Adam…
…not just the first man and human being, but also the first son of God. Matthew’s genealogy of Christ goes back to Abraham, whereas that of Luke is traced back to Adam…a son of God. What really makes that interesting is that you begin with a son of God and end with the Son of God. I suggest that this may have been the intended structure for the way Luke’s genealogy of Jesus of Nazareth is laid out. The first son of God brought sin and death to mankind, whereas the true Son of God redeemed man from sin and, ultimately, death. Christ undid what Adam had done.
For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.
1 Corinthians 15: 21-22.
If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man.
1 Corinthians 15: 44-49.
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—
To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.
But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!
Romans 5: 12-15.
A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.
1 Timothy 2: 11-15. I have to say that I cannot believe that the Apostle Paul wrote this…he was the one who said that there is no male or female in Christ…all are as one. But what is found in 1 Timothy completely undoes that whole idea, and throws Paul’s ground-breaking thought back into the dim recesses of human history. It does not matter whether Adam came first, there is no Adam and Eve anymore. The very early church had a strong egalitarian bent, which was quickly overtaken by age-old male domination. There could be no female apostles, and to this end, even Mary Magdalene was blasphemed, and Joanna and Susannah maligned…all had been full of demons. Nonsense. Women will be saved through childbearing? Women must not have authority over a man? That was clearly written by a man who feared women. But what is most interesting here is what makes the passage from 1 Timothy so different than the passages from Romans and 1 Corinthians…the question of blame. 1 Timothy blames the monumental trespass on Eve, whereas 1 Corinthians and Romans make no reference to Eve…the sin is that of Adam. However, 1 Timothy clearly makes use of that element of the Fall of Adam and Eve that is present in the canonical story…
The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.
Genesis 3:12. And…
To the woman he said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
Genesis 3:16. 1 Timothy states that Adam was not deceived. True, Eve was. But if Adam wasn’t deceived, then he sinned all on his own…with full awareness of what he was doing. And that is worse than sinning through deception. Thus Adam is the son of God who brought sin and death into the world…not Eve…and so it is Adam who is the clear contrast to Christ. The writer of 1 Timothy appears to hold Adam out as righteous…he does not mention the fact that Adam was a sinner too...just another poor man victimized by a woman. This presentation of the story would seem to suggest that the writer of 1 Timothy was counting on the fact that his audience did not really know the story in Genesis 3. This could perhaps be linked to the most likely idea that early gentile Christians were not overwhelmingly concerned with Jewish narratives…though that would, thankfully, change over time. Within the Creation Story Adam (adam) is created from dirt (adamah), and the name Adam is used both for the individual named Adam, as well as with the meaning…mankind…collectively of males and females…
He created them male and female and blessed them. And he called them adam after creating them.
Genesis 5:2. Thus Adam becomes a reflection of the sins of all who lived after him…men and women…you and me. Adam was created from the dirt, and upon his creation, he was in a state of sinlessness. He would of course remain that way until disobeying God, and blaming his wife. This state of sinlessness is, or so I think, alluded to in a story unique to the Gospel of John…
…but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.
At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. But what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
At this, those who heard him began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
“No one, sir,” she said.
This is, of course, the story of the woman caught in flagrante…the woman caught in adultery. This story is controversial as far as textual-criticism goes, since the oldest manuscripts of the Gospel of John do not include it. Thus it is a later addition to the text, in the same way that the second ending of the Gospel of Mark was added later. But this is the only time that Jesus is depicted as writing. There has been much debate about what exactly Jesus is writing in the dirt. I won’t go into the list of suggestions. However, what Jesus is writing leads him to the question of sinless vs. sinfulness.
Then Yahweh of the Gods said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— therefore the Yahweh of the Gods sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out…
Genesis 3: 22-24. I believe that there can be no denying that Christ writing in the dirt is meant to evoke the creation of Adam, and clearly what he writes on the ground contrasts sinlessness and sinfulness. To this end, Adam is unique among all humans…the only man born sinless who transitions to a state of sinfulness. This would indicate that it is Genesis 3: 22-24 that Christ writes in the dirt. What is odd is that Christ writes in the dirt, then stands up and tells the men that he who is without sin may cast the first stone, then he returns to writing in the dirt as the men begin filing away. So he began writing, but had not finished what he was writing. Perhaps this isn’t so strange. As the men were leaving he wrote…So He drove the man out. By man, the collective sense is intended, as a reflection of all the men present. It is interesting that we are told that it was the older men who left first. I would see here the idea that the older men were more knowledgeable about Scripture than the younger men, and that they made the connection between sinlessness and sinfulness inherent in the person of Adam.
