The whole myth of Genesis according to the majority of the scholars, is borrowed literally from the Hindu and the Mesopotamian literature as an allegory of the appearance of the life on earth and how the “divine Soul” fell from its divine abode, down on earth, being allegorized in the Fall of the protoplasts, representing the male & female aspect of the soul. The mythographers of that myth used deities and superstitious paradigms to explain to the vulgar how they imagined that life appeared on earth.
Mr. Franklin, in his book “Buddhists and Jeynes,” says: “A striking instance is recorded by the very intelligent traveler (Wilson), regarding a representation of the Fall of our first parents, sculptured in the magnificent temple of Ipsambul, in Nubia. He says that a very exact representation of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden is to be seen in that cave, and that the serpent climbing round the tree is especially delineated, and the whole subject of the tempting of our first parents most accurately exhibited.” (mentioned in Higgins’ Anacalypsis, vol. i. p. 403)
Nearly the same thing was found by Colonel Coombs in the South of India. Colonel Tod, in his “History of Rajapoutana,” says: “A drawing, brought by Colonel Coombs from a sculptured column in a cave-temple in the South of India, represents the first pair at the foot of the ambrosial tree, and a serpent entwined among the heavily-laden boughs, presenting to them some of the fruit from his mouth. The tempter appears to be at that part of his discourse, when his words, replete with guile, into her heart too easy entrance won: Fixed on the fruit she gazed. This is a curious subject to be engraved on an ancient Pagan temple” (James Tod’s History of Rajapoutana, p. 581, & Higgins: Anacalypsis, vol. i. p. 404)
As Dr. T. Inman points out, in the ancient languages, the term for “garden” was used as a metaphor for “the woman”. See “ANCIENT FAITHS AND MODERN: A Dissertation upon Worships, Legends and Divinities In Central And Western Asia, Europe, And Elsewhere, Before The Christian Era. Showing Their Relations To Religious Customs As They Now Exist”. By Thomas Inman, i. 52; ii. 553. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/38100/38100-h/38100-h.htm
Asherah, El’s and Yahweh’s wife was often named as tree, grove, locus etc in Vulgate and in the Orthodox Greek Bible. She was also represented with a tree coming out of her vagina, since she was worshipped as the goddess of fertility. The tree had a spiritual, but also a phallic meaning together with its fruits that metaphorically represented the “sperms” of the procreation. That is why we read in the paleo-Hebrew literature (see Louis Ginzberg “The Legends of the Jews”) that Eve gave also to all animals in Paradise to eat the fruit of the three of knowledge, except the bird “phoenix” that refused to eat and was reborn from its ashes, insinuating that through the sperm all kinds of life propagated on earth.
So, we have the male concept or the tree of life and of knowledge of Eden, that they were united in one single huge tree covering the entire earth, as we read in the ancient Jewish Midrashim, that represents the phallus and the female concept, the “garden” representing the yoni and the fruits of the tree, representing the sperms of the procreation. We encounter the same story (almost identical) in the Hindu literature, namely, that, “Meru” which is the equivalent Jewish Garden of Eden, in which Siva or Mahadeva the creator of the nature (The equivalent Gnostic Demiurge) has his abode and near him is Bhavani or Parvati, his sister and wife, the goddess of Yoni, or the “Queen of the mountain Meru”.
Is it a coincidence that in other ancient mythologies the main deity bore his sister or wife from his own body like Zeus with Athena and Hera and Lady Wisdom with Yahweh? The same we read in the Gnostic Gospels about god’s wife Sophia who bore the “son of Chaos”, known also as “The Demiurge”, or “Yaldabaoth” without any sexual intercourse, who was the chief deity of the Archons or Dark Angels, among them Yahweh who all together created the visible world and the protoplasts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_(Gnosticism)
In the paleo-Hebrew literature (Midrashim) we have seen that the tree of knowledge was immense and the same we read for the equivalent Hindu tree of knowledge “Jambu” which after passing through “the circle of the moon,” it divides it into four streams, flowing towards the four cardinal points. The same we read in the Jewish literature about the four rivers.
