φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ
In a departure from my set posting schedule, today, rather than a Main Project post, I’ve decided to post a Philological Concerns essay. The reason for the order switch is that I believe this essay on ancient philology will be crucial towards real engagement with this week’s Main Project topic. There are roughly 15,000 languages…
As we move to Genesis 2 and get closer to the first lines of the Adam and Eve story, there is a quick end to the creation of Genesis 1. After extracting habitable order from chaos using the articulated word, God sets to the task of creating the world as we know it. He does…
Ernest Becker, in his groundbreaking 1973 book The Denial of Death, famously says that “man is a god that shits.” Becker’s way of expressing this might be off-putting to some, but I think he really hits a home run here. We are not apes and we are not angels, but there is some kind of bridge…
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes” -Mark Twain In Genesis, and throughout the biblical stories, we are presented with a world in which human consciousness is of paramount importance. The modern world has seen its share of objections to the idea that human consciousness matters from the Club of Rome types and…
Using the KJV, the story of Adam and Eve has a total of eight hundred and ten words. Contained in this incredibly short and dense story are a number of themes. In no particular order and likely not exhaustive we see the themes of the divine order, the relationship between God and humanity, free will,…
In this week’s Main Project post we continued our discussion of the creation. After the heavens and earth were separated, but before Man was brought forth, God’s creative action differentiated the cosmos bringing forth the world and its denizens as we know it. With each step of the creation of order God’s final pronouncement on…
After creating the heavens and the earth from the deep which was void and without form, God sets to the task of creating the world. Between Genesis 1:3-25 there is a lot going on and most of it is quite subtle. It will bear careful consideration before we get to the creation of man. …
Earlier this week we spoke about the pattern that God sets at the beginning of time in the opening lines of Genesis. I want to spend a little more time talking about this pattern as it is absolutely crucial going forward. The first two lines of Genesis are In the Beginning God created the heavens…
Here we are. To the best of my ability I’ve attempted, in the last twenty-five posts, to create a primer for this moment. Beginning with the importance of the image of the shepherd in the ancient world to the Mesopotamian and Egyptian cosmogonies which preceded the ancient Hebrews, to how various scientific disciplines have found…
In this final post before we take up the task of walking through the stories of Genesis I want to talk about frames of reference as well as make some disclaimers. After all, to paraphrase Marcus Brody, we are meddling with powers we cannot possibly comprehend. Despicable people like philosopher John Gray and eco-fascist David…