This was all wonderful, but may I suggest to Mr Kushner that he formulates his questions a bit more succinctly next time? Towards the end, Mr Greenblatt started his answers before Mr Kushner finished formulating them, as there seems to come no end to Mr Kushner's build up.
The Garden of Eden (Adam and Eve) story attempts to explain several things: (1) How man came to be created, (2) Where he was created, (3) His purpose in life, (4) How he came to learn it is wrong to be naked, (5) How he angered his maker. The Babylonians had religious myths that addressed all of these questions. Some scholars are of the opinion that Genesis' Adam and Eve story is a refutation of these Babylonian beliefs. Monotheistic belief is being advanced at the expense of Polytheism. The Polytheistic gods lived in a desert flood plain (today's Iraq) whose uncultivated tract was called in Sumerian the EDIN. This EDIN was watered by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, two streams that water Genesis' EDEN. The gods made man to be their gardening slave. He is to relieve the gods of the toil in caring for their fruit-tree gardens associated with cities they have made in the midst of the EDIN. Early Sumerian art forms portray man as naked in the Edin, unaware it is wrong to be naked. Naked men present to their gods the harvest from Edin's city-gardens (see the Uruk vase of circa 3200 BC). Polytheism has man a sinner because he was made in the image of the gods who are portrayed as being sinners. For the gods rape each other, lie to each other, murder each other, commit incest with their mothers, daughters, and grand-daughters. The murdered gods descend to live in an underworld called EDIN. Here the gods consume clay for food and muddy water for drink. The Hebrews objected to these explanations about man's origins and behaviors. For the Hebrews God is not a liar, pervert, pedophile, and murderer. Man is the culprit or sinner not because he was made in the image of a sinful gd, but because he exercised his free will to act in an ignoble manner. I have two books on this subject available at Amazon.com, published in 2010, Walter R. Mattfeld, Eden's Serpent: Its Mesopotamian Origin, and The Garden of Eden Myth: Its Pre-biblical Origin in Mesopotamian Myths. I also have a website dealing with the subject at www.bibleorigins.net and videos at UA-cam under my name Walter R. Mattfeld.
This was all wonderful, but may I suggest to Mr Kushner that he formulates his questions a bit more succinctly next time? Towards the end, Mr Greenblatt started his answers before Mr Kushner finished formulating them, as there seems to come no end to Mr Kushner's build up.
The Garden of Eden (Adam and Eve) story attempts to explain several things: (1) How man came to be created, (2) Where he was created, (3) His purpose in life, (4) How he came to learn it is wrong to be naked, (5) How he angered his maker. The Babylonians had religious myths that addressed all of these questions. Some scholars are of the opinion that Genesis' Adam and Eve story is a refutation of these Babylonian beliefs. Monotheistic belief is being advanced at the expense of Polytheism. The Polytheistic gods lived in a desert flood plain (today's Iraq) whose uncultivated tract was called in Sumerian the EDIN. This EDIN was watered by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, two streams that water Genesis' EDEN. The gods made man to be their gardening slave. He is to relieve the gods of the toil in caring for their fruit-tree gardens associated with cities they have made in the midst of the EDIN. Early Sumerian art forms portray man as naked in the Edin, unaware it is wrong to be naked. Naked men present to their gods the harvest from Edin's city-gardens (see the Uruk vase of circa 3200 BC). Polytheism has man a sinner because he was made in the image of the gods who are portrayed as being sinners. For the gods rape each other, lie to each other, murder each other, commit incest with their mothers, daughters, and grand-daughters. The murdered gods descend to live in an underworld called EDIN. Here the gods consume clay for food and muddy water for drink. The Hebrews objected to these explanations about man's origins and behaviors. For the Hebrews God is not a liar, pervert, pedophile, and murderer. Man is the culprit or sinner not because he was made in the image of a sinful gd, but because he exercised his free will to act in an ignoble manner. I have two books on this subject available at Amazon.com, published in 2010, Walter R. Mattfeld, Eden's Serpent: Its Mesopotamian Origin, and The Garden of Eden Myth: Its Pre-biblical Origin in Mesopotamian Myths. I also have a website dealing with the subject at www.bibleorigins.net and videos at UA-cam under my name Walter R. Mattfeld.