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These stairs lead up to Kaufmann Jr's pad on the 3rd floor of the Fallingwater House. He and his parents of the Kaufmann Department Store owned this house from the late 1930's to the early 1960's when it was donated by Kaufmann Jr .to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. Since that time, the public has been able to tour this incredible house.
Deep In the Forrest, Ancient Wisdom is carved in stone imbued with Spiritual Energy!!
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EYMS Volvo B7TL/Wright Eclipse Gemini YX55DHJ (702) seen as it ambles through the splendid Wolds village of Sledmere whilst operating the TuTh 11:40 ex Driffield round trip on service 135.
The history of Sledmere is intertwined with the Sykes baronetcy who constructed Sledmere House in 1751 and continue to inhabit the property. The village has an estate feel to it, with cottages constructed for workers dominating property in the settlement. There are a number of memorials in Sledmere - most notably to the Wold Wagoners Reserve raised by Mark Sykes from the local population during WW1 - however the structure in the picture is simply a bandstand to my knowledge.
Bridlington depot operate the two TuTh journeys on the 135 alongside service 134 as part of a duty wedged between Driffield School work. 702 was new to Pocklington depot in 2005 for service X46 and operated there until transfer to Brid in early 2013. At the time the depot's only Gemini with service 510 in mind, it is currently used in a general pool of deckers which are mainly confined to school work and local services.
"In India, everyone seems to know this.
Philosophy isn't a form of gymnastics, it isn't the monopoly of the educated, it isn't reserved for academies, schools, or "philosophers".
Philosophy in India is part of life; it is Ariandne's thread leading the way out of the labyrinth of ignorance.
Philosophy is the religion offering a hoped-for salvation, which, for Indians, means knowledge.
Not "useful" knowledge for the sake of manipulating, possessing, changing, or dominating the world; but rather, as sacred texts say, "that knowledge which once attained leaves nothing else to know": self-knowledge."
(from "India Notes" by Tiziano Terzani - Italian journalist and writer,1938-2004)
Tiziano Terzani wrote about India like no other, his words are deeply connected to anything I see through my camera.
This sadhu was walking along the Ganges at Bhonsle Ghat in Varanasi (Benaras) where time seems to have decided to stop for ever, as if the atmosphere there wanted to be wrapped in a veil of philosophy, of self-knowledge...
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It was only later readers of Milton, says Appelbaum, who thought of "apple" as "apple" and not any seed-bearing fruit. For them, the forbidden fruit became synonymous with the malus pumila. As a widely read canonical work, Paradise Lost was influential in cementing the role of apple in the Fall story.
This month marks 350 years since John Milton sold his publisher the copyright of Paradise Lost for the sum of five pounds.
His great work dramatizes the oldest story in the Bible, whose principal characters we know only too well: God, Adam, Eve, Satan in the form of a talking snake — and an apple.
Except, of course, that Genesis never names the apple but simply refers to "the fruit." To quote from the King James Bible:
And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.'"
"Fruit" is also the word Milton employs in the poem's sonorous opening lines:
Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe
But in the course of his over-10,000-line poem, Milton names the fruit twice, explicitly calling it an apple. So how did the apple become the guilty fruit that brought death into this world and all our woe?
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The short and unexpected answer is: a Latin pun.
In order to explain, we have to go all the way back to the fourth century A.D., when Pope Damasus ordered his leading scholar of scripture, Jerome, to translate the Hebrew Bible into Latin. Jerome's path-breaking, 15-year project, which resulted in the canonical Vulgate, used the Latin spoken by the common man. As it turned out, the Latin words for evil and apple are the same: malus.
In the Hebrew Bible, a generic term, peri, is used for the fruit hanging from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, explains Robert Appelbaum, who discusses the biblical provenance of the apple in his book Aguecheek's Beef, Belch's Hiccup, and Other Gastronomic Interjections.
"Peri could be absolutely any fruit," he says. "Rabbinic commentators variously characterized it as a fig, a pomegranate, a grape, an apricot, a citron, or even wheat. Some commentators even thought of the forbidden fruit as a kind of wine, intoxicating to drink."
A detail of Michelangelo's fresco in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel depicting the Fall of Man and expulsion from the Garden of Eden
Wikipedia
When Jerome was translating the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil," the word malus snaked in. A brilliant but controversial theologian, Jerome was known for his hot temper, but he obviously also had a rather cool sense of humor.
"Jerome had several options," says Appelbaum, a professor of English literature at Sweden's Uppsala University. "But he hit upon the idea of translating peri as malus, which in Latin has two very different meanings. As an adjective, malus means bad or evil. As a noun it seems to mean an apple, in our own sense of the word, coming from the very common tree now known officially as the Malus pumila. So Jerome came up with a very good pun."
The story doesn't end there. "To complicate things even more," says Appelbaum, "the word malus in Jerome's time, and for a long time after, could refer to any fleshy seed-bearing fruit. A pear was a kind of malus. So was the fig, the peach, and so forth."
Which explains why Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel fresco features a serpent coiled around a fig tree. But the apple began to dominate Fall artworks in Europe after the German artist Albrecht Dürer's famous 1504 engraving depicted the First Couple counterpoised beside an apple tree. It became a template for future artists such as Lucas Cranach the Elder, whose luminous Adam and Eve painting is hung with apples that glow like rubies.
Enlarge this image
Eve giving Adam the forbidden fruit, by Lucas Cranach the Elder.
Wikipedia
Milton, then, was only following cultural tradition. But he was a renowned Cambridge intellectual fluent in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, who served as secretary for foreign tongues to Oliver Cromwell during the Commonwealth. If anyone was aware of the malus pun, it would be him. And yet he chose to run it with it. Why?
Appelbaum says that Milton's use of the term "apple" was ambiguous. "Even in Milton's time the word had two meanings: either what was our common apple, or, again, any fleshy seed-bearing fruit. Milton probably had in mind an ambiguously named object with a variety of connotations as well as denotations, most but not all of them associating the idea of the apple with a kind of innocence, though also with a kind of intoxication, since hard apple cider was a common English drink."
It was only later readers of Milton, says Appelbaum, who thought of "apple" as "apple" and not any seed-bearing fruit. For them, the forbidden fruit became synonymous with the malus pumila. As a widely read canonical work, Paradise Lost was influential in cementing the role of apple in the Fall story.
But whether the forbidden fruit was an apple, fig, peach, pomegranate or something completely different, it is worth revisiting the temptation scene in Book 9 of Paradise Lost, both as an homage to Milton (who composed his masterpiece when he was blind, impoverished and in the doghouse for his regicidal politics) and simply to savor the sublime beauty of the language. Thomas Jefferson loved this poem. With its superfood dietary advice, celebration of the 'self-help is the best help' ideal, and presence of a snake-oil salesman, Paradise Lost is a quintessentially American story, although composed more than a century before the United States was founded.
What makes the temptation scene so absorbing and enjoyable is that, although written in archaic English, it is speckled with mundane details that make the reader stop in surprise.
Take, for instance, the serpent's impeccably timed gustatory seduction. It takes place not at any old time of the day but at lunchtime:
"Mean while the hour of Noon drew on, and wak'd/ An eager appetite."
What a canny and charmingly human detail. Milton builds on it by lingeringly conjuring the aroma of apples, knowing full well that an "ambrosial smell" can madden an empty stomach to action. The fruit's "savorie odour," rhapsodizes the snake, is more pleasing to the senses than the scent of the teats of an ewe or goat dropping with unsuckled milk at evening. Today's Food Network impresarios, with their overblown praise and frantic similes, couldn't dream up anything close to that peculiarly sensuous comparison.
It is easy to imagine the scene. Eve, curious, credulous and peckish, gazes longingly at the contraband "Ruddie and Gold" fruit while the unctuous snake-oil salesman murmurs his encouragement. Initially, she hangs back, suspicious of his "overpraising." But soon she begins to cave: How can a fruit so "Fair to the Eye, inviting to the Taste," be evil? Surely it is the opposite, its "sciental sap" must be the source of divine knowledge. The serpent must speak true.
So saying, her rash hand in evil hour
Forth reaching to the Fruit, she pluck'd, she eat:
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat
Sighing through all her Works gave signs of woe,
That all was lost.
But Eve is insensible to the cosmic disappointment her lunch has caused. Sated and intoxicated as if with wine, she bows low before "O Sovran, vertuous, precious of all Trees," and hurries forth with "a bough of fairest fruit" to her beloved Adam, that he too might eat and aspire to godhead. Their shared meal, foreshadowed as it is by expulsion and doom, is a moving and poignant tableau of marital bliss.
Meanwhile, the serpent, its mission accomplished, slinks into the gloom. Satan heads eagerly toward a gathering of fellow devils, where he boasts that the Fall of Man has been wrought by something as ridiculous as "an apple."
Except that it was a fig or a peach or a pear. An ancient Roman punned – and the apple myth was born.
The first tale in the Bible tells of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden. This was in consequence for having tasted the “forbidden fruit” of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Christian iconography and popular culture represent the fruit as an apple. But a careful reading of the passage leads one to the conclusion that, in fact, the actual fruit is never mentioned in the book. How, then, did the apple become this symbol of temptation and sin?
A standard version of Genesis 3:3-5 says:
But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
According to Robert Appelbaum’s book Aguecheek’s Beef, Belch’s Hiccup, and Other Gastronomic Interjections, the confusion may be due to a sort of joke of St. Jerome, who first translated the Bible into the vulgar Latin. (This version is still known as “The Vulgate” even today.) It turns out that the Latin words for apple, and for evil, are the same: malus. According to Appelbaum, the Hebrew word, peri, which was used to refer to the fruit in the Bible, can refer to any type of fruit, a fig, a pomegranate, a grape, or even a peach or a lemon. Some Bible commentators even believe that the forbidden fruit may have been a drink that produced an intoxication in those who drank it. Hence they gained “knowledge of good and evil.”
St. Jerome translated “peri” with the word “malus.” It’s an adjective meaning “evil,” though as a noun, it means “apple,” from trees known even today as Malus pumila. However, as Appelbaum points out, malus may refer not only to the apple, but to any fruit with seeds: pears are a species of malus, as are figs, peaches, and others.In religious iconography, there was no clear consensus for several centuries on exactly what type of fruit it was from this tree of which humanity’s first parents couldn’t eat. Michelangelo painted a fig tree in the Sistine Chapel. Durer depicted an apple tree, as did Lucas Cranach, the Elder. But another Appelbaum hypothesis in explaining the apple’s preeminence over other seeded fruits comes from the English poet, John Milton. His Paradise Lost was published in 1667. For Milton, the semantic ambiguity of the malus should not have been a mystery, versed as he was in ancient languages like Latin and Hebrew. Appelbaum notes that it’s possible Milton appreciated St. Jerome’s joke as a reference to intoxication or drunkenness from apple cider, popular in his own time. Paradise Lost refers on a couple of occasions to the fruit of this problematic tree and refers to it as an apple.
Another possible explanation may come from the Golden Apple of Discord. In Greek mythology, this was the work of the goddess Eris, (a temptress, as Satan had been for the Hebrews). According to the myth, Eris was angry at having not been invited to the wedding of Peleus and Tetis (parents of the great warrior Achilles). She presented the wedding guests with a golden apple which would reveal who among them was “the most beautiful of all.” Three goddesses fought amongst themselves: Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty; Hera, the guardian of the home and childbearing and wife of the great Zeus; and Aphrodite, daughter of Zeus and goddess of wisdom. To settle the dispute, Zeus consulted a Trojan shepherd and mortal, Paris, to choose from among the three goddesses which was the most beautiful. The three goddesses tried to bribe him in turn with new gifts. Finally, Paris decided for Aphrodite, who had promised him the love of the most beautiful woman of all. This was none other than Helena. Helena’s abduction by Paris is the mythical origin of the Trojan War. And thus the apple is also at the center of the most epic dispute in Greek civilization.
The Apple and the Heart
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Romanesque iconography more frequently used the apple as the forbidden fruit. The lengthy list of images in the three studied countries represents a significant part of our corpus. Among them, one can cite in Spain, Amandi, Añes, Avilés, the Bible of Burgos, the Bible of San Isidoro, Covet, Estany, Estibaliz, Frómista, Loarre, Mahamud, Peralada (figure 6), Porqueras, Rebolledo de la Torre, San Pablo del Campo, Sangüesa, Santillana del Mar, and Uncastillo. In France, Airvault, Andlau, Arles, Aulnay, the Bible of Corbie, the Bible of Marchiennes, the Bible of Souvigny, Cahors, Chalon-sur-Saône, Chauvigny (Figure 3), Cluny, Courpiac, Esclottes, Guarbecque, Hastingues-Arthous, the Hortus Deliciarum, Lescure, Mauriac (in the Auvergne), Melay, Moirax, Montpezat, Neuilly-en-Donjon, Nîmes, Poitiers (Sainte-Radegonde Church), Provins, Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire, Saint-Gaudens, the Sauve-Majeure, Targon, Tavant, Thuret, Toirac, Varax, Verdun, and Vézelay. In Italy, Galliano, Modena (figure 4), Parma, Pisa, Sant’Angelo in Formis, and Sovana.
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Over subsequent centuries, the apple was continually present in the iconography of the original sin. [45] For illustrative purposes, note that in the Gothic...[45] It was frequently used as the forbidden fruit in literature, particularly in the twelfth century by Marie de France, [46] Marie de France, Yonec, v. 152, in Les Lais de Marie...[46] in the thirteenth century by Robert de Boron, [47] Le Roman du Graal: manuscrit de Modène, ed. Bernard...[47] and in the fifteenth century by Sebastian Brandt. [48] Sebastian Brandt, La Nef des fous [Das Narrenschiff],...[48] In paroemiology, this seems to be the meaning of a proverb from the beginning of the thirteenth century: “mieux vaut pomme donnée que mangée” (better an apple given than eaten). [49] Joseph Morawski, ed., Proverbes français antérieurs...[49] In hagiography, the apple is the forbidden fruit in, for example, the Cantigas de Santa María. [50] Alfonso X of Castile, Cantigas de Santa María, 353,...[50] An interesting case also appears in the breviary: the Hail Mary—appearing in the twelfth century from a passage in the New Testament [51] Luke, I, 28, 42. Henri Leclercq, “Marie, mère de Dieu,”...[51]—refers only to a “fruit,” but an anonymous commentator from Northern France specifies at the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century that it concerns the “fruit of the apple tree.” [52] Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod. Gall. 34,...[52] Anchored in Western imaginations ever since, the apple has even replaced the fig among modern scholars, in parallel to the cultural process that saw the heart where previously there had been the liver. [53] See Hasenohr, Prier au Moyen Âge: n. 38. Regarding...[53]
Figure 3. - Capital at the entranceway to the choir of the church
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The reasons behind this almost unanimous choice are unclear, however. We may allude to the more or less widespread presence of the apple throughout all of Western Europe. We may observe the old Celtic symbolism of the apple as the fruit of knowledge. We may recall its symbolic capital as a sign of power, wealth, lies, lust, discord, and transgression. [54] Michel Pastoureau, “Bonum, malum, pomum. Une histoire...[54] We may suppose that just as the garden of Hesperides recalls the Garden of Eden (both sheltering a snake that defends the sacred tree), the apple tree “with fruits of gold” in the Greek myth influenced the medieval interpretation of the biblical account. We may thus argue the ancient association between this tree and Eden, which led to naming the carob the “apple of Paradise” in Hebrew. [55] L. Ginzberg, Les Légendes des juifs, 219, n. 70.[55] We may also consider the authority of Saint Augustine, who hesitantly accepted the possibility of the apple being the fruit of sin, perhaps influenced by the existence of thirty different varieties of apples in the Roman world at the time. [56] Augustine, La Genèse au sens littéral en douze livres...[56] We may wonder especially whether in popular medieval etymology there was not certain confusion between the words malum “badly” and malum “apple” as well as between malus “malicious” and malus “apple tree;” these phonetic identities may have had semantic implications indicating the evil character of the fruit. [57] Among the transformations affecting the Roman world...[57]
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The increasing popularity of the apple in this role was perhaps also related to its round shape and red color, which drew it closer to the heart, being the organ that was linked to the blood of Christ and that Christianity and its doctrine perceived as the center of the human being. In this sense, the precedents were strong; the doubt surrounding the identity of the forbidden fruit reflected another, more ancient doubt regarding the central organ of the body in the diverse cultures that, in a more or less direct way, provided the foundations for medieval Christian culture. Whereas the Egyptians perceived the heart as the center of the human being, [58] The Book of the Dead, ed. and trans. E. A. Wallis Budge,...[58] the Hebrews attributed sacred powers to the liver, while regarding the heart as the seat of feelings and wisdom, and the source of life. [59] See, for example, Genesis, 20:5; Job, 9:4; Proverbs,...[59] The two organs fought for the role of the principle of life among the Babylonians [60] Alexandre Piankoff, Le “Cœur” dans les textes égyptiens...[60] and Greeks. [61] In mythology, the liver is the central element in the...[61]
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In the third century BC, the medical school in Alexandria established the physiological model that went on to prevail throughout the following two millennia: the brain was attributed with neurological sensitivity, movement, and functions, the heart with enthusiasm and the vital spirit. [62] Mary J. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of...[62]
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Isidore of Seville affirmed that in the heart “lies all concern and the source of knowledge, [as] with the heart we understand, and with the liver we love.” [63] Isidore of Seville, Seville’s Etymologies: The complete...[63] Sharing his opinion, more than five centuries later, Hildegard of Bingen considered the attribute of the heart to be knowledge and that of the liver to be sensitivity. [64] Hildegard of Bingen, Causae et curae, II, 1–12, ed....[64] For her, the heart was the point of contact between the body and the soul, the terrestrial and the divine; it was “almost the essence of the body [since it] governs it,” being the residence of the soul. [65] Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, I, 4, 16, ed. A. Führkötten...[65] It is thus not by chance that she imagined the forbidden fruit to be an apple. [66] Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, III, 2, 21, ed. Führkötten...[66] For Saint Bernard, the heart was the seat of faith. [67] Bernard of Clairvaux, In Nativitate Beatae Mariae,...[67] For his adversary, Pierre Abélard, when God wants to examine the feelings of men, he probes their hearts. [68] Pierre Abélard, Ethics, ed. and trans. D. E. Luscombe...[68] Chrétien de Troyes considered the heart to be the place where mystical union occurs with our purest self, [69] Chrétien de Troyes, Cligès, vv. 708–716, trans. Micha,...[69] since this organ is the seat of love, [70] Chrétien de Troyes, vv. 4302–4306, trans. Micha, 1...[70] memory, [71] Chrétien de Troyes, Le Conte du Graal ou le Roman de...[71] and life. [72] Chrétien de Troyes, Cligès, vv. 3668–3673, trans. Micha,...[72] Vincent of Beauvais regarded the heart as the principal “spiritual organ.” [73] Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, I, 32 (Graz:...[73] The evolution in the hierarchy of meanings did not affect the importance attributed to the heart: while troubadours and courtly love previously spoke of “the hearing of the heart,” the eye and the heart were later associated. [74] Guy Paoli, “La relation œil-cœur. Recherches sur la...[74] At the start of the thirteenth century, a poem established the relationship between the heart and the phallus, between feeling and sexuality, by telling the story of a character killed by the husbands of his mistresses, who tore off these two organs and gave them to their adulterous wives to eat. [75] Lai d’Ignauré, trans. Danielle Régnier-Bohler, in Le...[75]
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The new collective feeling in relation to the heart was present in the idioms that were forming. From the Classical Latin cor, synonymous with “memory” (also with “thought,” “intelligence,” and “heart” [76] This is still the meaning of the word for Saint Augustine...[76]) were derived “recorder” in French, ricordari in Italian, and recordar in Castilian and Portuguese. Although the heart as the center of memory appears in the root of the Castilian and Portuguese words decorar, this link is even more explicit in the phrases par cœur in French (appearing in around 1200), de cor in Portuguese (dating to the thirteenth century), and by heart in English (attested around 1374 and based on the acceptance of herte as “memory,” which existed from the start of the twelfth century [77] Rey, Dictionnaire historique, 1:442; José Pedro Machado,...[77]). However, the heart was not only regarded as the seat of memory. In English, it was associated with courage (towards 825), emotions (1050), love (about 1175), and character (1225). [78] The Oxford English Dictionary, 5:159.[78] In medieval Italian, the heart (core prior to 1250, then cuore) was reputed as being the center of feelings, emotions, and thoughts. [79] Manlio Cortelazzo and Paolo Zolli, Dizionario etimologico...[79]
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Most often, the association occurred between the organ and a feeling, thought to derive from it directly, as attested in various Western languages: curage in French (appearing in 1080, then written as courage and used as a synonym of cœur “heart” until the seventeenth century), coraggio (prior to 1257) in Italian, coraje in Castilian and coragem in Portuguese (both from the fourteenth century), herzhaftigleit in German (from the fifteenth century derived from herz “heart,” written herza in the eighth century), and courage in English (around 1500, written as corage in around 1300). English presents an interesting case, showing the psychocultural hesitation between the liver and heart as the seat of positive feelings: the compound liver-heartedness, literally “without liver or heart,” designates the idea of “cowardly.” Further evidence of the moral importance attached to this organ is found in the word cordial, which initially carried the neutral meaning of “relative to the heart” and later acquired the positive sense of “nice” and “pleasant,” not only in French, English, Castilian, and Portuguese, but also in Italian (cordial) and in German (herzlich).
