The Other People
A few weeks ago I was visited by *gulp* Jahova's Witnesses. In all seriousness, I have NOTHING against the Jahova's Witnesses or any other religious sect, UNLESS they come to my door and try to push their religious opinions on me as fact. What is fact to them may be fiction to me. I believe firmly in a person's right and free will to follow their own religious path. I do not "push" my beliefs on anyone and am highly offended when other people do not afford me the same courtesy. I recently expressed my concerns to a pagan friend of mine, who sent me the following essay. I think I'm not quite as brave as the good pagan folks in this account, but am DEFINATELY considering placing a "Religious Solicitation Prohibited" sign on my front porch. :-) I hope you enjoy the following essay and remember that it is intended to stimulate your brain and entertain you, NOT offend you. ENJOY!!!
We Are the Other People
by Oberon (Otter) Zell
"Ding-dong!" goes the doorbell. Is it Avon calling? Or perhaps Ed McMahon with my
three million dollars? No, it's Yahweh's Witlesses again, just wanting to have a nice little
chat about the Bible... Boy, did they ever come to the wrong house! So we invite them
in: "Enter freely and of your own will..." (Hey, it's Sunday morning, nothing much going
on, why not have a little entertainment?) Diane and I amuse ourselves watching their
expressions as they check out the living room: great horned owl on the back of my chair;
ceremonial masks and medicine skulls of dragons and unicorns on the wall; crystals,
wands, staffs, swords; lots of Goddess figures and several altars; boa constrictors draped
in amorous embrace over the elkhorn; white doves sitting in the hanging planters; cats
and weasels underfoot; iron dragon snorting steam atop the wood stove; posters and
paintings of wizards and dinosaurs and witchy women, some proudly naked; sculptures
of mythological beasties and lots more dinosaurs; warp six on the star-filled viewscreen
of my computer; a five-foot model of the USS Enterprise and the skeleton of a plesiosaur
hanging from the ceiling; very, very many books, most of them dealing with obviously
weird subjects... To say nothing of the great horned owl perched on the back of my chair
and the Unicorn grazing in the front yard. You know; early Addams Family decor. And
then, of course, it being late in the morning, you can expect Morning Glory to come
wandering out naked, looking for her wake-up cup of tea. Morning Glory naked is a truly
impressive sight, and the Witlesses look as if she'd set titties on stun as they stand
immobilised, hands clasped over their genitals. With the stage set and all the actors in
place, the show is ready to begin.
Their mission, of course, is to save our heathen souls by turning us on to "The Word of
the Lord"- their Bible. I guess they figure some of us just haven't heard about it yet, and
we're all eagerly awaiting their joyous tidings of personal salvation through giving our
rational faculties to Jesus. Every time they come around, I look forward to trying out a
new riposte. Sure, it may be cruel and sadistic of me, but hey, I didn't call them up and
ask them to come over; they entered at their own risk! This time should be pretty good.
After letting them run off their basic rap while lovely Morning Glory serves us all hot
herb tea, I innocently remark: "But none of that applies to us. We have no need for
salvation because we don't have original sin. We are the Other People."
"Hunh? What?" they reply eloquently. It's clear they've never heard this one before. "
Right," I say. "It's all in your Bible." And I proceed to tell them the story, using their own
book for reference: (Genesis 1:26) The [Elohim] said, "Let us make humanity in our own
image, in the likeness of ourselves, and let them be masters of the fish of the sea, the
birds of heaven, the cattle, all the wild beasts and all the reptiles that crawl upon the
earth." Elohim is a plural word, including male and female, and should properly be
translated "Gods" or "Pantheon." (1: 27) The Gods created humanity in the image of
themselves, In the image of the Gods they created them, Male and female they created
them. (1:28) The Gods blessed them, saying to them, "Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth
and conquer it. Be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven and all living
animals on the earth."
Now clearly, here we are talking about the original creation of the human species: male
and female. All the animals, plants, etc. have all been created in previous verses. This is
before the Garden of Eden, and Yahweh is not mentioned as the creator of these people.
