Mesopotamian mythology is as wild and trippy as anything in the Greeks and Egyptiaans or the Hindus. I think the fact the Bible stories are so familiar occludes the wider mythology behind it. That’s one of the things I’m going to get into as we go.
Really looking forward to it. Nothing quite like mythology.
The confusion is Aronofsky’s, who referred to the rock giants as both Watchers and Nephilim.
I’d be hard pressed to pick the trippiest mythology. The problem with the Mesopotamian stuff is that it has been obscured by the stories in the Bible. Everyone has at least heard of Zeus or Osiris or Shiva but who knows ** you do not have permission to see this link **.)
The popularity of the Epic of Gilgamesh helps. Now there’s a tale that cries out for a cinematic adaptation. I wonder why no one’s ever had a go at it?
I’ve said it before and will undoubtedly say it again. It is impossible to overestimate the influence this story has had on subsequent thinking. The tale seized the imagination of an entire culture. It played out in apocalypticism, gnosticism, Jewish mysticism, demonology, and eschatological speculation. Even people who know nothing about these ancient texts have heard of the Fall of the Angels and Satan.
What both these accounts have in common compositionally, whatever their relationship with each other might be, is that they are being used to set up accounts of the Flood. Essentially both the origin and the consequences of evil. So what do we have here?
Divine beings look on human women with desire, take them sexually, and produce a race of giants that go mad, ravage the earth, destroying others and eventually themselves. But, the closer you look at the story in these texts the less clear cut it seems. We will have to try to differentiate between what the original texts actually say and later interpretations by folks who had their own spin.
If you look closely at the account in Genesis it does seem rather fragmentary, as if it was extracted from a larger, more complete account. (As I pointed out though it need not have been the actual Enoch account. Alter is right. There’s a larger mythic complex behind all of this.) In Genesis it’s not completely obvious that a coherent narrative is even being told. What does the limiting of human lifespan have to do with the “activity” of the Watchers? And the mention of the the Nephilim have to do with either?
The account in 1 Enoch is at least part of the effort by subsequent story-tellers to “fill in the blanks” and “connect the dots”. I won’t spend time with the textual details but the Shemihazah narrative seems to be the oldest part. (As we’ll see there is another account centered on the figure of Azazel.) Note that this story predates references to Enoch himself who only enters the Watcher story later in the book. Also Shemihazah and his fellows are perfectly conscious of what they are doing. They have to work up each other’s courage to proceed.
So what’s the big deal? Divine/Human sexual relations are an old story in most world mythology. Many demigods and heroes of old came from just such unions. In the ANE we have Gilgamesh, described as two-thirds god and one-third man, who sprang from the union of the human King Lugalbanda (a famous culture hero in his own right) and goddess Ninsun, Queen of Heaven, daughter of Earth and Sky. The Greek Hercules was one of the countless progeny of Zeus, mothered by Alcmene, granddaughter of the hero Perseus. (One of the unexpected and rather delightful aspects of Mesopotamian mythology is how active sexually the goddesses are. With the Greeks we have the perennial horndog Zeus spreading his seed far and wide. Aside from the nature of his own birth, one of the major episodes in the Gilgamesh tale is his refusal of the advances of the goddess of love, Ishtar, reminding her of the sad fate of all her previous human lovers.)
But as far as I can tell, this episode is the only example of a human/divine sexual relationship in ancient Jewish literature. Interestingly however, note how similar the Genesis account is to the older pagan concept. Heroes of old? Warriors of renown? Hmmm… Some scholars have suggested that the account in 1 Enoch might even demonstrate an anti-Hellenistic point of view. The children of the Watchers are not heroes but monsters! This focus plays off the ancient view of birth. Women were considered more or less passive receptacles. The active force was in the male semen. If the father was human then the child was human. If divine then the child was divine. An ancient reader would thus have noted that the children of the rebellious Watchers were spoiled and monstrous. (While we’re considering ancient misogyny let’s don’t overlook the fact that the use of the term “Wives” denotes not a relationship but a function. The Watchers didn’t woo these women with their charms. No sort of consent should be assumed.)