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The symbolic value of the heart in the twelfth century was also seen in Jewish culture. Whereas the Pirkei Rabbi Nathan, a text predating the tenth century, establishes several comparisons between the parts of the universe and parts of the human body without even citing the heart, in the second half of the twelfth century, Maimonides considered it the center of the human body. [80] Samuel S. Kottek, “Microcosm and Macrocosm According...[80] He was probably influenced by Aristotle, for whom the human body developed from the heart, which was a very influential idea after the Christian rediscovery of the Stagirite. Thus, some Romanesque representations of the creation of Adam depict him coming to life not by a “breath on the face” (in faciem eius spiraculum vitae) as the Bible states, [81] Genesis, 2:7.[81] but by the hand of God touching his heart. This is the case, for example, in a manuscript from the abbey of Saint-Martial de Limoges, [82] Breviarium ad usum S. Martialis Lemovicensis (Paris:...[82] which was illuminated in around the year 1100, as well as in a relief carved a few years later on the northern facade of the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.
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The importance of the heart in Romanesque culture also transpires in its growing metaphorical use. On the political level, it became the “king” of the human body in the same way as the king is the “heart” of the social body. [83] Jacques Le Goff, “Head or Heart? The Political Use...[83] On the literary level, the rhetorical figure of the heart spread like a book in which an ordinary individual, saint, or even Christ could write their amorous (including erotic) and spiritual emotions. [84] On the evolution of this metaphor, see Ernst Robert...[84] On the architectural level, the cruciform design of churches situated the altar—the place where the mystery of the incarnation was reproduced—in the position occupied by the heart. [85] It is no coincidence that in Medieval French, the same...[85] On the liturgical level, the Christianization of the Holy Grail rendered it the receptacle holding the blood of Christ, symbolically transforming it into a heart. [86] Begoña Aguiriano, “Le cœur dans Chrétien,” Senefiance...[86] On the geographical level, in the same way as the heart was the center of the human body, the sepulcher of the Lord was the heart of the world, according to a sermon by Peter the Venerable. [87] Peter the Venerable, In laudem sepulcri Domini, PL,...[87] On the linguistic level, from the thirteenth century, the word designated the center of something in French and Italian, as it did later in English (beginning of the fourteenth century) and Castilian (sixteenth century). [88] This meaning was applied to the city by Aristotle in...[88] In this cultural context, when the Abbess of Bingen declared that Adam made of clay was merely an empty body before being filled with a heart, liver, lungs, stomach, and internal organs by God, [89] Hildegard of Bingen, Causae et curae, II, 20, ed. Kaiser,...[89] she seemingly established a hierarchy of organs. Thus, the growing importance of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in spirituality from the twelfth century seems to have been the conclusion of a long process in which this organ gained in medical and symbolic value. [90] Jean-Vincent Bainvel, “Cœur sacré de Jésus (dévotion...[90]
Exegetical Doubt
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An interesting example of the rivalry between the fig and the apple in terms of the symbolic function of forbidden fruit is seen in the sculptures on the western facade of the small rural Castilian church of San Quirce, close to Burgos, which was completed in 1147. Here, eleven modillions illustrate several episodes of the myth of Adam, from the creation of protoplasm to the judgment of Cain, while in between them, ten metopes depict scenes that are sometimes difficult to relate to those of the modillions, although each stage of the cycle is identified by inscriptions. [91] These inscriptions are now almost illegible, but they...[91] The ensemble forms an iconographic discourse with two aspects: the subject is evil, as much at its origin (original sin) as in some of its manifestations (sex, death, and bodily impurity).
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This latter topic is visible on the two metopes at each end, where the artist depicts a man defecating. This was not a simple curiosity or obscenity, as the placement of these scenes is significant: the first being compared with the sin of Adam and the second with that of Cain. In fact, an inscription close to the representation of the original sin illuminates the link between the events depicted on the metope and modillion: MALA CAGO. No doubt, the man who speaks and acts in this way is both the paradisiacal Adam who has just eaten the forbidden fruits as well as the symbol of all human beings, his “posthumous sons,” as defined in a contemporaneous sermon. [92] Julien of Vézelay, Sermons, XV, ed. and trans. Damien...[92] However, the exact interpretation of the inscription poses an important problem.
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A few decades ago, historiography considered this a pun, as the individual excretes both “apples” and “evils.” [93] Pérez de Urbel and Whitehill, “La iglesia románica...[93] This interpretation is based on three elements: the facade’s inscription, a capital inside the church on the same subject that undoubtedly depicts an apple, and finally, the ancient roots of the tradition perceiving the forbidden food of Paradise in this fruit. However, on the modillion’s scene, the forbidden fruits rather resemble figs, an impression reinforced by a nonformalistic reasoning. Indeed, the fig traditionally had an explicitly sexual character, while the apple, though related to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, had a more sensual, rather than explicitly sexual connotation. This is shown, for example, in an Icelandic saga from the thirteenth century in which the love philter is an apple, or even in some mythologies, where the rejuvenating and beautifying virtues attributed to the fruit remain in the etymology of “pomade,” a scented, cosmetic, and curative substance with apple. [94] See Pastoureau, “Bonum, malum, pomum;” Rey, Dictionnaire...[94]
29
The fig’s association with sexuality is seemingly expressed during the third quarter of the twelfth century in the iconographic design of the doorway of Barret Church in Poitou. Here, the three capitals on each side establish a spatial and symbolic relationship, which was very common in the Romanesque imagination. Looking at them, starting with the capital closest to the entry on the left-hand side, the first represents the original sin with the fig as the fruit, the second depicts a character in a very obscene pose, and the third, which is double, shows an eagle on one side and a monster devouring a sheep on the other. Symmetrically, on the right-hand side, the first capital depicts lions leaning against each other, the second, two doves embracing, and the final one, a centaur and a dove. The message seems rather evident: sin (that is to say, the fig and sex) leads to unnatural and erotic acts, thus to the death of the soul, which is devoured by the demon (eagle and monster); on the other hand, those who join Christ (the lion) will be innocent (doves), embracing peace and purity, thus calming the animal that exists in every human being (centaurs).
30
Indeed, the sexual meaning of the fig was accepted within traditional culture and did not disappear with its Christianization. Throughout the centuries, the fig tree was associated with Dionysus, and, at least in its Roman version, Bacchus. The image of the god was always carved in the wood of the fig tree, with a basket of figs being the most sacred object at the festivals that celebrated him, the Bacchanalia. As the protector of orchards, particularly of the fig tree, Dionysus was confused with his son, Priapus, born of Aphrodite. In the processions paying homage to this god of fertility, who was endowed with a disproportionately large penis, there was a large phallus carved in the wood of the fig tree, the leaves of which were also seen as an ithyphallic symbol. [95] Brosse, Mythologie des arbres, 290–291. The fig’s sexual...[95] This notion of sexual exuberance is also found in a version of an episode of the Dionysus myth by the Christian apologist Clement of Alexandria (around 150–250). [96] Clement of Alexandria, Protreptique, II, 34, 3–4, ed....[96] In a similar manner, although he calls the liver iecur and not ficatum, Isidore of Seville implicitly makes this link by affirming that in this organ “lies pleasure and concupiscence. [97] Isidore of Seville, Seville’s Etymologies, XI, I, 125,...[97]
31
The popular gesture of “making the fig” should also be mentioned here, associated with the fruit through its name and shape. This association is observed in Castilian, in which two words (higo/higa) appeared at the same time, in around 1140. [98] Joan Corominas, Diccionario critico etimológico de...[98] This gesture assumed “an obvious sexual connotation” [99] Jean-Claude Schmitt, La Raison des gestes dans l’Occident...[99] in the popular tradition of several societies, and even in the medieval West, where it can either denote the female sex organ (predominant meaning), its state of excitation (in this case, the tip of the thumb between the index and middle fingers imitates a swollen clitoris), copulation (the thumb is the penis between the vaginal lips), or a phallus (rarer meaning). [100] Desmond Morris et al., Os gestos: suas origens e significado...[100] It is probably with this latter meaning that formerly, in Bavaria, a young man confirmed his intention to marry by sending a silver or gold fig to his lover, who could refuse the demand by returning the gift or accept it by returning a silver heart. [101] José Leite de Vasconcelos, A figa (Porto: Araújo e...[101] The far la fica was an aggressive and derogatory gesture frequently used by Italians in the Middle Ages, not only on a daily basis, but also in emotionally charged situations. In 1162, angry with the Milanese who had forced his wife to mount a mule backwards, thus facing the tail of the animal—a very ancient position signifying contempt—Frederick I Barbarossa seized the city and, on penalty of death, forced the prisoners to remove a fig from the anus of a mule with their teeth. [102] Quoted by Leite de Vasconcelos, A figa, 80; by Jerome...[102] The inhabitants of Pistoia had carved into their castle of Carmignano two large arms with hands making the sign of the fig towards the enemy city of Florence—which, humiliated, went on to conquer the place in 1228. [103] Giovanni Villani, Cronica, VI, 5, ed. Ignazio Moutier...[103] In Dante, a robber condemned to Hell makes the sign of the fig against God Himself. [104] Dante Alighieri, Divina Commedia, Inferno, XXV, 1–3,...[104] The gesture and expression ficha facere are found, with the same derisory meaning, in all Romanesque cultures, and even outside of them. [105] Leite de Vasconcelos, A figa, 42–56, 72, 76–81, and...[105] Although this gesture has a talismanic function, that of casting off the evil eye and other dangers, this seems to be precisely due to its sexual connotation, that of warding off sterility in life. [106] Leite de Vasconcelos, A figa, 27–41, 57–59, and 91...[106]
32
In this sense, the scene of the paramount sin depicted on the third modillion at San Quirce, in addition to adopting the ancient interpretation of the original sin as a sexual sin, [107] See Martin Elze, Tatian und seine Theologie (Göttingen:...[107] prepared the observer to encounter, three metopes along and just after the expulsion from Paradise, a representation of the carnal relationship of protoplasm. [108] Pérez de Urbel and Whitehill (“La iglesia románica...[108] Thus, according to our hypothesis, the word malum would not have been used here with its specific meaning of “apple,” but rather in the broader sense of “fruit with pulp” (as opposed to nux, “fruit with hard skin”), [109] Although the former meaning was eventually enforced...[109] so that the pun of the inscription would signify “to expel evils and fruits.” Whether conscious or not of the inscription’s ambiguity, the sculptor at San Quirce thus revealed the interesting coexistence of two exegetical traditions, that of the apple, present in the representation of the original sin inside the church, and that of the fig, visible on its facade. An even more meaningful coexistence if it is accepted that a single artist carved both the capital and the modillion. [110] A situation that de Lojendio (Castilla 1) regards as...[110]
33
This exegetical doubt is not an isolated case appearing in a monastic community in the center of Castile. The formation of the French word “pomme” provides an interesting indication in this context. Although, from the beginning of the fifth century, the Latin word pomum (“fruit” in a generic sense) gained the specific meaning of “fruit of the apple tree” in Northern Italy and the majority of the Ibero-Romance area—a meaning preserved in the Provençal and Catalan poma—Italian, Castilian, Portuguese, and Galician eventually favored the traditional form malum, from which they derived mela, manzana, maçã and mazá, respectively. [111] Both the Spanish word manzana (attested in 1112 as...[111] Pomum preserved its broad sense in these four languages in the form pomo (poma in the case of Galician). By the same evolution, the collective forms pomario in Italian and pomar in Castilian, Portuguese, Provençal, and Galician derived from the Classical Latin pomarium.
34
In contrast, the medieval Latin of Gaul had used, from the end of the eighth century, the word pomarius to denote the apple tree, from which derived the vernacular name of this specific fruit (pume) from the generic term (pomum) in 1080. [112] The word appeared in the Chanson de Roland as pume;...[112] At the same date appeared the French word verger (orchard), denoting land planted with various fruit trees, taken from the Latin viridiarum (from viridis, “green”). Faced with these facts, it is not absurd to assume that the French linguistic evolution unconsciously avoided the supposedly negative character of this fruit, as expressed through the word malum. Furthermore, the apple is a positive symbol in Celtic culture, [113] Françoise Le Roux and Christian-Joseph Guyonvarc’h,...[113] which was heavily present in the territory of the future France, particularly in the context of the “folkloric reaction” of the twelfth century. [114] Jacques Le Goff, “Culture cléricale et traditions folkloriques...[114]
35
In accordance with its archetypical character as the fruit par excellence, the word was used in the formation of many syntagms, and even, around 1256, in the curious expression “pomme de paradis” (apple of paradise) denoting the banana. [115] Rey, Dictionnaire historique. It is interesting to...[115] Although in terms of vocabulary, we note a French resistance to the association of the apple with the fruit of sin, in terms of iconography, as seen above, such identification was established without problem. This was also the case in popular literary works, such as the first French theatrical text from the middle of the twelfth century or a sermon from the same time. [116] Respectively Le Mystère Adam: Ordo representationis...[116] Similarly, in this and the subsequent century, there were various love stories generally beginning with a betrayal (hearts metaphorically devoured) and ending with the death of the two protagonists (one of them literally devouring the other’s heart without realizing it [117] Accounts collected in Régnier-Bohler, ed., Le Cœur...[117]). To a certain extent, these stories consciously or unconsciously rewrote the drama of the original demise: betraying the confidence of the Creator (“from the tree . . . you will not eat”) by eating the apple/heart (“the knowledge of good and evil”), the human being was the cause of his own perdition (“the day you eat of it, you will surely die”), as Adam and Eve had hearts full of arrogance (“you will be like gods” [118] Genesis, 2:17; 3:5. On the close relationship between...[118]).
The Tree and Androgyny
36
This search for the identity of the Romanesque forbidden fruit must still consider the tree in relation to the primordial couple. The position of these three elements provides some important information. One of the symbolic and physical solutions used was to portray the primi parentes on the same side of the tree, with Eve always being closer to it (figure 4). The most common composition placed the tree between Adam and Eve, as already found on the sarcophagus of San Justo de la Vega in Leon, dated to the end of third century or the beginning of the fourth century and currently held in the archaeological museum of Madrid. It would be simplistic to think that this position on both sides of the tree simply responded to the desire for symmetry in Romanesque art, [119] As considered Guerra, Simbología románica, 107.[119] because the form is almost always a fragment of the contents that emerged. [120] Gerardus Van Der Leeuw, La Religion dans son essence...[120] In the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, this scheme probably referred to two very pressing questions related to the contemporary phenomenon of the sacralization of marriage.
Figure 4. - Relief on the western façade of Modena Cathedral (Emilia-Romagna), circa 1100.
37
On the one hand, by placing Adam and Eve at an equal distance from the tree, the iconography referred to a certain social egalitarianism and moral leveling between man and woman, even if the snake is almost always turned towards the woman. The side occupied by each character varied. We have already considered the position of Eve on the right-hand side of the tree as an “iconographic tradition,” a scheme with only three exceptions, in Saint-Antonin, Bruniquel, and Lescure. [121] Jean-Claude Fau, “Découverte à Saint-Antonin (Tarn-et-Garonne)...[121] In fact, the woman appears on the left in several other cases: for example on the sculptures in Anzy-le-Duc, Airvault, Butrera, Cergy, Cervatos, Covet, Embrun, Gémil, Girona, Lavaudieu, Lescar, Loarre, Luc-de-Béarn, Mahamud, Manresa, Moirax, Montcaret, Peralada (figure 6), Saint-Étienne-de-Grès, Saint-Gaudens, Sangüesa, San Juan de la Peña, Toirac, Verona, and Vézelay. Similarly, on the frescos in Aimé, Fossa, and San Justo in Segovia, on the illuminations of the Bible of Burgos, the Exultet 3 of Troia, and the Hortus Deliciarum, on a metal medallion from the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, and on the mosaics in Monreale and Trani.
38
In addition, the central position of the tree, separating Adam and Eve, insinuated a rupture of the initial unity, at least on the psychological level. The tree, that is to say knowledge, revealed the existence of contradictory traits in human beings, made in the image and resemblance of God, the androgyne par excellence. “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female created he them:” [122] Genesis, 1:27.[122] this is why the human being was initially double, and thus, inherently complete and microcosmic. [123] There were several types of microcosmic man in the...[123] Removing Eve from the rib of Adam was a surgery of separation, because they were formed from the same bones, they were “one flesh.” [124] Genesis, 2:23–24.[124] In this manner, the sacred text was interpreted from first half of the first century, initially by the Jew, Philo of Alexandria, and subsequently by Ambroise, Augustine, Gregory the Great, Isidore, the pseudo-Remigius of Auxerre, Guibert of Nogent, Pierre Lombard, Bernard, and others, who all regarded Eve as the image of the woman from within man. [125] Michel Planque, “Ève,” in Dictionnaire de spiritualité...[125]
39
Augustine, in particular, implicitly recognized the androgyny of the first man when he said that the devil “cannot tempt us only by the means of this animal part, which appears in a single man as an image or a model of woman.” [126] Augustine, Del Genesis contra los maniqueos [De Genesi...[126] Following a reasoning based on that of Saint Paul, he saw Adam-Eve as the complementarity of spirit and flesh, a comparison that was adopted by many thinkers in the Romanesque period. Since in the Bible, “Adam” was originally the generic name denoting a human being (Genesis, 1:19) and only later became the name of a person (Genesis, 3:17), Augustine interpreted the word “man” (Genesis, 1:26) as “human nature.” [127] Augustine, De Trinitate, I, 7, PL, vol. 42, col. 8...[127] Saint Anselme, who was very influential in the twelfth century, agreed that “Adam” should initially include Adam and Eve. [128] Anselm of Canterbury, La Conception virginale et le...[128] While trying to explain how Adam’s prohibition of the fruit also implied Eve, Petrus Comestor stated that it was transmitted to the woman through man; [129] Petrus Comestor, Historia scholastica, 15, PL, vol....[129] thus implicitly suggesting the unity of the two individuals, and the androgyny of the being to whom it was forbidden to eat the fruit.