The next chapter talks about how Yahweh, an individual member of the Pantheon, goes
about assembling his own special little botanical and zoological Garden in Eden, and
making his own little man to inhabit it: (Gen 2:7) Yahweh God fashioned a man of dust
from the soil. Then he breathed into his nostrils a breath of life, and thus the man became
a living being. (2:8) Yahweh God planted a garden in Eden which is in the east, and there
he put the man he had fashioned. (2:9) Yahweh God caused to spring up from the soil
every kind of tree, enticing to look at and good to eat, with the tree of life and the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil in the middle of the garden. (2:15) Yahweh God took the
man and settled him in the garden of Eden to cultivate and take care of it. Now this next
is crucial: note Yahweh's precise words: (2:16) Then Yahweh God gave the man this
admonition, "You may eat indeed of all the trees in the garden. (2:17) Nevertheless of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil you are not to eat, for on the day you eat of it you
shall most surely die." Fateful words, those. We will refer back to this admonition later.
Then Yahweh decides to make a woman to go with the man. Now, don't forget that the
Pantheon had earlier created a whole population of people, "male and female," who are
presumably doing just fine somewhere "outside the gates of Eden." But this set-up in
Eden is Yahweh's own little experiment, and will unfold to its own separate destiny.
(2:21) So Yahweh God made the man fall into a deep sleep. And while he slept, he took
one of his ribs and enclosed it in flesh. (2:22) Yahweh God built the rib he had taken
from the man into a woman, and brought her to the man. Right. Man gives birth to
woman. Sure he does. But that's the way the story is told here. (2:25) Now both of them
were naked, the man and his wife, but they felt no shame in front of each other. Well, of
course not! Why should they? But take careful note of those words, as they also will
prove to be significant...
Now this next part is where it starts to get interesting. Enter the Serpent: (Gen. 3:1) The
serpent was the most subtle of all the wild beasts that Yahweh God had made. It asked
the woman, "Did God really say you were not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?"
(3:2) The woman answered the serpent, "We may eat the fruit of the trees in the garden.
(3:3) "But of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden God said, 'You must not eat
it, nor touch it, under pain of death." (3:4) Then the serpent said to the woman, "No! You
will not die! (3:5) "God knows in fact that on the day you eat it your eyes will be opened
and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil."
What a remarkable statement! "Your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods,
knowing good and evil." The Serpent directly contradicts Yahweh. Obviously, one of
them has to be lying. Which one, do you suppose? And, if the serpent speaks true,
wouldn't you wish to eat of the magic fruit? Wouldn't it be a good thing, to become "like
gods, knowing good and evil"?
Or is it preferable to remain in ignorance?
(Gen. 3:6) The woman saw that the tree was good to eat and pleasing to the eye, and that
it was desirable for the knowledge that it could give. So she took some of its fruit and ate
it. She gave some also to her husband who was with her, and he ate it. (3:7) Then the
eyes of both of them were opened and they realised that they were naked. So they sewed
fig leaves together to make themselves loincloths. The author makes an interesting
assumption here: that if you realise you are naked you will automatically want to cover
yourself. Further implications will unfold shortly...
(Gen. 3:8) The man and his wife heard the sound of Yahweh God walking in the garden
in the cool of the day, and they hid from Yahweh God among the trees of the garden.
(3:9) But Yahweh God called to the man. "Where are you?" he asked. (3:10) "I heard the
sound of you in the garden," he replied. "I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid."
(3:11) "Who told you that you were naked?" he asked. "Have you been eating of the tree
I forbade you to eat?"
And so the sign of the Fall becomes modesty. Take note of this. The descendants of
Adam and Eve will be distinguished throughout history from virtually all other peoples
by their obsessive modesty taboos, wherein they will feel ashamed of being naked. It
follows that those who feel no shame in being naked are, by definition, not carriers of
this spiritual disease of original sin!
(Gen. 3:12) The man replied, "It was the woman you put with me; she gave me the fruit,
and I ate it." Right. Blame the woman. What a turkey! (3:13) Then Yahweh God asked
the woman, "What is this you have done?" The woman replied, "The serpent tempted me
and I ate." So of course she blames the serpent. But just what did the serpent do that was
so evil? Why, he called Yahweh a liar! Was he wrong? Let's see... (3:21) Yahweh God
made clothes out of skins for the man and his wife, and they put them on. Out of skins?
This means that Yahweh had to kill some innocent animals to pander to Adam and Eve's
new obsession with modesty!
And now we come to the crux of the Fall. Yahweh had said back there in chapter (2:17),
regarding the fruit of the tree of knowledge, that "on the day you eat of it you shall most
surely die." The Serpent, on the other hand, had contradicted Yahweh in chapter (3:4-5):
"No! You will not die! God knows in fact that on the day you eat it your eyes will be
opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil." So what actually happened?