There are some who believe that the Sumerian religious figure known as Adapa is a parallel to the account of Adam. Adapa was a mortal man who served the god Ea (Enki). Following Adapa’s cursing of the south wind which tipped over his boat while Adapa was fishing, the god Anu became angry. Adapa was brought to heaven to answer for his sin. Ea tricked Adapa by telling him, before standing in the presence of Anu, to gain the aid of Tammuz and Gishzida, the guardians of the heavenly gates, but not to eat the food or drink the water they would present to him. These were none other than the food and water of eternal life. By his refusal, he remained a mortal man, and Anu decreed that humankind will bear illness and disease as a result. It’s a cool story, and there are some common elements found between Adapa and Adam, but the two narratives are substantially different. Nonetheless, they may both be different versions of the same ancient story about sin and death. The First Book of Adam and Eve states, in Chapter VI, following Adam’s fall from grace…
I am God the Creator who, when I created My creatures, did not intend to destroy them. But after they had sorely roused my anger, I punished them with grievous plagues, until they repent.
An early Christian story, known to scholars as early as Origen, states that Christ was crucified at Golgotha, which was then the site of Christ’s death, under which the tomb of Adam was located. As much as it pains me to quote Epiphanius, the arch-curtain tearer and keeper of the moldy bread-box, in a positive way, he did write something fascinating…
“Our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified on Golgotha, nowhere else than where Adam’s body lay buried. For after leaving Paradise, living opposite it for a long time and growing old, Adam later came and died in this place, I mean Jerusalem, and was buried there, on the site of Golgotha. This was probably the way the place, which means ‘Place of a Skull,’ got its name, since the contour of the site bears no resemblance to a skull.”
He is wrong about the resemblance to a skull, as will be made clear shortly. Legend states that the earthquake mentioned in Matthew 27:51 was intended to allow Christ’s blood to drip down into Adam’s tomb onto his skull, thus redeeming the first human. The Rock of Golgotha…
The Church of the Holy Sepulcher contains…
…the Chapel of Adam, with the Holy Crack, through which Christ’s blood seeped down onto the skull of Adam, in a glass encasement.
Another tradition holds that Adam was buried at the Cave of Machpelah, the supposed burial place of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, and Leah. Adam dug out the cave as a burial site for himself and Eve, choosing the location because of a ray of light shining in from the Garden of Eden (Zohar Bereshit 57). It was Abraham who discovered Adam’s Cave and he actually met Adam, probably in the form of a spirit…or an elohim. Zohar Chae Sarah 128:1 states…
Abraham said to Adam: “Is there an opening here for the light?” Adam responded: “The All-Mighty has buried me here and since that time I have been hidden from human eyes, like the roots in the ground, until you came into the world. From now on, the covenant for me and for humanity will exist because of you.
The burial location is just outside of the gates of the Garden of Eden. Yet another tradition states the cave was dug by Adam and Eve as they tried to tunnel their way back into the Garden of Eden, but were stopped by God. It is interesting to note that God appointed two cherubim to guard the way back into the Garden of Eden, and in the Adapa story, two divine beings, Tammuz and Geshzida, guard the way into Anu’s heavenly abode.
…the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron. Islamic traditions differ. Some place the tomb of Adam in India. Some place Adam’s burial place in Mecca. Yet another tradition states that Noah took the bodies of Adam and Eve with him on the Ark and buried the remains in Jerusalem. A late Christian tradition claims that Adam and Eve, following their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, dwelt in a cave dubbed…the Cave of Treasures. The name is derived from the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh that had been placed there by Adam. Yes! Gold, frankincense, and myrrh…sound familiar?
When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Matthew 2: 10-11.
These were three of the gifts the Magi brought to Mary and Christ. But to make it more interesting…
And look! A woman was coming down from the mountain, and she said to me, “Man, where are you going?”
And I said, “I’m seeking a Hebrew midwife.”
And in reply she said to me, “Are you from Israel?”
And I said to her, “Yes.”
Then she said, “And who’s the one giving birth in the cave?”
And I said, “My betrothed.”
And she said to me, “She’s not your wife?”
And I said to her, “Mary was nurtured in the Temple of the Lord, and it was decided by lot that she would be my wife, yet she’s not my wife; but she’s conceived from the Holy Spirit.”