40
While the medieval Church did not formally accept the divine and the androgyny of Adam, it was still familiar with it. It is thus found in a text from the New Testament: “There is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Jesus Christ.” [130] Galatians, 3:28.[130] This appeared in an apocryphal text: “When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor female . . . then will you enter the kingdom [of God].” [131] Il Vangelo di Tommaso, 22, trans. Mario Erbetta (Casale...[131] This was a noncontemptible part of the thought of Clement of Alexandria [132] In a piece of literature that is today lost, Hypotyposes,...[132] (around 150–215), Origen [133] According to him, based on Luke, 20:36, there will...[133] (185–254), Gregory of Nyssa [134] Gregory of Nyssa, La Création de l’homme [De opificio...[134] (around 330–390) and, through them, of Johannes Scotus Eriugena [135] Johannes Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon, IV, PL, vol....[135] (around 810–870). It undoubtedly belonged to the cultural and psychological milieu of the first Christian centuries. [136] Wayne A. Meeks, “The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses...[136]
41
While the androgyne of Eden had disappeared, it was because of sin. For some thinkers, the human being henceforth became aware of its duplicity, since that time it was broken and characterized by the genitals, which was visible proof of the original sin: sexus comes from sectio (“cut,” “separation”), a term derived from secare “to cross,” which only assumed a specifically sexual meaning in the Middle Ages. [137] Du Cange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis,...[137] It is thus not by chance that Adam said “me” for the first time after the sin. [138] “Mulier, quam dedisti mihi sociam, dedit mihi de ligno,...[138] Although, undeniably, the original sin and sex were closely linked, the way in which events had transpired was the subject of debate. [139] Emmanuele Testa, Il peccato di Adamo nella Patristica...[139] One stream of thought interpreted the sin as a sexual offence: for example, the Jew Philon and some Church fathers, including Clement of Alexandria and Saint Ambrose. [140] Philo of Alexandria, De opificio mundi, 151–152, trans....[140] In the Romance period, the majority of theologists from the school of William of Champeaux (1070–1121) also considered that this sin involved concupiscence, although Guillaume himself saw it as an act of disobedience in which sensualitas managed to dominate ratio. [141] Odon Lottin, “Les théories du péché originel au XIIe...[141]
42
Another group reversed the question, seeing sex rather as a consequence of the sin. The Physiologus, an influential allegorical, zoological treatise translated into Latin in the fifth century, stated that the elephant and its partner, which “personified” Adam and Eve, were unaware of intercourse until the female had eaten the fruit of the Mandragora officinarum and given it to the male: “because of that, they had to leave Paradise.” [142] El Fisiólogo: bestiário medieval, 20, ed. Francis J....[142] The main proponent of this train of thought was Saint Augustine, according to whom the human being before the sin practiced sex without concupiscence. [143] Augustine, La Genèse au sens littéral [De Genesi ad...[143] The error of the first couple would then have been one of pride, which led to the error of disobedience and then to carnal error. [144] In the first part of his interpretation, Augustine...[144] Another proponent of this idea was Johannes Scotus Eriugena in the eighth century, who considered that before the sin, the human being was only one, and that the resulting division of the sexes would cease in the eternal life. [145] Johannes Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon, V, 20, PL, vol....[145] His thought continued to exert a certain influence; in the fourteenth century, it led Meister Eckhart to regard “any division” to be “bad as such,” thus perceiving the number two as the sign of the fall. [146] Meister Eckhart, Commentaire de la Genèse, 88 and 90,...[146] The Romanesque representations of the initial sin hesitated in choosing between these theological positions. Showing a preference for the second, several images accorded sexual attributes to Adam and Eve just after the ingestion of the fruit: for Adam, generally a beard [147] For Hildegard of Bingen, Causae et curae, II, 5–7,...[147] (figures 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5), seldom a penis (figure 5), and for Eve, usually breasts (figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6). A minority of images seem to attribute the initial sin to a sexual act, an iconographic and theological concept that was perhaps expressed for the first time on the bronze door of Hildesheim Cathedral in Germany between 1011 and 1015. [148] William Tronzo, “The Hildesheim Doors: An Iconographic...[148] Here, Adam appears to the left of the tree and behind him is another tree on which a small dragon is standing. Eve is to the right, close to another tree with the snake. The fruit is the apple, one in right hand of Adam and the other in the right hand of Eve, being stretched out towards Adam. There is another apple in the left hand of Eve, whose folded arm merges with her vagina. A similar illustration was used in Rebolledo de la Torre in 1186. In the Alardus Bible, the snake that gives the fruit to Eve is at the height of her vagina, recalling a male sexual organ about to penetrate her. The southernmost façade of the Church of Santa María in Sangüesa in Navarre, which dates from the second half of the twelfth century, seems to portray the same design. Here, the scene of sin is situated immediately below the personification of Lust, showing a woman whose naked breasts are attacked by toads and snakes. [149] Despite the great diversity of iconographical material...[149] This association between lust and the original sin was not uncommon; as Sangüesa was on St. James’s Way, the most travelled road by Occitans and Italians, we may hypothesize that its iconographic message expressed the opinion of many pilgrims on the subject. In this sense, this image from Navarre ratified at least two other images known to these pilgrims.
43
The first image from Provence, dated to the second quarter of the twelfth century, is located a few kilometers from Tarascon in Saint-Etienne-du-Grès, on the tympanum of Saint-Gabriel’s chapel, where Daniel appears next to the original sin (prefiguration of Christ, the new Adam) with lions (a common symbol of lust): an opposition of scenes suggesting the sexual signification of the sin. As already mentioned, it is true that the contrast between the two scenes did not necessarily mean that the artist interpreted the sin “as a vulgar sin of lust, but its consequence was to introduce turmoil and even shame into a domain that had emerged wholly pure from the hands of the Creator.” [150] Gérard de Champeaux and Sébastien Sterckx, Introduction...[150] However, the authors of this comment—a longstanding phenomenon in medieval art studies—seem inclined towards adapting the intentions of the Romanesque artist to the theologically correct reading, rather than considering other interpretative possibilities beyond the domain of ecclesiastical culture. It is significant, for example, that on the same area of the tympanum, the two scenes are chronologically inversed, first portraying Daniel and then the sin.
44
The second image from Italy figures on the mosaic of Otranto (1163–1165). The branches of the forbidden tree pass between the legs of the characters, insinuating the sexual nature of the sin. This seems all the more evident given that Adam and Eve are each situated in a circle, rendering the characters isolated, separated, and autonomous entities in their respective domains, domains most certainly resulting from the primordial androgyne being cut in two. This assumption is reinforced by the fact that the forbidden fruit is represented as the fig (with its strong sexual connotation, as already seen) and illustrated in a suggestive way by the mosaic artist, the priest Pantaleon: the thinner part of the fig held by Eve is facing downwards and placed between her breasts, as though forming a third breast; the fig in Adam’s hand is in the inverse position, reminding us of the male genitals. [151] The same sexual presentation appeared towards the end...[151]
Figure 5. - Illumination from the in Troia (Puglia), Archivio Capitulario, middle of the eleventh century.
Figure 6. - Capital in the western gallery of the monastery cloister
45
Taking the geographical distribution of the Romanesque images into account, we see that the function attributed to the fig as the forbidden fruit was mainly expressed in the cultural milieu related to the Greco-Judaic world, while the apple appeared in association with the Romano-Christian world. This is perhaps due the specific links established in these cultural areas between each fruit and a bodily organ. In the images where the fig is used, Eve is often portrayed with the fruit on the right-hand side of the tree, like the liver in the human body. [152] In this regard, I evidently mean a statistical trend,...[152] In the images with the apple, the tendency is for Eve and the fruit to appear on the left-hand side, just like the heart in the body (figures 3 and 6). In both instances, the forbidden fruit was the symbol of the rupture of the unity of Eden and the birth of the disjointed humanity that characterizes history.
Notes
[1]
On the methodological issues affecting the construction and analysis of an iconographic corpus, some good comments have been made by Jérôme Baschet in “Inventivité et sérialité des images médiévales. Pour une approche iconographique élargie,” Annales HSS 51 (1996): 93–133.
[2]
Genesis, 2:16–17; 3:1–12.
[3]
Jeremiah, 1:14. Jerome, Expositio quattuor Evangeliorum, Patrologia Latina (PL), vol. 30, col. 549d–550a.
[4]
Midrash Rabbah, Genesis, XV, 7, trans. Bernard Maruani and Albert Cohen-Arazi (Paris: Verdier, 1987), 1:183 [Midrash Rabbah, Genesis trans. Harry Freedman and Maurice Simon, 2 vols. (London: Soncino Press, 1939)]; Genesis Rabbah I (Genesis 1–11), trans. Luis Vegas Montaner (Estella: Verbo Divino, 1994), 188–189 [Genesis Rabbah I, trans. Samuel Rapaport (London: Routledge, 1907)].
[5]
Following the interpretation of Marcel Durliat, Pyrénées romanes (La-Pierre-Qui-Vire: Zodiaque, 1978), 42.
[6]
Vita Adae, 36–42: “The ‘Vita Adae’,” ed. J. H. Mozley, The Journal of Theological Studies (1929): 121–149 (English manuscripts); “La Vie latine d’Adam et Ève,” ed. Jean-Pierre Pettorelli, Archivum latinitatis Medii Aevi (1998): 5–104 (German manuscripts); 2 Henoc 22:8: Slavonic Apocalypse of Enoch, trans. Francis I. Andersen, in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth, 2 vols. (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1983–1985), 1:92–221; L’Évangile de Nicodème, 19, ed. André Vaillant (Geneva, Paris: Droz, 1968), 59–61.
[7]
In this instance, the capital over the door of Miègeville, dated to around 1100–1118, does not depict the scene of the sin, but rather that of the expulsion from Paradise, where the fruit behind Adam and Eve (the couple being situated between God on one side and an angel on the other) is the grapevine.
[8]
Midrash Rabbah, Genesis, XV, 7 and XIX, 5, trans. Maruani and Cohen-Arazi, [trans. Freedman and Simon], 184 and 217; Genesis Rabbah I, trans. Vegas Montaner, 190–225. Ethiopic Apocalypse of Enoch, XXXII, 3–6, trans. Ephraim Isaac, in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 1:28. Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, 4–8, trans. Harry E. Gaylord, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 1:667; Apocalypse of Abraham, XXXIII, 7, trans. Ryszard Rubinkiewicz and Horace G. Lunt, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 1:700. In the first century AD, Eliezer ben Hurcanus’s Chapters only specifies that “Noah found a grapevine coming from the Garden of Eden:” Los Capítulos de Rabbí Eliezer, XXIII, 4, trans. Miguel Pérez Fernandez, (Valencia: Institución San Jerónimo, 1984), 174. Louis Ginzberg nevertheless believes that this text probably alludes to a fragment from the tree of knowledge: Les Légendes des juifs [1909], trans. Gabrielle Sed-Rajna (Paris: Éd. du Cerf, 1997), 1:302, n. 59. According to the same author (Les Légendes des juifs, 219, n. 70), “the oldest and widespread opinion identifies the forbidden fruit with the grape, which traces back to an ancient mythological idea considering wine to be the beverage of the gods.”
[9]
David Romano, “Jueus a la Catalunya carolingia i dels primers comtes (876–1100),” in Exposiciò dins la formació de l’Europa medieval (Girona: Ajuntament de Girona, 1985), 113–119. Hilário Franco Júnior, “Le pouvoir de la parole: Adam et les animaux dans la tapisserie de Gérone,” Médiévales 25 (1993): 113–128.
[10]
Arturo Graf, Il Mito del Paradiso terrestre (1892; reprint, Rome: Edizioni del Graal, 1982), 65; Gioacchino Volpe, Movimenti religiosi e sette ereticali nella società medievale italiana: secoli XI–XIV fourth ed. (Florence: Sansoni, 1972), 17–40; Cinzio Violante, La Società milanese nell’età precomunale (Bari: Laterza, 1974), 220–231. Priests in Spain in the seventh century offered a bunch of grapes to believers during the Eucharist, which could also be a reaction against the idea of the grapevine as the forbidden fruit (third Council of Braga [675], prologue and canon 1: Concílios visigóticos e hispano-romanos, ed. and trans. José Vives (Barcelona and Madrid: CSIC, Instituto Enrique Florez, 1963), 371–373).
[11]
Michel Tardieu, Trois Mythes gnostiques: Adam, Éros et les animaux d’Égypte dans un écrit de Nag Hammadi (II, 5) (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1974), particularly 88–89, 142–144, and 166–169.
[12]
Paul Deschamps, “Notes sur la sculpture romane en Bourgogne,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1922): 61–80.
[13]
Deschamps, “Notes sur la sculpture.”
[14]
Joseph de Ghellinck, “L’eucharistie au XIIe siècle en Occident,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1913), vol. 5, col. 1233–1302. Iconography was also influenced by the phenomenon in which the Crucified was depicted as a bunch of grapes, as seen on the thirteenth-century metal relief on the door of the Church of Sion in Switzerland. This was reproduced by Erich Neumann, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, trans. Ralph Mannheim (1955; reprint, Princeton (N. J.): Princeton University Press, 1972), pl. 114.
[15]
Roger Dion, Histoire de la vigne et du vin en France des origines au XIXe siècle (Paris: author publication, 1959), 245–247.
[16]
Auguste Gaudel, “Péché originel,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, vol. XII-1, col. 441 [quotation back-translated from the French].
[17]
Jacques Brosse, Mythologie des arbres (Paris: Plon, 1989), 299–300. The purity attributed to the olive rendered the olive tree the tree of life par excellence, as seen above, n.5.
[18]
Robert Saint-Jean and Jean Nougaret, Vivarais-Gévaudan romans (La Pierre-Qui-Vire: Zodiaque, 1991), 157–158. La Nuit des temps, 75.
[19]
Genesis, 3:7.
[20]
John, 1:48. This relationship between the fig and knowledge can be traced back to classical paganism: Plato, for example, called this fruit “the friend of philosophers,” according to Éloïse Mozzani, Le Livre des superstitions: mythes, croyances et légendes (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1995), 746.
[21]
Matthew, 21:19. Paul Sébillot, Le Folklore de France, vol. 6, La Flore (1906; reprint, Paris: Imago, 1985), 21; Mozzani, Le Livre des superstitions, 746.
[22]
Stuttgart Psalter, around 810 (Stuttgart: Württembergische Landes-bibliothek, Cod. Bibl. 172o 23, fol. 8).
[23]
Midrash Rabbah, Genesis XV, 7, trans. Maruani and Cohen-Arazi, 185; Génesis Rabbah I, trans. Vegas Montaner, 190–191.
[24]
Life of Adam and Eve (Apocalypse), xx, 4–5, trans. M. D. Johnson, in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2:281; Apocalisse di Mosè, trans. Liliana Rosso Ubigli, in Apocrifi dell’Antico Testa-mento, ed. Paolo Sacchi (Turin: UTET, 1989), 2:429; Vida de Adán y Eva (Apocalipsis de Moises), trans. Natalio Fernández Marcos, in Apocrifos del Antiguo Testamento, ed. Alejandro Diez Macho (Madrid: Cristiandad, 1982), 2:330.
[25]
Testament of Adam 3c, trans. Stephen E. Robinson, in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 1:994; Testamento de Adán III, 4 (R II), trans. F. J. Martínez Fernández, in Apocrifos del Antiguo Testamento, 5:433.
[26]
Il Combattimento di Adamo, 40, ed. and trans. A. Battista and B. Bagatti (Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1982), 110.
[27]
Theodoret of Cyrus, Quaestiones in Genesim, II, 28, Patrologia Graeca (PG), vol. LXXX, col. 125 c.
[28]
Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, I, 2, 2, ed. Ernst Kroymann (Turnhout: Brepols, 1954), 443. Corpus christianorum. Series latina, 1; Hugh of Saint Victor, Adnotationes elucidatoriae in Pentateuchon, Patrologia Latina (PL), vol. CLXXV, col. 42 a-b; Pierre Comestor, Historia scholastica, 23, PL, vol. CXCVIII, col. 1073 b-c. Even at the end of the Middles Ages, several authors still thought in this manner: Meister Eckhart, Commentaire de la Genèse, 97 and 205, ed. and trans. Fernand Brunner et al. (Paris: Éd. du Cerf, 1984), 360 and 518. L’Œuvre latine de Maître Eckhart, 1.
[29]
Das Tristan-Epos Gottfrieds von Strassburg, v. 17944, ed. Wolfgang Spiewok (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1989), 251. Deutsche Texte des Mittelalters, 75.
[30]
Beryl Smalley, “Andrew of Saint-Victor, Abbot of Wigmore: A Twelfth-Century Hebraist,” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 10 (1938): 358–373; Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), 149–172 and 179–180; Esra Shereshevsky, “Hebrew Traditions in Peter Comestor’s Historia Scholastica,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 59 (1968–1969): 268–289.
[31]
Brosse, Mythologie des arbres, 285–286.
[32]
Jean Beleth, Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis, 125, ed. Herbert Douteil (Turnhout: Brepols, 1976), 239–241; Gervase of Tilbury, Otia Imperialia: Recreation for an Emperor, trans. S. E. Banks and J. W. Binns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). In the thirteenth century, the theme appeared in several well-known texts, such as La Queste del Saint Graal, ed. Albert Pauphilet (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1980), 210ff. and Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend: Legenda aurea, vulgo Historia Lombardica dicta, LXVIII, ed. Theodor Graesse (1846; reprint, Osnabrück: Otto Zeller, 1969), 303–304.
[33]
Exodus, 29:13, 22; Leviticus, 3:4, 10, 15; 4:9; 7:4; 8:16, 25; 9:10, 19.
[34]
Tobit, VI, 7.
[35]
Hesiod, Théogonie, v. 524, ed. and trans. Paul Mazon, thirteenth reprint (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1996), 51. Coll. des Universités de France [Theogony, trans Hugh G. Evelyn-White (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classics, 1914)].
[36]
Anacreon, “Fragment 33,” vv. 28, 32, in Carmina Anacreontea, ed. Martin L. West (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1984), 25.
[37]
Horace, Odes, IV, 1, 12, ed. and trans. François Villeneuve (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1927), 152 [The Complete Odes and Satires of Horace, trans. Sidney Alexander (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999)].
[38]
Plato, Timée, 71 a, d, ed. and trans. Albert Rivaud (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1985), 198 [Timaeus and Critias, ed. Thomas K. Johansen, trans. Desmond Lee (London: Penguin, 1977)].
