothers without some sneaky coniving backstabby reason. Sure as david Plotz points out, he makes a terrible dictator, probably ruining it for everyone later on, but at least on the personal level he has a heart...something i'm not sure i could say for the other characters.

That leads to my reason for this blog. While i haven't really had the time to read the bible, i picked up the Good Book on my way back from Seattle this weekend. I finished the summary of genesis. First I would like to comment on how refreshing it is to read. I don't need to set aside hours of alone time in order to read this book and understand it, as i do with the bible. Plotz has a style that almost seems like you're having a conversation. He's just telling you what his experience reading the bible was like as you hang out. My one disagreement is he seems to take things to literaly or i don't know, he seems to be searching for meaning where i have come to the conclusion there is none. For instance in his examination of the story of Noah, he asks why God does such a terrible thing. What has mankind done to deserve genocide. If God wanted to teach us humility and the fact we are dependant on him aren't there better ways? Where's the moral here?
I personally don't think there is one. It's a sort of Urmyth (is that the right word? i'll pretend it is anyway) I think it did actually happen, sort of. Once upon a time there was a big flood. Maybe even a few. It was so devastating that it passed through generations of storytellers until one day, instead of breaking the river banks and flooding the village, killing all the chickens in town, it flooded the world! I mean after allthere's many many many myths about the great flood.
despite that little disagreement I quite like Plotz's style. He tells his opinion on things without making it seem more than opinion, not without citing and quoting the bible anyway. I liked how he came to the conclusion of many writiers are responsible for the bible, or really, many editors. It doesn't really make me feel guilty for not continueing with as much enthusiasm as i should have however. In summary Genesis really is rather...well like i said dreary. It's just such a spectacular hypocracy to the idea of the bible being the ultimate book of goodness and morality. It doesn't help the bible's case to see where Plotz points out every point of what could easily be considered evil.
Well i shall toil away at the bible again at some point, and I shall certainly try to read as much plotz as I can now that I have found myself with freetime again. Pity really. I was getting really good at sewing.

Making...me

So I haven't been entirely faithful with posting here. I mentioned at the beginning that i don't do well posting my thoughts onto the web, i can't get past the thought that I am not that important, and no one should care that much about what i have to say. So when things get a bit tough, I tend to forget to do these sorts of things.
Lately I have been very busy on a big project that has had my full attention for the last 3 weeks. This caused a squeeze when school started, so i had class full time, work full time, and my project to work on, so forgive me professor for being less than mindful of this blogging assignment.
I finally finished Genesis after...well...pushing back sleep a bit and I can't say that i have all that much to add on after reading what everyone else has said. I can just echo the same thoughts. there is a lot in the bible that i did not expect to see. of course jonah was swallowed by a big fish, not a whale..that kind of thing. there is also the things that i knew were there, but still are rather...disturbing to read. Mostly i find it strange how, a religion where marraige and having only one mate is important, has a book where marrying many and using housemaidens and slaves for children is totally cool, but to be fair that's just common patriarchal family lines. doesn't matter who you do it with as long as everyone knows who daddy is. I'll go more in depth on genesis in a later post, probably wensday.
What i wanted to talk about now was...well this project i've been working on. It is a costume, a large full body fox costume, a bit like a mascot. Now it is a daunting task and I had no idea how to even sew before I started, but i took it a peice at a time, just day by day, and after a while it reminded me of the first genesis story. I may as well have been making the world for the difficulty it brought me to learn to hand stitch this entire suit. I began to joke about it with my partner. Well tonight the entire thing has come together and the body has taken form. I find it all to be particularly deep because, funnily enough, one of my final acts was to blow air into the "nose" to clear any loose peices of foam stuck in there.
As i said I am not religious, but it resonated quite well to immitate literature in a way. Plus i got a nice quote out of it :P

Anyway before i go there is one question i had that i wanted to write down. Why has it been so important for the story to restart so many times? Civilization started with Adam and Eve, then Noah, then in a sense Abraham started the nations of those that would be reading the bible and such. it reminds me of other mythologies. the greek/roman ages of gold, silver, and iron...the aztecs worlds that were created then destroyed, the hopi worlds they travelled through. Why is early literature doing this?

