02/11/22

Looking at Carol Hill’s Article (2021) “Original Sin with Respect to Science” (Part 11 of 15)

0047 Carol Hill’s worldview approach encourages me to imagine the genres of Genesis 2:4-11 as fairy tales, then as a mix, and then as epics.

0048 The identification of genre is crucial since the historical processes that coincide with the stories in Genesis are both real and impossible to isolate from the Biblical text alone.

Something outside the scriptures is needed. The scriptures tell the story from the inside. Archaeology tells the story from the outside.

0049 With this lesson in mind, Hill returns to her struggle with the doctrine of original sin.

02/10/22

Looking at Carol Hill’s Article (2021) “Original Sin with Respect to Science” (Part 12 of 15)

0050 In the last sections of her article, Carol Hill wrestles with the issue that Saint Augustine’s doctrine is part theological and part scientific.

The incredible duality comes from Saint Paul, who compares Christ, as the one who is to come, and Adam, as the one who is fallen. Paul makes two assertions. One, Jesus literally descends from Adam. Two, Adam’s sin entangles all humanity.

If Adam stands at the start of the history of the Jewish covenant, then that is one point.

If Adam stands at the start of the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia, then that is a second point.

A scientific question arises concerning the Ubaid. How does the Ubaid entangle all humanity?

0051 What does Paul say in his letter to the Romans?

Paul connects Jesus to the salvation for all humanity.

This connection is theological and diagnostic.

Augustine of Hippo develops the connection. He is honored for centuries for these developments.

0052 Today, Augustine’s theological propositions on the nature of original sin surpasses the current modern social sciences, which still reduce the human condition to manifestations of stimulus-response. Augustine’s diagnosis is unparalleled. Even if humans are animals behaving according to the dictates of stimulus-response, our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in. So, our evolved responses operate in a world that no longer reflects our um… evolution.

As for the current social sciences, if one reads two of E. Michael Jones’ books, Libido Dominandi and Degenerate Moderns, then one can see how the personal lives of the founders of various social sciences pay tribute to Augustine’s theological diagnosis of the human condition. Their personal lives are testimonials to original sin.

0053 Today, Augustine’s scientific proposition on the nature of transmission of original sin has been thoroughly debunked by modern genetics.

But, that does not mean that today’s humanity is not entangled in original sin.

Rather, it means that we are faced with a very curious problem in human evolution.

Why is our current Lebenswelt not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?

02/9/22

Looking at Carol Hill’s Article (2021) “Original Sin with Respect to Science” (Part 13 of 15)

0054 Carol Hill does not have an answer to the scientific question concerning the transmission of original sin from Adam and Eve to the rest of humanity.

However, she does have the intelligence to intimate that the problem is with science, rather than theology.

0055 Well, it is a problem with theology, in so far as many theologians cannot imagine that Augustine’s scientific proposition is now debunked. All humanity is not literally descended from Adam and Eve.

0056 The new scientific question, posed by Augustine’s failed hypothesis, and transformed by Hill’s careful framing, asks, “How does the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia potentiate our current Lebenswelt?”

0057 One answer is called, “the hypothesis of the first singularity”.

The first singularity?

The first singularity is a technical term for the fact that our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

0058 The Ubaid starts the first singularity.

How so?

The Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia is the first culture on Earth to practice speech-alone talk. At the time that the Ubaid emerges, all contemporary cultures practice hand-speech talk. Hand-speech talk is associated with the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

0059 Today, all civilizations practice speech-alone talk. The last significant cultures practicing hand-speech talk, the Australian aborigines and the North American Plains Indians, have been mortally compromised by external civilizations. The first singularity comes to a close in our own time.

0060 The hypothesis is plainly spelled out in the e-work, The First Singularity and Its Fairy Tale Trace.

The founding of the hypothesis is dramatically presented in the e-book, An Archaeology of the Fall.Both works are available at smashwords and other e-work venues.

02/8/22

Looking at Carol Hill’s Article (2021) “Original Sin with Respect to Science” (Part 14 of 15)

0061 The doctrine of original sin is inspired by Saint Augustine’s interpretation of Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Adam is of the type who is fallen. Jesus is of the type who is risen. Jesus descends from Adam. Adam connects to all humanity. Through this, Jesus connects to all humanity.

0062 How does Adam connect to all humanity?

One answer is offered by the Genesis text. God makes the earth-man and the rib-woman. The rest is history. But, is that the history of the Jewish covenant or the history of our current Lebenswelt? Or both?

0063 Hill tries to resolve the confounding, saying, “Adam and Eve are the parents of those in the covenant line of Adam leading to Christ.”

Technically, she is correct.

However, she does not capitalize on the other idea, clearly articulated in her article, saying (more or less), “Adam and Eve associate to the Ubaid period of southern Mesopotamia.”

0064 She cannot capitalize on this idea, because she has not encountered the concept of the first singularity, nor wondered about its implications.

Consider Comments on Original Sin and Original Death: Romans 5:12-19, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other electronic book vendors.

If the Ubaid initiates our current Lebenswelt, and if the Ubaid breaks with the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, then there is a replacement to Augustine’s failed scientific proposal.

0065 Hill’s vignette about copper production, a highly specialized alchemic process, tells me that she senses that ‘something cultural’ comes out of the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia and spreads to all the world. Her intuition is already fulfilled.

0066 The Ubaid is the first Neolithic culture to practice speech-alone talk. Speech-alone talk has dramatically different semiotic qualities than hand-speech talk, the way of talking practiced since the time that humans evolved. The semiotic qualities of speech-alone talk favor unconstrained social complexity. Unconstrained social complexity leads to greater wealth and power. Labor specialization increases wealth. Social specialization yields power.

No wonder every hand-speech talking culture in the world ends up dropping the hand-talk component of their hand-speech talk. It is so easy to do. Plus, the consequences are not readily apparent. Over generations, labor specializes and society stratifies. The world gets more and more complicated. The old ways are derided. Then, they are forgotten. A village becomes a town. A town becomes a city. In the city, there are rumors of people who remember. And what do they remember? History begins with the start of civilization.

0067 Meanwhile, the people in unconstrained social complexity become more and more disoriented, until evil is in their hearts, continually.

Our spoken words mean whatever we want them to mean. If our spoken words can lie for us, then why not live the lies? Doesn’t that fit Augustine’s theology of original sin?

Yes, the transmission of our current Lebenswelt, from the Ubaid to the entire world, does not come from descent. Rather, it comes from the fact that we all practice speech-alone talk. Before the Ubaid, humans practice hand-speech talk. Today, humans practice speech-alone talk. The semiotic differences between hand-speech and speech-alone talk account for why civilization never forms before the Ubaid and why civilization is potentiated within the Ubaid.

0068 Perhaps, an expanded theology of original sin comes from the realization that Adam associates to the Ubaid and the Ubaid associates to the first singularity. Augustine’s theology is a good place to start. I am fallen. Concupiscence calls me. I am tempted to project my own meanings, presences and messages into my speech-alone words. My spoken words can lie for me. I can accuse others, using made-up words, and so on. The only way for me to get to my feet is to be baptized, in a sacrament, just like Jesus is baptized by John. The water of baptism gives me the grace to be honest.

02/7/22

Looking at Carol Hill’s Article (2021) “Original Sin with Respect to Science” (Part 15 of 15)

0069 My thanks go to Carol Hill for her article.

My thanks go to Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith for publishing her essay.

0070 Perspectives is the flagship journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, a Christian association of scientists and those interested in science. Their website is www.asa3.org. Here is an association worth joining.

0071 When it comes to the doctrine of original sin, the science needs to change. This change comes in the hypothesis of the first singularity. The hypothesis addresses a question that modern evolutionary theory fails to utter and asks, “Why is our current Lebenswelt not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?”