[39]
In the Romanesque period, there was at least one allusion to the Latin Cupid (called only Amores) sending an arrow to the heart: Chrétien de Troyes, Cligès, v. 455, trans. Alexandre Micha (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1982) [Cliges, trans. W. W. Comfort (London: Everyman’s Library, 1914)]. A medieval collection of classical mythology, written between 875 and 1075, says that the gods sent an eagle to punish Prometheus by attacking his heart (not the liver, as Hesiod declared): Premier Mythographe du Vatican, I, 1, 3, ed. Nevio Zorzetti, trans. Jacques Berlioz (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1995), 2. The transposition of the symbolic role of the liver to the heart became so ingrained that modern scholars have more than once taken one for the other, as, for example, the translator of Horace, Odes, ed. and trans. Villeneuve, n.36 or that of Anacreon, Odes, trans. Frédéric Matthews (Paris: Presses Universitaires, 1927), 91.
[40]
Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea, XXV, ed. Graesse, 120. Eve
"All knowledge, the totality of all questions
and answers, is contained in the dog."
Franz Kafka - Investigations of the dog
I now have the knowledge to edit and prune flora to my liking ... no pun intended. Customized DFO/SFO and Bigger Trees.
I've also updated Verdant to 1.5: www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/60220/?
Also, in more exciting news, GOPHER, the one and only, took time after being out of skyrim for awhile to actually REVIEW MY MOD. I AM FLOORED.
Here's the link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bttQvfK5eEs
I don't know anything about this picture. It's dark and brooding and mysterious; and I don't know what kind of fire was burning somewhere to the left of the picture-frame.
I put in an arbitrary date of 1935, but I have no idea if that is correct...
*********************************
To the best of my knowledge, most of the photos in this Flickr album were taken by my grandmother, Mabel Yourdon, during the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. Most of them depict scenes of everyday life in mining camps and small towns near the Utah-Colorado border. Some of them show hunting, fishing, and camping trips in unspecified parts of the American west. It appears that a few of them were taken in southern California, when Mabel and her husband Ike traveled out there to visit relatives.
I have no idea what kind of camera Mabel used for these photos, nor what kind of film. There probably wasn’t that much variety available in the 1920s, and she was not a “professional” photographer. So it may have been a Brownie and whatever B/W film Kodak was selling at the time.
My stepfather, Ray Yourdon, was born in 1922; and his older brother, Marvin, was born two years before that. You’ll see photos of Ray and Marvin when they were young boys, when they were in high school, and when they went off to join the Navy and the Marines to fight in World War II.
Somewhere around 2005, I asked Ray if he could tell me the details of some of the photos; where possible, I have included those details in the notes for the photos. Some of the photos obviously evoked pleasant memories, and I heard stories about minor day-to-day events in his life that I had never heard before. But we rarely got through more than a few pictures before he ran out of energy; and so many of the photos have no explanation at all.
At this point, my parents and grandparents are all gone. I have cousins who grew up in the same area where these photos were taken, and one or two of them are still in that area. They may be able to fill in a few of the details; otherwise, you’ll just have to accept these photos as a glimpse of what life was like nearly a hundred years ago ...
Explored!
It took our ancestors thousands of years to light it, it took me only a few seconds. Knowledge is the key and it needs to be applied properly.
Oiran were the highest rank of courtesan in the old Yoshiwara licensed pleasure quarter of Edo-Tokyo. They were not just prostitutes, but also highly trained in the arts. They were highly respected in Edo period society. Kyoto's version, from the Shimabara licensed quarter, were called tayū. Today, they are considered the pinnacle of beauty, grace and knowledge of traditional Japanese arts and culture. Today's tayū are not classy prostitutes but 'super' geisha. It would be nice if Tokyo re-creates the oiran in the way that modern tayū exist.
Knowledge of the field, patience and luck meet the features of modern cameras ☺️ (and some photoshop kungfu to merge everything)
My daughter has her degree now and took her own photo next the the old buildings of our University of Otago. I am hoping future emplyers will be impressed by the way her mind is branching out and the way she sees things from a different angle.
Sorry to my contacts for being a bit busy recently. Back tonight.
"The Book of Genesis" redirects here. For the comics, see The Book of Genesis (comics).
The Creation of Man by Ephraim Moses Lilien, 1903.
Jacob flees Laban by Charles Foster, 1897.
Joshua 1:1 as recorded in the Aleppo Codex
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The Book of Genesis,[a] the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament,[1] is Judaism's account of the creation of the world and the origins of the Jewish people.[2]
It is divisible into two parts, the primeval history (chapters 1–11) and the ancestral history (chapters 12–50).[3] The primeval history sets out the author's (or authors') concepts of the nature of the deity and of humankind's relationship with its maker: God creates a world which is good and fit for mankind, but when man corrupts it with sin God decides to destroy his creation, saving only the righteous Noah to reestablish the relationship between man and God.[4] The ancestral history (chapters 12–50) tells of the prehistory of Israel, God's chosen people.[5] At God's command Noah's descendant Abraham journeys from his home into the God-given land of Canaan, where he dwells as a sojourner, as does his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob. Jacob's name is changed to Israel, and through the agency of his son Joseph, the children of Israel descend into Egypt, 70 people in all with their households, and God promises them a future of greatness. Genesis ends with Israel in Egypt, ready for the coming of Moses and the Exodus. The narrative is punctuated by a series of covenants with God, successively narrowing in scope from all mankind (the covenant with Noah) to a special relationship with one people alone (Abraham and his descendants through Isaac and Jacob).[6]
In Judaism, the theological importance of Genesis centers on the covenants linking God to his chosen people and the people to the Promised Land. Christianity has interpreted Genesis as the prefiguration of certain cardinal Christian beliefs, primarily the need for salvation (the hope or assurance of all Christians) and the redemptive act of Christ on the Cross as the fulfillment of covenant promises as the Son of God.
Tradition credits Moses as the author of Genesis, as well as the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and most of Deuteronomy, but modern scholars increasingly see them as a product of the 6th and 5th centuries BC.[7][8]
Contents
1Structure
2Summary
3Composition
3.1Title and textual witnesses
3.2Origins
3.3Genre
4Themes
4.1Promises to the ancestors
4.2God's chosen people
5Judaism's weekly Torah portions
6See also
7Notes
8References
9Bibliography
9.1Commentaries on Genesis
9.2General
10External links
Structure[edit]
Genesis appears to be structured around the recurring phrase elleh toledot, meaning "these are the generations," with the first use of the phrase referring to the "generations of heaven and earth" and the remainder marking individuals—Noah, the "sons of Noah", Shem, etc., down to Jacob.[9] It is not clear, however, what this meant to the original authors, and most modern commentators divide it into two parts based on subject matter, a "primeval history" (chapters 1–11) and a "patriarchal history" (chapters 12–50).[10][b] While the first is far shorter than the second, it sets out the basic themes and provides an interpretive key for understanding the entire book.[11] The "primeval history" has a symmetrical structure hinging on chapters 6–9, the flood story, with the events before the flood mirrored by the events after;[12] the "ancestral history" is structured around the three patriarchs Abraham, Jacob and Joseph.[13] (The stories of Isaac do not make up a coherent cycle of stories and function as a bridge between the cycles of Abraham and Jacob.)[14]
Summary[edit]
See also: Primeval history and Patriarchal age
The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo, 1512.
God creates the world in six days and consecrates the seventh as a day of rest. God creates the first humans Adam and Eve and all the animals in the Garden of Eden but instructs them not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. A talking serpent portrayed as a deceptive creature or trickster, entices Eve into eating it against God's wishes, and she entices Adam, whereupon God throws them out and curses them—Adam to getting what he needs only by sweat and work, and Eve to giving birth in pain. This is interpreted by Christians as the fall of humanity. Eve bears two sons, Cain and Abel. Cain kills Abel after God accepts Abel's offering but not Cain's. God then curses Cain. Eve bears another son, Seth, to take Abel's place.
After many generations of Adam have passed from the lines of Cain and Seth, the world becomes corrupted by human sin and Nephilim, and God determines to wipe out humanity. First, he instructs the righteous Noah and his family to build an ark and put examples of all the animals on it, seven pairs of every clean animal and one pair of every unclean. Then God sends a great flood to wipe out the rest of the world. When the waters recede, God promises he will never destroy the world with water again, using the rainbow as a symbol of his promise. God sees mankind cooperating to build a great tower city, the Tower of Babel, and divides humanity with many languages and sets them apart with confusion.
God instructs Abram to travel from his home in Mesopotamia to the land of Canaan. There, God makes a covenant with Abram, promising that his descendants shall be as numerous as the stars, but that people will suffer oppression in a foreign land for four hundred years, after which they will inherit the land "from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates". Abram's name is changed to Abraham and that of his wife Sarai to Sarah, and circumcision of all males is instituted as the sign of the covenant. Due to her old age, Sarah tells Abraham to take her Egyptian handmaiden, Hagar, as a second wife. Through Hagar, Abraham fathers Ishmael.
God resolves to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for the sins of their people. Abraham protests and gets God to agree not to destroy the cities for the sake of ten righteous men. Angels save Abraham's nephew Lot and his family, but his wife looks back on the destruction against their command and turns into a pillar of salt. Lot's daughters, concerned that they are fugitives who will never find husbands, get him drunk to become pregnant by him, and give birth to the ancestors of the Moabites and Ammonites.
Abraham and Sarah go to the Philistine town of Gerar, pretending to be brother and sister (they are half-siblings). The King of Gerar takes Sarah for his wife, but God warns him to return her, and he obeys. God sends Sarah a son whom she will name Isaac; through him will be the establishment of the covenant. Sarah drives Ishmael and his mother Hagar out into the wilderness, but God saves them and promises to make Ishmael a great nation.
The Angel Hinders the Offering of Isaac (Rembrandt, 1635)
God tests Abraham by demanding that he sacrifice Isaac. As Abraham is about to lay the knife upon his son, God restrains him, promising him numberless descendants. On the death of Sarah, Abraham purchases Machpelah (believed to be modern Hebron) for a family tomb and sends his servant to Mesopotamia to find among his relations a wife for Isaac; after proving herself, Rebekah becomes Isaac's betrothed. Keturah, Abraham's other wife, births more children, among whose descendants are the Midianites. Abraham dies at a prosperous old age and his family lays him to rest in Hebron.
Isaac's wife Rebecca gives birth to the twins Esau, father of the Edomites, and Jacob. Through deception, Jacob becomes the heir instead of Esau and gains his father's blessing. He flees to his uncle where he prospers and earns his two wives, Rachel and Leah. Jacob's name is changed to Israel, and by his wives and their handmaidens he has twelve sons, the ancestors of the twelve tribes of the Children of Israel, and a daughter, Dinah.
Joseph, Jacob's favorite son, makes his brothers jealous and they sell him into slavery in Egypt. Joseph prospers, after hardship, with God's guidance of interpreting Pharaoh's dream of upcoming famine. He is then reunited with his father and brothers, who fail to recognize him, and plead for food. After much manipulation, he reveals himself and lets them and their households into Egypt, where Pharaoh assigns to them the land of Goshen. Jacob calls his sons to his bedside and reveals their future before he dies. Joseph lives to an old age and exhorts his brethren, if God should lead them out of the country, to take his bones with them.
Composition[edit]
Abram's Journey from Ur to Canaan (József Molnár, 1850)
Title and textual witnesses[edit]
Genesis takes its Hebrew title from the first word of the first sentence, Bereshit, meaning "In [the] beginning [of]"; in the Greek Septuagint it was called Genesis, from the phrase "the generations of heaven and earth".[15] There are four major textual witnesses to the book: the Masoretic Text, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Septuagint, and fragments of Genesis found at Qumran. The Qumran group provides the oldest manuscripts but covers only a small proportion of the book; in general, the Masoretic Text is well preserved and reliable, but there are many individual instances where the other versions preserve a superior reading.[16]
Origins[edit]
Main article: Composition of the Torah
For much of the 20th century most scholars agreed that the five books of the Pentateuch—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy—came from four sources, the Yahwist, the Elohist, the Deuteronomist and the Priestly source, each telling the same basic story, and joined together by various editors.[17] Since the 1970s there has been a revolution leading scholars to view the Elohist source as no more than a variation on the Yahwist, and the Priestly source as a body of revisions and expansions to the Yahwist (or "non-Priestly") material. (The Deuteronomistic source does not appear in Genesis.)[18]
Scholars use examples of repeated and duplicate stories to identify the separate sources. In Genesis these include three different accounts of a Patriarch claiming that his wife was his sister, the two creation stories, and the two versions of Abraham sending Hagar and Ishmael into the desert.[19]
This leaves the question of when these works were created. Scholars in the first half of the 20th century came to the conclusion that the Yahwist is a product of the monarchic period, specifically at the court of Solomon, 10th century BC, and the Priestly work in the middle of the 5th century BC (with claims that the author is Ezra), but more recent thinking is that the Yahwist is from either just before or during the Babylonian exile of the 6th century BC, and the Priestly final edition was made late in the Exilic period or soon after.[8]
As for why the book was created, a theory which has gained considerable interest, although still controversial is "Persian imperial authorisation". This proposes that the Persians of the Achaemenid Empire, after their conquest of Babylon in 539 BC, agreed to grant Jerusalem a large measure of local autonomy within the empire, but required the local authorities to produce a single law code accepted by the entire community. The two powerful groups making up the community—the priestly families who controlled the Temple and who traced their origin to Moses and the wilderness wanderings, and the major landowning families who made up the "elders" and who traced their own origins to Abraham, who had "given" them the land—were in conflict over many issues, and each had its own "history of origins", but the Persian promise of greatly increased local autonomy for all provided a powerful incentive to cooperate in producing a single text.[20]
Genre[edit]
Genesis is perhaps best seen as an example of a creation myth, a type of literature telling of the first appearance of humans, the stories of ancestors and heroes, and the origins of culture, cities and so forth.[21] The most notable examples are found in the work of Greek historians of the 6th century BC: their intention was to connect notable families of their own day to a distant and heroic past, and in doing so they did not distinguish between myth, legend, and facts.[22] Professor Jean-Louis Ska of the Pontifical Biblical Institute calls the basic rule of the antiquarian historian the "law of conservation": everything old is valuable, nothing is eliminated.[23] Ska also points out the purpose behind such antiquarian histories: antiquity is needed to prove the worth of Israel's traditions to the nations (the neighbours of the Jews in early Persian Palestine), and to reconcile and unite the various factions within Israel itself.[23]
Themes[edit]
Joseph Recognized by His Brothers (Léon Pierre Urban Bourgeois, 1863)
Promises to the ancestors[edit]
In 1978 David Clines published his influential The Theme of the Pentateuch – influential because he was one of the first to take up the question of the theme of the entire five books. Clines' conclusion was that the overall theme is "the partial fulfillment – which implies also the partial nonfulfillment – of the promise to or blessing of the Patriarchs". (By calling the fulfillment "partial" Clines was drawing attention to the fact that at the end of Deuteronomy the people are still outside Canaan).[24]
The patriarchs, or ancestors, are Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, with their wives (Joseph is normally excluded).[25] Since the name YHWH had not been revealed to them, they worshipped El in his various manifestations.[26] (It is, however, worth noting that in the Jahwist source the patriarchs refer to deity by the name YHWH, for example in Genesis 15.) Through the patriarchs God announces the election of Israel, meaning that he has chosen Israel to be his special people and committed himself to their future.[27] God tells the patriarchs that he will be faithful to their descendants (i.e. to Israel), and Israel is expected to have faith in God and his promise. ("Faith" in the context of Genesis and the Hebrew Bible means agreement to the promissory relationship, not a body of belief).[28]
The promise itself has three parts: offspring, blessings, and land.[29] The fulfilment of the promise to each patriarch depends on having a male heir, and the story is constantly complicated by the fact that each prospective mother – Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel – is barren. The ancestors, however, retain their faith in God and God in each case gives a son – in Jacob's case, twelve sons, the foundation of the chosen Israelites. Each succeeding generation of the three promises attains a more rich fulfillment, until through Joseph "all the world" attains salvation from famine,[30] and by bringing the children of Israel down to Egypt he becomes the means through which the promise can be fulfilled.[25]
God's chosen people[edit]
Scholars generally agree that the theme of divine promise unites the patriarchal cycles, but many would dispute the efficacy of trying to examine Genesis' theology by pursuing a single overarching theme, instead citing as more productive the analysis of the Abraham cycle, the Jacob cycle, and the Joseph cycle, and the Yahwist and Priestly sources.[31] The problem lies in finding a way to unite the patriarchal theme of divine promise to the stories of Genesis 1–11 (the primeval history) with their theme of God's forgiveness in the face of man's evil nature.[32][33] One solution is to see the patriarchal stories as resulting from God's decision not to remain alienated from mankind:[33] God creates the world and mankind, mankind rebels, and God "elects" (chooses) Abraham.[6]
To this basic plot (which comes from the Yahwist) the Priestly source has added a series of covenants dividing history into stages, each with its own distinctive "sign". The first covenant is between God and all living creatures, and is marked by the sign of the rainbow; the second is with the descendants of Abraham (Ishmaelites and others as well as Israelites), and its sign is circumcision; and the last, which does not appear until the book of Exodus, is with Israel alone, and its sign is Sabbath. A great leader mediates each covenant (Noah, Abraham, Moses), and at each stage God progressively reveals himself by his name (Elohim with Noah, El Shaddai with Abraham, Yahweh with Moses).[6]
Judaism's weekly Torah portions[edit]
Main article: Weekly Torah portion
First Day of Creation (from the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle)
Bereshit, on Genesis 1–6: Creation, Eden, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Lamech, wickedness
Noach, on Genesis 6–11: Noah's Ark, the Flood, Noah's drunkenness, the Tower of Babel
Lech-Lecha, on Genesis 12–17: Abraham, Sarah, Lot, covenant, Hagar and Ishmael, circumcision
Vayeira, on Genesis 18–22: Abraham's visitors, Sodomites, Lot's visitors and flight, Hagar expelled, binding of Isaac
Chayei Sarah, on Genesis 23–25: Sarah buried, Rebekah for Isaac
Toledot, on Genesis 25–28: Esau and Jacob, Esau's birthright, Isaac's blessing
Vayetze, on Genesis 28–32: Jacob flees, Rachel, Leah, Laban, Jacob's children and departure
Vayishlach, on Genesis 32–36: Jacob's reunion with Esau, the rape of Dinah
Vayeshev, on Genesis 37–40: Joseph's dreams, coat, and slavery, Judah with Tamar, Joseph and Potiphar
Miketz, on Genesis 41–44: Pharaoh's dream, Joseph in government, Joseph's brothers visit Egypt
Vayigash, on Genesis 44–47: Joseph reveals himself, Jacob moves to Egypt
Vaychi, on Genesis 47–50: Jacob's blessings, death of Jacob and of Joseph
See also[edit]
Bible portal
Dating the Bible
Enûma Eliš
Genesis creation narrative
Genesis 1:1
Historicity of the Bible
Mosaic authorship
Paradise Lost
Protevangelium
Wife–sister narratives in the Book of Genesis
Notes[edit]
^ The name "Genesis" is from the Latin Vulgate, in turn borrowed or transliterated from Greek "γένεσις", meaning "Origin"; Hebrew: בְּרֵאשִׁית, "Bərēšīṯ", "In [the] beginning"
^ The Weekly Torah portions, Parashot, divide the book into 12 readings.
References[edit]
^ Hamilton 1990, p. 1.
