*We Are the Other People*
by Oberon (Otter) Zell
"Ding-dong!" goes the doorbell. Is it Avon calling? Or perhaps Ed McMahon
with my three million dollars? No, it's Yahweh's Witlesses again, just
wanting to have a nice little chat about the Bible... Boy, did they ever
come to the wrong house! So we invite them in: "Enter freely and of your own
will..." (Hey, it's Sunday morning, nothing much going on, why not have a
little entertainment?) Diane and I amuse ourselves watching their expressions
as they check out the living room: great horned owl on the back of my chair;
ceremonial masks and medicine skulls of dragons and unicorns on the wall;
crystals, wands, staffs, swords; lots of Goddess figures and several altars;
boa constrictors draped in amorous embrace over the elkhorn; white doves
sitting in the hanging planters; cats and weasels underfoot; iron dragon
snorting steam atop the wood stove; posters and paintings of wizards and
dinosaurs and witchy women, some proudly naked; sculptures of mythological
beasties and lots more dinosaurs; warp six on the star-filled viewscreen of
my computer; a five-foot model of the USS Enterprise and the skeleton of a
plesiosaur hanging from the ceiling; very, very many books, most of them
dealing with obviously weird subjects... To say nothing of the great horned
owl perched on the back of my chair and the Unicorn grazing in the front
yard. You know; early Addams Family decor. And then, of course, it being
late in the morning, you can expect Morning Glory to come wandering out
naked, looking for her wake-up cup of tea. Morning Glory naked is a truly
impressive sight, and the Witlesses look as if she'd set titties on stun as
they stand immobilized, hands clasped over their genitals.
With the stage set and all the actors in place, the show is ready to begin.
Their mission, of course, is to save our heathen souls by turning us on to
"The Word of the Lord"- their Bible. I guess they figger some of us just
haven't heard about it yet, and we're all eagerly awaiting their joyous
tidings of personal salvation through giving our rational faculties to Jesus.
Every time they come around, I look forward to trying out a new riposte.
Sure, it may be cruel and sadistic of me, but hey, I didn't call them up and
ask them to come over; they entered at their own risk! This time should be
pretty good. After letting them run off their basic rap while lovely Morning
Glory serves us all hot herb tea, I innocently remark: "But none of that
applies to us. We have no need for salvation because we don't have original
sin. We are the Other People."
"Hunh? What?" they reply eloquently. It's clear they've never heard this
one before. "
Right," I say. "It's all in your Bible." And I proceed to tell them the
story, using their own book for reference: (Genesis 1:26) The [Elohim] said,
"Let us make humanity in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves, and let
them be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all
the wild beasts and all the reptiles that crawl upon the earth." Elohim is a
plural word, including male and female, and should properly be translated
"Gods" or "Pantheon." (1: 27) The Gods created humanity in the image of
themselves, In the image of the Gods they created them, Male and female they
created them. (1:28) The Gods blessed them, saying to them, "Be fruitful,
multiply, fill the earth and conquer it. Be masters of the fish of the sea,
the birds of heaven and all living animals on the earth."
Now clearly, here we are talking about the original creation of the human
species: male and female. All the animals, plants, etc. have all been
created in previous verses. This is before the Garden of Eden, and Yahweh is
not mentioned as the creator of these people.
The next chapter talks about how Yahweh, an individual member of the
Pantheon, goes about assembling his own special little botanical and
zoological Garden in Eden, and making his own little man to inhabit it: (Gen
2:7) Yahweh God fashioned a man of dust from the soil. Then he breathed into
his nostrils a breath of life, and thus the man became a living being. (2:8)
Yahweh God planted a garden in Eden which is in the east, and there he put
the man he had fashioned. (2:9) Yahweh God caused to spring up from the soil
every kind of tree, enticing to look at and good to eat, with the tree of
life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the middle of the
garden. (2:15) Yahweh God took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden
to cultivate and take care of it. Now this next is crucial: note Yahweh's
precise words: (2:16) Then Yahweh God gave the man this admonition, "You may
eat indeed of all the trees in the garden. (2:17) Nevertheless of the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil you are not to eat, for on the day you eat
of it you shall most surely die." Fateful words, those. We will refer back
to this admonition later.
