Of all the Creation myths of ancient peoples, the opening of the book of Genesis stands in a class by itself. Unlike all cultures Before (our) Common Era the priests of Yahweh in the 9th/8th century BCE Jerusalem were busily indulging themselves in setting up the self-serving premise of divine discrimination. The Creator they presented in Genesis who walked in his garden and talked to himself is thus depicted as either not omniscient (all-knowing) or as an unfeeling schemer. For example, where is the wisdom of placing two tempting fruit trees as the focal point of this garden landscape and then forbidding two uncomprehending newly created creatures the freedom to eat of them? It is weak story-plotting. But it didn’t much matter to the priest authors, for the underlying purpose of the story was to channel the Hebrew people away from belief in numerous gods and goddesses to gradually (and with much difficulty) indoctrinate them with the premise of one human-like being (male of course) who created limited identities without the necessity of energy intercourse.
In more ancient time frames the civilizations such as Sumer, Babylonia, Assyria, etc.recognized and respected the interactions and inestimable universal energies and it was these unseen but interrelated and interacting primal creative forces which the ancient cultures personified as a pantiscracy of “gods”. This was allegorized as a Utopian society in which all were equal and each had governing power. It is an insight which is also the heartbeat of democracy. The creative energies which interact throughout nature and all through the observable universe do often appear in opposition, hence the “gods” which personified those energy actions were often depicted in Pagan cultures as in competition or in a state of lust. There was never any doubt among these Pagan cultures, however, that such creative energies originated out of a singular Source..
The Yahweh priest-authors in the 9th/8th century BCE slyly contrived the claim that the amoral all-embracing source-power of Creation had singled out only one group of people in the world (them of course) as the sole recipients of his blessings. To accomplish this pretext of divine discrimination and purported prejudice the wily priest editors referred to those same primal and diverse energies which were responsible for all manifested life as having been their historical ancestors by dubbing those primal creative energies as Isaelites–the alleged descendants of Jacob/Israel. The various gods and goddesses that were recognized by the surrounding cultures and which symbolized for them the same diverse creative primal energies, were then ridiculed as being too lacking and had not been chosen by the power that the priests named Yahweh. But this assault on Pagan wisdom necessitated finding a means to explain the diverse energy attributes that had been represented and personified with Pagan gods and goddesses.
The priest-editors who mined and reworked ancient teachings given with constellation figures, old oral Hebrew myths and Cabal texts certainly knew that the Pagan gods represented forces of creative energy. They knew as well that those energies, although unseen for the most part, interact throughout the universe and have an effect on all life. The clever scheme of the Yahweh priest authors of demoting the the numerous Pagan gods and goddesses was to simply give those primal forces a different designation. Consequently those diverse creative forces were reassigned from godly status by Yahweh’s priests and were hailed as angels in the service of Yahweh. For all extent and purpose, the attributes and special duties of the spurned Pagan gods were simply transferred to angels and were envisioned as acting under the direction of a divinely indifferent power-source which they personified as Yahweh.
Other Pagan recognition of primal energies were similarly disguised. In the earliest part of the priest-authored book of Genesis (3:20) the character of Eve is referred to as “Mother of all living,” which suggests the rank of a near-sacred being. This title that Adam allegedly bestowed upon Eve happens to be identical to what the ancient Sumerians had bestowed upon their love goddess Aruru, for she was regarded in their culture as the creatrix of all life. And strangely also, the authors of Genesis never mentioned an account of Eve’s death, and the reason for that is no death occurred–we know her today as Mother Nature.
Eve’s implied eminence in Genesis, even after the alleged fruit picking mistake, reflects the Pagan perception that creation of all life can take place only through a process of polar energy interactions. This is why various neighboring cultures which the priests of Yahweh envied–such as Sumerian, Babylonian, Phenician, Hittie, Ugaritic, etc.–gave homage to goddesses as being equal in divine power as the gods. But Eve, according to the Yahweh priest authors, was also demoted and allegedly designed by Yahweh to simply serve as Adam’s helpmeet (Gen 2:18-20). This was a deliberate capsizing of Pagan’s correct understanding that creation of any manifestation occurred only from exchange of opposite but equal polar energies. The premise presented by the priests of Yahweh, however, was that Yahweh-Jehovah simply muttered things into material existence, and that story feature had no parallel in any other Mediterranean or Near Eastern myths. The advantage of this story flight of fancy was that it placed man (especially the political minded priests) in the authoritarian position. Unfortunately, by demoting the feminine (negative) polar aspect which is equally necessary for life production, the Genesis myth of Creation essentially rejects the scientific polarizing energy principle by which energy manifests as matter. And western religious understanding has been plagued with confusion, controversy and misunderstanding ever since.
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