^ Sweeney 2012, p. 657.
^ Bergant 2013, p. xii.
^ Bandstra 2008, p. 35.
^ Bandstra 2008, p. 78.
^ Jump up to: a b c Bandstra (2004), pp. 28–29
^ Van Seters (1998), p. 5
^ Jump up to: a b Davies (1998), p. 37
^ Hamilton (1990), p. 2
^ Whybray (1997), p. 41
^ McKeown (2008), p. 2
^ Walsh (2001), p. 112
^ Bergant 2013, p. 45.
^ Bergant 2013, p. 103.
^ Carr 2000, p. 491.
^ Hendel, R. S. (1992). "Genesis, Book of". In D. N. Freedman (Ed.), The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (Vol. 2, p. 933). New York: Doubleday
^ Gooder (2000), pp. 12–14
^ Van Seters (2004), pp. 30–86
^ Lawrence Boadt; Richard J. Clifford; Daniel J. Harrington (2012). Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction. Paulist Press.
^ Ska (2006), pp. 169, 217–18
^ Van Seters (2004) pp. 113–14
^ Whybray (2001), p. 39
^ Jump up to: a b Ska (2006), p. 169
^ Clines (1997), p. 30
^ Jump up to: a b Hamilton (1990), p. 50
^ John J Collins (2007), A Short Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, Fortress Press, p. 47
^ Brueggemann (2002), p. 61
^ Brueggemann (2002), p. 78
^ McKeown (2008), p. 4
^ Wenham (2003), p. 34
^ Hamilton (1990), pp. 38–39
^ Hendel, R. S. (1992). "Genesis, Book of". In D. N. Freedman (Ed.), The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (Vol. 2, p. 935). New York: Doubleday
^ Jump up to: a b Kugler, Hartin (2009), p.9
Bibliography[edit]
Commentaries on Genesis[edit]
Sweeney, Marvin (2012). "Genesis in the Context of Jewish Thought". In Evans, Craig A.; Lohr, Joel N. (eds.). The Book of Genesis: Composition, Reception, and Interpretation. BRILL. ISBN 978-9004226531.
Bandstra, Barry L. (2008). Reading the Old Testament. Cengage Learning. ISBN 978-0495391050.
Bergant, Dianne (2013). Genesis: In the Beginning. Liturgical Press. ISBN 9780814682753.
Blenkinsopp, Joseph (2011). Creation, Un-creation, Re-creation: A Discursive Commentary on Genesis 1–11. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 9780567372871.
Brueggemann, Walter (1986). Genesis. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. Atlanta: John Knox Press. ISBN 0-8042-3101-X.
Carr, David M. (2000). "Genesis, Book of". In Freedman, David Noel; Myers, Allen C. (eds.). Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible. Amsterdam University Press. ISBN 9780567372871.
Cotter, David W (2003). Genesis. Liturgical Press. ISBN 9780814650400.
De La Torre, Miguel (2011). Genesis. Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible. Westminster John Knox Press.
Fretheim, Terence E. "The Book of Genesis." In The New Interpreter's Bible. Edited by Leander E. Keck, vol. 1, pp. 319–674. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994. ISBN 0-687-27814-7.
Hamilton, Victor P (1990). The Book of Genesis: chapters 1–17. Eerdmans. ISBN 9780802825216.
Hamilton, Victor P (1995). The Book of Genesis: chapters 18–50. Eerdmans. ISBN 9780802823090.
Hirsch, Samson Raphael. The Pentateuch: Genesis. Translated by Isaac Levy. Judaica Press, 2nd edition 1999. ISBN 0-910818-12-6. Originally published as Der Pentateuch uebersetzt und erklaert Frankfurt, 1867–1878.
Kass, Leon R. The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis. New York: Free Press, 2003. ISBN 0-7432-4299-8.
Kessler, Martin; Deurloo, Karel Adriaan (2004). A Commentary on Genesis: The Book of Beginnings. Paulist Press. ISBN 9780809142057.
McKeown, James (2008). Genesis. Eerdmans. ISBN 9780802827050.
Plaut, Gunther. The Torah: A Modern Commentary (1981), ISBN 0-8074-0055-6
Rogerson, John William (1991). Genesis 1–11. T&T Clark. ISBN 9780567083388.
Sacks, Robert D (1990). A Commentary on the Book of Genesis. Edwin Mellen.
Sarna, Nahum M. The JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989. ISBN 0-8276-0326-6.
Speiser, E.A. Genesis: Introduction, Translation, and Notes. New York: Anchor Bible, 1964. ISBN 0-385-00854-6.
Towner, Wayne Sibley (2001). Genesis. Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN 9780664252564.
Turner, Laurence (2009). Genesis, Second Edition. Sheffield Phoenix Press. ISBN 9781906055653.
Von Rad, Gerhard (1972). Genesis: A Commentary. Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN 9780664227456.
Wenham, Gordon (2003). "Genesis". In James D. G. Dunn, John William Rogerson (ed.). Eerdmans Bible Commentary. Eerdmans. ISBN 9780802837110.
Whybray, R.N (2001). "Genesis". In John Barton (ed.). Oxford Bible Commentary. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198755005.
General[edit]
Bandstra, Barry L (2004). Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Hebrew Bible. Wadsworth. ISBN 9780495391050.
Blenkinsopp, Joseph (2004). Treasures old and new: Essays in the Theology of the Pentateuch. Eerdmans. ISBN 9780802826794.
Brueggemann, Walter (2002). Reverberations of faith: A Theological Handbook of Old Testament themes. Westminster John Knox. ISBN 9780664222314.
Campbell, Antony F; O'Brien, Mark A (1993). Sources of the Pentateuch: Texts, Introductions, Annotations. Fortress Press. ISBN 9781451413670.
Carr, David M (1996). Reading the Fractures of Genesis. Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN 9780664220716.
Clines, David A (1997). The Theme of the Pentateuch. Sheffield Academic Press. ISBN 9780567431967.
Davies, G.I (1998). "Introduction to the Pentateuch". In John Barton (ed.). Oxford Bible Commentary. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198755005.
Gooder, Paula (2000). The Pentateuch: A Story of Beginnings. T&T Clark. ISBN 9780567084187.
Hendel, Ronald (2012). The Book of "Genesis": A Biography (Lives of Great Religious Books). Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691140124.
Kugler, Robert; Hartin, Patrick (2009). The Old Testament between Theology and History: A Critical Survey. Eerdmans. ISBN 9780802846365.
Levin, Christoph L (2005). The Old Testament: A Brief Introduction. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691113944.
Longman, Tremper (2005). How to read Genesis. InterVarsity Press. ISBN 9780830875603.
McEntire, Mark (2008). Struggling with God: An Introduction to the Pentateuch. Mercer University Press. ISBN 9780881461015.
Newman, Murray L. (1999). Genesis (PDF). Forward Movement Publications, Cincinnati, OH.
Ska, Jean-Louis (2006). Introduction to Reading the Pentateuch. Eisenbrauns. ISBN 9781575061221.
Van Seters, John (1992). Prologue to History: The Yahwist as Historian in Genesis. Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN 9780664221799.
Van Seters, John (1998). "The Pentateuch". In Steven L. McKenzie, Matt Patrick Graham (ed.). The Hebrew Bible Today: An Introduction to Critical Issues. Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN 9780664256524.
Van Seters, John (2004). The Pentateuch: A Social-science Commentary. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 9780567080882.
Walsh, Jerome T (2001). Style and Structure in Biblical Hebrew Narrative. Liturgical Press. ISBN 9780814658970.
External links[edit]
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Genesis
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Genesis in Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Greek, Latin, and English – The critical text of the Book of Genesis in Hebrew with ancient versions (Masoretic, Samaritan Pentateuch, Samaritan Targum, Targum Onkelos, Peshitta, Septuagint, Vetus Latina, Vulgate, Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion) and English translation for each version in parallel.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Genesis
"The Fall of Man" by Lucas Cranach the Elder. The Tree of Knowledge is on the right.
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Biblical Hebrew: עֵ֕ץ הַדַּ֖עַת ט֥וֹב וָרָֽע [ʕesˤ hadaʕaθ tˤov waraʕ]) is one of two specific trees in the story of the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2–3, along with the tree of life.
Contents
1In Genesis
1.1Narrative
1.2Meaning of good and evil
2Religious views
2.1Judaism
2.2Christianity
2.3Islam
2.4Other cultures
3See also
4References
4.1Bibliography
In Genesis[edit]
Narrative[edit]
Genesis 2 narrates that Yahweh places the first man and woman in a garden with trees of whose fruits they may eat, but forbids them to eat from "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." When, in Genesis 3, a serpent persuades the woman to eat from its forbidden fruit and she also lets the man taste it, God expels them from the garden and thereby from eternal life.
Meaning of good and evil[edit]
The phrase in Hebrew: טוֹב וָרָע, tov wa-raʿ, literally translates as good and evil. This may be an example of the type of figure of speech known as merism, a literary device that pairs opposite terms together in order to create a general meaning, so that the phrase "good and evil" would simply imply "everything." This is seen in the Egyptian expression evil-good, which is normally employed to mean "everything."[1] In Greek literature, Homer also uses the device when he lets Telemachus say, "I [wish to] know everything, the good and the evil." (Odyssey 20:309–310)
However, if tree of the knowledge of good and evil is to be understood to mean a tree whose fruit imparts knowledge of everything, this phrase does not necessarily denote a moral concept. This view is held by several scholars.[1][2][3]
Given the context of disobedience to God, other interpretations of the implications of this phrase also demand consideration. Robert Alter emphasizes the point that when God forbids the man to eat from that particular tree, he says that if he does so, he is "doomed to die." The Hebrew behind this is in a form regularly used in the Hebrew Bible for issuing death sentences.[4]
Religious views[edit]
Judaism[edit]
In Jewish tradition, the Tree of Knowledge and the eating of its fruit represents the beginning of the mixture of good and evil together. Before that time, the two were separate, and evil had only a nebulous existence in potential. While free choice did exist before eating the fruit, evil existed as an entity separate from the human psyche, and it was not in human nature to desire it. Eating and internalizing the forbidden fruit changed this and thus was born the yetzer hara, the evil inclination.[5][6] In Rashi's notes on Genesis 3:3, the first sin came about because Eve added an additional clause to the Divine command: Neither shall you touch it. By saying this, Eve added to YHWH's command and thereby came to detract from it, as it is written: Do not add to His Words (Proverbs 30:6). However, In Legends of the Jews, it was Adam who had devoutly forbidden Eve to touch the tree even though God had only mentioned the eating of the fruit.[7]
When Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge, all the animals ate from it, too [8]
In Kabbalah, the sin of the Tree of Knowledge (called Cheit Eitz HaDa'at) brought about the great task of beirurim, sifting through the mixture of good and evil in the world to extract and liberate the sparks of holiness trapped therein.[9] Since evil has no independent existence, it depends on holiness to draw down the Divine life-force, on whose "leftovers" it then feeds and derives existence.[10] Once evil is separated from holiness through beirurim, its source of life is cut off, causing the evil to disappear. This is accomplished through observance of the 613 commandments in the Torah, which deal primarily with physical objects wherein good and evil are mixed together.[11][12][13] Thus, the task of beirurim rectifies the sin of the Tree and draws the Shechinah back down to earth, where the sin of the Tree had caused Her to depart.[14][15]
Christianity[edit]
A marble bas relief by Lorenzo Maitani on the Orvieto Cathedral, Italy depicts Eve and the tree
In Christian tradition, consuming the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was the sin committed by Adam and Eve that led to the fall of man in Genesis 3.
In Catholicism, Augustine of Hippo taught that the tree should be understood both symbolically and as a real tree - similarly to Jerusalem being both a real city and a figure of Heavenly Jerusalem.[16] Augustine underlined that the fruits of that tree were not evil by themselves, because everything that God created was good (Gen 1:12). It was disobedience of Adam and Eve, who had been told by God not to eat of the tree (Gen 2:17), that caused disorder in the creation,[17] thus humanity inherited sin and guilt from Adam and Eve's sin.[18]
In Western Christian art, the fruit of the tree is commonly depicted as the apple, which originated in central Asia. This depiction may have originated as a Latin pun: by eating the mālum (apple), Eve contracted malum (evil).[19]
Islam[edit]
See also: Tree of life (Quran)
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The Quran never refers to the tree as the "Tree of the knowledge of good and evil" but rather typically refers to it as "the tree" or (in the words of Iblis) as the "tree of immortality."[20] The tree in Quran is used as an example for a concept, idea, way of life or code of life. A good concept/idea is represented as a good tree and a bad idea/concept is represented as a bad tree[21] Muslims believe that when God created Adam and Eve, he told them that they could enjoy everything in the Garden except this tree (idea, concept, way of life), and so, Satan appeared to them and told them that the only reason God forbade them to eat from that tree is that they would become Angels or they start using the idea/concept of Ownership in conjunction with inheritance generations after generations which Iblis convinced Adam to accept[22]
When they ate from this tree their nakedness appeared to them and they began to sew together, for their covering, leaves from the Garden. The Arabic word used is ورق which also means currency / notes.[23] Which means they started to use currency due to ownership. As Allah already mentioned that everything in Heaven is free(so eat from where you desire) [24] so using currency to uphold the idea of ownership became the reason for the slip. The Quran mentions the sin as being a 'slip', and after this 'slip' they were sent to the destination they were intended to be on: Earth. Consequently, they repented to God and asked for his forgiveness[25] and were forgiven.[26] It was decided that those who obey God and follow his path shall be rewarded with everlasting life in Jannah, and those who disobey God and stray away from his path shall be punished in Jahannam.
God in Quran (Al-A'raf 27) states:
"[O] Children of Adam! Let not Satan tempt you as he brought your parents out of the Garden, stripping them of their garments to show them their shameful parts. Surely he [Satan] sees you, he and his tribe, from where you see them not. We have made the Satans the friends of those who do not believe."
Other cultures[edit]
A cylinder seal, known as the Adam and Eve cylinder seal, from post-Akkadian periods in Mesopotamia (c. 23rd-22nd century BCE), has been linked to the Adam and Eve story. Assyriologist George Smith (1840-1876) describes the seal as having two facing figures (male and female) seated on each side of a tree, holding out their hands to the fruit, while between their backs is a serpent, giving evidence that the fall of man account was known in early times of Babylonia.[27] The British Museum disputes this interpretation and holds that it is a common image from the period depicting a male deity being worshipped by a woman, with no reason to connect the scene with the Book of Genesis.[28]
See also[edit]
Adam and Eve (Latter Day Saint movement)
Dream of the Rood
Enlightenment (spiritual)
Original sin
References[edit]
^ Jump up to: a b Gordon, Cyrus H.; Rendsburg, Gary A. (1997). The Bible and the ancient Near East (4th ed.). New York: W.W. Norton & Co. p. 36. ISBN 978-0-393-31689-6.
^ Harry Orlinsky's notes to the NJPS Torah.
^ Wyatt, Nicolas (2001). Space and Time in the Religious Life of the Near East. A&C Black. p. 244. ISBN 978-0-567-04942-1.
^ Alter 2004, p. 21.
^ Rashi to Genesis 2:25
^ Ramban to Genesis 3:6
^ Ginzberg, Louis, The Legends of the Jews, Vol. I: The Fall of Man, (Translated by Henrietta Szold), Johns Hopkins University Press: 1998, ISBN 0-8018-5890-9
^ Bereishit Rabbah 19: 5
^ Epistle 26, Lessons in Tanya, Igeret HaKodesh
^ ch. 22, Tanya, Likutei Amarim
^ ch. 37, Lessons in Tanya, Likutei Amarim
^ Torah Ohr 3c
^ Torat Chaim Bereishit 30a
^ Bereishit Rabbah 19:7
^ Ramban to Genesis 3:8
^ Augustine, On the Literal Meaning of Genesis (De Genesi ad litteram), VIII, 4.8; Bibliothèque Augustinniene 49, 20
^ Augustine of Hippo, On the Literal Meaning of Genesis (De Genesi ad litteram), VIII, 6.12 and 13.28, Bibliothèque Augustinniene 49,28 and 50-52; PL 34, 377; cf. idem, De Trinitate, XII, 12.17; CCL 50, 371-372 [v. 26-31;1-36]; De natura boni 34-35; CSEL 25, 872; PL 42, 551-572
^ "The City of God (Book XIII), Chapter 14". Newadvent.org. Retrieved 2014-02-07.
^ Adams, Cecil (2006-11-24). "The Straight Dope: Was the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden an apple?". The Straight Dope. Creative Loafing Media, Inc. Retrieved 2008-10-06.
^ Qur'an 20:120
^ Qur'an 14:24
^ Qur'an 20:120
^ "ورق".
^ Qur'an 7:19
^ Qur'an 7:23
^ Qur'an 2:37
^ Mitchell, T.C. (2004). The Bible in the British Museum : interpreting the evidence (New ed.). New York: Paulist Press. p. 24. ISBN 9780809142927.
^ The British Museum. "'Adam and Eve' cylinder seal". Google Cultural Institute. Retrieved 2017-04-06.
Bibliography[edit]
Alter, Robert. A translation with commentary (2004). The five books of Moses. New York: W.W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-33393-0.
Knight, Douglas (1990). Watson E. Mills (ed.). Mercer dictionary of the Bible (2d corr. print. ed.). Macon, GA: Mercer University Press. ISBN 0-86554-402-6.
Media related to Tree of the knowledge of good and evil at Wikimedia Commons
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_the_knowledge_of_good_and_evil
Or "used" knowledge, since this is a used bookstore in Seaside Oregon. How do they sell books if the store is in this state? Well, I'm not sure, but it has looked like this for the five years I have driven by it.
Knowledge Has A Mind Of It's Own
Inspired by my own drawing from 1984, when I was 7 years old, for my Grandma (it could be 1982, but I can't read my own writing :) I've wanted to do this photo for so long, and am so thrilled I've finally done it.
The Drawing Hope Project: A storybook made up of images and stories inspired and based on the drawings and imaginations of children who are struggling with illness, but who are filled with hope. Anything is possible.
www.DrawingHope.ca <-- more info!
Help SPONSOR the project!! www.IndieGogo.com/DrawingHope
You can help support The Drawing Hope Project: A Magical Story in Photographs. Featuring 20 real-life "SickKids", their drawings and stories, turned into magical photographs, and tied together with a thread of belief that anything is possible.
PLEASE, NO invitations or self promotions, THEY WILL BE DELETED. My photos are FREE to use, just give me credit and it would be nice if you let me know, thanks.
The Vimy Memorial Sculptures
Canadian Walter Allward created these plaster sculptures as part of his design for the Vimy Memorial in France. There are twenty figures altogether, seventeen of which are in the collection of the Canadian War Museum. The statues symbolize the values defended and the sacrifices made by Canadian soldiers in the First World War.
'The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun. It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is deprived of its warmth.
The Bible Psalm 19 : 1-6
*********************************************************
"Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes, und die Feste verkündigt seiner Hände Werk.
Ein Tag sagt's dem andern, und eine Nacht tut's kund der andern, ohne Sprache und ohne Worte; unhörbar ist ihre Stimme. Ihr Schall geht aus in alle Lande und ihr Reden bis an die Enden der Welt. Er hat der Sonne ein Zelt am Himmel gemacht; sie geht heraus wie ein Bräutigam aus seiner Kammer und freut sich wie ein Held, zu laufen ihre Bahn. Sie geht auf an einem Ende des Himmels und läuft um bis wieder an sein Ende, und nichts bleibt vor ihrer Glut verborgen."