I guess the next step is to discuss just who all these actors are in the story. So, next time, I begin with the mysterious Watchers. (Cue the ominous lyre music.)
The tale seized the imagination of an entire culture. It played out in apocalypticism, gnosticism, Jewish mysticism, demonology, and eschatological speculation.
What are the thoughts on who the author(s) might have been?
But as far as I can tell, this episode is the only example of a human/divine sexual relationship in ancient Jewish literature.
In and of itself, quite remarkable.
I guess the next step is to discuss just who all these actors are in the story. So, next time, I begin with the mysterious Watchers. (Cue the ominous lyre music.)
What an eerie name to give to a group of people, Watchers.
As interesting as the video you posted is, Colin, please explain to me what it has to do with the Book of Enoch. If you can’t explain it to my satisfaction, I’m going to ask Robert to remove it. This is your first and only warning, bubba. The subject of this thread should be clear, even to you.
They’re (the Watchers) not people 🙄 they’re the fallen angels. People and angels, not the same thing.
Yet explaining the “Sons of God” as a special class of humans was indeed one of the most popular viewpoints in the Church, as I will discuss.
What are the thoughts on who the author(s) might have been?
A truly fraught subject. They rejected the Temple Cult and the Torah to some extent. So this eliminates most of the candidates that wrote the Hebrew Bible. It appears to spring from some sort of marginalized group that is attempting to seperate itself out from the Temple Cult and pagan Hellenism. Not a very satisfactory answer but that’s where we are. Picking up ambiguous clues in the text.
What an eerie name to give to a group of celestial beings, Watchers.
Yes quite eerie. I am in the process of getting my notes together before I post on this subject. As you can imagine the problem is not what to put in but what to leave out. A little preview, however.
The word translated Watcher in Aramaic is עִיר ʿiyr, plural עִירִין ʿiyrin, in Greek: ἐιρ or ἐγρήγορος, egrḗgoros. I am informed that the word ir is from from the root of Heb. ʿer, “awake, watchful”; the sense of the Greek egrḗgoroi is “those who are awake”; “those who guard”. All the later sources treat them as types of angels whose function is to report the activities of humans on earth to the Divine Council in Heaven. Like most divine beings they are defined by their function. This function rests on an ancient ANE conception of how the divine order worked which I’ll get into as well.
Note: I’m not fluent in Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek, much less Ge’ez, so I’m not going to paste a lot of it into these posts except in cases like this one where it seems relevant. Normally I’ll just use the english translation, or when there’s no agreed upon translation, the transliteration.
They rejected the Temple Cult and the Torah to some extent.
I’m curious as to the ways in which they rejected the Torah, but I’m sure you’ll get to it.
So this eliminates most of the candidates that wrote the Hebrew Bible. It appears to spring from some sort of marginalized group that is attempting to seperate itself out from the Temple Cult and pagan Hellenism. Not a very satisfactory answer
But adding even more mystery.
I’m curious as to the ways in which they rejected the Torah, but I’m sure you’ll get to it.
Well in Enoch you will not find any explicitly anti-Temple rhetoric. It’s just that the authors present what is essentially an alternative Judaism with the focus on a heavenly Temple rather than an earthly one. And you have references to Sinai which ignore Moses and the stipulations of the Covenant. Without mentioning Moses the figure of Enoch is presented with all the prerogatives that later became associated with Moses. Basically Enoch ignores the Temple Cult and the Torah and presents another Judaism. Astounding when you consider how the Temple and the Torah came to dominate the discourse. The only conclusion I can come to is that the core of Enoch reaches back to a stage where “Judaism” was not yet a settled thing. That’s why it’s probably a mistake to talk about “Mosaic Judaism” or “Enochic Judaism”. At that point what came to be called “Judaism” simply didn’t exist. What we see is an amorphous mass of similar but fluid beliefs slowly coalescing, some ideas to be absorbed, some to be extruded. Rather like very early Christianity! With both Christianity and Judaism we are looking back at their early formation through the lens of what they became. A perspective that can’t help but distort our perceptions.