Then Yahweh decides to make a woman to go with the man. Now, don't forget
that the Pantheon had earlier created a whole population of people, "male and
female," who are presumably doing just fine somewhere "outside the gates of
Eden." But this set-up in Eden is Yahweh's own little experiment, and will
unfold to its own separate destiny. (2:21) So Yahweh God made the man fall
into a deep sleep. And while he slept, he took one of his ribs and enclosed
it in flesh. (2:22) Yahweh God built the rib he had taken from the man into
a woman, and brought her to the man. Right. Man gives birth to woman. Sure
he does. But that's the way the story is told here. (2:25) Now both of them
were naked, the man and his wife, but they felt no shame in front of each
other. Well, of course not! Why should they? But take careful note of those
words, as they also will prove to be significant...
Now this next part is where it starts to get interesting. Enter the Serpent:
(Gen. 3:1) The serpent was the most subtle of all the wild beasts that Yahweh
God had made. It asked the woman, "Did God really say you were not to eat
from any of the trees in the garden?" (3:2) The woman answered the serpent,
"We may eat the fruit of the trees in the garden. (3:3) "But of the fruit of
the tree in the middle of the garden God said, 'You must not eat it, nor
touch it, under pain of death." (3:4) Then the serpent said to the woman,
"No! You will not die! (3:5) "God knows in fact that on the day you eat it
your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil."
What a remarkable statement! "Your eyes will be opened and you will be like
gods, knowing good and evil." The Serpent directly contradicts Yahweh.
Obviously, one of them has to be lying. Which one, do you suppose? And, if
the serpent speaks true, wouldn't you wish to eat of the magic fruit?
Wouldn't it be a good thing, to become "like gods, knowing good and evil"?
Or is it preferable to remain in ignorance?
(Gen. 3:6) The woman saw that the tree was good to eat and pleasing to the
eye, and that it was desirable for the knowledge that it could give. So she
took some of its fruit and ate it. She gave some also to her husband who was
with her, and he ate it. (3:7) Then the eyes of both of them were opened and
they realized that they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together to
make themselves loincloths. The author makes an interesting assumption here:
that if you realize you are naked you will automatically want to cover
yourself. Further implications will unfold shortly...
(Gen. 3:8) The man and his wife heard the sound of Yahweh God walking in the
garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from Yahweh God among the trees
of the garden. (3:9) But Yahweh God called to the man. "Where are you?" he
asked. (3:10) "I heard the sound of you in the garden," he replied. "I was
afraid because I was naked, so I hid." (3:11) "Who told you that you were
naked?" he asked. "Have you been eating of the tree I forbade you to eat?"
And so the sign of the Fall becomes modesty. Take note of this. The
descendants of Adam and Eve will be distinguished throughout history from
virtually all other peoples by their obsessive modesty taboos, wherein they
will feel ashamed of being naked. It follows that those who feel no shame in
being naked are, by definition, not carriers of this spiritual disease of
original sin!
(Gen. 3:12) The man replied,"It was the woman you put with me; she gave me
the fruit, and I ate it." Right. Blame the woman. What a turkey! (3:13)
Then Yahweh God asked the woman,"What is this you have done?" The woman
replied, "The serpent tempted me and I ate." So of course she blames the
serpent. But just what did the serpent do that was so evil? Why, he called
Yahweh a liar! Was he wrong? Let's see... (3:21) Yahweh God made clothes
out of skins for the man and his wife, and they put them on. Out of skins?
This means that Yahweh had to kill some innocent animals to pander to Adam
and Eve's new obsession with modesty!
And now we come to the crux of the Fall. Yahweh had said back there in
chapter (2:17), regarding the fruit of the tree of knowledge, that "on the
day you eat of it you shall most surely die." The Serpent, on the other
hand, had contradicted Yahweh in chapter (3:4-5): "No! You will not die! God
knows in fact that on the day you eat it your eyes will be opened and you
will be like gods, knowing good and evil." So what actually happened? Who
lied and who told the truth about this remarkable fruit? The answer is given
in the next verse: (3:22) Then Yahweh God said, "See, the man has become like
one of us, with his knowledge of good and evil. He must not be allowed to
stretch his hand out next and pick from the tree of life also, and eat some
and live forever."
Get that? Yahweh himself admits that he had lied! In fact, and in Yahweh's
own words, the Serpent spoke the absolute truth! And moreover, Yahweh tells
the rest of the Pantheon that he intends to evict Adam (and presumably Eve as
well) to keep them from gaining immortality to go with their newly-acquired
divine knowledge. To prevent them, in other words, from truly becoming gods!
So who, in this story, comes off as a benefactor of humanity, and who comes
off as a tyrant? THE SERPENT NEVER LIED!
This story, to digress slightly, bears a remarkable resemblance to a
contemporary tale from ancient Greece. In that version, the Serpent (later
identified as Lucifer, the Light-Bearer) may be equated with the heroic titan
Prometheus, who championed humanity against the tyranny of Zeus, who wished
for people to be mere slaves of the gods. Prometheus, whose name means
"forethought," gave people wisdom, intelligence, and fire stolen from
Olympus. Moreover, he ordained the portions of animal sacrifice so that
humans got the best parts (the meat and hides) while the portion that was
burned to the gods was the bones and fat. In punishment for this defiance of
his divine authority, Zeus condemned Prometheus to a terrible punishment for
an immortal: to be chained to a mountain in the Caucasus, where Zeus'
gryphon/eagle (actually a Lammergier) would devour his liver each day. It
would grow back each night. Zeus promised to relent if Prometheus would
reveal his great secret knowledge: Who would succeed Zeus as supreme god?
Prometheus refused to tell, but history has revealed the answer...
The interesting thing about all this is that the Greeks properly regarded
Prometheus as a noble hero in his defiance of unjust tyranny. One may wonder
why the Serpent is not so well regarded. On the contrary, snakes are loathed
throughout Christiandom. (3:23) So Yahweh God expelled him from the garden
of Eden, to till the soil from which he had been taken. (3:24) He banished
the man, and in front of the garden of Eden he posted the cherubs, and the
flame of a flashing sword, to guard the way to the tree of life.
So that's it for the Fall. But the story of Adam and Eve doesn't end there.
(Gen 4:1) The man had intercourse with his wife Eve, and she conceived and
gave birth to Cain... (4:2) She gave birth to a second child, Abel, the
brother of Cain. Now Abel became a shepherd and kept flocks, while Cain
tilled the soil. (4:3) Time passed and Cain brought some of the produce of
the soil as an offering for Yahweh, (4:4) while Abel, for his part, brought
the first-born of his flock and some of their fat as well. Yahweh looked
with favor on Abel and his offering. But he did not look with favor on Cain
and his offering, and Cain was very angry and downcast. Well, why shouldn't
he be? Both brothers had brought forth their first fruits as offerings, but
Yahveh rejected the vegetables and only accepted the blood sacrifice. This
was to set a gruesome precedent: (4:8) Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let us
go out;" and while they were in the open country, Cain set on his brother
Abel and killed him.
Accursed and marked for fratricide, (4:16) Cain left the presence of Yahweh
and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. We can assume that the phrase
"left the presence of Yahweh" implies that Yahweh is a local deity, and not
omnipresent. Now Eden, according to (Gen. 2:14-15), was situated at the
source of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, apparently right where Lake Van is
now, in Turkey. "East of Eden," therefore, would probably be along the
shores of the Caspian Sea, right in the Indo-European heartland. Cain
settled in there, among the people of Nod, and married one of the women of
that country. Here, for the first time, is specifically mentioned the "other
people" who are not of the lineage of Adam and Eve. i.e: the Pagans.
So let's look at this story from another viewpoint: There we were, around six
thousand years ago, living in our little farming communities around the
Caspian Sea, in the land of Nod, when this dude with a terrible scar comes
stumbling in out of the sunset. He tells us this bizarre story, about how
his mother and father had been created by some god named Jahweh, and put in
charge of a beautiful garden somewhere out west, and how they had gotten
thrown out for disobedience after eating some of the landlord's forbidden
magic fruit of enlightenment. He tells us of murdering his brother, as the
god of his parents would only accept blood sacrifice, and of receiving that
scar as a mark so that all would know him as a fratricide.