Die Bibel Psalm 19, 2-7
“Each material has its specific characteristics in which we must understand it if we want to use it. In other words, no design id possible until the materials with which you design are completely understood.”
Mies van der Rohe
The offspring from this illicit union between angels and human women were giants who “became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.” (Genesis 6) The fact that they were giants, is also proof in and of itself that their parentage was superhuman. But these giants were evil. Having been born of corrupted, Satanic angels they dominated the Earth and filled it with violence. It is also interesting to note that the Bible calls them “men of renown.” The Hebrew word here, shem, refers to being famous and legendary. It is as if the Bible is indicating that when the reader hears of legends of “demigods”, titans or legendary heroes who were part god, that this is who those “myths” were referring to. These were ‘men’ of superhuman ability and strength. In addition to causing violence and sin in the world, the Nephilim were also corrupting the human bloodline.
The Nephilim giants spread violence and sin that: “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Humanity was on the verge of being wiped out with no hope of being saved from sin if every person born became part fallen angel. Thus God judged the Earth with the flood.
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise
thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel… - Gen. 3:15 (KJV)
The word seed, in this above verse, means “semen virile;” hence “offspring,” “posterity,” and “descendants.”[2] We know there were groups of human beings with truly human blood: Adam, the Adamites, and other pre-Adamites. We also know there had begun to be offspring on the earth with mixed
blood - those with blood of the Serpent (such as Cain). We’ll now discover there would be more crossbred-offspring - via these fallen angels, as well; and we’ll discover what it all would mean to the Genesis 3:15
Prophecy.
To begin, the mixing of human and fallen angelic blood was not in God’s plan for the human race, as far as “kind after kind.” There would be entirely new groups of people emerging.What was so wrong with the mixing of humans and Nephilim, other than this? First off, we’ve already mentioned that these crossbred offspring weren’t really meant for this earth. The reason? A number of genetic disturbances developed because of it. Some of these mixed offspring could have turned out normally - similar to other human beings; many others did not. There were a number of those either
much bigger or smaller than their human counterparts.Many were giants, physical giants: On the earth there once were giants.- Homer (circa 400 B. C.)[20]
The ancient genomes, one from a Neanderthal and one from a different archaic human group, the Denisovans, were presented on 18 November at a meeting at the Royal Society in London. They suggest that interbreeding went on between the members of several ancient human-like groups living in Europe and Asia more than 30,000 years ago, including an as-yet unknown human ancestor from Asia.
“What it begins to suggest is that we’re looking at a ‘Lord of the Rings’-type world — that there were many hominid populations,” says Mark Thomas, an evolutionary geneticist at University College London who was at the meeting but was not involved in the work.
The first Neanderthal and the Denisovan genome sequences revolutionized the study of ancient human history, not least because they showed that these groups interbred with anatomically modern humans, contributing to the genetic diversity of many people alive today.
All humans whose ancestry originates outside of Africa owe about 2% of their genome to Neanderthals; and certain populations living in Oceania, such as Papua New Guineans and Australian Aboriginals, got about 4% of their DNA from interbreeding between their ancestors and Denisovans, who are named after the cave in Siberia’s Altai Mountains where they were discovered. The cave contains remains deposited there between 30,000 and 50,000 years ago.
Those conclusions however were based on low-quality genome sequences, riddled with errors and full of gaps, David Reich, an evolutionary geneticist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts said at the meeting. His team, in collaboration with Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have now produced much more complete versions of the Denisovan and Neanderthal genomes — matching the quality of contemporary human genomes. The high-quality Denisovan genome data and new Neanderthal genome both come from bones recovered from Denisova Cave.
The new Denisovan genome indicates that this enigmatic population got around: Reich said at the meeting that they interbred with Neanderthals and with the ancestors of human populations that now live in China and other parts of East Asia, in addition to Oceanic populations, as his team previously reported. Most surprisingly, Reich said, the new genomes indicate that Denisovans interbred with another extinct population of archaic humans that lived in Asia more than 30,000 years ago, which is neither human nor Neanderthal.
The meeting was abuzz with conjecture about the identity of this potentially new population of humans. “We don’t have the faintest idea,” says Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the London Natural History Museum, who was not involved in the work. He speculates that the population could be related to Homo heidelbergensis, a species that left Africa around half a million years ago and later gave rise to Neanderthals in Europe. “Perhaps it lived on in Asia as well,” Stringer says.
The earliest known Egyptian pyramid is the Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara. It was built during the third dynasty, 2630-2611 BC and the pyramid and its surrounding complex are said to have been designed by Imhotep. Not the scary figure from the Mummy-movies but the architect and vizier of pharaoh Djoser. Imhotep was skilled in all areas of administration and royal enterprises and he was also a priest, writer, a doctor and the founder of the Egyptian studies of astronomy and architecture. Imhotep was also seen as a god, the God of Healing, and he was called the son of Ptah. Ptah was one of five major Egyptian gods with Re, Isis, Osiris and Amun. The name Imhotep means "the one that comes in peace" but where he came from is unknown. From statues of him we can see that he had Caucasian features and the long head of the pharaohs even if he was not a pharaoh.
Djoser's mummy has not been found, but what is remarkable about his pyramid is all the storage rooms plus a large maze of corridors and chambers dug beneath it. Massive amounts of seeds like wheat, barley, grape, tomato and figs - along with 40.000 storage vessels has been found so far. Egyptologists claim this to be for the king's afterlife but would he need such a large amount of seeds in a theological heaven?
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, made by the government of Norway deep inside a mountain on the remote and cold island of Svalbard, is a "doomsday" seed bank that stores backup copies of millions of different crop varieties in case of a worldwide catastrophe. Is it possible that also all the seeds in Djoser's storage rooms were meant to be in case of catastrophe - to restart the Egyptian civilisation?
Imhotep diagnosed and treated over 200 diseases; he performed surgery and practiced some dentistry. He has a remarkable degree of medical knowledge. The prescriptions in his ancient documents not only can compare with pharmaceutical preparations of today but many of the remedies also had therapeutic merit, Yes, many of his ancient remedies survived into the 20th century and some remain in
Akenaten.Semen and ejaculation are actually a strong part of ancient Egyptian god myths: there's an extended episode in which Set and Horus, two male gods, have what's essentially a semen-battle. Set tries to seduce Horus, but Horus throws Set's semen in the river, and then tricks him into eating lettuce smeared with Horus's semen. When the other gods try to figure out who "won" this particular fight, they summon both bits of sperm, and Horus wins, because he got Set to "swallow". Horus's semen becomes a lovely gold disc of shame around Set's head.The Horus and Seth story ends with the father, Osiris, declaring his son, Horus, his legitimate heir. Seth is brought as a bound prisoner, a game that was played by post-pubescent boys, and Isis closes the ceremony with a declaration of Horus’s new identity.
Hathor’s role in the Horus and Seth story may be that of the female entertainer, because, at a time when Pre Harakhty was sulking “she uncovered her nakedness before him, thereupon the great god laughed at her.” Literally, she ‘uncovered her vagina’, and judging from the lion’s flank determinative, she exposed her vagina by bending forward, a popular pose among the relatively few pornographic pictures we have from ancient Egypt. The way the words are written, the sexual act is implied, but not expressly stated. The sun-god nevertheless emerges from his depression with satisfaction. Perhaps someone can come up with another example where laughter is a euphemism for orgasm.
The point here is that Hathor used her sexuality here not for reproduction, but for entertainment, or, perhaps healing, in the sense of curing a depression
Did Imhotep also have knowledge of genetics? Is it possible that he with his superior medical skills tried to restore the pharaoh's dwindling power and knowledge? Had interbreeding with local people changed the divine pharaohs mental capacities, did their long skulls get shorter and shorter and the brain capacities smaller and smaller? Did he try to recreate the former race that once had come from the north - the race that he himself most probably had inherited his impressive brain capacities from? Is that why the pharaoh Akenaten not only had a long skull but also female features like breasts and a wide hip? And Akenaten's daughters had even longer skulls and that his son Tutankhamun's DNA (from his mummy) has revealed that he was not an Egyptian but had come from the north?
Denisovans are the famous Nephilim?
back
The world, thanks to Cain and the Serpent, was now on the slow pathway to self-destruction. We also know Cain, through his “ways,” was doing the exact opposite that God had planned for him. Adam had fallen a long time before this. The whole working world of the Garden had forever changed. The other fallen, corporeal angels of the Garden probably felt vindicated, at least in their minds. Cain began to influence the developing societies around him with these anti-God religious beliefs. Cain, the Serpent, and now these other fallen angels were being held in high regard - for their “other worldly” knowledge. This would, eventually, give them their “bargaining chips,” to get themselves whatever they wanted.
The rest of the fallen angels, also known as the Nephilim, wanted their place in this post-Adamic world.
The power grid had changed; and these fallen angels aimed to keep it that way. We recall the prophecy, as stated by God to the Serpent: Here we finally arrive at the Nephilimas a means of addressing the genetic evidence that the effective human population never dropped below a few thousand.27 Genesis 6 is the enigmatic story leading up to Noah’s flood,
in which the “sons of God” found the “daughters of
men” to be beautiful and took them as wives. These
unions were an anathema to God, and the offspring
are identifi ed with their own name, the Nephilim,
of which some became known as “mighty men” or
“men of renown.” There are three common explanations
offered: angels marrying human women, noblemen or tyrant rulers marrying commoners, or the righteous line of Seth intermarrying with the unrighteous line of Cain.28 Substantive objections can be raised for each of these arguments. Angels intermarrying with humans fails because Christ explicitly
stated that angels neither marry nor are given in
marriage (Mark 12).29 Noblemen intermarrying with
commoners is a stretch because this would not have
been objectionable to God, and would not have produced
offspring with any unusual physical attributes.
www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/19/ancient-humans-sex-myst...
Where Do Mermaids Come From?
Where do mermaids come from? Mermaid legends are told all over the world. We hear of mermaids in Ireland, Scotland, England, Israel, India, Greece, Syria, China, and in Africa. How is it that so many different cultures across the world have their own mermaid legends? How is it that cultures far away from one another have similar tales of mermaids? Most people believe mermaids are mythical creatures fit for a kid’s imagination and nothing more. But legends come from somewhere. Truth lies behind every legend, including the legends of mermaids and where they come from. A new age concept tells us mermaid origins come from lost civilizations like Lemuria and Atlantis. Learn more below.
Edgar Cayce on Atlantis I
364-1
2. Atlantis as a continent is a legendary tale. Whether or not that which has been received through psychic sources has for its basis those few lines given by Plato, or the references made in Holy writ that the earth was divided, depends upon the trend of individual minds. Recently, however, the subject has taken on greater import, since some scientists have declared that such a continent was not only a reasonable and plausible matter, but from evidences being gradually gathered was a very probable condition.
3. As we recognize, there has been considerable given respecting such a lost continent by those channels such as the writer of Two Planets, or Atlantis - or Poseida and Lemuria - that has been published through some of the Theosophical literature. As to whether this information is true or not, depends upon the credence individuals give to this class of information.
4. Then, it has seemed well to many of this group, that those channels through which information may be obtained interest themselves in such an undertaking, as to gain through those channels such information that might be applicable in the lives or experiences of individuals interested in such.
5. From time to time, in and through the information obtained for some individuals in their life readings, has come that they, as an entity or individual, occupied some particular place, or performed some activity in some portion of that continent; or emigrated from the continent to some other portion of the earth's surface at the time, and began some particular development. These must have been a busy folk, for with their advent into other climes (as the information runs) they began to make many changes from the activities in that particular sphere in which they entered.
6. Then, if we are to accept such as being a fact or fiction, may truly depend upon what value to the human family knowledge concerning such a peoples would be in the affairs of individuals today. What contribution would information be to the minds of individuals, as to knowing or understanding the better or closer relations to the Creative Forces? Or, to put it another manner, what would information of that nature mean to my SOUL today?
7. Be it true that there IS the fact of reincarnation, and that souls that once occupied such an environ are entering the earth's sphere and inhabiting individuals in the present, is it any wonder that - if they made such alterations in the affairs of the earth in their day, as to bring destruction upon themselves - if they are entering now, they might make many changes in the affairs of peoples and individuals in the present? Are they, then, BEING born into the world? If so, what WERE their environs - and will those environs mean in a material world today?
364-3
1. EC: Yes, we have the subject and those conditions. As has been said, much data has been received from time to time through psychic forces as respecting conditions in or through the period, or ages, of this continent's existence. That the continent existed is being proven as a fact.
2. Then, what took place during the period, or periods, when it was being broken up? What became of the inhabitants? What was the character of their civilization? Are there any evidences of those, or any portion of, the inhabitants' escape? The POSITION of the continent, and the like, MUST be of interest to peoples in the present day, if either by inference that individuals are being born into the earth plane to develop in the present, or are people being guided in their spiritual interpretation of individuals' lives or developments BY the spirits of those who inhabited such a continent. In either case, if these be true, they ARE WIELDING - and are to wield - an influence upon the happenings of the present day world.
3. The position as the continent Atlantis occupied, is that as between the Gulf of Mexico on the one hand - and the Mediterranean upon the other. Evidences of this lost civilization are to be found in the Pyrenees and Morocco on the one hand, British Honduras, Yucatan and America upon the other. There are some protruding portions within this that must have at one time or another been a portion of this great continent. The British West Indies or the Bahamas, and a portion of same that may be seen in the present - if the geological survey would be made in some of these - especially, or notably, in Bimini and in the Gulf Stream through this vicinity, these may be even yet determined.
4. What, then, are the character of the peoples? To give any proper conception, may we follow the line of a group, or an individual line, through this continent's existence - and gain from same something of their character, their physiognomy, and their spiritual and physical development.
5. In the period, then - some hundred, some ninety-eight thousand years before the entry of Ram into India [See 364-3, Par. R2] - there lived in this land of Atlantis one Amilius [?], who had first NOTED that of the separations of the beings as inhabited that portion of the earth's sphere or plane of those peoples into male and female as separate entities, or individuals. As to their forms in the physical sense, these were much RATHER of the nature of THOUGHT FORMS, or able to push out OF THEMSELVES in that direction in which its development took shape in thought - much in the way and manner as the amoeba would in the waters of a stagnant bay, or lake, in the present. As these took form, by the gratifying of their own desire for that as builded or added to the material conditions, they became hardened or set - much in the form of the existent human body of the day, with that of color as partook of its surroundings much in the manner as the chameleon in the present. Hence coming into that form as the red, or the mixture peoples - or colors; known then later by the associations as the RED race. These, then, able to use IN their gradual development all the forces as were manifest in their individual surroundings, passing through those periods of developments as has been followed more closely in that of the yellow, the black, or the white races, in other portions of the world; yet with their immediate surroundings, with the facilities for the developments, these became much speedier in this particular portion of the globe than in others - and while the destruction of this continent and the peoples are far beyond any of that as has been kept as an absolute record, that record in the rocks still remains - as has that influence OF those peoples in that life of those peoples to whom those that did escape during the periods of destruction make or influence the lives of those peoples TO whom they came. As they MAY in the present, either through the direct influence of being regenerated, or re-incarnated into the earth, or through that of the MENTAL application on through the influences as may be had upon thought OF individuals or groups by speaking from that environ.
6. In the MANNER of living, in the manner of the moral, of the social, of the religious life of these peoples: There, classes existed much in the same order as existed among others; yet the like of the warlike INFLUENCE did NOT exist in the peoples - AS a people - as it did in the OTHER portions of the universe.
364-4
2. EC: Yes, we have the subject here, The Lost Continent of Atlantis.
3. As the peoples were a peaceful peoples, their developments took on rather that form - with the developing into the physical material bodies - of the fast development, or to the using of the elements about them to their own use; recognizing themselves to be a part OF that about them. Hence, as to the supplying of that as necessary to sustain physical life as known today, in apparel, or supplying of the bodily needs, these were supplied through the natural elements; and the DEVELOPMENTS came rather in the forms - as would be termed in the PRESENT day - of preparing for those things that would pertain to what would be termed the aerial age, or the electrical age, and supplying then the modes and manners of transposition of those materials about same that did not pertain to themselves bodily; for of themselves was transposed, rather by that ability lying within each to be transposed in thought as in body.
4. In these things, then, did Amilius [?] see the beginning of, and the abilities of, those of his own age, era, or period, not only able to build that as able to transpose or build up the elements about them but to transpose them bodily from one portion of the universe to the other, THROUGH the uses of not only those RECENTLY re-discovered gases, and those of the electrical and aeriatic formations - in the breaking up of the atomic forces to produce impelling force to those means and modes of transposition, or of travel, or of lifting large weights, or of changing the faces or forces of nature itself, but with these transpositions, with these changes that came in as personalities, we find these as the Sons of the Creative Force as manifest in their experience looking upon those changed forms, or the daughters of men, and there crept in those pollutions, of polluting themselves with those mixtures that brought contempt, hatred, bloodshed, and those that build for desires of self WITHOUT respects of OTHERS' freedom, others' wishes - and there began, then, in the latter portion of this period of development, that that brought about those of dissenting and divisions among the peoples in the lands. With the attempts of those still in power, through those lineages of the pure, that had kept themselves intact as of the abilities of forces as were manifest IN their activities, these BUILDED rather those things that ATTEMPTED to draw BACK those peoples; through first the various changes or seasons that came about, and in the latter portion of the experience of Amilius [?] was the first establishing of the altars upon which the sacrifices of the field and the forest, and those that were of that that SATISFIED the desires of the physical body, were builded.
5. Then, with the coming in or the raising up of Esai [?], with the change that had come about, began in that period when there were the invasions of this continent by those of the animal kingdoms, that brought about that meeting of the nations of the globe to PREPARE a way and manner of disposing of, else they be disposed of themselves by these forces. With this coming in, there came then the first of the destructive forces as could be set and then be meted out in its force or power. Hence that as is termed, or its first beginning of, EXPLOSIVES that might be carried about, came with this reign, or this period, when MAN - or MEN, then - began to cope with those of the beast form that OVERRAN the earth in many places. Then, with these destructive forces, we find the first turning of the altar fires into that of sacrifice of those that were taken in the various ways, and human sacrifice began. With this also came the first egress of peoples to that of the Pyrenees first, OF which later we find that peoples who enter into the black or the mixed peoples, in what later became the Egyptian dynasty. We also find that entering into Og, or those peoples that later became the beginning of the Inca, or Ohum [Aymara'?], that builded the walls across the mountains in this period, through those same usages of that as had been taken on by those peoples; and with the same, those that made for that in the other land, became first those of the mound dwellers, or peoples in that land. With the continued disregard of those that were keeping the pure race and the pure peoples, of those that were to bring all these laws as applicable to the Sons of God, man brought in the destructive forces as used for the peoples that were to be the rule, that combined with those natural resources of the gases, of the electrical forces, made in nature and natural form the first of the eruptions that awoke from the depth of the slow cooling earth, and that portion now near what would be termed the Sargasso Sea first went into the depths. With this there again came that egress of peoples that aided, or attempted to assume control, yet carrying with them ALL those forms of Amilius [?] that he gained through that as for signs, for seasons, for days, for years. Hence we find in those various portions of the world even in the present day, some form of that as WAS presented by those peoples in THAT great DEVELOPMENT in this, the Eden of the world.
