Bible Mysteries I

Found a neat little book from the library on biblical mysteries. I’m hesitant about revealing the name of the book and its author as it has a slight, oh, shall we say, bias against the material. I’m not sure why. The author is a professor of biblical this and that at a once-highly-reputable college. Yet the book drips with hip post-modernism (even though it was published in late-90s and looks like it was printed in late-50s – which is why I borrowed it in the first place). There’s a thinly-disguised undercurrent of sarcasm through the work (silly ignorant ancient writers!). The author’s also very careful not to use the dreaded masculine pronoun (the greatest po-mo religious sin), and uses BCE and CE instead of BC and AD (in a book on the Bible written by a biblical scholar!).

For my humble opinion on the whole BCE/CE nonsense, see here.

Still, if you read above all this garbage, the book does raise some interesting questions. At least to my warped mind. Particularly if you take a strong literal approach to the Bible. Now, as you may know, I am a practicing Catholic. We Catholics tend to take a literal approach to Scripture (for example, the miracles of Jesus did happen), but we tend to moderate and downplay our approach to, say, basing our entire scientific worldview on a literal interpretation of Genesis. You know, that whole Galileo thing. I am not an expert in the field; I can only impart what I have learned in a Catholic high school and college (yeah, I know, “Catholic college” is sometimes an oxymoron), and what I’ve read.

Lately I’ve been viewing the Bible as an incredible work of literature. That’s how I want to post these “Biblical mysteries” – as comments on the greatest work of literature to Western Man. I’m not debating theology or making a statement on the sliding scale of literalness of Scripture. No, I’m approaching this the way I generally approach life: with a slightly-skewed interest in the odd and unsettling.

So what questions did I take particular interest in?

How about these, for starters?

* Did God create the heavens and the earth first, as it says in Genesis 1, or did He create Wisdom first, as is stated in Proverbs 8:22?

* What type of Light did God create when on the first day He said, “Let there be light,” yet He did not create the Sun or the Moon until the fourth day?

* Why isn’t the creation of Angels mentioned in the first two chapters of Genesis?

* When God decided to make man, why does He say, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” using the plural? (Christians believe this is the first mention, albeit veiled, of the Trinity in the Bible.)

* The snake that plants the seed of temptation in Eve’s mind: since its punishment is to slither about on its belly, does this imply that it once had legs like a dog or a lizard? Why was it a talking creature? (One of only two animals in the Bible, if I remember correctly, to have speaking lines.)

* After Adam and Eve are banished from the Garden of Eden, an angel is set with a flaming sword to guard it against unauthorized entrance. Why did God not just destroy the garden or leave it untended? Does a guardian imply that He has future plans for this earthly paradise? Is it heaven? If so, is heaven located somewhere on the earth?

* Why did God favor Abel’s sacrifice and not Cain’s (flesh over grain)? Is it because of the giver – after all, Cain did murder his brother, and surely such thoughts take time to ferment in the mind of the murderer, right?

* How did Cain and Abel find mates to start families with? Did they have sisters – did Adam and Eve have children not specifically mentioned in Genesis? Did Eve have daughters – Noaba and Awan, or Lebuda and Qelima?

* What about Enoch – mentioned in just six verses in Genesis 5 – who was twice said to “walk with God” and was “taken by God” (similar to the prophet Elijah, who was taken up to heaven in a whirlwind), thus not suffering human death?

* If mankind was so wicked leading up to the Flood, why was the only instance mentioned Cain’s murder of Abel? How does Enoch, a paragon of virtue, factor into the wickedness of humanity? Why was mankind not given a chance for repentance?


(More “mysteries” tomorrow …)