0072 The hypothesis of the first singularity is a portal to a new age of understanding.

01/31/22

Looking at Mark S. Smith’s Book (2019) “The Genesis of Good and Evil” (Part 1 of 16)

0001 Mark S. Smith is a theologian in the Catholic tradition. He writes a book that is equally weighted between text and endnotes. The text ends at the center of the bound volume. The endnotes begin at the center of the bound volume. Smith sends a message. At the very center, there is a gap. The gap is between the text and the endnotes. Does the text write the endnotes? Or, do the endnotes write the text?

The full title of the book is The Genesis of Good and Evil: The Fall(out) and Original Sin in the Bible. It is published by Westminster John Knox Press, in Louisville, Kentucky.

0002 A scholarly introduction sets the tone. This work is not about the Bible. This book is about scripture. Nowhere in the Bible, does anyone say the word, “Bible”. Instead, people in the Bible say, “scripture”, all the time. So, their scope (or cultural impress at the time) includes Jewish scripture. Only a retrospective reading, by Christians, years after the gospels are added to the Jewish scripture, allows the use of the word, “Bible”, which comes from the Greek, “biblos”, denoting a collection of manuscripts. The Bible, at its heart, binds two books, which we now call the Old and New Testaments.

0003 How scholarly is that?

01/29/22

Looking at Mark S. Smith’s Book (2019) “The Genesis of Good and Evil” (Part 2 of 16)

0004 Two key words pop out in the introduction, “scope” and “retrospect”. Both apply to reading and writing.

First, consider the author. The author has a gift, a charism. Insights are framed by “his” scope, the cultural impress of the time. But, the cultural impress does not determine the author’s words. The author does. The author has “his” own concerns, which somehow intersect with scope. The author’s insights arise from “his” own interpretations and experiences.

0005 I can write two formulaic descriptions of the author, following A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form(available at the smashwords website as well as other purveyors of e-works).

One, the normal context of producing text₃ brings the actuality of the author’s personal conditions₂ into relation with possibilities inherent in the cultural milieu of the author₁, including “his” scope.

Two, the normal context of writing₃ brings insights₂ into relation with the potential of the author’s point of view₁, containing “his” charism.

0006 Do these nested forms interscope?

Some say that an author emerges from the civilizational conditions. Others say that an author conveys insights. Clearly, one nested from does not fully situate the other.

They do not interscope.

0007 Instead, they intersect. The author is the single actuality that fuses the actualities of conditions₂ and insight₂.

0008 Ah, the author₂ is a single actuality that is the intersection of two actualities, conditions_2H and insight_2V. One nested form defines the horizon. One nested form transects the horizon. Clearly, the intersection celebrates, rather than resolves, contradictions inherent to the author₂.

Here is a picture of the intersection.

01/28/22

Looking at Mark S. Smith’s Book (2019) “The Genesis of Good and Evil” (Part 3 of 16)

0009 Mark Smith concludes the introduction by casting an eye upon the reader. The Christian reader of Genesis 3 wants to plumb the author’s scope_1H and charism_1V in order to apply lessons to “his” own situation, where “his” indicates “his” and “hers”.

0010 “His”?

Even the awkward attribution smells funny. Presumably, men, like rotten fruit, no longer represent the entire species.

So, we have to clean up the language, don’t we?

0011 What does Genesis 3 really say?

Mark Smith intends to inform the reader. He begins with a retrospective.

0012 John Milton (1608-1674), at the start of the Age of Ideas, composes an epic poem, titled, Paradise Lost. Paradise Lost begins in the middle. Yes, a theodrama precedes Adam’s occupation of paradise. And, Satan is not pleased.

The most recent Catechism of the Catholic Church formulates original sin as the connection between Adam’s transgression and our current misery. Figuratively, we are all Adam’s descendants. Or, is it literally?

