First, since God created Adam, I think it is quite appropriate to call Adam
the son of God. I find the Asherah allusion irrelevant since my Bible
doesn't say anything about Asherah being involved in the creation. What
translation are you using?
>
>For example, it seems clear in the account that the flood is a cosmos-
>deconstructing affair, in which the waters which the ancients believed
>surrounded the earth were loosed and the universe (as they knew it)
>dissolved back into primordial chaos, with the Ark a bubble of salvation.
>(It also seems clear that their notion of what the universe consisted
>of was limited to their own 'land' and did not encompass the whole planet.)
I actually agree with you, that they believed that the flood encompassed
their land. I don't think they had a concept of planet earth.
>Triage on the historical facts destroys the mythological significance.
>I suppose it is up to everyone to decide which is the meat of the story.
>Looking at the stories of other cultures, it seems inescapable that
>the mythological aspect of the story is the primary message.
>
then was Jesus great...great-grandfathered by a mythological being? Does
this treatment of Jesus make one want to really believe what Luke says
about him? Are the genealogies to be believed prior to the mythical Noah?
I mean is Jesus NOT descended from Adam, or do you believe that Adam was
mythical?
>Another part of the debate is the recent (post-Enlightenment) use of
>analogy to talk about God (and spiritual matters generally). Previously,
>analogy was taken as revealing, but not definitive. That is, for
>example, being the ancestor of someone was an analogy that need not be
>literalized. Now, we tend more to insist that our religious analogies
>are factually definitive, and one becomes the father of another by
>participating in conception and physical birth resulting. (This is
>developed in more detail in Placher's book _The Domestication of
>Transcendence_, which I'm reading now.)
Then what else in the Scripture need not be literalized? Did the waters not
part? Did Jesus really not raise Lazarus? What are the criteria by which
we decide what is and what is not to be literalized?
glenn
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
Foundation, Fall and Flood
& lots of creation/evolution information
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm