0052 Why would God confound humanity?

Genesis One is a sign of the evolutionary record.

Genesis One can only be viewed as a sign of the evolutionary record in light of Peirce’s typology of natural signs.

Genesis One is also a sign of the oldest civilization of the ancient Near East.

0053 During most of the Bible’s theodrama, no one apparently knows this.

The stories of the Old Testament are remembered and retold by itinerate bards, as well as by temple priests.  The prophetic stories are collected, redacted, written, promulgated, misinterpreted and then fulfilled in the death and resurrection of one of those itinerate preachers, who started out as a carpenter.

The Bible, the union of the Old and New Testaments, promises the salvation of all who are baptized in the water of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus, that miraculous former carpenter, serves as the New Adam.

During this entire time, the so-called “literature of the ancient Near East” is the Father’s secret.  Yes, everyone knows that the Near East is ancient.  But, no one remembers that these ancient civilizations have voices of their own.  No one knows about the cuneiform tablets buried in those dusty tells. The West recovers fragments.  Revealing fragments.

0054 Why does God empower a secularizing West, still animated by Christian curiosity, to recover some of this long-buried literature?  

Why does God reveal this secret in the middle of the modern Age of Ideas?

May I call the revelation, “a divine accommodation”?

0055 The title of chapter two of Loke’s book is “Divine Accommodation and Its Implications for Biblical Anthropology”.

0056 What is the concept of divine accommodation?

The scriptures work according to a human mode of understanding, following appearances in the common manner, and taking into account the human point of view during particular historical moments.  Divine accommodation is relevant even when the historical moment passes and fades from memory.  After all, what does our modern Age of Ideas have in common with the ancient Near East?

The theologian and biologist Denis Lamoureux responds to the challenge of divine accommodation by separating the messages of the Old Testament from the presences of premodern prescientific ancient Near Eastern conceptual frameworks.  For example, ancient Near Easterners regarded the heavens and the earth as surfaces.  Here is the inspiration for the medieval alchemist’s vision of a mundane and a celestial earth.  What happens above, happens below.  One system dwells between two surfaces.

0057 The god of the storm rules between the mundane and the celestial earths.  What better way to portray the tempestuous nature of human affairs, in our current Lebenswelt, against the eternal rhythms of earth and sky?

0058 But, can we, mere mortals, extract message from presence without distorting meaning?

Lamoureux’s project poses a paradox.  It holds the message of the Book of Genesis in high regard.  It aims to disregard the… um… presence of the world in which the book is told.  The messengers of Genesis live in the cultural world of the ancient Near East.  The dramas of the Old Testament take place on the stage of a grand theater that we, moderns, now realize has a life of its own.  Yes, the life of the ancient Near East permeates a document that comes from God and thus, cannot error.

0059 Perhaps, there is another way to understand…

What if even the apparent errors manifest divine intent?

After all, most of the apparent scientific errors reflect the premodern cognitive frameworks of the ancient Near East.

0060 What if the truthfulness of scripture is not restricted to literal words on physical pages.  It makes me wonder.  What is “truth”?  Where did I hear that question before?  Is truth the opposite of false?  Or, is true the opposite of deception?  Is truth correct and honest?  If so, then how can truth survive even one civilizational turning?  A civilizational turning?  Yes, a civilizational turning occurs when a civilization realizes that everything it knows is wrong.

The book of Genesis tells of many civilizational turnings.  The stories of Adam and Eve correspond to one.  Perhaps, the stories of Cain and Abel correspond to another.  The civilizational turning between Cain and Lamech is as clear as day.  Lamech turns God’s protection of Cain completely around.  Biblical turnings occur within the civilizational turnings of larger Near Eastern societies.  The Genesis genealogies are lists that keep track of names, despite civilizational changes. No doubt, on the celestial earth, a story attends each name.