6. In the latter portion of same we find as CITIES were builded more and more rare became those abilities to call upon rather the forces in nature to supply the needs for those of bodily adornment, or those of the needs to supply the replenishing of the wasting away of the physical being; or hunger arose, and with the determinations to set again in motion, we find there - then Ani [?] [See the name ANI mentioned on pp. 6, 57, 187 and 324 of the book, MYTHS & LEGENDS OF ANCIENT EGYPT, by Lewis Spence.] [GD's note: I put a question mark because I didn't know whether this was the correct spelling or not.], in those latter periods, ten thousand seven hundred (10,700) years before the Prince of Peace came - again was the bringing into forces that to TEMPT, as it were, nature - in its storehouse - of replenishing the things - that of the WASTING away in the mountains, then into the valleys, then into the sea itself, and the fast disintegration of the lands, as well as of the peoples - save those that had escaped into those distant lands.
7. How, then, may this be applicable to our present day understanding? As we see the effects as builded in that about the sacred fires, as through those of Hermes, those of Arart, those of the Aztec, those of Ohum [Aymara'?], each in their respective sphere CARRYING some portion of these blessings - when they are kept in accord and PURE with those through which the channels of the blessings, of the Creative Forces, may manifest. So, we find, when we apply the lessons in the day - would ye be true, keep that EVERY WHIT thou KNOWEST to do within thine own heart! Knowing, as ye USE that as is KNOWN, there is given the more and more light to know from whence ye came and whither ye go!
8. Ready for questions.
9. (Q) Please give a description of the earth's surface as it existed at the time of Atlantis' highest civilization, using the names of continents, oceans and sections of same as we know them today?
(A) As to the highest point of civilization, this would first have to be determined according to the standard as to which it would be judged - as to whether the highest point was when Amilius [?] ruled with those understandings, as the one that understood the variations, or whether they became man made, would depend upon whether we are viewing from a spiritual standpoint or upon that as a purely material or commercial standpoint; for the variations, as we find, extend over a period of some two hundred thousand years (200,000) - that is, as light years - as known in the present - and that there were MANY changes in the surface of what is now called the earth. In the first, or greater portion, we find that NOW known as the southern portions of South America and the Arctic or North Arctic regions, while those in what is NOW as Siberia - or that as of Hudson Bay - was rather in that region of the tropics, or that position now occupied by near what would be as the same LINE would run, of the southern Pacific, or central Pacific regions - and about the same way. Then we find, with this change that came first in that portion, when the first of those peoples used that as prepared FOR the changes in the earth, we stood near the same position as the earth occupies in the present - as to Capricorn, or the equator, or the poles. Then, with that portion, THEN the South Pacific, or Lemuria [?], began its disappearance - even before Atlantis, for the changes were brought about in the latter portion of that period, or what would be termed ten thousand seven hundred (10,700) light years, or earth years, or present setting of those, as set by Amilius [?] - or Adam.
364-5
2. EC: Yes, we have the information as given respecting the continent Atlantis. In the considerations that may be had concerning such information, many are the questions that must naturally arise in the minds of individuals who would consider same in any way or manner. However, will a very close check be kept upon those who evince an interest, these will be found to be those who occupy in the present some influence innate or manifested from their experience or sojourn under or in that environ. As has been given, this would be well to do; for to the analytical or to the research character of mind, there will be little that may escape the attention of such a mind - when spiritual or psychic, or occult, or those kindred subjects are approached - as to how quick there is the desire, that expression of "I know it, but don't know how to tell it, will be in that individual's or entity's feeling, and expression - when one may be obtained at all. They will immediately become the dreamer! Try this!
3. Ready for questions.
4. (Q) Explain the information given regarding Amilius [?], who first noted the separation of the peoples into male and female, as it relates to the story in the Bible of Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden giving the name of the symbols Adam, Eve, the apple, and the serpent.
(A) This would require a whole period of a lecture period for this alone; for, as is seen, that as is given is the presentation of a teacher of a peoples that separated for that definite purpose of keeping alive in the minds, the hearts, the SOUL minds of entities, that there may be seen their closer relationship to the divine influences of Creative Forces, that brought into being all that appertains to man's indwelling as man in the form of flesh in this material world. These are presented in symbols of that thought as held by those peoples from whom the physical recorder took those records as compiled, with that gained by himself in and through the entering into that state where the entity's soul mind drew upon the records that are made by the passing of time itself in a material world. As given, these are records not only of the nature as has been termed or called akashic records (that is, of a mental or soul record), but that in a more material nature as set down in stone, that was attempted to be done - HAS been attempted to be done throughout ALL time! WHY does man NOW set in stone those that are representatives of that desired to be kept in mind by those making records for future generations? There are many more materials more lasting, as is known to many.
In the records, then, as this: There are, as seen, the records made by the man in the mount, that this Amilius [?] - Adam, as given - first discerned that from himself, not of the beasts about him, could be drawn - WAS drawn - that which made for the propagation OF beings IN the flesh, that made for that companionship as seen by creation in the material worlds about same. The story, the tale (if chosen to be called such), is one and the same. The apple, as 'the apple of the eye', the desire of that companionship innate in that created, as innate in the Creator, that brought companionship into the creation itself. Get that one!
In this there comes, then, that which is set before that created - or having TAKEN ON that form, able of projecting itself in WHATEVER direction it chose to take, as given; able to make itself OF that environ, in color, in harmony, in WHATEVER source that makes for the spirit of that man would attempt to project in music, in art, in ANY form that may even be conceivable to the mind itself in what may be termed its most lucid moments, in its most esoteric moments, in its highest animation moments; for were He not the SON of the living God made manifest, that He might be the companion in a made world, in material manifested things, with the injunction to subdue all, BRING all in the material things under subjection - all UNDER subjection - by that ability to project itself IN its way? KNOWING itself, as given, to be a portion OF the whole, in, through, of, by the whole? In this desire, then, keep - as the injunction was - thine self separate: OF that seen, but NOT that seen. The apple, then, that desire for that which made for the associations that bring carnal-minded influences of that brought as sex influence, known in a material world, and the partaking of same is that which brought the influence in the lives of that in the symbol of the serpent, that made for that which creates the desire that may be only satisfied in gratification of carnal forces, as partake of the world and its influences about same - rather than of the spiritual emanations from which it has its source. Will control - inability of will control, if we may put it in common parlance.
364-6
1. GC: You will have before you the material and information given through this channel on the lost continent of Atlantis, a copy of which I hold in my hand. You will answer the questions which I will ask regarding this:
2. EC: Yes, we have the information as written here, as given. In following out that as just given, with these changes coming in the experience of Amilius [?] and I [Ai? Ay?], Adam and Eve, the knowledge of their position, or that as is known in the material world today as desires and physical bodily charms, the understanding of sex, sex relationships, came into the experience. With these came the natural fear of that as had been forbidden, that they know themselves to be a part of but not OF that as partook of EARTHLY, or the desires in the manner as were ABOUT them, in that as had been their heritage.
3. Were this turned to that period when this desire, then, becomes consecrated in that accomplished again in the virgin body of the mother of the SON of man, we see this is then crystallized into that, that even that of the flesh may be - with the proper concept, proper desire in all its purity - consecrated to the LIVING forces as manifest by the ability in that body so brought into being, as to make a way of escape for the ERRING man. Hence we have found throughout the ages, so oft the times when conception of truth became rampant with free-love, with the desecration of those things that brought to these in the beginning that of the KNOWLEDGE of their existence, as to that that may be termed - and betimes became - the MORAL, or morality OF a people. Yet this same feeling, this same exaltation that comes from association of kindred bodies - that have their lives consecrated in a purposefulness, that makes for the ability of retaining those of the essence of creation in every virile body - can be made to become the fires that light truth, love, hope, patience, peace, harmony; for they are EVER the key to those influences that fire the imaginations of those that are gifted in ANY form of depicting the high emotions of human experience, whether it be in the one or the other fields, and hence is judged by those that may not be able, or through desire submit themselves - as did Amilius [?] and I [?] to those ELEMENTS, through the forces in the life as about them.
7. (Q) How large was Atlantis during the time of Amilius?
(A) Comparison, that of Europe including Asia in Europe - not Asia, but Asia in Europe - see? This composed, as seen, in or after the first of the destructions, that which would be termed now - with the present position - the southernmost portion of same - islands as created by those of the first (as man would call) volcanic or eruptive forces brought into play in the destruction of same.
8. (Q) Was Atlantis one large continent, or a group of large islands?
(A) Would it not be well to read just that given? Why confuse in the questionings? As has been given, what would be considered one large continent, until the first eruptions brought those changes - from what would now, with the present position of the earth in its rotation, or movements about its sun, through space, about Arcturus, about the Pleiades, that of a whole or one continent. Then with the breaking up, producing more of the nature of large islands, with the intervening canals or ravines, gulfs, bays or streams, as came from the various ELEMENTAL forces that were set in motion by this CHARGING - as it were - OF the forces that were collected as the basis for those elements that would produce destructive forces, as might be placed in various quarters or gathering places of those beasts, or the periods when the larger animals roved the earth - WITH that period of man's indwelling. Let it be remembered, or not confused, that the EARTH was peopled by ANIMALS before peopled by man! First that of a mass, which there arose the mist, and then the rising of same with light breaking OVER that as it SETTLED itself, as a companion of those in the universe, as it began its NATURAL (or now natural) rotations, with the varied effects UPON the various portions of same, as it slowly - and is slowly - receding or gathering closer to the sun, from which it receives its impetus for the awakening of the elements that give life itself, by radiation of like elements from that which it receives from the sun. Hence that of one type, that has been through the ages, of mind - that gives the SUN as the father OF light in the earth. Elements have their attraction and detraction, or those of ANIMOSITY and those of gathering together. This we see throughout all of the kingdoms, as may be termed, whether we speak of the heavenly hosts or of those of the stars, or of the planets, or of the various forces within any or all of same, they have their attraction or detraction. The attraction increases that as gives an impulse, that that becomes the aid, the stimuli, or an impulse to create. Hence, as may be seen - or may be brought to man's own - that of attraction one for another gives that STIMULI, that IMPULSE, to be the criterion of, or the gratification of, those influences in the experience of individuals or entities. To smother same oft becomes deteriorations for each other, as may come about in any form, way or manner. Accidents happen in creation, as well as in individuals' lives! Peculiar statement here, but - true!
9. (Q) What were the principal islands called at the time of the final destruction?
(A) Poseidia and Aryan [?], and Og [?].
10. (Q) Describe one of the ships of the air that was used during the highest period of mechanical development in Atlantis.
(A) Much of the nature, in the EARLIER portion, as would be were the hide of MANY of the pachyderm, or elephants, many into the CONTAINERS for the gases that were used as both lifting and for the impelling of the crafts about the various portions of the continent, and even abroad. These, as may be seen, took on those abilities not only to pass through that called air, or that heavier, but through that of water - when they received the impetus from the NECESSITIES of the peoples in that particular period, for the safety of self. The shape and form, then, in the earlier portion, depended upon which or what skins were used for the containers. The metals that were used as the braces, these were the COMBINATIONS then of what is NOW a lost art - the TEMPERED brass, the temperament of that as becomes between aluminum (as now called) and that of uranium, with those of the fluxes that are from those of the COMBINED elements of the iron, that is carbonized with those of other fluxes - see? These made for lightness of structure, non-conductor OR conductors of the electrical forces - that were used for the IMPELLING of same, rather than the gases - which were used as the lifting. See? For that as in the NATURE'S forces may be turned into even the forces OF that that makes life, as given, from the sun rays to those elements that make for, or find CORRESPONDING reaction in their APPLICATION of same, or reflection of same, TO the rays itself - or a different or changed form of storage of FORCE, as called electrical in the present.
11. We are through for the present.
364-7
3. (Q) How is the legend of Lilith connected with the period of Amilius?
(A) In the beginning, as was outlined, there was presented that that became as the Sons of God, in that male and female were as one, with those abilities for those changes as were able or capable of being brought about. In the changes that came from those THINGS, as were of the projections of the abilities of those entities to project, this as a being came as the companion; and when there was that turning to the within, through the sources of creation, as to make for the helpmeet of that as created by the first cause, or of the Creative Forces that brought into being that as was made, THEN - from out of self - was brought that as was to be the helpmeet, NOT just companion of the body. Hence the legend of the associations of the body during that period before there was brought into being the last of the creations, which was not of that that was NOT made, but the first of that that WAS made, and a helpmeet to the body, that there might be no change in the relationship of the SONS of God WITH those relationships of the sons and daughters of men.
In this then, also comes that as is held by many who have reached especially to that understanding of how NECESSARY, then, becomes the PROPER mating of those souls that may be the ANSWERS one to another of that that may bring, through that association, that companionship, into being that that may be the more helpful, more sustaining, more the well- ROUNDED life or experience of those that are a PORTION one of another. Do not misinterpret, but knowing that all are OF one - yet there are those divisions that make for a CLOSER union, when there are the proper relationships brought about. As an illustration, in this:
In the material world we find there is in the mineral kingdom those elements that are of the nature as to form a closer union one with another, and make as for compounds as make for elements that act more in unison with, or against, other forms of activity in the experience in the earth's environ, or the earth's force, as makes for those active forces in the ELEMENTS that are ABOUT the earth. Such as we may find in those that make for the active forces in that of uranium, and that of ultramarine, and these make then for an element that becomes the more active force as with the abilities for the rates of emanation as may be thrown off from same. So, as illustrated in the union, then, of - in the PHYSICAL compounds - that as may vibrate, or make for emanations in the activities of their mental and spiritual, and material, or physical forces, as may make for a GREATER activity in this earth environ. Then, there may be seen that as is in an elemental, or compound, that makes for that as is seen in the material experience as to become an antipathy for other elements that are as equally necessary in the experience of man's environ as in the combination of gases as may produce whenever combined that called water, and its antipathy for the elements in combustion is easily seen or known in man's experience.
So in those unions of that in the elemental forces of creative energies that take on the form of man, either in that of man or woman, with its NATURAL or ELEMENTAL, see? ELEMENTAL forces of its vibration, with the union of two that vibrate or respond to those vibrations in self, create for that ideal that becomes as that, in that created, in the form - as is known as radium, with its fast emittal vibrations, that brings for active forces, principles, that makes for such atomic forces within the active principles of all nature in its active force as to be one of the elemental bases from which life in its essence, as an active principle in a material world, has its sources, give off that which is EVER good - unless abused, see? So in that may there be basis for THOSE forces, as HAS been, as IS sought, thought, or ATTAINED BY those who have, through the abilities of the vibrations, to make for a continued force in self as to meet, know, see, feel, understand, those sources from which such begets that of its kind, or as those that become as an antipathy for another, or as makes for those that makes for the variations in the tempering of the various elements, compounds, or the like; so, as is seen, THESE - then - the BASIS for those things as has been given here, there, in their various ways and manners, as to the companion of, and COMPANIONS of, that that first able - through its projection of itself and its abilities in the creation - to bring about that that was either of its OWN making, or creation, or that given in the beginning to BE the force THROUGH which there might BE that that would bring ever blessings, good, right, and love, in even the physical or material world. See?
4. (Q) How long did it take for the division into male and female?
(A) That depends upon which, or what branch or LINE is considered. When there was brought into being that as of the projection of that created BY that created, this took a period of evolutionary - or, as would be in the present year, fourscore and six year. That as brought into being as was of the creating OF that that became a portion of, OF that that was already created by the CREATOR, THAT brought into being as WERE those of the forces of nature itself. God said, "Let there be light" and there WAS light! God said, "Let there be life" and there WAS life!
5. (Q) Were the thought forms that were able to push themselves out of themselves inhabited by souls, or were they of the animal kingdom?
(A) That as created by that CREATED, of the animal kingdom. That created as by the Creator, with the soul.
6. (Q) What was meant by the Sons of the Highest in Atlantis and the second coming of souls to the earth, as mentioned in a life reading given thru this channel? [See 2802-1 on 5/18/25.]
(A) In this period or age, as was seen - There is fault of words here to PROJECT that as actually OCCURS in the FORMATIONS of that as comes about! There was, with the WILL of that as came into being through the correct channels, of that as created by the Creator, that of the CONTINUING of the souls in its projection and projection - see? while in that as was OF the offspring, of that as pushed itself INTO form to SATISFY, GRATIFY, that of the desire of that known as carnal forces of the SENSES, of those created, there continued to be the war one with another, and there were then - FROM the other SOURCES (worlds) the continuing entering of those that WOULD make for the keeping of the balance, as of the first purpose of the Creative Forces, as it magnifies itself in that given sphere of activity, of that that had been GIVEN the ABILITY to CREATE with its OWN activity - see? and hence the second, or the CONTINUED entering of souls into that known as the earth's plane during this period, for that activity as was brought about. Let's REMEMBER that as was given, in the second, third from Adam, or fourth, or from Amilius, there was "In that day did they CALL UPON the NAME of the Lord" - is right! and ever, when the elements that make for littleness, uncleanness, are crucified in the body, the SPIRIT of the Lord, of God, is present! When these are overbalanced, so that the body (physical), the mental man, the imagination of its heart, is evil, or his purpose is evil, then is that war continuing - as from the beginning. Just the continued warring of those things within self as from the beginning; for with these changes as brought SIN into the world, with same came the FRUITS of same, or the seed as of sin, which we see in the material world as those things that corrupt good ground, those that corrupt the elements that are of the compounds of those of the first causes, or elementals, and pests are seen - and the like, see? So does it follow throughout all creative forces, that the fruits of that as is active brings that seed that makes for the corrupting of, or the clearing of, in the activative forces of, that BEING acted upon.
7. (Q) What was meant by "As in the first Adam sin entered, so in the last Adam all shall be made alive?"
(A) Adam's entry into the world in the beginning, then, must become the savior OF the world, as it was committed to his care, "Be thou fruitful, multiply, and SUBDUE the earth!" Hence Amilius, Adam, the first Adam, the last Adam, becomes - then - that that is GIVEN the POWER OVER the earth, and - as in each soul the first to be conquered is self - then ALL THINGS, conditions and elements, are subject unto that self!
That a universal law, as may be seen in that as may be demonstrated either in gases that destroy one another by becoming elements of the same, or that in the mineral or the animal kingdom as may be found that destroy, or BECOME one WITH the other. Hence, as Adam given - the SON of God - so he MUST become that that would be able to take the world, the earth, back to that source from which it came, and ALL POWER is given in his keeping in the earth, that he has overcome; self, death, hell and the grave even, become subservient unto Him THROUGH the conquering of self in that made flesh; for, as in the beginning was the word, the Word WAS with God, the Word WAS God, the same was IN the beginning. The Word came and dwelt among men, the offspring of self in a material world, and the Word OVERCAME the world - and hence the world BECOMES, then, as the servant of that that overcame the world!
8. (Q) Please give the important re-incarnations of Adam in the world's history.
(A) In the beginning as Amilius, as Adam, as Melchizedek, as Zend [?], as Ur [?] [Enoch? GD's note: Perhaps Ur was prehistory person [364-9, Par. 3-A] who established Ur of the Chaldees? I don't think he was mentioned anywhere else in the readings as an incarnation of Jesus.], as Asaph [?] [Songs of Asaph? See Ps. 81:5 indicating that Joseph and Asaph were one and the same?], as Jesus [Jeshua] - Joseph - Jesus. [See 364-9, Par. 3-A.]