A situation that naturally leads to what I want to talk about next. Maybe after all the best way to illuminate the beginning is to compare it to what came last. Everyone, even people who never darken the door of a church, have a general idea of what is called the “Fall of the Angels” and know about the figure of Satan. Our popular culture is full of stories of demons and evil spirits who find their origins in some idea of a primordial rebellion against God. The angels and the demons become mirror hierarchies who operate in the field of action while God and Satan sit back and function as rather withdrawn principals. (Orthodox theology rejects the equivalence of God and Satan of course but functionally this duality is present everywhere in our popular culture. Realistically folks, a fight where one side can’t lose is rather pointless is it not?)
The problem is that when you go back and look at all the so-called “founding documents” of the faith you never have this scenario described in such an explicit way. What you do find are various and sundry references, some quite obscure and ambiguous, proof-texted and interpreted, the product of centuries of speculation (much of it internally inconsistent). What you find are various Yahwehs, various Satans, and the nature of the Angels is in many ways the most fluid of all!
Scholars have speculated, since they could do so without being burned at the stake, about a relationship between the culture of the ancient Hebrews and the culture of their surrounding pagan neighbors. Still, in isolation, ancient Israel was seen as in most aspects unique and the distinctiveness of their religious and ethical conceptions was assumed. But eventually scholars began to discover more and more information about these surrounding pagan neighbors. Many of the accounts in the Hebrew scriptures have analogues in older pagan literature. Creation stories, flood stories, etc. Clearly there was a relationship. Now I don’t have time or space to go into all that. I’m setting this up as background just to point out that the same is true of story of the “Fall of the Angels”. But if you’re interested in the subject here are some cool books I’ve found over the years.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
** you do not have permission to see this link **
** you do not have permission to see this link ** (One of the editors of this series, Sophus Helle, also has a terrific new translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh.)
Sooo…it won’t surprise anyone that if the Biblical stories of the Creation and the Flood have precursors in the wider ANE then so does the account of the Watchers in Genesis. The expansion of the story in Enoch is also drawing on this older mythology, retaining elements elided even by the account in Genesis.
In order to identify the Watchers we have to go back to an older conception of the Divine Realm. In the ANE, in the entire polytheistic Mesopotamian mythic complex, the Divine Realm is organized as a hierarchy. This idea rests on the assumption that the Divine Realm is a continuum. There are levels of divinity. (One can function as an elohim without being co-equal with God the Father, to put it into much later theological terms.) The head deity rules over a group of lesser gods in the manner of a court. It is interesting to consider the irony that the heavenly court seems modeled after an earthly court and then the earthly court uses the heavenly court as validation of its own authority.
There is also an ancient mythological conception where one of the lesser gods overcomes the original head god and assumes his role in the Divine Council. In Ugarit it was Baal who overcame El. In the ancient Hebrew conception it appears to have been Yahweh who overcame El. For a deep dive in all this see books from Mark S Smith:
** you do not have permission to see this link **
** you do not have permission to see this link **
Hmmmm…a hierarchy of gods. And a tale where one of the chief god’s lieutenants usurps his place. Sounds a little familiar, huh?
Folks I realize that if you’re not absorbed by this stuff it can be overwhelming. Make your head spin. So let me stop for now with a little story. In one of the first courses I had in college, a Western Lit survey, the professor entered carrying a box. He laid it down on his desk, opened it and distributed small paperbacks to everyone in the class. He said, “The syllabus begins with Homer but we’re going back a bit further.”