0061 If the history of the USA is any indicator, a civilizational turning occurs every orbit of the protoplanet Pluto, around 248 years.  The American revolution starts in 1776 AD.  America grows into a nation, then an empire, and then the empire collapses in 2024.  The stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and Lamech may correspond to three Plutonic orbits.

Three fairy tales for three Plutonic orbits.

0062 One can say that the fact that the Bible is written in the literary genres of the ancient Near East is divine accommodation.

One can also say that Biblical inerrancy proclaims that the apparently erroneous “sciences” of the ancient Near East are part of the revelation.  The presence of the ancient Near East cannot be separated from the message of divine revelation.

0063 This implies that there is a hylomorphic aspect to Biblical revelation.

What is a hylomorphe?

A hylomorphism consists of two contiguous real elements.  Aristotle’s hylomorphe has two real elements, matter and form.  For nomenclature, I place the contiguity in brackets.  I suspect that a familiar term fits as a label for the contiguity,producing the hylomorphe, matter [substance] form.

0064 Similarly, Biblical inerrancy and divine accommodation are two real elements.  These two elements stamp a common metal.

0065 The normal context of modern Christian Faith₃ brings the common metal of Biblical inerrancy and divine accommodation₂ into relation with the possibility of Biblical and historical interpretation in the modern and postmodern age₁.

0066 How can this be?

The recovery of cuneiform texts from ancient Near Eastern civilizations during the modern era gives me information that not even Moses was aware of.  The stories of Adam and Eve trace back to the earliest stages of Mesopotamian civilization.  The Creation Story is a sign of the evolutionary record and a sign of the ancient Near East.

0067 What is so important about the first civilization on Earth?

Remember the analogy of the great river running north from eastern Africa through Egypt, to the Mediterranean Sea? The southern and elevated part is De Nile.  Then, there is the imaginary falls (which is really a series of boat-crushing rapids).  Then, there is DeNial, running to the Sea and the start of history.  The Lebenswelt that we evolved in corresponds to De Nile.  Our current Lebenswelt corresponds to DeNial.  We, in our current Lebenswelt, are so estranged from the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, that all written origin stories of the ancient Near East (except for the anomalous Genesis One) depict a recent origin of humans.

0066 In some of the written origin stories of the ancient Near East, humans spring from seeds in irrigated fields.

On other stories, humans are fashioned from the blood of a defeated deity.

All are in accord in this one regard.  Humans are recent things.

0068 Witness the stories of Adam and Eve.  The manufacture of each person is quite specific.  They are fashioned during the Wet Neolithic of southwestern Asia (and northern Africa) at the confluence of four rivers, two of which are the Tigris and Euphrates.  The scene is depicted in Razie Mah’s masterwork, An Archeology of the Fall, as an island that rises out of river mud.  There, a garden grows.

The apparent error that four rivers flow out of Eden is not an error at all.  It is merely an appearance that locates the witness on the island.  On top of that, the other apparent errors of the making of Adam and Eve point to the genre of fairy tales.  Many aspects of the stories of Adam and Eve point to the location and timing of the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia.  Many aspects point to the genre of fairy tale.

0069 When the modern inquirer stands at the bottom of the rapids separating DeNile from DeNial, which are really the same river, running from east-African highlands to Mediterranean-delta lowlands, we may correctly and honestly describe these the rapids as a giant waterfall, hundreds of feet tall.  No boat can pass from DeNial to De Nile, not even one carrying the (allegedly) feather-light soul of the Pharaoh.  Similarly, we, in our current Lebenswelt, cannot navigate back to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

The disjuncture is so great that scientists, fixed on accounting for the metaphorical lands around De Nile, cannot imagine the waterfall.  Instead, they see a series of rapids, which they label, The Neolithic Agricultural Revolution, or The Copper Age, or Trends towards Urbanization, or A Transition from Down-The-Line Trading to Organized Long-Distance Trade. 

0070 Of course, what scientist would model a series of non-navigable rapids with the conceptual apparatus of a huge impassible waterfall?