the bible...as literature

I've been forcing myself to stop thinking in terms of theology, because frankly it's too easy (and not the point of the class) I'm sure we could all pick holes in the Bible and it's religious message when taken literally, we've all noticed some weird discrepancies by now. So I've been working on looking at the bible and it's role as literature.
Karen's post made me think about it mostly. She asked why circumcision is a requirement, why was it put in the bible? Well it does seem random, but when i thought about it I figured it was there for the same reason a lot of old laws were there, Hygene. Sure now it's all well and good, we bathe regularly, we got cool disinfectant wipes and lysol, and if something does happen, a trip to the doctor will probably fix you right up. Well in ye olden times it wasn't the same. Things were dirty, people didn't bathe much, nasty little germs all around and if you got sick, it could very likely kill you. So there were certain things people noticed would kill them, or make them sick. Pork for instance couldn't be properly prepared at the time, you eat pork, you get sick, why? well we didn't have the technology at the time to trace to cause and effect, nor even the knowledge of nasty little germies, so god did it. He's made at you. same with shellfish. So I may not have the er...expert opinion on the matter of circumcision but, i think it was just a way to make things a bit cleaner and less likely to get all infected and gross XP
Really the bible is like all the good classical literature, it's a collection of the human experience used as a guide. You can break down classics into morals Don't kill your brother and marry his wife, don't have a big stupid blood feud, teenage love angst sucks...okay i might have given a few english professors an anerism summarizing shakespeare so simply, but i think i've proved a point. Frankenstein shows us to not try and surpass the bonds of what is human, the bible tells us love thy neighbor, or don't eat pork, or whatever.
Honestly looking at it as a peice of literature, I can't say it's the best. It doesn't have the kick that more modern literature has, and to be fair the style of prose hadn't had time to develope yet, but it's also missing the spirit that oral tales seem to have. It's certainly no Beowulf. It strikes me as a sort of hybrid, between a how to guide, and chicken soup for the soul. Perhaps it will get better as I go along.