And…
The midwife went with him. And they stood in front of the cave, and a bright cloud overshadowed the cave. And the midwife said, “My soul is magnified today, because my eyes have seen something wonderful. Salvation has been born to Israel!”
And immediately the cloud withdrew from the cave, and a great light appeared in the cave, so bright that their eyes couldn’t bear it. And a little later, the light withdrew until an infant appeared. And he came and took the breast of his mother, Mary.
Yes, according to the Gospel of James, Christ was born in a cave.
And the magi went, and behold! The star they had seen in the East led them until they came to the cave, and it stood over the head of the cave. And when they saw him with his mother Mary, the Magi took gifts from their bags: gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.
And so now we have the Cave of Treasures…not to mention a fascinating connection between a son of God (Adam) and the Son of God (Christ), as found in Luke.
Adam was buried in the Cave of Treasures, but had actually requested burial at a different location…the Center of the World…Golgotha. The Books of Adam and Eve detail an ongoing war between Adam and Eve on the one hand, and Satan, i.e. the Serpent, on the other hand. Adam takes the gold, and some of the incense and myrrh, and gives it to Eve as a wedding gift. The Apocalypse of Adam is a gnostic work purporting to be teachings that Adam imparted to his son Seth, which include some Virgin Birth myths related to the Great Illuminator who appears to be Christ.
Walther Flemming was a German biologist who, in 1882, was an early discoverer of cell division during mitosis and meiosis. Six years later…
…Wilhelm von Waldeyer-Hartz coined the term…chromosome.
In 1902, Theodor Boveri and Walter Sutton developed the Chromosome Theory of Inheritance, according to which paired chromosomes are identified as the carriers of genetic material. In 1905…
…Nettie Maria Stevens discovered something that revolutionized human genetics…she discovered the X Y sex chromosomes. Oddly enough, she discovered this while studying…
…mealworms, perhaps making humans and mealworms descended from a common ancestor. I suppose not. Actually, Annabelle tried to sneak these into my salad. Still, as everyone well knows, the human genome is comprised of 23 pairs of chromosomes containing DNA. Chromosomes are of two types…autosomes (22) and allosomes, the sex chromosomes…determining whether a human is male or female. Or, as I like to say, determining whether a human is Adam or Eve. And it is the Number 23, not 23rd, that is so important here.
Two X chromosomes make you Eve, and XY makes you Adam. And, speaking generally, each Eve and each Adam receive 50% of their DNA from their father, and 50% of their DNA from their mother.
One of Christianity’s most engaging and powerful images is…
…St. Anne teaching her daughter, the Virgin Mary. Teaching her what? Her numbers? How to read? I prefer to think that Good Saint Anne is teaching Mary to read Scripture. What would be a bit odd is that if they were studying Isaiah 7:14 in the Hebrew version, then young Mary would see that she will be an almah, i.e. young woman, when Christ is conceived. If they were studying Isaiah 7:14 in Greek, she would see that she will still be a parthenos…a virgin. Very Strange, to be sure. But what is even a bit stranger is…
to the right, Mary is learning her Scriptures in Hebrew. On the left, for some reason, Mary is learning her Scriptures in Latin. Go figure. But I must show the following image because it makes a fascinating divergence…
…Mary appears to be learning how to write. But we know that her first-born son could read…
Oh, my! Christ reads from the Book of Isaiah…in Greek! Have no fear, I will not launch into another discussion of Isaiah 7: 14 in Greek vs. Hebrew. And we know from the story of the woman caught in adultery, Jesus knew how to write as well. Canonical scripture does not name Mary’s parents…Anne and Joachim are first named in the Gospel of James. Early Christianity denied James a place in the canon. Yet, early Christian scholars could not stop quoting it. And without James, there is no Anne and Joachim!
John 19:25 states that…
Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.