The poor guy is really a mess psychologically, obsessed with guilt. He is
also obsessively modest, insisting on wearing clothes even in the hottest
summer, and he has a hard time with our penchant for skinny-dipping in the
warm inland sea. He seems to believe that he is tainted by the "sin" of his
parent's disobedience; that it is in his blood, somehow, and will continue to
contaminate his children and his children's children.
One of our healing women takes pity on the poor sucker, and marries him...
(4:17) Cain had intercourse with his wife, and she conceived and gave birth
to Enoch. He became the builder of a town, and he gave the town the name of
his son Enoch.
With both of their first sons not turning out very well, Adam and Eve decided
to try again: (4:25) Adam had intercourse with his wife, and she gave birth
to a son whom she named Seth... (4:26) A son was also born to Seth, and he
named him Enosh. This man was the first to invoke the name of Yahweh. Now
it doesn't mention here where Seth's wife came from. Another woman from Nod,
possibly, or maybe someone from another neolithic community downstream in the
Tigris-Euphrates valley. But her folks also, cannot be of the lineage of
Adam and Eve, and must also be counted among "the other people."
But whatever happened to Adam? After all, way back there in chapter Gen.
2:17, warning Adam about the magic fruit of knowlege, Jahweh had told him
that "on the day you eat of it you shall most surely die." So, when did Adam
die? (Gen. 5:4) Adam lived for eight hundred years after the birth of Seth
and he became the father of sons and daughters. (5:5) In all, Adam lived for
nine hundred and thirty years; then he died. Hey, that's pretty good! Nine
hundred and some odd years isn't bad for a man who's been told he's gonna die
the next day!
Well, the story goes on, and maybe next time the Witlesses come to visit I'll
tell more of it. But suffice it to say that those of us who are not of
Semitic descent (i.e., not of the lineage of Adam and Eve) cannot share in
the Original Sin that comes with that lineage. Being that the Bible is the
story of that lineage, of Adam and Eve's descendants and their specialn
relationship with their particular god, Yahweh, it follows that this is not
the story of the rest of us. We may have been Cain's wife's people, or
Seth's wife's people, or some other people over the hill and far away, but
whichever people the rest of us are, as far as the Bible is concerned, we are
the Other People, and so we are continually referred to throughout.
Later books of the Bible are filled with admonitions to the followers of
Jahweh to "learn not the ways of the Pagans..." (Jer 10:2) with detailed
descriptions of exactly what it is we do, such as erect standing stones and
sacred poles, worship in sacred groves and practice divination and magic.
And worship the sun, moon, stars and the "Queen of Heaven." "You must not
behave as they do in Egypt where once you lived; you must not behave as they
do in Canaan where I am taking you. You must not follow their laws." (Lev
18:3) For Yahweh, as he so clearly emphasises, is not the god of the Pagans.
We have our own lineage and our own heritage, and our tale is not told in
the Bible. We were not "made" like clay figurines by a male deity out of
"dust from the soil." We were born of our Mother the Earth, and have evolved
over aeons in Her nurturing embrace. All of us, in our many and diverse
tribes, have creation myths and legends of our origins and history; some of
these tales may even be actually true.
Like the descendants of Adam and Eve, many of us also have stories of great
floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other cataclysms that wiped out
whole communities of our people, wherein "I alone survived to tell the tale."
Nearly all of our ancestral tribes (and especially those of us who today are
reclaiming our own Pagan heritage) lack that peculiar obsessive body modesty
that seems to be a hallmark of the original sin alluded to in the story of
the Fall. We can be naked and unashamed! Why, our Goddess even tells us, "as
a sign that you are truly free, you shall be naked in your rites." Not being
born into sin, we have no need of salvation, and no need of a Messiah to
redeem our sinful souls.
Neither heaven nor hell is our destination in the afterlife; we have our own
various arrangements with our own various deities. The Bible is not our
story; we have our own stories to tell, and they are many and diverse. In a
long life, you may get to hear many of them... May you live long and
prosper!
(
geocities.com/sunsetstrip/balcony) (
geocities.com/sunsetstrip)