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Re: The Grand Challenge

Posted By: John M. Riada
Date: Tuesday, 29 October 2002, at 9:59 p.m.

In Response To: The Grand Challenge (Charles Pope)

I share your sentiment Charles, the story is indeed charged with a kind of emotional repellant that stirs up trepidation and even a little dread. Banishment from the "Forbidden Garden" and guardian cherubs (not the rosy cheeked variety from the 'Victorian shop') with flaming swords to make sure we stay away, seems to be imprinted on our very souls. While everything that follows is fair game for students, that first chapter is easier skipped-over. Is the flaming sword in our minds after all? Look anywhere you want -- but not there? For a place we are compelled to stay away from, the writer is unusually explicit in describing its location. (Genesis 2:8-14)

What bearing, if any, does Eden/Adam & Eve have on the study of Abraham and the Egyptians? Is there any evidence that they (Abraham etc) were aware of this story? Or maybe the book of Genesis is simply a rip-off of older Sumerian texts as conventional historians decree. Some history heretics (mostly religious types) believe that Genesis was the original source, passed down orally from an earlier time. Another view contemplates that Genesis and the Sumerian epics are really two distinct records of the same history, from different sides of the mountain.

Perhaps the real mystery about the Garden of Eden is in our tempered curiosity, after all. With unbridled passion, all of history is fair game for us, but this 'Eden' story is a door left closed. Perhaps you are right Charles, maybe the flaming sword is psychological - a shared and unspoken taboo of ancient things better left undisturbed.

"So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." (Genesis 3:24)

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