The paperback was ** you do not have permission to see this link ** in the Penguin version from scholar N. K. Sandars. Folks, that’s Nancy Katherine by the way. Prof Sandars, who died back in 2015 at the ripe old age of 101, was born in an time when her gender would have been held against her in the scholarly professions, thus the initials. (Contrast that with our modern enlightened era when no one gets bothered by such concerns, -sigh-.) In fact, the Sandars version of the epic, while it closely follows the cuneiform text, is in reality more a transliteration than a literal translation. She glides over the textual difficulties and corruptions. This has the advantage of allowing the reader to simply read the story without being interrupted by issues of interest only to scholars.
I would still recommend it. A terrific intro to the story. Once you are familiar with the story then you can go get more literal translations. All I can say is that reading this book initiated a life long interest that has never waned. That’s why I am willing to go on and on about this stuff. That little book opened up a whole world to me that I would have never known existed. I grew up reading Genesis so the Epic was familiar but very very different. That background gave me a way in. Aside from the cool gods and monsters it is also a very human book from the other side of time. Who cannot share Gilgamesh’s grief over the death of his friend (and lover?) Enkidu, or not feel his longing ache for transcendence? Love and death, still we obsess over little else. I wish I could go back and thank the professor. That’s what education is. Not simply memorizing information so you can get a piece of paper that qualifies you for certain jobs, but passing on the hopes and fears of the human race, one generation to the next.
Sin-Leqi-Unninni was the name of the author of the official Babylonian version, the most complete we have from antiquity, and the one from which most of the modern translations derive. It seems important to remember his name. If you compare the various versions that survive Sin-Leqi-Unninni added the focus on mortality and the growth of Gilgamesh from brash young adventurer to worldly-wise king. (And if anyone out there needs a distinctive name for a son or grandson on the way, well…)
The only conclusion I can come to is that the core of Enoch reaches back to a stage where “Judaism” was not yet a settled thing.
This is the idea that came to me as well.
Is there a consensus on when the Torah became the bedrock? Obviously post-exile.
Rather like very early Christianity! With both Christianity and Judaism we are looking back at their early formation through the lens of what they became. A perspective that can’t help but distort our perceptions.
Exactly.
It is interesting to consider the irony that the heavenly court seems modeled after an earthly court and then the earthly court uses the heavenly court as validation of its own authority.
Priceless.
I wish I could go back and thank the professor. That’s what education is. Not simply memorizing information so you can get a piece of paper that qualifies you for certain jobs, but passing on the hopes and fears of the human race, one generation to the next.
I’m sure he was aware of the legacy he was passing on.
It is, however, nice to be thanked.
One of my most prized possessions is an email of thanks I received from a Liberian-born ELL student who had been homeschooled until 10th grade. Through hard work and perseverance, she graduated, and because of her exceptional running abilities managed to get a track scholarship. She’ll be graduating from university this spring.
So who were the Watchers, then?
Just as it is a scholarly commonplace to compare the accounts of the Creation and the Flood in Genesis to ANE precursors, so it is with Those Who Watch. Later they are described as angels. But even in the Bible we see glimpses of pagan polytheistic divine beings, part of the Heavenly Court, the Divine Council. Divine beings whose job (all these beings are defined by their function) is to go about the earth and report happenings back to the Heavenly Court.
Many scholars have pointed out the similarity of the Watchers to the so-called Apkallu, sage/demigods in Mesopotamian mythology. The Apkallu in Akkadian, in Sumerian Abgal – these folks go waaay back – function similarly to the Watchers. They are not the High Gods but they serve as divine intermediaries. They are the ‘Wise Ones’, who pass the knowledge of heaven on to humankind. In ANE mythology they have both a positive and negative aspect. They teach mankind but they are also responsible for much of the subsequent Mesopotamian demonology.
