Most cultures in the world have a creation myth that explains how the world came to be, how mankind began, etc.

Most of them include a myth about how mankind acquired fire. But there is no story about that in the Bible. Why not, I wonder?

Because it is a scientific text.

They used quantum physics. ;-)

Interesting observation, Mr. Packham.

I can see why most creation myths would not include uncommon things like volcanoes but they all had to have exposure to fire.

Thunder origin is another thing I like to look for in mythology.

dagny Wrote:
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> They used quantum physics. ;-)

Let there be light. Preferably from volcanic activities.

The International Brotherhood of Mythmakers (IBM) was upset about how the acquisition of fruit was given a bad name, and staged a work slowdown when fire was the next storyline on the agenda.

They were later fired, and a lame flood story was used to reboot the franchise. It even ended with a birdie and a rainbow, an idea Walt Disney decided to steal.

Adam was not dumb ~


He knowed how to make a fire ~


he made Eve smoke too ~



¸¸><((((º> ¸.•´¯`•.¸¸><((((º>¸.•´¯`•.¸¸><((((º>¸.•´¯`•.¸¸




that forbiden fruit ~


tastes great when cooked on the grill ~


and eaten off Eve ~


¸¸><((((º> ¸.•´¯`•.¸¸><((((º>¸.•´¯`•.¸¸><((((º>¸.•´¯`•.¸¸


good question OPie ~


another good one would be ~


where is the whipped cream ? ~



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Hi R. Packham, you're my favorite giant.
When first researched whether I'd made the right decision years earlier, it was your work that confirmed it for me. Still grateful.

Why no fire? I think it's because they're written by different kinds of minds.

For example the Greeks had curious minds, they were observers and thinkers. Just read their works. Their eyes were open. They wanted to explain their observations. Their myths attempt to do that.

The JudeoChristians were precisely the inverse. They wanted something to believe in. In that world fire doesn't matter at all. In that world, observation, curiosity, and logic are the enemy of belief.

Glad you are well, and all the best

Paul met the Stoics and the Epicurians.

Acts 17:18-34

He discussed the Unknown God that some people talked about in the city of Athens.

So there was most likely a debate.

They do have Tubal Cain the first mentioned blacksmith.

Interesting that in mormonism you end up with Nephi and the brother of Jared as blacksmiths that are taught by divine means to work metal.

It’s explained in the sealed portion of the Golden Plates. The church will explain once it has saved up enough money to buy back the plates from Moroni. In the mean time, wear a coat to church. Golden plates don’t come cheap.

Joseph Smithwash wasn't into expending too much energy where it might not have mattered most, give him the break he needs he had a bum leg. Just one though, the other leg was fine and almost like the entire rest of him, only half bum.
If Prophet Joseph thought it would have paid he might have moved up the ten commandments and that burning bush thing so that man could have fire. Not fire in your pants kind of heat we got that obscure flaming sword fable when an emergency required immediately required it. Caught in Alger's fanny he came up with that on his feet, off his feet, you know what I mean...

Fire in Genesis it's in there we all simply missed it. Just like we missed the important part where we weren't supposed to become God. Right next to the part where there is but one God. See how easy things in Genesis are to haplessly easy to glance over?

You really wouldn't want God to teach you about fire, trust me even his bic lighter is atomic powered. One little flick and he'd be booming, "Anybody next?" until running out of eager volunteers.

Lest he send down an angel with a flaming sword.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/17/2020 04:46PM by josephssmmyth.

You might enjoy the related interesting protestant myth that was popular in my neck of the woods in the 90s.

According to a local protestant church there was no writing until Moses.

Yup I had multiple run ins with folks at work convinced that God gave Moses the Hebrew alphabet and that's why he wrote the first five books of the bible.

It conveniently explained anything odd or left out. They had to memorize scriptures until Moses wrote it down.

...And Moses couldn't read it any more...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/18/2020 08:10AM by Soft Machine.

HAHAHAHAHAH Ha.

Because there was no need to know or do anything before the fall. Humanity have to discover everything through their labor.

Cauda Wrote:
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> Because there was no need to know or do anything
> before the fall. Humanity have to discover
> everything through their labor.

Ashamed, they has fig leaves and it hadn't gotten very cold yet but the reality show Survivor could subtlety take the same theme and run with it in Naked And Afraid. We again only use faith though because fuzzy night vision video wasn't to show up for another five thousand years or so.

Swedish are maybe less inhibiting but alas, Americans struggling for ratings above practically almost anyone out there just couldn't jump fast enough, given the opportunity.

Adam and Adam might still have to wait a while for Naked And Unafraid ha ha ha..

In those days it just didn't get that cold in Missouri.

They didn't need fire and only finally started gathering tinder and sparking rocks after they beheld Elijah being taking to heaven in a chariot of fire. This was just before they all moved to Jerusalem.

You can find this in the Texas Erectus Bible. I know cuz my new name is Elias, short for Elijah.

Done & Done Wrote:
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> In those days it just didn't get that cold in
> Missouri.
>
> They didn't need fire and only finally started
> gathering tinder and sparking rocks after they
> beheld Elijah being taking to heaven in a chariot
> of fire. This was just before they all moved to
> Jerusalem.
>
> You can find this in the Texas Erectus Bible. I
> know cuz my new name is Elias, short for Elijah.

Hemmed in by the Wisconsin River up north and the bigger Mississippi waterway to the west of Dickeyville Smith would easily choose somewhere close by (he always did) for another one his simpleton claims. Just out of reach on the other side of the dangerous Mississippi was Eden, how very convenient if not convincing.

Never true but pathetically desperate of Smith in knitting almost anything that happened to pop into his tortured and broken thinking.

Cowbell

Beth Wrote:
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> Cowbell

Wasn't that "More" Cowbell, silly?

