>>> James Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> 12/23/99 06:19PM >>>
On Thu, 23 Dec 1999 17:34:51 -0500 "Charles Brown"
<CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us> writes:
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>>>> James Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> 12/23/99 04:53PM >>>
>Jewish interpretations of the story of Adam and Eve have always
>been different from the Christian ones. The doctrine of original
>sin is not a Jewish teaching.
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>CB: By the way, what is the Jewish "interpretation" of the story of
>Adam and Eve ? Seems to me the story itself is Jewish. And isn't it
>in the text that Adam and Eve AND THEIR PROGENY (everybody) lost
>eternal life because of the sin ? And what about the gaining of
>knowledge of good and evil ? Feeling shame at nudity ( the origin of
>clothes ?) ? Is the Jewish interpretation of the story entirely
>different than the Jewish interpretation ?
I think you meant to ask if the Jewish interpretatiosn were different from the Christian ones. There do appear to be some important differences. It is my understanding that the Jewish Cabbalists interpreted the story in terms of the Fall being a necessary step forward in the development of human consciousness. By defying God humans developed self-awareness which resulted in a knowledge of good and evil. This self-awareness was manifested by their becoming ashamed of their nakedness. In the Cabbalist view sin was a necessary step for human self-development (which goes to show how mystics were the first dialectical thinkers).
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CB: Thanks for this. So, for the Cabbalists it is not a "fall" but a "rise" Thinking about this for a few days in conjunction with some feminist reading, I was thinking the same thing. Eve led humanity on a step forward , not in a step backward. The knowledge of good and evil is , perhaps, a way of describing the founding of culture and symbolic thinking. Perhaps this story reflects the fact that women founded human culture and led humanity out of the its totally animal state.
The Christian interpretation of the Adam & Evil seems to me to owe much to Gnosticism which emphasized the fallen nature of this world and the fallen nature of man.
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>> Seems the Judaic version is that it was a sin or
>>transgression of God's law and command, and since Adam and Eve were
>>the original people, it was the original sin in some sense.
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>Original sin in the sense of being the first sin committed by humans.
>People did not inherit from then an innateky sinful nature as
>Christianity generally teaches.
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>CB: Yes, but isn't the Jewish doctrine that people inherited death (
>i.e. innate mortality) and knowledge of good and evil from this sin ?
>This is not just any old sin , but a sin with heavy implications for
>all of humanity, in the Jewish interpretation, isn't it ?
Yes, of course. The first sin was still the defining moment for humanity for both good and bad. There was certainly a price to be paid for it but the consequences were not all bad either, and it was also seen as representing a major step in the development of human consciousness.
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>>I was the "original" one on this thread to mention sin in commenting
>>on Yoshie's post. Here's what I said:
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>>***** [Joan] Copjec and [Jacob] Rogozinski are both concerned,
>>though in
>>different ways, to save Kant from his optimistic turn in order to
>>liberate
>>from his text what they consider his crucial insight: the
>ineradicable
>>evil
>>of human nature. But if this is what they are looking for, why not
>>look to
>>Luther and Calvin, who do truly assert just such a doctrine?
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>>CB: Hell, why not look to the snake in the garden and original sin,
>>the original source of Luther and Calvin's doctrine. The idea of
>>ineradicable evil of human nature is not original with these guys.
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>>Then next, Ken claimed there was no textual basis for Augustine's
>>doctrine of original sin. Not that I am trying to get into defending
>>Augustine's interpretation, but it is not quite accurate to say that
>>there is NO textual basis for Augustine's interpretation. No
>>disagreement if you are saying the Judaic original interpretations
>>were not the same as Augustine's.
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>I think it is reasonable to say that Augustine's interpretation of
>the Adam & Eve story is one possible interpretation but it
>was not the only possible one.
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>CB: As I say, I am not an Augustinian. I don't think or argue in the
>least that his is the only possible or even original interpretation of
>the story. However, it does seem to me that the story on its face has
>to do with sin and the origin of sin. This is not the precise
>Christian/Augustinian doctrine, but the Jewish and Christian
>interpretations , exegeses seem to be variations of a single myth (
>See Levi-Strauss "Mythologique" , _Structural Anthropology_).
Well of course but I think the more interesting question would be why the different interpretations of the same myths. Whose interests were served by these differing interpretations? What relations can be drawn between these different interpretations and the differing social locations that Christians and Jews occupied under the Roman Empire and in medieval society?
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CB: Yes, agreed, and what about whose interests were served by portraying Eve, a woman , as causing a fall , instead of a rise. Why the interests of patriarchy, of course. Now correct my history, but didn't patriarchy go all of the way back to Abraham , in 1900 BC, way before the Roman Empire and Christianity ?
Marxist anthropologist Evelyn Reed has an essay on women as the originators of all of human cultural development, which would suggest that the Adam and Eve myth is perhaps an inverted representation of the truth that women founded humanity (!).
As to different positions of Christians and Jews under the Roman Empire, Christians started out as a despised , tiny sect of Jews. The mainstream Jews were a conquered people , but they had comprador kings in the Empire. Then it began to shift ending with Constantine becoming a Christian.
I'm not sure how the different interpretations of the myth of the fall/rise from the Garden of Eden play in this. Christianity seemed to be the religion of slaves, so maybe the notion of being "fallen" resonated with being a slave and was popular among all slaves in the empire, not just Jews/Christians, but all slaves, who were the main oppressed and exploited class in the mode of production of slavery.
CB