Oh, that is precisely what the writers of the ancient Near East do.

They cannot see the highlands above the rapids.  So, the Lebenswelt that we evolved in never comes to view.  The waterfall is so tall that it reaches from the earth to the heavens.  Or is it, from the heavens to earth?

0071 So, versus 26 and 27 of sura 15 of the Qu’ran says that humans are molded from dry clay.  And the jinn?  They are created from the scorching fire.  Perhaps, the jinn are associated to the same roaring fires that burned ancient royal cities and kilned cuneiform clay tablets into brick.

0072 Why do scientists not imagine the waterfall that is witnessed by every recovered origin story of the ancient Near East (with one exception)?

The scientific story of human evolution, dutifully recounted by Loke in section 5.1, is radically incomplete, because it cannot account for the testimony of all the written origin stories of the ancient Near East.  At the start of our current Lebenswelt, humanity is born again.

0073 Loke does not know about The First Singularity and Its Fairy Tale Trace, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.  Loke has not heard about An Archaeology of the Fall.

Loke is not alone.  There is a scientific hypothesis that agrees with all those written origin stories of the ancient Near East.  Human evolution comes with a twist.  The Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia is the first culture on Earth to practice speech-alone talk.  At the time, all other contemporaneous Epipaleolithic and Neolithic cultures practice hand-speech talk.  Today, all civilizations employ speech-alone talk.

0074 The scientific hypothesis of the first singularity allows the Christian theologian to see the actuality inherent in the coincidence of Biblical inerrancy and divine accommodation.

0075 If the Bible is inerrant, then the fairy tales of Adam and Eve are not in error.  There may be no talking snake, as envisioned.  But, there is a historical Adam and Eve, deep in the founding of the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia, who practice speech-alone talk and who make a tragic decision.

Who remembers this decision?

The women of the family of Seth, the women of the family of Noah, and the woman of the family of Terah fashion a fairy tale.  Generation after generation, mothers tell their children this fairy tale, with utmost fidelity.  Why such fidelity?  They know that this story goes back as far as anyone can remember.

0076 If the Bible accommodates for the ways of humans, the genre of fairy tale fits the concept.  In our current Lebenswelt, we are exiles from the Lebenswelt that we evolved in. The story of Adam and Eve accommodates to those who tell origin stories.

Perhaps, it is fitting that the women of Israel bear this tradition.  The stories of Adam and Eve are not explicitly recounted in the later books of Moses, which stand in the purview of priests and similarly appointed men.  These fairy tales are only included in the writing of the Old Testament by an alleged “redactor”, perhaps because the bards of Israel start their traditional recitations with their mothers’ fairy tale.  The stories of Adam and Eve shift attention, from the grandeur of the Creation Story, back to the mundane lives of those who God has chosen.

These stories are like water landing from a waterfall as high as the eye can see.

0077 At this point, I am able to formulate the vision that Loke strives to achieve.

The stories of Adam and Eve clearly are fairy tales.  They are precisely the type of stories a mother tells her children.  And yet, they come from the Bible, which has no errors, because it is the word of God.  Well, the Bible is the words of God.  The Word of God is Jesus, the Christ, the fulfillment of all that goes before.  Jesus is the penultimate in divine accommodation, as well as the penultimate in Biblical inerrancy.

For today’s Christian, confronted with the intransigence of science and confounded with the falsities and the deceptions of modernity, the stories of Adam and Eve do not sound like anything a scientist would describe.  For that, Christians are ridiculed by the very people who claim that the Bible is simply another tale from the ancient Near East.

Yet, in that observation, there is an opportunity.  According to Loke, the Pentateuch must be interpreted as events, occurring on a small stage, within a larger stage, the theater of the ancient Near East.  Once this type of concordism becomes routine, then the wonders of the coincidence of Biblical inerrancy and divine accommodation may play out and expand the extent of God’s revelation to include that larger stage.