Clopas has a very important connection to the panther. But that is jumping too far ahead. According to John 19:25, Mary had a sister named Mary. Earlier I quoted the Golden Legend on the point that Anne had two husbands, with a daughter named Mary from both…making a total of three, if we include her first daughter the Virgin Mary, who, according to James, had no human father. This may indeed have been the source of that legend. It has been commonly believed that Mary, Jesus’s aunt, and the woman named as Salome, are one and the same…Mary Salome. That is a bit of tidying up. However, tradition has also identified Salome as the…
…wife of Zebedee, and mother of James and John…the Sons of Thunder. Neither identification is compelling, and we may have a touch of Golden Legend here. Nonetheless, Mary…as Mary Salome…joined the very illustrious ranks of the…
…the Three Marys…the mother of James, the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Bethany, with one of these Marys also being called Mary Salome. These three Marys should not be confused with …St. Anne and her three daughters…all named Mary, from three different husbands? Perhaps two? This wasn’t uncommon; the Emperor Octavian had two sisters named Octavia…each by a different mother. But why two Marys? Three Marys, three husbands. Hmmm. The Gospel of James makes a very important first step to dealing with a potential problem…actually, a real problem. Anne, mother of Mary, and her husband Joachim, were barren. I will avoid digressing into the repeated use of this theme in the Bible…but the important thing here is that Anne becomes pregnant with the Virgin Mary without sexual relations with Joachim, who was busy spending 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness when Anne conceived Mary. The next step was taken when the idea of the Immaculate Conception came into being. This holds that Mary was, is, and always will be completely free of sin. The Gospel of James didn’t go this far. Care should be exercised! The Immaculate Conception claims that Mary was conceived without sin, not that Anne was a virgin when Mary was conceived. The concept of the Immaculate Conception was hotly debated during the Middle Ages, with each position having its yea-sayers and its nay-sayers. In Marianism, denial of this position is regarded as heresy. The position was declared dogma in 1849 by…
…Pope Pius IX. There was a middle road taken, that taken by…
…St. Bridget of Sweden, who claimed, of course, that the Virgin Mary visited her and revealed that her parents, Anne and Joachim, had conceived Mary by sexual union, but it was free of sexual lust, so the union was sinless. It was in 1830 that Catherine of Laboure saw a vision of Mary of the Immaculate Conception, with her vision being the enduring image…
…of Mary of the Immaculate Conception. Why take this step?
…Lady Lilith. And who is Lilith? That’s a more complicated question than one might expect. The word appears only once in the Old Testament…Isaiah 34:14…
Desert creatures will meet with hyenas,
and wild goats will call to each other;
there the night creatures will also lie down
and find for themselves places of rest.
Isaiah is describing the type of creatures that one finds in the deserted, desolate places of the wilderness. This is, of course, that part of the Hebrew world where the spirit-being Azazel dwelt. I’ve written about him before. He is the second-party of the Scapegoat Ritual, whereby one goat is sacrificed to Yahweh, while another goat is driven out into the wilderness for Azazel. I’ve also taken the position that the entity Christ went into the wilderness to face was not originally Satan…it was Azazel…and then the text was altered when all bad-spirit-guys were rolled up into the character of Satan. But the desert wilderness is a frightening place at night, when all the creatures come out making their scary sounds. The word translated above as “night creature” is…
…Lilith. Historically, this verse has had been understood in two ways. The first is a mythological one, i.e. Isaiah is not referring to normal creatures, but rather, he is referring to mythological creatures. The Septuagint:
And demons shall meet with satyrs, and they shall cry one to the other: there shall satyrs rest, having found for themselves a place of rest.
A very awkward rendition, in which the Lilith is lost in translation. But demons? And…
…satyrs…half-goat, half-man, mythological creatures. And this image is potentially rather embarrassing given another element found with the satyr…
…let the bad jokes begin. But we’re all adults here…I think. Darla! Cover your eyes! Obviously, they are fertility creatures who spend their time chasing poor wood nymphs and maenads…or is it the other way around? Getting in the whole part-animal, part-man, weird mythological creatures, the Latin translation of the Bible reads…
Et occurrent daemonia onocentauris, et pilosus clamabit alter ad alterum; ibi cubavit lamia, et invenit sibi requiem.
…yes! The onocentaur! A centaur is part-man, part-horse. The onocentaur is part-man, part donkey. So, yes, the onocentaur is one-half of a jackass. And they were a favorite creature to put in a Medieval bestiary. Demons, hairy onocentaurs…right. But! Thanks to Jerome! Why? He introduced a gal after my own heart…
Now were talking! Lamia was a half-woman, half-beast demonic entity. She started as a very beautiful queen who had an affair with Zeus. Hera grew angry, and killed Lamia’s children. Lamia then wandered around stealing and eating babies. So she was turned into a monster. And here we have the ancient Greek version of an awful female demon that I have discussed so often on this site…
…Lamashtu, the ancient Mesopotamian demon who killed pregnant women, women in childbirth, babies, children, etc. She was the embodiment of all that could go wrong with childbirth, and the only way to defeat her was to summon Pazuzu through rituals and incantations. Over time, the characters of Lamia and Lilith were overlaid, and so Lilith became the Baby-Eater. Here is a Medieval incantation to ward off Lilith during childbirth…
Jewish tradition also states that prophet Elijah could be summoned to chase away Lilith when a woman was in childbirth. A second female demon…Naamah…is sometimes added. Interestingly, if Lilith = Lamashtu, it should be noted that the demonic pair of Naamah and Lilith cause epilepsy…the medical disorder that plagued Regan MacNeil in The Exorcist. Lilith and Naamah are frequently paired together, and tradition holds that they are the two harlots who appear before King Solomon arguing over the ownership of a baby. Naamah is also regarded as the mother of the arch-demon…
However, Lamia was not always depicted as a monster. People’s imagination ran away with them, causing them to do with Lamia what they did with Medusa…
…from a dreadful monster, to a dreadful-looking woman, to drop-dead gorgeous! Beautiful, but deadly.