You know, I was conflicted. More cowbell means that there must already be cowbell. No cowbell in the big inning.

Beth Wrote:
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> You know, I was conflicted. More cowbell means
> that there must already be cowbell. No cowbell in
> the big inning.
Ha.. BIG iNNING!

We've lately had the best new lines, on our own SNl roll I guess..

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j8kIzOr6DP8&list=LL8m320zZouvRw0767FFiaGQ&index=5

It's turtles all the way down.

Dave the Atheist Wrote:
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> It's turtles all the way down.

It might not be all that depressing, here have a peek from maybe somewhere beneath that upside down shell.

I was in a lot of pain when just before, and also while beginning my exit from mormo-ism. I was in need. All of the gauges on my personal dashboard were screaming and blinking and reading way too high except maybe one. The fuel gauge was empty.

What did I do wrong, I thought. I simply wanted to be able to trust. I needed to trust, why would somebody treat me so wrong. So I quit, didn't want to hear anything about it and I was happy.
Great I thought, I found my nitch and I thought I wouldn't have to thnk about that again if not for a very very long time. Was I done or what?

But I was lucky. As hurt as I was and as much of the CPTSD that I had earned there was a journey for me. Nope, famously there was a way where there was no way.

I peeked from under my shell.

RPackham Wrote:
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> Most cultures in the world have a creation myth
> that explains how the world came to be, how
> mankind began, etc.
>
> Most of them include a myth about how mankind
> acquired fire. But there is no story about that in
> the Bible. Why not, I wonder?

My (very IMperfect!) understanding is that fire in the Bible [means: Old Testament] is an indication of the presence of [God] (I can't write the Hebrew word for God here, but the unvoiceable letters, written right to left, are: Yod Hay Vav Hay).

If there is no fire in the creation story, I would assume that the lack of fire has important meaning in some way--but I don't know what that might be.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/18/2020 10:52PM by Tevai.

Left to right, no? YHWH.

Fire wasn't a big element of the original Hebrew myths; it entered the proto-Jewish tradition during the Captivity, for in the Indo-European tradition fire was very important. The parallel is Ahura Mazda, a sky god one of whose symbols was fire and who is worshipped in the light of the sun or the light of fire.

After the return from exile, fire took on new meaning in the emerging Jewish religion. Fire plays a big role in Daniel but especially in the latter half of that book, which was removed from the canon by the higher critics in the 19th century because it was too Zororastrian. The OT also has its chariots of fire, meaning the horses that draw the sun across the sky. That too was an Indo-European motif present in the swastika (the sun rolling through heaven) and the Greek Key (which is a variant on the swastika).

YHWH was originally a sky/storm god and it was easy to impart to him the imagery of the earlier Persian deity.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/19/2020 02:15AM by Lot's Wife.

Dunno how you have learned all this stuff LW,
--- but it is Delicious to read and ponder.

If you tell me which topics interest you, I will happily provide a bibliography.

Long story short, I was once studying Greek mythology and came across a passage in Hesiod that was almost identical to the second book of Daniel. I asked the professor about that and he gave me a ton of information about the interaction between various Indo-European myths and those of Israel and other places. His emphasis was less on the history than on the linguistics and mythology.

I wanted to learn more, so I read a bunch of books on the various Aryan peoples from Tocharia and India to Ireland while wading through books on Jewish/Canaanite mythology. Some of those books (Avesta Eschatology was a very old one whose name I remember, Norman Cohn's Chaos, Cosmos, and the World to Come) focused directly on the Hebrew/Israel/Judaea connection while others (Mallory, Renfew, gimbutas, Childe, et al.) addressed the Indo-Europeans.

It's a simple story. The proto-Jews (meaning the people who would return from Babylon) underwent a galvanic experience when interacting with the Persian elite who were also captive in Babylon. Those proto-Jews took monotheism, the sense of God in fire, the Book of Job (a version of which exists in the much older Avesta), and many other ideas with them when they returned to Palestine.

Here are a couple of treatments of the Swastika/Greek Key tradition.

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29644591

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika#Prehistory

This latter reference is particularly relevant in its pre-history and history sections.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
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> Left to right, no? YHWH.

I think it depends on how comfortable someone is when they are dealing with a language which is written right to left.

YHWH is how English-speakers read them (with the often used shift into pronouncing these as "Jehovah").

People who are reasonably comfortable with right-to-left, and/or are comfortable with switching back and forth from English (let's say) to Hebrew (or Hebrew to English), are fine with the Hebrew written language norm: HWHY ("havoheJ"). ;)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/19/2020 02:28AM by Tevai.

Yes, that makes sense.

My concern was that you listed the characters as "Yod Hay Vav Hay," which would be YHWH if read left to right. If read the other way, then the order should be "Hay Vav Hay Yod," wouldn't it?

Lot's Wife Wrote:
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> My concern was that you listed the characters as
> "Yod Hay Vav Hay," which would be YHWH if read
> left to right. If read the other way, then the
> order should be "Hay Vav Hay Yod," wouldn't it?

When Jews talk to each other, or when (let's say) someone like history teacher Henry Abramson is speaking on YouTube, we say either "Yod Hay Vav Hay" (which, in our brains, we "see" as right-to-left) or, alternatively, we say "HaShem" (means "the Name," a phrase which is used orally as a substitute for the English language word "God").

I was ineptly trying to explain the Hebrew language right-to-left shift (because it is probable that many here do not know that Hebrew is written right-to-left).

Instead, inadvertently, I made what I was trying to explain more complicated than would have been the case if I had just not said anything. ;)

And, with "havoheJ," I was trying to make an English-language joke about Hebrew.

I think it is time for bed.

Sweet dreams to everyone who is a part of this board.

Sleep well, Tevai.