I've been thinking about this a lot, by coincidence, as I read Unsong by Scott Alexander (unsongbook.com). It's a beautifully written somewhat comic and somewhat tragic story about the kabbalic-turned-capitalist search for the powerful Names of God.
It occurred to me that, if the Abrahamic God exists, and the origin of Adam is anything more than a mere metaphor, God must have had to make a decision at some point. "There!", He/She/It said as the last vital chromosome fell into place in generation Aleph-1, "All this work is finally done. Whew! I could use some rest." Or something.
But maybe it's all metaphor (except for the God existing part). Maybe the Garden of Eden was Us (big-us, all the hominids) co-existing without technology, and the rise of flint-knapping/agriculture/representational art/whatever was the "eating of the fruit and gaining of knowledge".
Or any other variation you like, as long as you're not intentionally bound from thinking by a literalist view of the Torah's Book of Genesis. In which case, I have bad news: "Adam" wasn't even named that in the early writings, presumably closer to God's word. So, your translation is a bad start for you.
So, maybe the "Twelve Tribes of Israel" are themselves metaphoric for the whole set of hominin branches. Maybe "Ham" was Paranthropus. Accepting that "seven" in the bible sometimes implies "an important big number", maybe "seven" generations later (give or take a few 100) Paranthropus died out completely. Poor Ham. He was just checking to make sure Dad didn't oversleep.
Or maybe, there is no God, and it's just fun to play with myths, which are culturally powerful.
It's not hard to see how "leaving the garden" can be interpreted as us leaving nature. We're the only animal that doesn't really jive with the rest of the ecosystem.
He seems to have been "Adamah", or "dirt" - which is not far removed from "Adam", I'll grant.
But "Eve" is the one that really changed. She was named by Adam "Ishah", feminine version of "ish"/man. Or maybe "Chivah", a variation on the Hebrew word for life. I'm not clear. Then the Greeks made her "Zoe".... Fast forward a few hundred years, and a couple languages, and it becomes "Eve".
An early computer translating program took "out of sight, out of mind" to Russian and back, and returned "invisible insanity". A fairly reasonable translation, in some respects.
My point is really this: Biblical literalists who only read it in their native tongue are making indefensible claims about meaning.
It occurred to me that, if the Abrahamic God exists, and the origin of Adam is anything more than a mere metaphor, God must have had to make a decision at some point. "There!", He/She/It said as the last vital chromosome fell into place in generation Aleph-1, "All this work is finally done. Whew! I could use some rest." Or something.
But maybe it's all metaphor (except for the God existing part). Maybe the Garden of Eden was Us (big-us, all the hominids) co-existing without technology, and the rise of flint-knapping/agriculture/representational art/whatever was the "eating of the fruit and gaining of knowledge".
Or any other variation you like, as long as you're not intentionally bound from thinking by a literalist view of the Torah's Book of Genesis. In which case, I have bad news: "Adam" wasn't even named that in the early writings, presumably closer to God's word. So, your translation is a bad start for you.
So, maybe the "Twelve Tribes of Israel" are themselves metaphoric for the whole set of hominin branches. Maybe "Ham" was Paranthropus. Accepting that "seven" in the bible sometimes implies "an important big number", maybe "seven" generations later (give or take a few 100) Paranthropus died out completely. Poor Ham. He was just checking to make sure Dad didn't oversleep.
Or maybe, there is no God, and it's just fun to play with myths, which are culturally powerful.