The equivalent Hindu Mahadeva’s sister and wife, is the “androgynous” in the Mosaic myth, originally Adam and Lilith, and after Adam & Eve who is his sister because she is from Adam’s own flesh, but also a wife, just like in the Hindu myth and not only (see Isis-Hathor and Osiris, Zeus, Athena and Hera etc)!
Some authors argue that Adam derives from the Babylonian goddess Adamu which means “soil”, “earth” and it has actually the same meaning in the Semitic vocabulary among other meanings.
The idea brought out in this story of the first human pair having originally formed a single androgynous being with two faces, separated later into two personalities by the Creator, is to be found in the Genesis account (v. 2). “Male and female created he them, and blessed them, and named their name Adam.” Jewish tradition in the Targum and Talmud, as well as among learned rabbis, allege that Adam was created man and woman at the same time, having two faces turned in two opposite directions, and that the Creator separated the feminine half from him, in order to make of her a distinct person. The same fable we read in the Roman Mythology concerning the double-faced Janus.
The Zend-Avesta, the sacred writings of the Parsees, states that the Supreme being Ahuramazdâ (Ormuzd), created the universe and man in six successive periods of time. This book states that Ahuramazdâ created the first man and women joined together at the back. After dividing them, he endowed them with motion and activity, placed within them an intelligent soul, and bade them “to be humble of heart; to observe the law; to be pure in their thoughts, pure in their speech, pure in their actions.” Thus were born Mashya and Mashyâna, the pair from which all human beings are descended. [Francois Lenormant: “Beginning of History” vol. i. p. 6.]
Bishop Colenso’s Examination Of The Pentateuch Examined, 2011 by George Smith Drew (Author) vol. iv. p. 158) tells us of the Persian legend that the first couple lived originally in purity and innocence. Perpetual happiness was promised them by the Creator if they persevered in their virtue. But an evil demon came to them in the form of a serpent, sent by Ahriman, the prince of devils, and gave them fruit of a wonderful tree, which imparted immortality.
Eating of the forbidden fruit was simply a figurative mode of expressing the performance of the act necessary to the perpetuation of the human race. The “Tree of Knowledge” was a Phallic tree, and the fruit which grew upon it was Phallic fruit. [ “Much of the Old Testament which Christian divines, in their ignorance of Jewish lore, have insisted on receiving and interpreting literally, the informed Rabbis never dreamed of regarding as anything but allegorical. The ‘literalists’ they called fools. The account of the Creation was one of the portions which the unlearned were specially forbidden to meddle with.” (Greg William, The Creed of Christendom, p. 80.)]
In all the vast variety of religious systems, it seems that none of them is really original. All of them derived from another one or ones that proceeded long before. Hence, the origin of one religion should be veiled at any cost, whence the myth of the forbidden tree of knowledge whose allegoric meaning was to the no initiated “not to seek the truth” (Knowledge).
However, since Genesis is copied from the Hindus and the Mesopotamians, the myth of the tree of knowledge was an allegory referred to as the “book of knowledge” alluded to the Wisdom of Buddha or Veda. Veda is the sacred book of the Hindus in which all knowledge is written of the past, present and future. In India the myth says, that the eldest son of God, Adonis or Buddha -the male-, at the instigation of the female, robbed the garden of a flower, for which he was crucified; but that he rose again to life and immortality and by this he wrought the salvation of man. (Godfrey Higgins, Anacalypsis p 304)
So, do you still take the biblical myth literally?
BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR FURTHER READING
The origins of human beings according to ancient Sumerian texts
https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-human-origins-folklore/origins-human-beings-according-ancient-sumerian-texts-0065
Should We Take Creation Stories in Genesis Literally?
Finding multiple truths in biblical myths
The Adam and Eve Story: Eve Came From Where?
Bible Myths and their Parallels in other Religions, by Thomas Doane
R&I~Smit
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