The Allegory of the Fall of Man in Genesis and the Original Sin

This OP is somehow the continuation of my previous one, “The Allegory of the myth of Genesis”, that due to its voluminous references and texts, ought to be exposed in two parts.

The allegory of the Fall or the expulsion of the protoplasts from Eden, as well as the story of the fallen angels in the Jewish literature and in other mythologies like the myth of Prometheus, are based on the same rebellion of a “messenger” (for the western literature,  he was Lucifer the messenger of light or of knowledge), just like in the religion of the Brahmans, where Moisasure, the Hindu Lucifer, becomes envious of the Creator’s resplendent light, and leading a legion of rebellious spirits against Brahma, declares war against him. The same with Zeus and his eleven gods and goddesses against Kronos and the rebellious Watchers and the Fallen Angels in the Jewish literature (read for this the Book of Enoch).

The word “angel” originates from the ancient Greek vocabulary and it meant “the messenger”, that one who concludes contracts, or covenants, or collects money. As a divine or transcendent presence, the concept of angel appears for the first time in the person of Hermes, who is addressed as Persephone’s angel by Homer (Iliad Β, 786/7 & C, 121). Also, according to Plato (The Republic, 10, 619b), the Underworld has its angels, who are called “catachthonian angels” (evil angels).

The Fall of man on earth, was a Hindu allegory of the soul which firstly was divine living on the 7th sky together with Brahma (we read of the same belief in the Jewish literature that among the “chambers” of the firmament, there was one with souls guarded by Metatron the lesser Yahweh), and its fall represents its embodiment in a carnal body on earth which metaphorically signifies its “spiritual death”! With the metaphorical Fall of the protoplasts, the Soul, became despiritualized and was given a fleshly body. In Genesis 3:21, the significant metaphoric phrase, “Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skin, and clothed them”, the author wanted to pass the message that the “coats of skin” represented the human body! Unless the god is considered as a “butcher” to have killed and skinned the animals and as a “tailor”, to make coats and to dress the protoplasts, which is ridiculous to take it literally!

The ancient Greeks held the same concept probably copied from the Persians, Hindus or Egyptians. Pythagoras said, “The soul is a demon imprisoned in a human body. Once, the soul lived among the gods, now it is condemned to watch the world behind its prison’s bars” (the body with its propensities). In Orphic teaching, the soul was considered to be a “deposed God”, and it was possible to free itself from the perishable body and to regain its divine essence, by consecutive purges, mystic rituals, and reincarnations. (see Pythagoras’ secret teaching https://www.lookingforwisdom.com/pythagoras/)

In Plato’s Timeous we also read, “Father God assigned to minor gods that he created himself, the creation of the humans. Those minor gods having understood the Father God’s instructions fabricated the body for every human and in this body, they placed the immortal soul”! The same phrase we read in the Gnostic Gospels. In Plato’s Republic in the chapter “The dream of the soldier Er” he says that the soul reaches the purgatory and drinks from the “river of forgetfulness” in order to “forget” its past deeds and to be incarnated in another body until its purification. Drinking from this river, the soul “forgets” its past incarnations but doesn’t get rid of its past sins, which the supposed new human tries to atone!

In Corpus Hermeticum a similar phrase is to be found: “Atum (god) implants each human soul in flesh by means of the gods who circle in heaven (the planets). It is man’s lot to live his life according to the fate determined for him by these circling celestial powers and then to pass away and be resolved into the elements”.

In the Jewish Midrashim, Yahweh orders the angel Metatron to fetch him from the firmament’s store-room of the souls a specific soul with specific characteristics to place it in a new-born baby’s body. After the death, the soul returns in the same store-house in heaven. This concept was copied by Ezra during his exile in Babylon, when he compiled the Babylonian Talmud under the Zoroastrian influence which is more than apparent in the Jewish literature and theology today.

(JUDAISM MEETS ZOROASTRIANISM http://www.sullivan-county.com/news/mine/jud_zor.htm)

The Hindus invented the notion of the soul to explain its perpetual incarnations in a human body until its enlightenment and purification. In Hinduism the atman (“breath,” or “soul”) is the universal, eternal self, of which each individual soul (jiva or jiva-atman) partakes. The jiva-atman is also eternal but is imprisoned in an earthly body at birth. https://www.britannica.com/topic/soul-religion-and-philosophy

Have you noticed the striking similarities with Pythagoras’ and Plato’s sayings and the Jewish “breath” (god’s spirit) of Genesis?

The same dogma we encounter among the ancient Egyptians, namely, in “The Book of the Dead” where the soul (Ba) tries to pass the seven guarded gates of the underworld by using spells enclosed in the coffins in order to reach the boat of Amun-Ra to the eternity.