This is an important point worth pondering. With our thousands of years of culture and tradition we are used to a certain underlying fundamental binary. Call it Good vs Evil. We see these as discrete opposing categories. God is Good. Satan is Evil. God loves us. Satan wants to destroy us. But it wasn’t this cut and dried in the pagan world. Any divine being had both a benign and malignant aspect, depending on what kind of mood you caught them in, or the circumstances under which your encounter with them took place. The God could bless you with a good crop but he could also send a plague to wipe you out. (We do see still this conception in Yahweh in the oldest parts of the Hebrew Bible.) This explains religious practice in these ancient cultures. Piety consisted of fulfilling sacred obligations, feasts, rituals, tithes to the temple, etc. The average guy left the religion to the designated experts and nagging after the gods for favor like we are trained to do was a bit risky! There was no real theology to learn. There were sacred stories to tell. You fulfilled your duty.
Scholars note that all the functions of the Apkallus, both good and bad, are turned to evil in the Genesis/Enoch account. In the ANE the source of knowledge and wisdom is always from heaven, willingly dispensed to humans. In Gen/Enoch dispensing knowledge to humans is part of the Watcher rebellion. As I’ve already pointed out divine human sexual encounters were normal in paganism. In Gen/Enoch bad bad bad. The Hebrew exiles drew from this well of mythology but they also bent it to their own perspective. (You can see this in the Creation stories and the Flood stories as well.)
The iconography of the Apkallu is very interesting. They are usually depicted as either fish/human or bird/human hybrids. Berossus, the early-3rd-century BCE Hellenistic Babylonian scribe, a priest of Marduk and an astronomer who wrote in Koine Greek, tells of the primordial fish/human Oannes, who came out of the sea and bestowed upon humankind the arts and sciences and crafts of all kinds. How to found cities, and establish temples, how to plant and harvest. Everything that makes up civilization. Interesting that in this view all knowledge comes from before the Flood. Nothing new can be added. Perhaps this explains the fundamental conservatism of these cultures. And why when they encountered innovating cultures like the Greeks they really had no defense.
Bird imagery seems logical. The wings and flight as a symbol of unimpeded thought, both intellectual and spiritual. But why fish? Fish spring from the waters of primordial chaos. They know the secrets of the Deep. And interestingly they are always depicted as wide-eyed, unblinking, always…you guessed it! Always watching.
A good visual aid is always welcome. I searched around and found some images online.
Behold! The Apkallu.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
Ea is at far left, with water coursing from his shoulders.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
** you do not have permission to see this link **
The Tree of Life? Yep, sorry the Hebrews didn’t invent that one either.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
With our thousands of years of culture and tradition we are used to a certain underlying fundamental binary. Call it Good vs Evil. We see these as discrete opposing categories. God is Good. Satan is Evil. God loves us. Satan wants to destroy us. But it wasn’t this cut and dried in the pagan world. Any divine being had both a benign and malignant aspect, depending on what kind of mood you caught them in, or the circumstances under which your encounter with them took place. The God could bless you with a good crop but he could also send a plague to wipe you out. (We do see still this conception in Yahweh in the oldest parts of the Hebrew Bible.)
And this insight helps us to better understand the utter abundance of troublesome passages.
I’ve thought for a long time that Dylan nicely captured it in the opening of ** you do not have permission to see this link ** when he has God responding to Abraham’s questioning the command to sacrifice:
“You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin’ you better run.”
Christianity created a problem for itself by insisting that God must be absolutely Good. Not only are you saddled with a dodgy tradition, you must now answer all kinds of annoying questions about how things work. The Problem of Evil was a self-inflicted wound.
Berossus was an interesting fellow. A non-Greek writing in Greek for Greeks perhaps within a generation of Alexander’s conquest of Babylon. Early Hellenism. Josephus knew his work and records that he wrote an account of the Jewish Exile. Alas, Berossus’ work survives only in quoted fragments. His three volume Babylonaiica is one of those lost texts that scholars would trade important body parts for.