0078 The only requirement is for the stories of Adam and Eve to somehow connect to the start of the grand stage, the start of civilization in the Near East, as well as throughout the world.

That requirement is satisfied in the scientific hypothesis of the first singularity, which proposes that speech-alone talkenters a world filled with hand-speech talk with the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia.

The stories of Adam and Eve associate to the start of the Ubaid, as well as the earliest adoption of speech-alone talk, as well as the initiation of our current Lebenswelt.

0079 Here is a picture of Loke’s vision.

0080 As soon as this dyad in the realm of actuality is formulated, Loke’s vision unfolds.

Yet, Loke knows nothing about the first singularity.

This is a rare moment in history.  No one knows that great questions have been addressed by a novel scientific hypothesis.  Why civilization?  Why are the timeframes of the Lebenswelt that we evolved in so different than timeframes in our current Lebenswelt?  How are we tied to the origin of our current Lebenswelt?

Loke knows nothing.  And yet, because he has read and contemplated the scriptures, he knows everything.

0081 Now is a good time to note how current literature, such as Loke’s book, may be re-articulated and re-interpreted in light of three new hypotheses on human evolution, contained in Razie Mah’s masterworks, (1) The Human Niche, (2) An Archaeology of the Fall, and (3) How To Define the Word “Religion”.  The hypotheses that (1) the human niche is the potential of triadic relations, that (2) our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, and that (3) spoken words are defined by their potentials, in addition to the fact that they occupy positions in two arbitrarily related systems of differences, change the face of scientific inquiry into humankind.

0082 With these three hypotheses, the Christian can now picture the Pentateuch as revelation, as well as a testimonial available to scientific inquiry.  We also have testimony from royal archives throughout the ancient Near East, in the form of recovered and translated cuneiform tablets.  Thus, God’s revelation enlivens ancient testimony about the current human condition, bringing that testimony to life.

0083 Are revelation and ancient testimony two faces of one coin?

I return to Loke’s third chapter, discussing the time spans of creation.

0084 There are two concerns for the modern Christian.

One pertains to the time scales reported in the Genesis text.

The second pertains to the time scales of the evolutionary record.

The first is revelation.  The second is scientific testimony.

0085 If the revelation is a vision, then the scientific testimony includes all of evolutionary history, from the start of our solar system to the start of our current Lebenswelt.  The two coincide when one reads the Biblical text through the lens of Peirce’s typology of natural signs.  In this, the revelation itself testifies to the fact that one of humanity’s crucial adaptations involves sign-processing. 

0086 Here is a picture of the nested form corresponding to Loke’s integrating approach.

0087 God’s revelation extends to the times above the waterfall, which stand beyond the direct remembrance of those who live in the times below the waterfall.

0088 There are two creation stores in Genesis.

Genesis One portrays the creation of the tent (or temple) of the heavens and the earth.  At the same time, using Peirce’s typology of signs, the six days of creation are signs of corresponding evolutionary epochs.

Genesis 2.4 introduces the stories of Adam and Eve.  These stories are fairy tales, concerning two figures living near the start of the Ubaid.  Adam and Eve are the parents, not of all humanity, but the lineage of Seth.  Noah is born in the lineage of Seth.  Abraham is born into the lineage of Noah.  Moses is born in the lineage of Abraham.  David is anointed king over the people who followed Moses.  Jesus is born into the lineage of David.

0089 Remember the Greimas square?

Here is the Greimas square for the map of the Nile, imaginatively relabeled with a pencil.

0090 The waterfall is an imaginary construct, marking the location of a series of unnavigable rapids.   It is the focal term (A).

The Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia is clearly manifest in the archaeological record by 5800BC.  That is 7800 years ago.  I denote this year as 0 Ubaid Zero Prime, that is, 0 U0′ (spoken, “Zero Uh-Oh Prime”).

Uh-oh Prime?

0091 Imagine going over a waterfall so tall that, by the time of landing, you do not remember that you went over some sort of edge, long long ago.