…a real beauty, either fully human, or half-snake half-beauty. Lamashtu received no such make-over. One version of the myth states that Zeus, feeling sorry for Lamia for the terrible fate bestowed upon her by Hera, gave Lamia the ability to shape-shift, connecting her with the demonic empousai…
…horrid female demons who could turn themselves into beautiful women, and then seduce and the eat the flesh of men. This violent attack against men also appears with the…
…succubus, in this case (left) Pope Sylvester II and his succubus-girl friend…Meridiana. In ancient Akkadian religion, the terms lilitu and lili are similar to the idea of the empousa/succubus. In the Talmud, Lilith is similar in that it attacks men while they are sleeping…
Rabbi Ḥanina said: It is prohibited to sleep alone in a house, and anyone who sleeps alone in a house will be seized by the evil spirit Lilith.
(Talmud Bab, Shabbath 151 b)
Other translations of Lilith include…night-monster…night-demon…demoness of the night…and night-hag. A different view of Lilith is that she is a type animal…night-creature…creature-of-the-night…nocturnal anmial…night-bird…night-owl…screech-owl…nightjar. So the tendency is to be vague, or to conceptualize Lilith as a bird of some type. The Hebrew word translated as…satyrs…simply denotes wild-goats. But the translation…satyrs, i.e. a mythological creature, may have been driven by the view that Lilith was a mythological monster or demon of some kind. Some translations simply say…Lilith, leaving it up to us to figure out what, or who, is intended. Some have suggested that a bizarre female image found in ancient Babylonia…
…is a parellel of Lilith. Here the connection between Lilith and owls is also observed.
So why is this important to the matter at hand? Because! Eve was not Adam’s first wife. In later traditions, Lilith was an ancient being who was Adam’s first wife…
While God created Adam, who was alone, He said, 'It is not good for man to be alone' (Genesis 2:18). He also created a woman, from the earth, as He had created Adam himself, and called her Lilith. Adam and Lilith immediately began to fight. She said, 'I will not lie below,' and he said, 'I will not lie beneath you, but only on top. For you are fit only to be in the bottom position, while I am to be the superior one.' Lilith responded, 'We are equal to each other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth.' But they would not listen to one another. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced the Ineffable Name and flew away into the air. Adam stood in prayer before his Creator: 'Sovereign of the universe!' he said, 'the woman you gave me has run away.' At once, the Holy One, blessed be He, sent these three angels to bring her back.
This quote is from the Alphabet of ben Sirach (second alphabet). Yes! Imagine that…husband and wife begin to argue…about sex. Actually, Lilith is taking the position that she, not Adam, is the dominant one…Adam will have none of that. After Lilith fled the Garden of Eden, Adam would eventually marry Eve. Lilith accepts her role…
"'Leave me!' she said. 'I was created only to cause sickness to infants. If the infant is male, I have dominion over him for eight days after his birth, and if female, for twenty days.'
As far as the presence of another woman in the Garden of Eden goes…
So one must wonder…was Lilith actually brought back to the Garden of Eden? Did she become the unnamed serpent who brought God’s wrath on her ex-husband and new wife as an act revenge? The old maxim…the Devil made me do it, must give way to…Lilith made my do it.
According to Genesis, Eve was the deceived party, whereas Adam’s sin was deliberate. In the Book of Adam and Eve (II: Chapter V), Eve takes all the blame for the sin that forced God to cast her and Adam from the Garden of Even…
And as they prayed, Adam raised his eyes, and saw the rock and the roof of the cave that covered him overhead, so that he could see neither heaven, nor God's creatures. So he wept and smote heavily upon his breast, until he dropped, and was as dead.
