{"id":973,"date":"2014-01-28T03:56:33","date_gmt":"2014-01-28T03:56:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wearedone.org\/?p=973"},"modified":"2014-01-28T17:34:07","modified_gmt":"2014-01-28T17:34:07","slug":"bible-stories-garden-of-eden-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wearedone.org\/?p=973","title":{"rendered":"Bible Stories: Garden of Eden revisited."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/wearedone.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/stavrakapolou1.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/wearedone.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/stavrakapolou1.jpg\" alt=\"stavrakapolou1\" width=\"204\" height=\"300\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-974\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nI featured <em>Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou<\/em> Professor of the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion at Exeter, UK in her first BBC &#8220;<em>Bible&#8217;s Buried Secrets<\/em>&#8221; episode on the miniscule evidence for the Biblical King David a few months ago. Definitely check out this episode about the Garden of Eden and modern Biblical scholarship&#8217;s take on its origins and original meanings.<br \/>\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe class='youtube-player' type='text\/html' width='678' height='412' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Ccih0oP-OYA?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;fs=1&#038;autohide=2&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;wmode=transparent' allowfullscreen='true' style='border:0;'><\/iframe><\/span><br \/>\nIt is amazing how myths take on an interpretation all their own over the centuries, and get handed down to us as unquestioned and revealed truth.<\/p>\n<p>My first exposure to this phenomenon (being raised Catholic) was over the Immaculate Conception and Assumption of Mary.<br \/>\nWe were taught since she was the mother of God (or at least the vessel for Jesus to mature in&#8230;) she certainly couldn&#8217;t have the taint of Original Sin&#8230; How could something sinful hold God, right? So her mom, Mary&#8217;s mother, had the only Immaculate Conception ever, ever, in history and Mary was born without sin, without the big Osin!! Far out.<br \/>\nSO, for you thinkers out there you know this creates a whole other problem. Before the Fall from Grace by Adam and Eve, people didn&#8217;t die. But now they were mortal due to the degrading presence of Original Sin.<br \/>\nSo Mary wouldn&#8217;t, couldn&#8217;t die, no sin, dig?<br \/>\nSo she had to be Assumed straight up into heaven, didn&#8217;t pass go, didn&#8217;t collect the $200. Shucks.<br \/>\nNow these two dogmas are some of those eternal truths I&#8217;d learned since Catechism in first grade, right?<br \/>\n<em>WRONG<\/em>.<br \/>\nThey made it up. It had been on Catholic theologians minds (many a sleepless night, no doubt&#8230; this was before altar boys, remember) for centuries that Mary had to be Original Sin-free but it wasn&#8217;t until December 8, 1854 that it became unquestioned Catholic dogma, eternal truth.<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s not in the Bible. It wasn&#8217;t revealed, but delivered to us by Papal Bull (I&#8217;m not making this up )&#8230; bull is right.<br \/>\nThey made it up. They decided it by committee after a millennia of mulling it over and let the Pope declare it true for all time. Fuck me, you gotta be kidding, right?<br \/>\nThen, geniuses that they are, they realized now they&#8217;re fucked&#8230; she cant die&#8230; now what? It took them another 100 years to make the solution official.<br \/>\nPope Pius XII exercising his new found Papal infallibility (that being decreed only 80 years before in 1870) just up and declared Mary&#8217;s Assumption straight into heaven! Proclaimed <em>ex cathedra<\/em> November 1, 1950&#8230; 4 years before I was born. Some fucking eternal truth, huh?  I&#8217;m fucking old, but I ain&#8217;t <em>that old<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>And conveniently they grandfathered in the dogma of the Immaculate Conception which had been proclaimed 16 years before as infallible too in kind of a retroactive ex cathedra. Sounds like one of those cool snowboarders moves they bust out at the X-games;<br \/>\n&#8220;Dude, did you see that?  At the end his 360 off the box he cut a retro ex cathedra, man&#8230;Whoa! <\/p>\n<p>The technical term used by Mother Church is actually <em>&#8220;ex cathedra&#8221;<\/em> which is to mean &#8220;<em>infallibly true<\/em>&#8221; but literally translates as &#8220;<em>from the chair<\/em>.&#8221; From the chair!! I swear I&#8217;m not making this up&#8230; these guys could have written for stand-up!<br \/>\nYeah, it came from the chair alright&#8230; he pulled that one out of his backside fersure.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/wearedone.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/willywonkaoutaass.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/wearedone.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/willywonkaoutaass.jpg\" alt=\"willywonkaoutaass\" width=\"300\" height=\"298\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-975\" srcset=\"http:\/\/wearedone.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/willywonkaoutaass.jpg 300w, http:\/\/wearedone.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/willywonkaoutaass-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/wearedone.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/willywonkaoutaass-200x200.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>That did it for me.<br \/>\nYou fuckers have been telling me since I was little all this Catholic-Xian stuff was eternal god given truths that I&#8217;d surely burn in hell for rejecting, when in actuality a bunch of old virgin white guys in long dresses made this shit up <em>nearly two thousand years later<\/em> because of their longstanding theological conundrums? Fuck me.<br \/>\nThis is but one of many many examples of the Arrogance of Religious Thought\u2122.<br \/>\nStavrakopoulou&#8217;s and other modern Biblical scholars take on the Garden of Eden exposes another one. A real whopper.<br \/>\n&#8230; to be continued&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"bawpvc-ajax-counter\" data-id=\"973\"> (1431)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I featured Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou Professor of the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion at Exeter, UK in her first BBC &#8220;Bible&#8217;s Buried Secrets&#8221; episode on the miniscule evidence for the <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/wearedone.org\/?p=973\">Continue Reading &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":977,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,15,4,2],"tags":[277,275,276,278],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wearedone.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wearedone.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wearedone.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wearedone.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wearedone.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=973"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/wearedone.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":987,"href":"http:\/\/wearedone.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973\/revisions\/987"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wearedone.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wearedone.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wearedone.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wearedone.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}