0125 What is proposition fourteen?

From the point of view of the ancient Near East, the Genesis serpent would be a chaos creature.

0126 Here is a question raised by a dead pharaoh.

How should I handle a snake while on my migration back to the source?

The pyramid texts of Egypt offer an answer.

Tell it to lie down.

0127 On the one hand, the serpent in Genesis has no legs.  As the saying goes, “It doesn’t have a leg to stand on.”

On the other hand, the serpent has no hands or arms.  Consequently, it cannot communicate in hand talk.  It must practice speech-alone talk.

0128 Isn’t that a coincidence?

The Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia is the first culture to practice speech-alone talk.

The Ubaid stands at the threshold of our current Lebenswelt.

0129 The serpent talks like a lawyer.  The serpent is subtle, wily, cunning, shrewd and calculating.  The serpent does not lie.  The serpent fashions his spoken words so they lie for him.  How many careers are built on that expertise?

0130 The serpent may be more than a chaos creature.  The serpent may serve as a metaphor for any person who makes a living by speech-alone.

0131 This job is never open in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, since hand talk (and for humans, hand-speech talk) is grounded in the natural signs of icons and indexes.  Hand-speech words are always regarded as obvious, since they picture and point to their referents.  There is no opportunity to make a living by stating the obvious.

0132 In our current Lebenswelt, spoken words are not so obvious.  So, many can make a living out of turning practical molehills into rhetorical mountains.  Serpents are everywhere.  Today, the easiest way to encounter them is to watch corporate television, especially the channel of the Syndicated Noble Alliance of Kind Experts (SNAKE).  Some call this dragon, the Confusing Common People channel.

0133 Here is a hylomorphe, in case you are drawn into the… um… temptation to engage.

0134 At this point, Walton’s humble portrait takes on a different hue.

Do the early chapters of Genesis offer an insider’s view of the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia?

Is the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia one of the most fascinating historical periods?

0135 Science knows what happens.  The villages of the Ubaid consolidate around 0 U0′.  The town-chiefdoms of the Uruk are clearly present around 1800 U0′.  Then, the Sumerian Dynastic starts around 2800 U0′. Each archeological period is more “advanced” than the preceding one.

Furthermore, the hypothesis of the first singularity proposes that the adoption of speech-alone talk by the Ubaidpotentiates unconstrained social complexity.

0136 But, that is all that science can say.

It cannot tell how the drama plays out from the inside.

Genesis 1-11 tells us.

From the inside, it is theodrama, from start to finish.

0137 Genesis 1-11 covers all three archaeological periods, not from the outside, but from the inside.  Adam and Eve point to the Ubaid. Noah’s flood points to the Uruk, where there is a break in one of the famous king lists.  The tower of Babel addresses the Sumerian Dynastic.

0138 The serpent is more than a chaos creature.

The serpent is a player in the theodrama of our current Lebenswelt.