Old ugarit Adam and Eve cuneiform sheds light on Genesis origin according to publishers and further background info needed...

[AngelaMOU]

A while ago I've read the original dutch publication of the Canaanite Adam and Eve origin:

Oude variant verhaal Adam en Eva gevonden

Op Oegaritische kleitabletten is een variant gevonden van het verhaal over Adam en Eva uit de dertiende eeuw voor Christus. Dat schrijft NRC Handelsblad vandaag. Dat dit verhaal ouder is dan de versie in het bijbelboek Genesis, was wel bekend, maar er was nooit eerder een ouder voorbeeld van...

www.nrc.nl

Marjo Korpel & Johannes de Moor

This was published as https://www.sheffieldphoenix.com/showbook.asp?bkid=271

Quote:
A number of clay tablets from Ugarit, dating from the late thirteenth century BCE, throw new light, Korpel and de Moor argue, on the background of the first chapters of Genesis and the myth of Adam. In these tablets, El, the creator deity, and his wife Asherah lived in a vineyard or garden on the slopes of Mt Ararat, known in the Bible as the mountain where Noah’s ark came to rest. The first sinner was not a human being, but an evil god called Horon who wanted to depose El. Horon was thrown down from the mountain of the gods, and in revenge he transformed the Tree of Life in the garden into a Tree of Death and enveloped the whole world in a poisonous fog. Adam was sent down to restore life on earth, but failed because Horon in the form of a huge serpent bit him. As a result Adam and his wife lost their immortality.

I would like to get a bit more info incl. the cuneiform themselves and possible current archeaological research of this particular archaeological excavation and cultural settlement there.

Horon for example is also in egypt and akkadian a demon deity: https://second.wiki/wiki/horon_gott

 

[Sparhafoc]

In such an extremely narrow specialist area, you'll get no more here than people running Google searches and pointing you at the links.

 

[Deleted member 619]

Yeah. This is one of those rare occasions in which I don't actually know anybody who might have some specialist insight. Usually, I can pin down somebody to ask about a subject, but this is an incredibly narrow field. I wouldn't even know where to begin.

Frankly, were I genuinely searching for somebody to talk to, my first stop would probably be @Sparhafoc, since there's at least a little crossover between anthropology and archaeology.

Which is just a long-winded way of saying 'I got nuthin'.

 

[*SD*]

You've come to the right place because I know everything about every topic, there's literally nothing I don't know. *






* The above is not even slightly true and I too got nuthin'

 

[Sparhafoc]

And all I know is that Horon is an ancient god of the Ugaritic religion, and later civilizations like Canaan and Egypt also paid some reverence to him. And that's pretty much already included in the OP.

There are plenty of indications that the origin narratives of the OT are just cultural interpretation of yet more ancient traditions and beliefs, and while the majority of scholars recognize that, the majority of Christians never will.

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

Other than looking at the Canaanite religion, et al, it is quite a specialist field - but there's no reason why we can't explore it together. How better to learn, and expand out knowledge?

Although there are a number of sources for Horon, there are few that are free to access. One I found is this.

Kindest regards,

James

 

[Deleted member 619]

Damn you, James. Don't I have enough rabbit-holes to go down already?

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

Ignore the rabbit holes - just stick with the wormholes, Hack.

Kindest regards,

James

 

[Sparhafoc]

Yes, please. Sort out all that fysiks stuff to a level I can understand it, and I'll take care of any and all the bizarre shit ancient humans did with their brains. What do you wanna know about the Canaanites? I'll get right on it!

 

[Deleted member 619]

I'm going to do a refresher on General Relativity and see if I can't eke out an Idiot's Guide like I did for SR.

Of course, by refresher course, I mean watching one of MIT's lecture series.

Oh, speaking of which, the 2013 Quantum Mechanics course by Allan Adams is a different class. People talk about Feynman in hushed tones as a lecturer, and rightly so. I think Allan Adams is better. Supremely entertaining and the whole of reality is right there.

Shitloads of maths, but it's manageable.

 

[Sparhafoc]

As I just invoked on newolder's thread about measuring the Hubble constant with fast radio bursts...

Dear Physicists, drench us in your discovery goop!

But oh, er sorry.

Ugaritic religion...

Well, to make some discussion out of it, I'd say one of the most vital things to consider when talking about this period in the late Neolithic (say around 8kya) is that it's a transitional time, a really significant upheaval in human existence where the most primal organization of a human group was abandoned in favour of an new way of living, but one that we'd all be much more familiar with.

Essentially all humans for the vast majority of anatomically modern human's existence lived as nomadic or semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers, tribes of related families in loose clans which controlled, exploited and guarded their territory, they had contact with and positive/negative relations with other neighboring and local tribes and clans, but rarely had a single formal settled spot. They exploited the seasonal offerings of their lands, they traded when they could, they subsisted.

With the spread and adoption of cereal agriculture, it became nutritionally profitable enough to settle in a location where food and property could be stored and guarded. That in turn had all the much discussed knock on effects like urbanization and stratification of society, ownership of land and property, classes of specialists who could survive by trading their expertise, and of course classes of special specialists - the Priests and Kings; the temporal and spiritual 'guardians'.