Genesis to 6.8

I always find the beginning of the bible to be particularly interesting. I highly enjoy creation myths and so the likenesses to other creation myths is quite fun. First I suppose I should start with God creating the world in 7 days. The most interesting part to me was the idea that he created a dome to hold the sky seperate from the water, because while this was obviously written a very long time ago, this shows that the writers had the idea that the sky at least was round, and were probably well aware that the earth itself was round as well (but the myth of it being flat perpetrated because sea navigation was not advanced enough for ships to travel far from the coasts without being lost...maybe, i'm no historian)
I think I prefer the first story of the creation. It's interesting to look at it and try to trace early human conciousness of their own surroundings and how they interpretted the earth. the second story, with adam and eve bothers me at certain points when taken literally, but also has interesting points.
First I find it fascinating how many creation myths begin with the idea of human beings being created from the earth be it dust, dirt, or clay. It is like that with the romans, some african mythology, and the dust in particular is an interesting likeness to mesopotamian mythology where men start from dust, and after their death return to dust (this is not a happy endevour, the afterlife is not a very nice place to be in mesopotamia) It's very interesting the likenesses those myths have, and makes me wish i had a chance to just trace oral traditions through history, but alas I am only an undergrad, let's move on to my more sophmoric review of the second story.
The tale of Adam and Eve has always bothered me, and perhaps i am viewing it in a biases way (no, i probably am, but i don't much mind) first, while i don't mind the idea that woman was created from man so much, it's a curious change over from the 7 day story where both were created together. It makes me think that perhaps this story came from a different set of oral traditions as societies began to become patriarchal instead of family groups where the mother and father would rule together. It seems many mythologies have this patriarchal shift, for instance you can see it in the greek creation myth with the fall of the titans. Zeus becomes the patriarchal figure, in control, and civilization starts, but back to the bible (sorry i am so scatterbrained today)
I really hate the apple story. First of all, God hasn't really been said to be all knowing yet, but i assume that he is a very intelligent being, at least smarter than humans, in the way that parents are smarter than their children. He tells the two that they can have anything they want, except this one fruit from this one tree. really? He thought that would work? sure there was the added bonus of, this fruit will kill you, but still, it's like telling a child not to touch the cookies on the table then leaving them on a plate, in the open. That is quite the safeguard >.>. So the snake comes along and tells the little children that no the cookies aren't going to kill them. so obviously they take them. Yep that was a brilliant plan there. So God is walking in the garden, does he have a human form? can adam and eve gaze upon him without being hurt by his presense? is he wearing clothing, since he does know of good and evil and his own nakedness? well he grows angry and the two are kicked out of eden. Still seems to be a bit harsh, but i wonder if it is a point to mark when we as humans no longer hunted and gathered but began to farm for our food. The part that bugs me is the great pains during childbirth, honestly is it a proper punishment to make it so that they'll nearly die? and add on that they won't be able to resist having children and nearly dying? again, a tad harsh.
I wonder though, Does the knowledge of good and evil also equate to the knowledge of right and wrong? good=right, evil=wrong. sure the right thing to do, like helping an old lady across the street is a small bit of good, but it is still good, just as lying is a small bit of evil, but it's still evil. Well the point of my question is this. If they were unaware of good and evil, how could adam and eve be expected to know that disobeying god was bad? They were given free will and a choice to make, but they didn't have the tools to make the right choice. so they were punished for something they couldn't really help, and with the idea of original sin, all the babies ever born will be punished because god asked adam and eve to choose between right and wrong, before they knew what it was.
Next comes Cain and Abel. Obviously the human race is farming at this point. It was around this time that human beings were beginning to stop killing (and sometimes eating) other tribes and start taking slaves. the value of human life became...valueable and I believe this story marks when murder and canabalism became unacceptable to people. Taking it literally again, both Cain and Abel are devote and bring offerings, but Cain's is snubbed for some reason? God couldn't muster up any sort of "good job" for an offering to him? I'd be mad too if i didn't even get a thank you. God's curse is another point the story makes for how human life is valueable and killing is no longer acceptable.
That was mostly the interesting part to Cain. I do wonder where his wife came from, did god try again in Eden and they failed again? Did he just make more people in the world? How is it the terrible Cain became the patron for a ciilization, or a few of them really? It makes me wonder if it was more oral traditions pulled together, then at some point reflavored with name changes so now it's about Cain. The tidbit with his decendant is interesting where the curse is 72 fold for killing him. I wonder what it means. It ended so ubruptly. perhaps the first decendants of gods first children are special, or maybe it's against injuring anyone, or maybe just goes to show people are getting more nasty and violent and the violence begets more violence it only becomes worse.
The decendants of seth is an interesting bit (i know i'm odd for finding it interesting. it's just a long line of fathering really) but it was interesting at two parts. The first was that humans were apparently near divine, they were alive for 900 years and such, but this era had to end and the human being would only manage 120 years. How could our ancestors have come to that number? at the time the life span wasn't anywhere near that! it still hasn't quite managed that now, except a few outliers, but studies in DNA show that after 120 years the structure of our DNA begins to weaken. This is why clones have problems with aging. if you clone yourself after 60 years, the clone has about 60 years left to live. neat isn't it? i always found that little part of the bible to just be...fascinating. Anyway the other interesting part is, it resembles the greek mythology with its ages. the divine humans are much like the men of the golden age. what does that mean? maybe we like to think we were at least once great, maybe we know that once our ancsestors were far more physically superior to ourselves. they were the wolves to our being dogs. or maybe there really was a part of human history where god was with us and we were awesome.
The Nephilim children are like the greek heroes, all touched by the gods in some way, normally through their bloodline. The human idea of superior blood is interesting, and has some creedane. when a family starts with very nice genes, royal families for instance, and continue to have children with people like themselves (normally through imbreeding) they manage to have a very fine family...pole. the problem comes from marrying outside of the family. See imbreeding doesn't create bad genes, it just brings out any bad genes. If you carefully selectfully breed, it's not a problem until new genes are in the mix, then everyone ends up with hemophilia.
Well i shall call it a night on this part. I didn't mean to get so ranty but i do really like to analyze this sort of thing. I'll be better later on, though i'm not sure who will really be reading this anyway? Are we supposed to comment on everyone elses blog?

first day of class

So I must say that I am quite pleased with this first day of class. I was dreading this course to be honest, so much work and such a touchy subject, but after seeing the other people in the course, and listening to Professor Sexson I am happy I signed up.

Now to start with my journey through the bible. Like I said in class I "read" it before, but professor Sexson was right, i didn't strive to fully comprehend everything. The story behind this is fairly simple really. I am an atheist...well I am more of a Daoist, but i don't believe in a deity or that the universe has any interest in me whatsoever, so for simplicity I just say I'm an atheist. Now i understand some people need religion, and if you believe in something and arent hurting anyone, then who am I to say that you're wrong. Well some people don't particularly feel the same way and I was getting quite a bit of flack simple for not believing in what they did. So one day I simply decided to pick up a king james bible and read it cover to cover. It certainly made it easier when people quoted scripture at me to point out counter examples from the same book.
but yes, it will be interesting to see what i get out of it when i'm looking at it in an academic sense.