The image of the Apkallu and others (gods and priests) tending the Tree of life is an iconic image throughout Mesopotamia for millennia. The Tree of Life of course appears in Genesis but also in Revelation, which is clearly familiar with the Enoch literature. The Tree of Life appears all through the Book of Enoch as we will see.
Ron Hendel, a scholar whose work I have appreciated in reading about Genesis and Enoch, has written an interesting paper, “The Flame of the Whirling Sword”: A Note on Genesis 3:24, showing that the “Flaming Sword”, rather than being wielded by the cherubim as is popularly imagined, is best considered as a divine being itself. (Unfortunately the paper is behind a paywall.)
Prof Hendel has recently issued his commentary on Genesis 1-11, the so-called “Primeval History”, for Anchor/Yale. A hardcopy will be a must-have for me but it is too recent to be available at discount prices. And I took a vow that I will never pay full price for anything. But, like the Apkallu, I am wide-eyed, unblinking, forever on the watch – and patient.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
ps: Don’t you think the Apkallu fish-man would make a terrific Halloween costume? You could make yourself a fishhead hat with a scaly cape and complete the ensemble with a T-shirt inscribed with the word Apkallu in cuneiform. (𒉣𒈨) So stylish you might find yourself wearing it around in everyday life!
the “Flaming Sword”, rather than being wielded by the cherubim as is popularly imagined, is best considered as a divine being itself
I do like the sound of that.
If you sign into JSTOR, you can read 100 free articles a month. I’ve got the Hendel article open now in another window.
Prof Hendel has recently issued his commentary on Genesis 1-11, the so-called “Primeval History”, for Anchor/Yale.
I’d love to have it as well but at that price… If only I had been born into the landed gentry.
** you do not have permission to see this link ** of his must be fascinating as well.
A hardcopy will be a must-have for me but it is too recent to be available at discount prices. And I took a vow that I will never pay full price for anything.
Now, that’s a vow worth making.
I’ve been meaning to ask you what book you’d recommend that deals best with how Genesis fits in with the mythology of the Ancient Near East. Years ago I read ** you do not have permission to see this link ** but it was a really difficult read.
…how Genesis fits in with the mythology of the Ancient Near East.
Try
** you do not have permission to see this link **
** you do not have permission to see this link **
If you want to read some of the original ANE mythology see
** you do not have permission to see this link **
These are all written by scholars but they’re very readable.
Now, before I move on to the even more fraught subject of the Nephilim, I’m going to chase me some rabbits.
There have been alternative views offered over the centuries about the true nature of the bene elohim. Inclusive of and prior to the first century CE the common view was the Watchers were divine beings, angels, part of the Divine Council. But after the first century both Christian and Jewish thinkers became progressively uncomfortable with the idea of any hint of a polytheistic background to the stories in the Hebrew scriptures. Other interpretations of the ‘Sons of God’ were presented. I’m only going to focus on two that were very influential.
1. Offspring of Seth, Eve’s third son. From surviving material the first thinker who offered this view was ** you do not have permission to see this link ** (160ish to 240ish CE), very influential on christian historian Eusebius. This view became popular in the church and was held by Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and Aquinas. Let Julius speak:
The descendants of Seth are called the sons of God on account of the righteous men and patriarchs who have sprung from him, even down to the Savior Himself; but the descendants of Cain are named the seed of men, as having nothing divine in them, on account of the wickedness of their race and the inequality of their nature, being a mixed people, and having stirred the indignation of God.
In this view, Cain’s lineage is corrupt because it came from the first murderer. The lineage of Seth is considered pure and elect because he replaced the righteous victim Abel. Seth’s line led to Noah. Alas, Seth’s descendants couldn’t keep their hands off Cain’s descendants. This intermixing led to great evil and resulted in the Flood. So the “Sons of God” were human beings.
Although this explanation does avoid the problem of polytheism its liabilities become apparent when you carefully consider the sources. Elsewhere in the Hebrew scriptures the term “Sons of God” always refers to divine beings, not humans. And why would the offspring of these cohabitations be Nephilim and not just more humans? There are other discrepancies but you get the idea. As I indicated this was a very influential view among christians.