Yes, that sounds like 0 U0′.

0092 Perhaps, I can picture a series of rapids, where each rapid is so turbulent that one hardly remembers the previous one.  Or maybe, one remembers only half of the previous turbulence.  After four rapids, each lasting around two-hundred and forty-eight years, one remembers only one-sixteenth of the first rapid.  After another seven-hundred and fifty years, one remembers less that one percent of the original rapid.  Perhaps, people only remember the first rapid as some sort of fairy tale.

0093 The Ubaid nominally starts at 0 U0′.

The next archaeological period, the Uruk, begins around 1800 U0′.

That corresponds to seven Plutonic years.

In each Plutonic year, civilization emerges, grows, matures, becomes feeble, and descends into the underworld.

Recall, only a single Plutonic year describes the rise, growth, maturity, corruption and self-destruction of the United States of America, from 1776 to 2024.

Imagine such change seven times over.

Who could remember?

0094 The lowlands of DeNial (B) contrast with these rapids.  The lowlands hit their stride in the Uruk.

The Uruk expands, in an organized fashion, into territories occupied by other Neolithic cultures.  Uruk invents the pottery wheel, then the cart wheel.  Uruk domesticates the donkey.  Uruk invents writing.  Uruk conducts long-distance trade, which is very different from traditional down-the-line exchange.  Uruk builds towns.  Uruk sends emissaries to distant lands.  Uruk demands corvee labor and compensates with rations using standardized bowls.

Neighboring hand-speech talking cultures do what every culture does when exposed to a budding civilization with wealth and power.  They mimic their neighbor.  They drop the hand-talk component of their hand-speech talk.  They adopt speech-alone talk.  Then, they too, begin to forget the time-less world of hand-speech talk.  Why?  Speech-alone talk and hand-speech talk have radically different semiotic properties.

0095 Speech-alone talk is purely symbolic.  Spoken words can label anything.  On the map, I write the name of the river, running through Egypt, on its way to the Mediterranean, where history begins.  I write the name, “DeNial”.  Sure, it is a joke, of some sort.  At the same time, the label shows that any spoken word can be placed anywhere, even on a map of a river, when the official name is different.  Yes, we pretend that our spoken words are full of meaning, presence and message, when they really only placeholders in two arbitrarily related systems of differences, parole and langue.  Spoken words fill empty slots in a network of empty slots.

Isn’t that what the structuralists have been telling the modern West for the past century?

0096 The uplands of De Nile (C) speak against the lowlands of DeNial (B).

Hand-speech talk pictures and points to its referents.  So, the referent exists and the gestural-word pictures or points to the referent.  Symbolic operations enter the picture only because one manual-brachial word gesture must be sufficiently distinct as to not be confused with other manual-brachial word gestures.  Symbols have that character.  Each symbol is distinct.  Distinctiveness allows speed in communication.  Manual-brachial word gestures, even though grounded in the sign-qualities of icons and indexes, are sufficiently symbolic as to support symbolic operations, otherwise known as grammar.  

Hand-speech talk is fully linguistic.  Hand-speech talk is grounded in the natural sign-qualities of icons and indexes. Hand talk has trained us to expect that our words refer to real things, not abstractions or made-up realities.  We innately expect our words to refer to things and states of things.

0097 The river of time (D) contrasts with the uplands of De Nile (C), because it includes that short river running through the lowlands (B), just beyond the falls (A).  As far as human evolution goes, De Nile (C) runs for millions of years while the entire river (D) runs only 7800 years longer.  All written history occurs within that short period of 7800 years.  Everyone who we know, as historical figures, live in our current Lebenswelt (B).

0098 Here is a picture of the Greimas square for the waterfall, in terms of Earth years.

0127 The author does not grasp the potential of his own hypothesis, that God labels Adam and Eve as “Image Bearers of God” and the label stands at the start of all humankind in our current Lebenswelt.