So, the Fall of the protoplasts is nothing but an allegory of the fall of the soul, that is, its immoral degradation and has nothing to do with the myth of the “disobedience” which was “invented” by the Jewish authors as an excuse of the expulsion from Eden. Besides, this “excuse” is debunked by the Bible itself, in which in the chapter of Genesis 3:22, we read what the Gods said after the “disobedience” of the protoplasts….

“And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side[e] of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life”.

Have you noticed, that the tree of knowledge wasn’t any more so significant to be guarded, contrary to the tree of “Life”?

Were the gods (plural form) afraid of the protoplasts that they would become immortal and mighty like them? Well, the scholars argue, that Genesis was written by four different authors and we can distinguish the contradictory accounts in both chapters one and two. The rest of the myth is just some embellishments, since the verse 2:22, contradicts with the notion of the disobedience and alludes to the notorious Christian motto “Ignorance is bliss” and “believe but do not seek”. “Knowledge” contrary to the Hindu Rig Vedas, was considered by the Hebrew-Christians from the remote antiquity, as a “forbidden fruit”, since it gets people “think” instead of blindly believe in superstitious myths! Up to the 15th century, the reading of the Bible was the exclusivity of the priests of RCC and the vulgar had no access at all. You see, it was at the RCC’s discretion to falsify any time the biblical texts and when the printing machine was invented, “fathers” pointed out the danger of that “malevolent” invention, since they were deprived of the possibility to forge their scriptures. This is also insinuated in the myth of Prometheus who brought to the humans the “fire” (the light, the knowledge) and was punished by the Olympian gods.

Besides, the early Christian fathers, saw differently the supposed “disobedience”, especially Augustin and Jerome who saw the sex as the original sin. After 20 years of debates about sex and original sin, the council of Ephesus embedded the Augustine’s misogynic concept of the original sin into Christianity condemning the Pelagians who were opposed to it and their Bishop Julian, declaring “little babies as evil requiring their baptism as a form of exorcism to remove them from the state of sin and expel the evil spirits”! After 431 CE, the doctrine of all the Christians is that all people are born in a state of sin and they HAD TO be baptized at the early age of their existence on earth and not as it was done before as fully grown men. Pope Leo III considered the humans “being made of filthy sperm, conceived in the desire of the flesh in the heat of sensual lust and his evil doings offend god”. I wonder, why then god created the man with lust and not as most of the animals that copulate once or twice a year? Or even better as Augustin thought, namely, women to get pregnant like the flowers, with pollen! Sic!

The misogynic “fathers” and “prophets” (some prophets!) argue in the OT, that the man is born in filth due to the original sin!

Psalm 51:5, “Behold, I was shaped in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me” (KJV). Hence, the author of this verse is speaking of the sinful character not only of the mother, but also of the child at the time of his conception and gestation!

The same in Psalm 58:3, “The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies” (KJV).

Apparently, the author has experienced newborn babies to get up and walk around the nursery telling lies to their parents! Some sick imagination! This, and other passages have been misused to teach the monstrous doctrine that babies of wicked parents are morally defiled and therefore go to hell if they die in infancy.

In the Romans 5:12, Paul accuses Adam that he brought sin with a tragic universal result. “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned–for before the law was given, sin was in the world”.

Does he, or he doesn’t take the Genesis allegoric myth literally?

Others claim that the original sin was due to the Fallen Angels who copulated with the mere women, but I wonder, why god did not foresee or prevent it and made the sexual organs, if not for the procreation of the humans on earth? Were they originally made for “decorative purposes”? Do angels have physical bodies and sexual organs to copulate with mere women? We read in some midrashim that “Angels were born circumcised”; hence, they were male! Shall I suppose that there are also female angels? Indeed, in the Jewish “mythology”, it seems that there are low-level angels who are born, multiply and die! And if somebody wants to learn of the origin of the Hebrew-Christian angels, the answer is …. “Babylonian”! Sic! If somebody doubts, then I recommend the book “DICTIONARY OF ANGELS INCLUDING THE FALLEN ANGELS, By Gustav Davidson”.

What do you believe?

 

Links and Bibliography for further reading

“The New History of Early Christianity” Charles Freeman

“A History of Early Christian Literature”, Edgar J. Goodspeed

“The age of Faith, The Story of Civilization” Will Durante

Fall of man

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_man

 

Zoroastrianism and Judaism According to the Jewish Encyclopedia

http://www.sullivan-county.com/z/zor6.htm

 

ZOROASTRIANISM, JUDAISM, AND CHRISTIANITY

http://www.pyracantha.com/Z/zjc3.html

 

ZOROASTER’S CONTRIBUTIONS TO CHRISTIANITY.

https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1904&context=ocj

 
 
 
R&I-Rawr

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Article URL : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_man