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#5749 08/28/00 09:43 PM
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I hope delving into religion doesn't offend anyone, but after reading about the creation of the universe in both the Bible and Edith Hamilton's Mythology, it appears that both are quite similar. They both begin with chaotic nothingness, and then light is separated from dark, then land comes out of the water, and finally, the earth is inhabited with creatures.

In both accounts, the source of man's woes is the female (Pandora and Eve). Are these simply coincidences, or something else. What do you think?


#5750 08/28/00 09:52 PM
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#5751 08/29/00 04:49 AM
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>I hope delving into religion doesn't offend anyone, but after reading about the creation of the universe in both the Bible and Edith Hamilton's Mythology, it appears that both are quite similar.

Joseph Campbell ("The Masks of God", et al) called this the monomyth (after James Joyce); everything has roots. [I'm greatly oversimplifying!]



#5752 08/29/00 01:06 PM
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>>In both accounts, the source of man's woes is the female

i don't know about anyone else, but the female is certainly the source of this man's woes.


#5753 08/29/00 02:33 PM
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>>In both accounts, the source of man's woes is the female

Jazzy, I've always thought it was because until very recently, sociologically speaking, it was the men who had all the power: the power to rule, the power to make his wishes (such as telling a story and making it come out the way HE wanted it to, never mind what really happened) predominate, and later the power of having the ability to read and write when most women did not, thus furthering his ability to relate "HIS"tory!


#5754 08/29/00 05:25 PM
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Are we then saying that the Bible, or religion in general, is false and merely the explanation from a male perspective of what is not understood?


#5755 08/29/00 06:01 PM
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Are we then saying that the Bible, or religion in general, is false and merely the explanation from a male perspective of what is not understood?

Whoa, whoa up a minute! Not necessarily, Doc! That's WAY
beyond what I meant. It's been too long since I studied other religions than my own for me to feel sure that what I'm saying is fact-based, so I'll stick to the Bible.
Barring another visitation by the Almighty, I don't think we'll ever know how close to the truth the Bible is. The cultures in the Bible were male-dominated. All or nearly all of the books of the Bible were written by men; and some were written only after centuries of word-of-mouth versions of occurrences. These might be completely accurate, for all I know. My point was that they were told and recorded by men, who like we humans today, were not perfect. The powerful rulers of their day were male, so it seems to me that they would have thought it was logical that the most
powerful ruler of all was male. And, it also makes sense to me that maybe a few of these early writers, being fallible, may have not denied their inclination to be self-serving, and have written women into a subservient role
(which was most definitely the societal norm then).

And, completely aside from human failings and plain error in recording, we can't know that we have everything that was written that should be included in the Bible. Almost certainly, some has been destroyed, and since some scrolls were found as recently as 1947, there may well exist some
others that we haven't found yet!

So no, I would not say that religion IS false; just that I can't really believe we have the complete, literal truth.




#5756 08/29/00 07:16 PM
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food for thought:

one of the gnostic scriptures (read apocrypha) is "The gospel according to Mary", which gives a very different picture of Mary Magdalene -- one of a disciple rather than a prostitute and supplicant, and a very different view of women in that time.

as always, the question to be asked is: why was this suppressed?


#5757 08/29/00 08:38 PM
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>>a very different picture of Mary Magdalene -- one of a disciple rather than a prostitute and supplicant, and a very different view of women in that time.

as always, the question to be asked is: why was this suppressed?


Author Laurie King, in one of her fiction series about
Sherlock Holmes and his heretofore-unknown assistant, brings up this very thing. In fact, the name of the book is
'A Letter of Mary'. The assistant stumbles across a letter supposedly written by Mary in which she refers to herself as a disciple.

I don't know what, if any, research Ms. King did, but her reason given in the novel was that it was suppressed in order to maintain male dominance (or the appearance of it).

I very much enjoy reading her books, incidentally, because she is an author who actually uses language that requires a higher than elementary-level education to comprehend.



#5758 08/29/00 10:45 PM
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