And Eve sat weeping; for she believed he was dead.
Then she arose, spread her hands towards God, suing Him for mercy and pity, and said, "O God, forgive me my sin, the sin which I committed, and remember it not against me.
"For I alone caused Thy servant to fall from the garden into this lost estate; from light into this darkness; and from the abode of joy into this prison.
"O God, look upon this Thy servant thus fallen, and raise him from his death, that he may weep and repent of his transgression which he committed through me.
1 Timothy would agree with this idea. Lilith aside, Eve was the one who brought sin into Creation…she have known better than to listen to the serpent…Lilith or otherwise. Women in modern culture have taken offense at this, but at other times…
Ok, so forget the last one…and least kids were being taught that cigarettes are harmful to your health. Eve has proved popular in American media, sometimes in a sexualized role. The name Eve, in Hebrew, is Hawwah…one who lives. Adam will dub her…the mother of all who live. The reason for this is obvious…all human beings are descended from her.
Salve, Regina, Mater misericordiae! vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve. Ad te clamamus, exules filii Evae. Ad te suspiramus, gementes, et flentes, in hac lacrimarum valle.
Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.
Just as Eve was banished from the Garden of Eve, so too are we. None have been allowed to return to Paradise by following in the footsteps of Eve, never making it past the Cave of Treasures. But in going back to the beginning…Event One, the Divine Creation, the Mother of God meets Eve…
…face-to-face with a message of hope. Through the death and resurrection of Mary’s son, the Children of Eve are no longer banished from Paradise. Mary, herself a child of Eve…the Mother of All Who Live…becomes the Mother of All Who Are Saved. Their meeting at Event 1 frees Eve from the guilt she’s lived under for untold thousands of years, and from the moment of Christ’s birth, a New Event 1 begins…Creation and Paradise start over. The Gospel of James addressed a concern that pre-dates the discovery of the human genome over 2,000 years later. The latter shows that half of our chromosomes come from Eve, and half come from Adam. If Christ cannot have a human father because he must be conceived and born without sin, with chromosomal heredity symbolic of the passing on of original sin, then what can be said of his mother Mary? After all, she was a child of Eve as everyone else has been since Event 1. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception removes the remaining 50% of the transmission of original sin. And to this end, Mary must have a miraculous birth, one without the sexual union of her parents. So James and all who have followed him have solved the problem inherent in the argument that there must have be a divine conception of Christ and a Virgin Birth…this makes him the sinless Son of God, as Adam had once been a sinless son of God. And so Eve and Mary meet each other at Event 1, changing the course of human history. The Immaculate Conception seeks to answer the question that Matthew and Luke never asked, but James did…how can Christ be the Son of God, even if Mary was espoused by God’s Essence, unless Mary’s Number 50 was removed as well? I suggest that this is key in finding the Panther and explaining the genesis of the Virgin Birth Myth…the person of Christ. Was this a potential criticism that early Christianity may have met? How can Jesus of Nazareth have been born the Sinless God if he had a human mother? And so the argument that Christ could not have had a human father in order to be free of the taint of Original Sin flounders on the question of his mother’s number 50. A strange theological and religious course had to be followed to remove this objection. But in the Gospel of the Young Jesus, which leads to the contradictory Narrative of Luke, the Virgin Birth has no such significance…it fulfills an Old Testament prophecy, and identifies the point at which Jesus became Christ. Mark knows nothing of this…Jesus became the Son of God after he underwent a baptism for the removal of all traces of his human nature…the nature that he inherited from Joshua and Miriam, and Adam and Eve. The adopted Son of God…this is something labelled a heresy soon after Christianity began its amazing growth, and is a heresy to this day. And so I walk the path that leads through a spiritual wilderness…heading to a place where there is no self…only calm. But it is not for nothing that Jesus of Nazareth appeared at the Jordan River to obtain his title of Son of God. And it is not for nothing that Mary becomes God’s Eden, the Garden Enclosed, More Glorious Than Paradise, The New Eve, and Eve’s Tears Redeeming. The Crown of Virginity is a different matter altogether. But the Sixth Kingdom says that the Great Illuminator’s mother came from heaven to gather flowers. She conceived, and her son was born in a garden, living among the angels of the flower garden until he received his power and glory…leaving the apples on the tree this time. Perhaps the path leading through the wilderness, avoiding Azazel along the way, ends in the New Eden, a place where Eve, Christ, and Mary await. I’m not sure about Lilith. But perhaps the Kingdom of God is really the Garden of God after all.