2. Divine Kingship. This view claims that the “Sons of God” were human kings or leaders that only claimed divinity, standing as representative of God over the people. Associations of kingship with divine prerogatives were common in the ancient world. The intermixing was polygamy and the mixing of royal and common bloodlines. This view was very influential in Jewish traditions. Such figures as Rashi, Maimonides, and Ibn Ezra held this view.
Interestingly, while the Sethian view has mostly faded in the christian church, the kingship view is now common among conservative christian scholars. The dominant view among historical/critical scholars is the older, polytheistic view since it makes best sense of the data. Some conservative scholars like Michael Heiser are also prepared to bite the bullet.
Sooo? What interests me about this is the problem that arises when our fundamental views fly in the face of available evidence. How do we respond? Not think about it? Invent some rationalization? Amend our views? We have examples of all these choices. And the consequences. A example from a different tradition.
One of my closest friends is an Indian woman named Sharada I met on the job. She is a very pious Hindu, from the Shivaite tradition. Lord Shiva, in his aspect of cosmic dancer, ** you do not have permission to see this link **, will be well known to many, even if you don’t know its full significance. (This image is suffused with meaning. Shiva dances on the burning field of time. In one hand he beats the drum rhythm of creation. In another he holds the fire of destruction. One hand points down to his foot as it crushes the demon of ignorance. And the last hand offers the gesture of acceptance, of peace. Look on this image, full of wonder and terror, but don’t be afraid. Friends, this is why Hindus don’t need sermons! And why I laugh at the thought of what I was taught as a boy about ignorant pagan idol worship.)
Now as a pious Hindu one is required to believe that Sanskrit is the divine language and that the Vedas, the sacred liturgical scriptures , are primal, from eternity. Evidence of pre-Vedic Indian civilization has been known since the 1920s with the excavations at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro. So I once asked Sharada about this after we had talked about christian fundamentalists looking for evidence of Noah’s Ark. (It’s been my pleasure to explain some of the weightier matters of the law to her just as she has for me.) What I expected was that she would simply call it a legend that she no longer believed as a modern woman. But no. She replied that as a modern educated woman she questioned it and accepted the archeology. But as a pious Hindu she believed in the primacy of the Vedas. In other words, she is able to hold two mutually contradictory ideas side by side. And she saw absolutely nothing untoward about doing so. In fact, I got the impression that she is rather saddened by own inability to do so.
Rather than simply dismissing Sharada’s perspective as a kind of sustainable cognitive dissonance I have imagined her being able to move between two worlds, each with their own presuppositions and inferences. I can at least consider the possibility that western rationalism is as limiting as it is revealing. Perhaps at the very least I receive a glimpse of what ancient thought must have been like and a glimpse of how ancient thought accommodates our own without abandoning its deeply held beliefs.
I’m long-winded. Next time I’ll talk about “boundary violations”.
What interests me about this is the problem that arises when our fundamental views fly in the face of available evidence. How do we respond? Not think about it? Invent some rationalization? Amend our views?
I think we all have a tendency, whatever our particular beliefs happen to be, to do whatever we can to maintain them since they are such a part of our identity; an attack on our beliefs is seen as an attack on ourselves.
Of course, the best course is to change our views, but that’s easier said than done.
Shiva dances on the burning field of time. In one hand he beats the drum rhythm of creation. In another he holds the fire of destruction. One hand points down to his foot as it crushes the demon of ignorance. And the last hand offers the gesture of acceptance, of peace. Look on this image, full of wonder and terror, but don’t be afraid.
Absolutely brilliant.
It also brings to mind all the insights I must have missed out by not exploring other religions very much. Of course, it’s never too late. Any book(s) you’d recommend that might give me a good overview of the Eastern Religions?
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
11 Guest(s)