Indeed, he immediately stumbles into the fool’s errand that says, “Labels are really important.”

0128 Well, I admit the point.  Realistic labels are important if I want to get anything technical accomplished, including floccinaucinihilipilification.  But, spoken words do not reliably generate realistic labels.

Consider the testimony of the World Economic Forum-promoted author, Noah Harari, who claims that humans are able to succeed more than other animals because humans are able to invent fictional beings, like “images” and “God”, to get others to buy into a deception and thereby bind them to cooperate on complex tasks.

Or, consider the testimony of the serpent in the garden, who says (more or less), “Everything I say is technically correct, and is designed to deceive you into believing that this fruit is intelligence incarnate, because I am convinced that you are that stupid.”

0129 To make a long story short, the hypothesis of the first singularity highlights the word-play that dwells within the stories of Adam and Eve as well as our everyday civilized lives.  The hypothesis places the stories of Adam and Eve at the start one of the world’s first civilizations, and conveys the message that our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

Loke’s hypothesis of God naming Adam and Eve, “Image-Bearers of God”, complements the hypothesis of the first singularity because it attaches labels onto these fairy-tale figures, so that Adam and Eve can be the founders of all humans who receive this label, by way of all sorts of non-genetic mechanisms, such as being born into a civilization practicing speech-alone talk.

0130 In section 5.6, Loke defends Traducianism.

The doctrine of Traducianism explains the passage of original sin… or is it original guilt?… from Adam to all subsequent humanity.  It assumes that Adam and Eve are literally the father and mother of all humanity. So, the mechanism of transfer may be called, “genetic”.

The theological implications of the scientific hypothesis of the first singularity offers an alternative mechanism.  Original sin, the condition of the loss of original justice, passes to anyone who is born in a civilized world, practicing speech-alone talk.  The mechanism of transfer is not “genetic”.  It is “unavoidable”, because every civilization practices speech-alone talk from its inception.

0125 Indeed, the hypothesis of the first singularity accounts for the impression that Adam and Eve are the first humans,because they are fairy tale figures associated to the foundation of the first culture to practice speech-alone talk, the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia, round about 0 U0′.

Yes, I am back to uh-oh prime.

0131 The Uruk archaeological period starts 1800 U0′, after seven Plutonic years.

The Sumerian Dynastic, officially labeled “civilization”, starts around 2800 U0′, after four more Plutonic years.

0132 For southern Mesopotamia, only 11 Plutonic years pass when going from zero to full civilization.  By the time that the Sumerian Dynastic starts, speech-alone talk extends from the eastern coast of China to the western edge of the Mediterranean to the northern steppes of Russia.

How do I know this?

Speech-alone talk is the third technology of the intellect (the first is hand-talk and the second is hand-speech talk) adopted by the Homo genus.  Speech-alone talk has radically different semiotic qualities than hand and hand-speech talk.  These novel semiotic qualities promote unconstrained social complexity, including civilization.

See chapter five of An Archaeology of the Fall.

0133 Speech-alone talk spreads from the Ubaid to surrounding hand-speech talking cultures.  Exposure to speech-alone talk initiates a cultural process where the hand-component of hand-speech is valued less and less until the people practice speech-alone talk.  No doubt, the shamans of old warn of the dangers.  But, who are they to impede progress towards increasing wealth and power?

0134 The stories of Adam and Eve bear witness.  All the non-Biblical written origin stories of the ancient Near East also bear witness.  Humans are recent creations.  None of the storytellers can imagine a world full of humans before the beginning described in their origin stories.  No one can discern the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  

In the first chapter of Genesis, humans are created in the image of God.  In the Adam and Eve stories, they are endowed with the title, “Image Bearer of God”.  Well, the title is not explicitly bestowed.  Rather, the couple mechanically fashioned, by God, each in a different style, which comes pretty close to an explicit declaration.  And, what do they do?  They tarnish the image.  They devalue the brand.

How great their fall.