Genesis 3:6

Rhesus2 · May 11, 2006

"And when the man saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, he took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto his wife with him; and she did eat."

Archangel Michael · May 11, 2006

Er, women are the dominant sex?

Fernidad of Prussia · May 11, 2006

Rhesus2 said:
"And when the man saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, he took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto his wife with him; and she did eat."

"For she saw it was great and took a chomp, then said, here for it is good for you and I, for I have done good." He looked at her and said are you crazy? Then she replied, "Well, no cookie, no nookie!"

fortyseven · May 11, 2006

Fernidad of Prussia said:
"For she saw it was great and took a chomp, then said, here for it is good for you and I, for I have done good." He looked at her and said are you crazy? Then she replied, "Well, no cookie, no nookie!"

ROTFL good one Fern

Evil Opus · May 11, 2006

Rhesus2 said:
"And when the man saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, he took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto his wife with him; and she did eat."

Women dominate history, and instead of Alexander the Great we have Cleopatra going on a campaign of culture instead of conquest.

Cosmos · May 11, 2006

Since the snake is the instigator, and since it's clearly a male snake (ha nachash haya arum m'kol chayat ha sadeh...Gen 3:1), one might conclude that actually male is the dominant sex

Darkest · May 12, 2006

Narrow-minded fools! This is sacred! How dare you blaspheme!

(Is blaspheme a verb?)

Cosmos · May 12, 2006

Ha! I hadn't noticed that you had reversed the man and the woman, and I was assuming that based on the regular text you were saying that female actually does dominate in OTL, because the female gives the knowledge to the man. In this case we'd have to change the snake from a male to a female.

MarkA · May 12, 2006

Female snake? The snake was the symbol of masculinity as well as other symbolic elements including rebirth (shedding of skin) and birth (appearing from holes in the ground as if being reborn).

Cosmos · May 12, 2006

MarkA said:
Female snake? The snake was the symbol of masculinity as well as other symbolic elements including rebirth (shedding of skin) and birth (appearing from holes in the ground as if being reborn).

That's probably part of the reason why it's a male snake in the OTL story. But in addition to all you mentioned, the snake was also a symbol of fertility cults. It is associated with the goddess Asherah (who is also associated with trees), and the goddess Anat, and interestingly in Jewish midrashic tradition the snake in Gen 3 is thought to be Lilith, the first wife of Adam.

MarkA · May 12, 2006

Cosmos said:
That's probably part of the reason why it's a male snake in the OTL story. But in addition to all you mentioned, the snake was also a symbol of fertility cults. It is associated with the goddess Asherah (who is also associated with trees), and the goddess Anat, and interestingly in Jewish midrashic tradition the snake in Gen 3 is thought to be Lilith, the first wife of Adam.

I had not heard of the Lilith tradition.

The associations of snakes with goddess (incluing Minoan) is that the snake is the masculine symbol.

DuQuense · May 12, 2006

Means whe can't justify our supression of Women on the grounds that a women got us kicked out of Eden.

Cosmos · May 12, 2006

DuQuense said:
Means whe can't justify our supression of Women on the grounds that a women got us kicked out of Eden.

Isn't it true that the it's only the Christians who had seen the woman's activity as being something negative? In Jewish Qabbalistic tradition the snake, in addition to being associated with Lilith, is also noted to represent the Messiah, the gamatriac value of the snake, nachash, being 358, the same value as that of mashiach. Some fundamentalist (and I'd say Christianized) Jews have rationalized that it means the messiah is supposed to cure what the snake causes, but I had always thought it meant simply that the snake is a kind of savior, providing humans the ability to think and therefore help themselves.

Othniel · May 12, 2006

Acautly look at what the snake was made of, bronze, which represents judgement, and the snake was often seen to represent sin.

Cosmos · May 13, 2006

Othniel said:
Acautly look at what the snake was made of, bronze, which represents judgement, and the snake was often seen to represent sin.

Was it bronze, or brass? I don't remember exactly. Anyway it is used to cure people of some sickness and is then carried by Moses and passed down to his descendants for 500 years before King Hezekiah destroys it. So the Moses people do not think it represents skin.

Cosmos · May 13, 2006

Cosmos said:
Othniel said:

Acautly look at what the snake was made of, bronze, which represents judgement, and the snake was often seen to represent sin.

Click to expand...

Was it bronze, or brass? I don't remember exactly. Anyway it is used to cure people of some sickness and is then carried by Moses and passed down to his descendants for 500 years before King Hezekiah destroys it. So the Moses people do not think it represents skin.

OK, I looked it up and actually the snake, both in the Moses story and the Hezekia story, is neither bronze nor brass, but pure (i.e. non-alloyed) copper.

This is fascinating because the Hebrew word for copper is in fact nechoshet, which is a form of the word for snake, nachash, the 3 letters that form the shoresh (root) of nechoshet, spelling the word nachash. This means that copper in the ancient near east was associated with snakes, which makes perfect sense since copper was the particular metal associated with the goddess who went by the names Asherah, Ashtoret, Ishtar, Inanna, Aphrodite, Venus, etc. Another reason it's fascinating to me is because I just added to my novel an incident in which a statue of Ashtoret is noted to be plated in copper and not bronze.

Cosmos · May 13, 2006

Here is the alchemical symbol for copper

Seems to me the nachash, the snake, in the bible must have have had feminine attributes, even in cases when a story depicted a snake that was male

The Mists Of Time · May 14, 2006

Rhesus2 said:
"And when the man saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, he took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto his wife with him; and she did eat."

I've thought a world with the gender roles reversed like that would be interesting. God would be female of course, which is the perception of God I'm most comfortable with anyway. If God was perceived of as female would we call Her God or would we call Her Goddess? Instead of a patriarchal male dominated world it would have been and be a matriarchal female dominated world.

Looking on ahead in Genesis to 3:13 "And God said to the man, "What is this that you have done?" And the man said, "The serpent beguiled me and I did eat."

Genesis 3:16 might be an even more interesting rewrite. "To the man She said, "I will greatly multiply your pain in conception, in pain you shall concieve children, yet your desire shall be for your wife, and you shall be dependent on your wife and she shall rule over you."

What things might women have done to us men over the ages to keep us in line and maintain their domination over us? What also might women have done to us men over the ages to keep us docile and submissive to them?

Max Sinister · May 14, 2006

IronYuppie and kilngirl should be able to answer that.

Nekromans · May 14, 2006

Castration would be the norm in many ancient cultures, as women sought to control men. Only those of good stock would be allowed the pleasure of breeding.