So the Ugaritic religion was one of the founder religions in some respects. One of the first human urban centres - a city - established this religion in a sense we'd consider an 'organised religion' , different in character than in other states and times, but with a recognizable role in society. There was a demand for religious paraphernalia, to honour the gods, and so we have examples of sophisticated material culture, of figurines and statues, and quite a lot of smashed up shit that still offers little snippets of knowledge about their society.

That's the real tantalizing beauty here: there's a huge gulf in terms of the existence of material culture before this period and after - turns out, settled humans produce an awful lot of shit - and Ugarit in some senses spans that gap, showing us an example of an early burgeoning urban society.

Also, these proto Adam and Eve type myths are really ancient oral traditions much handed down and traded about and then garbled by the intervening time, but still a window in their world. Fascinating to imagine how they saw themselves and the world around them.

There, all on topic now.



EDIT; And resolved aphasia.

 

[Deleted member 619]

I seriously hope LISA gets properly funded.

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

Speaking of early cultures, there's this fascinating find:

Archaeologists Say a Mystifying Group of Ancient Monuments in Saudi Arabia Suggests the Existence of a Prehistoric Cattle Cult

Kindest regards,

James

 

[Led Zeppelin]

Why would they bother taking the time to make clay and the tools needed (and risk breaking them) to form the the tablets and make up a fake story(according to atheists) to enscribe on them and the carry the tables around with them forever. Why such an effort in a day and age when there there was hardly any garauntee of your mere day to day survival?

How many man hours would have been involved in this process? How much did the tablets weigh?

 

[ldmitruk]

Why would they bother taking the time to make clay and the tools needed (and risk breaking them) to form the the tablets and make up a fake story(according to atheists) to enscribe on them and the carry the tables around with them forever. Why such an effort in a day and age when there there was hardly any garauntee of your mere day to day survival?

How many man hours would have been involved in this process? How much did the tablets weigh?

By that way of thinking, why bother taking the time to make parchment and the tools needed needed to write on parchment and make up a story (which according to Christians is true) to write on the parchment and then carry them around forever. Why such an effort in a day and age when there was hardly any guarantee of you mere day to day survival? Than as time progress spend many man hours re-copying the stories by hand over centuries, introducing errors and inconsistencies with each copy.

 

[Led Zeppelin]

By that way of thinking, why bother taking the time to make parchment and the tools needed needed to write on parchment and make up a story (which according to Christians is true) to write on the parchment and then carry them around forever. Why such an effort in a day and age when there was hardly any guarantee of you mere day to day survival? Than as time progress spend many man hours re-copying the stories by hand over centuries, introducing errors and inconsistencies with each copy.

Hmm....maybe because it is not a "made up story"?

 

[Akamia]

Hmm....maybe because it is not a "made up story"?

But why tell it at all? Why did they think it was important?

Real or fictional, stories matter. They can influence or create cultures all on their own, for better or worse. Their truth value as historical events or fictional ones isn't always the most important thing at the time they're written.

 

[Led Zeppelin]

But why tell it at all? Why did they think it was important?

Real or fictional, stories matter. They can influence or create cultures all on their own, for better or worse. Their truth value as historical events or fictional ones isn't always the most important thing at the time they're written.

Well sure, I understand where you are coming from. But were people really writing fiction back then? I have no idea but I think this is pretty interesting and I wish I knew more.

If the account giving Genesis is true (which I strongly suspect it is) then what would be more worth the effort requiered to preserve a record of such an account at that time? It would be important because it would contain information about how man could possibly reconcile themselves with God and perhaps return one day to the paradise Adam and Eve once lived in.

On the other hand it could be that Nomads were writing fiction all the time 6000 years ago or so. Maybe just for fun. But it seems unlikely to me. But I really don't know. Hopefully someone here does.

 

[Sparhafoc]

Why would they bother taking the time to make clay and the tools needed (and risk breaking them) to form the the tablets and make up a fake story(according to atheists) to enscribe on them and the carry the tables around with them forever. Why such an effort in a day and age when there there was hardly any garauntee of your mere day to day survival?

How many man hours would have been involved in this process? How much did the tablets weigh?

Why did Douglas Adams and all the people involved in the publication of that book, including the people who make the ink, the paper, the glue, the typsetters, the spell-checkers, and all the sundry other delivery and logistics people bother to do all this just to make up a fake story?



To be clear though, I am not saying that this was the motive of ancient peoples with their religious texts, just showing that your argument doesn't really mean anything.

That we know it's a false story doesn't mean that they knew it was a false story - they believed it, it was important to them, therefore they invested labour and wealth into it as it had value to them and their society.

 

[Sparhafoc]

Well sure, I understand where you are coming from. But were people really writing fiction back then?

As far as we know, no.

The issue would more have been that there was no market for fiction, or other forms of literary media considering basically everyone was illiterate.

On the other hand it could be that Nomads were writing fiction all the time 6000 years ago or so. Maybe just for fun. But it seems unlikely to me. But I really don't know. Hopefully someone here does.

I don't see why there's any need at all to assume that the people who wrote these texts thought they were writing fiction. It's not a necessary conceit to understand what motivated them or why the texts exist.