0013 These introductory retrospections add a puzzling emptiness.

Maybe, the story of Adam and Eve begins in the middle, but what goes before? The defeat of Satan is not about humans. What would it mean if humans, or generally, our hominin ancestors, live before Adam and Eve, on the open plains and in the gnarled forests that the defeat of Satan leaves open for settlement? It is an odd question…

…further cemented by the formulation that we are all descendants of Adam. How can folk living on the far edges of Eurasia be Adam’s descendants, when Adam lives a generation before the formation of Cain’s city? They cannot be literally descended. After all, the first towns start a little over 6000 years ago.

Better words may be “drawn into” and “entangled”.

We are all drawn into Adam’s transgression.

0014 Indeed, we are entangled. It is like the sticky postmodern situation where the word, “he”, once meant both “he” and “she”, then “she” declares that “he” is presumptive, arrogant, and so on, and demands her own pronoun. And now, everyone wants their own pronouns. For me, it is back to “he”, but now in scare quotes, because there is no way to get disentangled.

0015 What sin has all humanity been drawn into?

What sin entangles us?

Oh, it must be original sin.

0016 According to Mark Smith, the foundational stories in Genesis 3 contain deeply unsettling psychological portraits. The psychology is tied to the drama, just like the pronoun business. The drama contains comedy and tragedy and, most horrifying, catastrophe. Yet, all this is not so bad, because good people appear in every generation, like Abel, who gets murdered, and Enoch, who gets swept up in mysterious circumstances, and Noah, who gets to build an ark because God is about the wipe out the civilization.

Other people, who may not be as good as good can be, are somehow in play, even though they are not upstage. They are the ones who call upon the name of the Lord. They remember. Plus, a good God knows all.

0017 So, I say, “There is more to Genesis 3 than meets the eye.”

01/27/22

Looking at Mark S. Smith’s Book (2019) “The Genesis of Good and Evil” (Part 4 of 16)

0018 The author₂, in prior blogs, is the single actuality composed of two actualities, insight_2V and conditions_2H. One cannot separate the two. They work in tandem. Insight_2V emerges from the author’s charism_1V, a divine gift. Condition_2H situates the author’s scope_1H, the cultural impress of the time, including literature that the author may have been exposed to.

The author₂ is an actuality. This actuality₂ is contextualized by the normal context₃ of revealing₃. This actuality emerges from the possibilities of ‘recording something for someone’₁.

0019 The resulting nested form is:

Revealing₃( author₂ ( potential of ‘recording something for someone’₁)

0020 On one hand, Genesis is not a secret document, so ‘something’ goes to all. On the other hand, for those who heard the oral tradition for millennia, ‘something’ is very personal. The early stories of Genesis are told to attentive children, by their mothers. These mothers know that their tradition is older than they can imagine. This is their charism. They are the ones who tell the stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Lamech and the rest, generation through generation.

May I also say that they are the authors, so to speak?

0021 In chapter one, Mark Smith broadly speculates that Genesis 3 and Ezekiel 28 and 31 derive from the same source. Yet, there is, as Jacques Lacan puts it, “a petit objet A”, evidence that serves to inform the observer that there is a missing piece to a puzzle. The four rivers that flow into the Persian Gulf do not flow during Ezekiel’s time. They flow during the Wet Period of the Developed Neolithic of southwest Asia, five thousand years earlier. The four rivers in Genesis 3 are a petit objet A. They are in Genesis 3, yet are missing at the time when the redactor composes the scriptures. So, how does the redactor know about these four rivers?

Oh, there must be an oral tradition.

0022 Ahem. There is another observation that needs to be accounted for. Why does the bulk of the Old Testament, from Abraham through the prophets, not directly mention the stories of Adam and Eve? Why do they mention the seventh day as a day of rest, a theme of the Creation Story? Why is Genesis 3 ignored while the lessons of Genesis 1 are placed center stage?