Then, as that coming into the world in the second coming - for He will come again and receive His own, who have prepared themselves through that belief in Him and acting in that manner; for the SPIRIT is abroad, and the time draws near, and there will be the reckoning of those even as in the first so in the last, and the last shall be first; for there is that Spirit abroad - He standeth near. He that hath eyes to see, let him see. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear that music of the coming of the Lord of this vineyard, and art THOU ready to give account of that THOU hast done with thine opportunity in the earth as the Sons of God, as the heirs and joint heirs of glory WITH the Son? Then make thine paths straight, for there must come an answering for that THOU hast done with thine Lord! He will not tarry, for having overcome He shall appear even AS the Lord AND Master. Not as one born, but as one that returneth to His own, for He will walk and talk with men of every clime, and those that are faithful and just in their reckoning shall be caught up with Him to rule and to do JUDGEMENT for a thousand years!
9. (Q) Describe some of the mental abilities that were developed by the Atlanteans at the time of their greatest spiritual development.
(A) Impossible to describe achievements physical in their spiritual development. The use of MATERIAL conditions and spiritual attributes in a material world would, and do, become that as are the miracles of the Son in the material world; for even as with Him in - and as He walked, whether in Galilee, in Egypt, in India, in France, in England, or America - there WERE those periods when the activities of the physical were as was what would be termed the everyday life of the SONS of God in the Atlantean or Eden experience; for as those brought the various changes from the highest of the SPIRITUAL development to the highest of the mental, then of the MATERIAL or physical developments, then the fall - see?
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Edgar Cayce on Atlantis II
364-10
1. GC: You will have before you the information given through this channel on the lost continent of Atlantis. You will please continue with this information, and answer the questions which I will ask regarding same.
2. EC: Yes. In understanding, then, in the present terminology, occult science, or psychic science - as seen, this was the natural or nature's activity in that experience, and not termed a science - any more than would be the desire for food by a new born babe. Rather the natural consequence. This explanation may of necessity take on some forms that may possibly be confusing at times, but illustrations may be made through the various types of occult science, or psychic manifestations, that may clarify for the student something of the various types of psychic manifestations in the present, as well as that that was natural in this period.
3. There is, as has been oft given, quite a difference - and much differentiation should be made - in mysticism and psychic, or occult science as termed today.
4. From that which has been given, it is seen that individuals in the beginning were more of thought forms than individual entities with personalities as seen in the present, and their projections into the realms of fields of thought that pertain to a developing or evolving world of matter, with the varied presentations about same, of the expressions or attributes in the various things about the entity or individual, or body, through which such science - as termed now, or such phenomena as would be termed - became manifest. Hence we find occult or psychic science, as would be called at the present, was rather the natural state of man in the beginning. Very much as (in illustration) when a baby, or babe, is born into the world and its appetite is first satisfied, and it lies sleeping. Of what is its dreams? That it expects to be, or that it has been? Of what are thoughts? That which is to be, or that which has been, or that which is? Now remember we are speaking - these were thought forms, and we are finding again the illustrations of same!
5. When the mental body (Now revert back to what you are calling science) - when the mental body, or mind, has had training, or has gone through a course of operations in certain directions, such individuals are called so-and-so minded; as one of an inventive turn, and trained; one of a statistician turn, and trained; one of a theologian turn, and trained; one of philosophical turn, and trained. Of what does the mind build? We have turned, then, to that that has become very material, for the mind constantly trained makes for itself MENTAL pictures, or makes for that as is reasoned with from its own present dimensional viewpoints - but the babe, from whence its reasoning? from whence its dream? From that that has been taken in, or that that has been its experience from whence it came? Oft has it been said, and rightly, with a babe's smile 'Dreaming of angels', and close in touch with them - but what has PRODUCED that dream? The contact with that upon which IT has fed! Don't forget our premise now from which we are reasoning! and we will find that we will have the premise from which those individuals, or the entities, reasoned within the beginning in this land. (We are speaking of Atlanteans, when they became as thought forces.) From whence did THEY reason? From the Creative Forces from which they had received their impetus, but acted upon by the thought FORMS as were in MATERIAL forms about them, and given that power (will) to be one WITH that from what it sprang or was given its impetus, or force, yet with the ability to USE that in the way that seemed, or seemeth, good or well, or pleasing, unto itself. Hence we find in this particular moulding or mouldive stage, that in which there was the greater development of, and use of, that as is termed or called psychic and occult forces, or science - in the present terminology, or age.
6. Illustrating, then, that as to how this was used by those entities, those beings, in the formative stage of their experience or sojourn among that as had been created in all of its splendor to supply every want or desire that might be called forth by that being, with all of its attributes physical, mental AND SPIRITUAL at hand; for, as has been given, even unto the four hundred thousandth generation from the first creation was it prepared for man's indwelling. As we today (turn to today), we find there the developments of those resources. How long have they remained? Since the beginning! How long has man been able to use them for his undoing, or his pleasure, or for his regeneration? Since the knowledge of some source has awakened within its psychic force, or source, of the apparatus, or the form that it takes, either in a physical or mental (for remember, Mind is the Builder - and it moves along those channels through which, and by which, it may bring into existence in whatever dimension or sphere from which it is reasoning, or reasoning toward - see) - and as these may be illustrated in the present:
7. When there is a manifestation of a psychic force, or an occult action, or phenomena, or activity in, upon, of or for, an individual, there is then the rolling back, as it were, or a portion of the physical consciousness - or that mental trained individual consciousness - has been rolled aside, or rolled back, and there is then a visioning - To what? That as from the beginning, a projection OF that form that assumed its position or condition in the earth as from the beginning, and with those so endowed with that as may be called an insight into psychic sources there may be visioned about a body its astral (if chosen to be termed), rather its THOUGHT body, as is projected FROM same in such a state; especially so when there is the induction, or the inducing of, an unconsciousness of the normal brain, or normal mental body. Submerged - into what? Into the unconscious, or subconscious. Sub, in THIS instance, meaning BELOW - not above normal; below - SUBJECTED to the higher consciousness, or to the higher thought, that has been builded - just as sure as has a physical body been builded, from what?
That as has been given from its first nucleus as passed through in its experience. Then there may be visioned by such a body, as may be called with the second sight, or with a vision, that accompanying thought body of such an one, manifesting in much the way and manner as individuals in the Atlantean period of psychic and occult development brought about in their experience. Through such projections there came about that first necessity of the division of the body, to conform to those necessities of that as seen in its own mental vision as builded (MENTAL now - Don't confuse these terms, or else you will become VERY confused in what is being given!).
8. The mental vision by its action upon what body is being builded? On the mental body of the individual in a material world, out of Spirit, out of the ability to have all the attributes of the spiritual or unseen forces - but MATERIALIZED forces, as is necessary from the mental body in a material world MENTALLY trained to, or in, certain directions, or given directions, or following the natural bent of its threefold or threeply body, as is seen in every individual or every entity. As these projected themselves, then we find these DEVELOPMENTS were in this portion of the development in the Atlantean period. How were these used? In much as were from the beginning. Remember there was ever the instruction to those peoples that were to hold to that that would bring for the spiritual forces, rather than the abuses of the abilities - as those with familiar spirits, as those that spoke to or partook of the divinations of those that had passed from the earth's plane, or those that partook of the animal magnetism - that came from the universal consciousness of animal matter as passed into its experience, in its interchange through those periods of integration and disintegration - and the spirit forces possessing those that would lay themselves open to such conditions, for these are as real as physical bodies if the attunements of the entity are such that it may vision them! and they are about you always, sure! These, then, are entities - sure; whether animal or those endowed with the soul - until they pass through those changes - as there ever has been, see? Also there are those that ever make for those channels in the psychic and occult (we are speaking of, through which man - as it reached that stage, or that position that it became farther and farther from its natural sources, through the same CHARACTER of channel may it communicate with that from which it is a portion of, or the Creative Forces), and hence the terminology arose as 'Good Spirits' and 'Bad Spirits'; for there are those that partake of the earth, or of the carnal forces, rather than of those forces that are of the spiritual or CREATIVE. Those that are destruction are of the Earth. Those that are constructive, then, are the good - or the divine and the devilish, bringing for those developments in their various phases. Hence the greater development of that called occult, or psychic forces, during the Atlantean period - and the use of same, and the abuse of same - was during its first thousand years, as we would call light years; not the light of the star, but the sun goes down and the sun goes down - years. That brought about those cycles, or those changes. Hence we have that which has been given through many of the sources of information, or the channels for individuals - and in those, these, the entity - as a voice upon waters, or as the wind that moved among the reeds and harkened, or again as when the morning stars sang together and the sons of God beheld the coming of man into his own, through the various realms as were brought by the magnifying of, or the deteriorating of, the use of those forces and powers as manifested themselves in a MATERIAL area, or those that partook of carnal to the gratification of that that brought about its continual HARDENING and less ability to harken back through that from WHICH it came, and partaking more and more OF that upon which it became an eater of; or, as is seen even in the material forces in the present: We find those that partake of certain elements, unless these become very well balanced WITH all SOURCES - Of what? That of which there were the first causes, or nature, or natural, or God's sources or forces are. Hence ELEMENTS - not rudiments; elements - as are termed in the terminology of the student of the anatomical, physiological, psychological forces within a body - GERMS! Sure they are germs! for each are as atoms of power - From what? That source from which it has drawn its essence upon what it feeds. Is one feeding, then, its soul? or is one feeding its body? or is one feeding that interbetween (its mental body) to its own undoing, or to those foolishnesses of the simple things of life? Being able, then, to partake OF the physical but not a part of same - but more and more feeding upon those sources from which it emanates itself, or of the SPIRITUAL life, so that the physical body, the mental body, are attuned TO its soul forces, or its soul source, its Creator, its Maker, in such a way and manner, as it develops.
9. What, then, IS psychic force? What IS occult science? A developing of the abilities within each individual that has not lost its sonship, or its relation to its Creator, to live upon - or demonstrate more and more through phenomena of whatever nature from which it takes its source, for that individual activity of that entity itself through the stages of development through which it has passed, and giving of its life source that there may be brought INTO being that which gives more knowledge of the source FROM which the entity ESSENCE (Isn't a good word, but signifies that intended to be expressed; not elements, not rudiments, but ESSENCE of the entity itself, ITS spirit and soul - its spirit being its portion of the Creator, its soul that of its entity itself, making itself individual, separate entity, that may be one WITH the Creative Force from which it comes - or which it is! of which it is made up, in its atomic forces, or in its very essence itself!) emanates; and the more this may be manifest, the greater becomes the occult force.
10. To what uses, then, did these people in this particular period give their efforts, and in what directions were they active? As many almost as there were individuals! for, as we find from the records as are made, to some there was given the power to become the sons of God; others were workers in brass, in iron, in silver, in gold; others were made in music, and the instruments of music. These, then, we find in the world today (Today, now - we are reasoning from today). Those that are especially gifted in art - in its various forms; and a real artist (as the world looks at it) isn't very much fit for anything else! yet it is - What? An expression of its concept OF that from WHICH it, that entity, sprang - through the various stages of its evolution (if you choose to call it such) in a material world, or that which it fed its soul or its mental being for its development through its varied experiences IN a material world. These, then, are but manifestations (occult forces) in individuals who are called geniuses, or gifted in certain directions.
11. These, then, are the manners in which the ENTITIES, those BEINGS, those SOULS, in the beginning partook of, or developed. Some brought about monstrosities, as those of its (that entity's) association by its projection with its association with beasts of various characters. Hence those of the Styx, satyr, and the like; those of the sea, or mermaid; those of the unicorn, and those of the various forms - these projections of what? The abilities in the PHYCHIC forces (psychic meaning, then, of the mental AND the soul - doesn't necessarily mean the body, until it's enabled to be brought INTO being in whatever form it may make its manifestation - which may never be in a material world, or take form in a three-dimensional plane as the earth is; it may remain in a fourth-dimensional - which is an idea! Best definition that ever may be given of fourth-dimension is an idea! Where will it project? Anywhere! Where does it arise from? Who knows! Where will it end? Who can tell! It is all inclusive! It has both length, breadth, height and depth - is without beginning and is without ending! Dependent upon that which it may feed for its sustenance, or it may pass into that much as a thought or an idea. Now this isn't ideal that's said! It's idea! see?)
12. In the use of these, then, in this material plane - of these forces - brought about those that made for all MANNERS of the various forms that are used in the material world today. MANY of them to a much higher development. As those that sought forms of minerals - and being able to be that the mineral was, hence much more capable - in the psychic or occult force, or power - to classify, or make same in its own classifications. Who classified them? They were from the beginning! They are themselves! They were those necessities as were IN the beginning from an ALL WISE Creator! for remember these came, as did that as was to be the keeper of same! The husbandman of the vineyard! Each entity, each individual - today, has its own vineyard to keep, to dress - For who? Its Maker, from whence it came! What is to be the report in thine own life with those abilities, those forces, as may be manifest in self - through its calling upon, through what? How does prayer reach the throne of mercy or grace, or that from which it emanates? From itself! Through that of CRUCIFYING, NULLIFYING, the carnal mind and opening the mental in such a manner that the Spirit of truth may flow in its psychic sense, or occult force, into the very being, that you may be one with that from which you came! Be thou faithful unto that committed into thy keeping! Life ITSELF is precious! For why? It is of the Maker itself! That IS the beginning! The psychic forces, the attunements, the developments, going TO that! As did many in that experience. And Enoch walked with God, and he was not for God took him. As was many of those in those first years, in this land, this experience.
13. These in the present, then, do not justly call it science; rather being close to nature. Listen at the birds. Watch the blush of the rose. Listen at the life rising in the tree. These serve their Maker - Through what? That psychic force, that IS Life itself, in their respective sphere - that were put for the service of man. Learn thine lesson, O Man, from that about thee!
364-11
1. GC: You will have before you the information given through this channel on the lost continent of Atlantis. You will continue with this information, and will answer the questions which I will ask regarding this:
2. EC: Yes. As to why, then, each individual must be, and is, the keeper of his own vineyard? For there is, as from the beginning, in each entity that - of the Father, or the First Cause - that enables one to make manifest even in the material world through the attributes OF the First Cause, that makes for the manifestation OF that power, or force, in a material world. As to what one does WITH same is an action of the will that entity himself, or herself.
3. As to occult or psychic science, as called, then - it is, as we have found through some manifestations, that these forces are first recognized in or by the individual. Hence, as has been seen, in the beginning these were the natural expressions of an entity. As there developed more of the individual association with material conditions, and they partook of same in such a manner as to become wholly or in part a portion OF same, farther - or more hidden, more unseen - has become occult or psychic manifestations. First there were the occasional harking back. Later by dream. Again we find individuals raised in certain sections for specific purposes. As the cycle has gone about, time and again has there arisen in the earth those that MANIFESTED these forces in a more magnificent, more beneficent, way and manner. And, as has been given, again the time draws near when there shall be seen and known among men, in many places, the manifestations of such forces in the material world; for "As ye have seen him go, so will He return again." Be thou faithful unto those words He has given while yet with you. Hence it behooves every individual to take cognizance of that force that may manifest in their material lives, even in this material age; for those that become ashamed for His sake - for THAT sake - of that that may manifest (which is as the Spirit's manner of activity) through those many channels that are open to those who will look up, lift up - and these, we find, are often in the lowliest of places and circumstances. Why? Since these are forces of the Most High, since these supplied - as of old - those secular things in abundance, and were supplied the needs not only of the physical being but of the mental and spiritual also, contributing to those forces as made for the gratification also of that builded in a material world, does it become any wonder that he that shall be abased and remains true shall wear the Crown of Life? Does it become unreasonable, then, that ye are being chastised for that which has been builded within the material forces of the body itself, that must be tried so as by fire? for the chaff must be burned out! Even as with the use of those sources of information, the abilities to become a portion of those elements that were the creative forces OF the compounds or elements within the universal forces, at that period brought about those forces that made for destruction of the land itself, in the attempt to draw that as was in man then back TO the knowledge; and these brought about those destructive forces (that are known today) in gases, with that called the death ray [See 364-11, Par. R2], that brought from the bowels of the earth itself - when turned into the sources of supply - those destructions to portions of the land. Man has ever (even as then) when in distress, either mental, spiritual OR physical, sought to know his association, his connection, with the divine forces that brought the worlds into being. As these are sought, so does the promise hold true - or that given man from the beginning, "Will ye be my children, I will be thy God!" "Ye turn your face from me, my face is turned from thee", and those things ye have builded in thine own endeavor to make manifest thine own powers bring those certain destructions in the lives of individuals in the present, even as in those first experiences with the use of those powers that are so tabu by the worldly-wise, that are looked upon as old men's tales and women's fables; yet in the strength of such forces do WORLDS come into being!
4. THIS is what psychic force, and so called occult science, DID mean, HAS meant, DOES mean in the world today.
5. Ready for questions.
6. (Q) Describe in more detail the causes and effects of the destruction of the part of Atlantis now the Sargasso sea.
(A) As there were those individuals that attempted to bring again to the mind of man more of those forces that are manifest by the closer association of the mental and spiritual, or the soul forces that were more and more as individual and personal forms in the world, the use of the these elements - as for the building up, or the passage of individuals through space - brought the uses of the gases then (in the existent forces), and the individuals being able to become the elements, and elementals themselves, added to that used in the form of what is at present known as the raising of the powers from the sun itself, to the ray that makes for disintegration of the atom, in the gaseous forces formed, and brought about the destruction in that portion of the land now presented, or represented, or called, Sargasso sea.
7. (Q) What was the date of the first destruction, estimating in our present day system of counting time in years B.C.?
(A) Seven thousand five hundred (7,500) years before the final destruction, which came as has been given.
8. (Q) Please give a few details regarding the physiognomy, habits, customs and costumes of the people of Atlantis during the period just before this first destruction.
(A) These, as we find, will require their being separated in the gradual development of the body and its physiognomy as it came into being in the various portions of that land, as well as to those that would separate themselves from those peoples where there were the indwelling of peoples, or man - as man, in the various areas of the land, or what we call world.
In the matter of form, as we find, first there were those as projections from that about the animal kingdom; for the THOUGHT bodies gradually took form, and the various COMBINATIONS (as may be called) of the various forces that called or classified themselves as gods, or rulers over - whether herds, or fowls, or fishes, etc. - in PART that kingdom and part of that as gradually evolved into a physiognomy much in the form of the present day may (were one chosen of those that were, or are, the nearest representative of the race of peoples that existed in this first period as the first destructions came about). These took on MANY sizes as to stature, from that as may be called the midget to the giants - for there were giants in the earth in those days, men as tall as (what would be termed today) ten to twelve feet in stature, and in proportion - well proportioned throughout. The ones that became the most USEFUL were those as would be classified (or called in the present) as the IDEAL stature, that was of both male and female (as those separations had been begun); and the most ideal (as would be called) was Adam, who was in that period when he (Adam) appeared as five in one - See?
In this the physiognomy was that of a full head, with an extra EYE - as it were - in those portions that became what is known as the EYE. In the beginning these appeared in WHATEVER portion was desired by the body for its use!
As for the dress, those in the beginning were (and the Lord made for them coats) of the skins of the animals.