Does it have anything to do with rotten men? The lessons of Genesis 1 are proclaimed by Moses. Not its companion, Genesis 3 and the like. Genesis 3 is told by the women of Israel to their children. Surely, Moses knows what the daughters of Israel tell their children, with unswerving dedication. Here is the source of the oral tradition that mentions the four rivers flowing into (or is it out of?) Eden.

0023 Here is my conclusion.

The sons of Israel are so busy constructing their world, according to their manly ways, that they do not imagine that these womanly stories about Adam and Eve have any… well… relevance to the issues at hand. When the bards of Israel put these fairy tales as the opening act, then… oh… the situation changes. Suddenly, Adam and Eve are legit.

0024 The bards of Israel?

The concept is implied in Smith’s speculative common source for Ezekiel 28 and Genesis 3. Who is the common source? Well, they are probably not members of the priestly class. Yet, their style is evident even in the days of Jesus. Jesus’ ministry is precisely what one expects for a bard of Israel. Jesus is totally traditional and miraculously entertaining. He recites the scriptures to all who come to listen.

0025 Still don’t imagine the bards of Israel?

The Greeks have the same schtick around the same time. Homer! He compiles the stories of the Greek bards. These stories, told in the Iron Age, detail the Bronze Age. Did I mention that the Bronze Age ends in some sort of catastrophe, hundreds of years prior to Homer?

0026 Still don’t grasp the bards of Israel?

Here, I jokingly shift my gaze to Hollywood, brimming with Jewish talent, sons of Abraham, rebels with Moses, kings like David and self-aggrandizers like Solomon. Where does all their verve come from? The bards of Israel got around.

01/26/22

Looking at Mark S. Smith’s Book (2019) “The Genesis of Good and Evil” (Part 5 of 16)

0027 The stories of Adam and Eve stand at the start of the Old Testament, why are they not mentioned later in the Old Testament?

They are fairy tales told by the wives of the men who proclaim the stories of Noah, Abraham, Moses and David, to name a few. The men know what the women are telling their children. The same stories are told over and over. They are not important. They are women’s stories.

The fall of Judah changes all that. It is similar to the collapse at the end of the Bronze Age. The bards of Israel, like the bards of Greece, are full of tradition, but not exactly reputable. They pick up stories from all around Israel, including the ones told by women to their children for as long as anyone can remember. The redactors quietly rewards their genius by placing the stories of Adam and Eve right after their own, incredibly ancient and beautiful, Creation Story. Writing styles serve as evidence.

The redactor puts the fairy tale stories into a document that does not mention them again. The written scriptures, composed during and after the exile, are correspondingly new, even though the stories are old. The stories of Genesis 3 enter strange territory, a new audience, so to speak, which is not as innocent as the first audience, the children of the daughters of Israel.

0028 Mark Smith notes that the Deuterocanonical Wisdom of Solomon 2:24 mentions the Fall.

Yes, the early stories of Genesis are so old that other contenders for an official origin story are around, at the time of the recording of the Wisdom of Solomon 2:24. For example, the contemporary Baal cycle expresses a decisive conflict among the gods. The defeated are expelled. The imagery is very similar to the first half of the storyline of Paradise Lost. Isaiah 14 refers to the fate of the day star, the son of the dawn, fallen from heaven. The imagination leaps from fallen celestial beings to the Nephilim (Genesis 6.2) to the serpent talking to Eve (Genesis 3).

The Dead Sea Scrolls also mention Adam, as if they know Genesis 3, but their vision is not anything like the doctrine of original sin. They are retrieving Genesis 3, but the retrospection is not clear.

Why?

The written stories of Genesis 3 are novel, even though the oral tradition of the women of Israel is ancient.

0029 After the Resurrection, the letters of Paul link Adam and Jesus, with such amazing eloquence, that the concept of original sin floats right below the surface.

The surface of what?

Retrieval.