Who lied and who told the truth about this remarkable fruit? The answer is given in the
next verse: (3:22) Then Yahweh God said, "See, the man has become like one of us, with
his knowledge of good and evil. He must not be allowed to stretch his hand out next and
pick from the tree of life also, and eat some and live forever."
Get that? Yahweh himself admits that he had lied! In fact, and in Yahweh's own words,
the Serpent spoke the absolute truth! And moreover, Yahweh tells the rest of the
Pantheon that he intends to evict Adam (and presumably Eve as well) to keep them from
gaining immortality to go with their newly-acquired divine knowledge. To prevent them,
in other words, from truly becoming gods! So who, in this story, comes off as a
benefactor of humanity, and who comes off as a tyrant? THE SERPENT NEVER LIED!
This story, to digress slightly, bears a remarkable resemblance to a contemporary tale
from ancient Greece. In that version, the Serpent (later identified as Lucifer, the
Light-Bearer) may be equated with the heroic titan Prometheus, who championed
humanity against the tyranny of Zeus, who wished for people to be mere slaves of the
gods. Prometheus, whose name means "forethought," gave people wisdom, intelligence,
and fire stolen from Olympus. Moreover, he ordained the portions of animal sacrifice so
that humans got the best parts (the meat and hides) while the portion that was burned to
the gods was the bones and fat. In punishment for this defiance of his divine authority,
Zeus condemned Prometheus to a terrible punishment for an immortal: to be chained to a
mountain in the Caucasus, where Zeus' gryphon/eagle (actually a Lammergier) would
devour his liver each day. It would grow back each night. Zeus promised to relent if
Prometheus would reveal his great secret knowledge: Who would succeed Zeus as
supreme god? Prometheus refused to tell, but history has revealed the answer...
The interesting thing about all this is that the Greeks properly regarded Prometheus as a
noble hero in his defiance of unjust tyranny. One may wonder why the Serpent is not so
well regarded. On the contrary, snakes are loathed throughout Christendom. (3:23) So
Yahweh God expelled him from the garden of Eden, to till the soil from which he had
been taken. (3:24) He banished the man, and in front of the garden of Eden he posted the
cherubs, and the flame of a flashing sword, to guard the way to the tree of life.
So that's it for the Fall. But the story of Adam and Eve doesn't end there. (Gen 4:1) The
man had intercourse with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain... (4:2)
She gave birth to a second child, Abel, the brother of Cain. Now Abel became a shepherd
and kept flocks, while Cain tilled the soil. (4:3) Time passed and Cain brought some of
the produce of the soil as an offering for Yahweh, (4:4) while Abel, for his part, brought
the first-born of his flock and some of their fat as well. Yahweh looked with favour on
Abel and his offering. But he did not look with favour on Cain and his offering, and Cain
was very angry and downcast. Well, why shouldn't he be? Both brothers had brought
forth their first fruits as offerings, but Yahveh rejected the vegetables and only accepted
the blood sacrifice. This was to set a gruesome precedent: (4:8) Cain said to his brother
Abel, "Let us go out;" and while they were in the open country, Cain set on his brother
Abel and killed him.
Accursed and marked for fratricide, (4:16) Cain left the presence of Yahweh and settled
in the land of Nod, east of Eden. We can assume that the phrase "left the presence of
Yahweh" implies that Yahweh is a local deity, and not omnipresent. Now Eden,
according to (Gen. 2:14-15), was situated at the source of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers,
apparently right where Lake Van is now, in Turkey. "East of Eden," therefore, would
probably be along the shores of the Caspian Sea, right in the Indo-European heartland.
Cain settled in there, among the people of Nod, and married one of the women of that
country. Here, for the first time, is specifically mentioned the "other people" who are not
of the lineage of Adam and Eve. i.e: the Pagans.
So let's look at this story from another viewpoint: There we were, around six thousand
years ago, living in our little farming communities around the Caspian Sea, in the land of
Nod, when this dude with a terrible scar comes stumbling in out of the sunset. He tells us
this bizarre story, about how his mother and father had been created by some god named
Jahweh, and put in charge of a beautiful garden somewhere out west, and how they had
gotten thrown out for disobedience after eating some of the landlord's forbidden magic
fruit of enlightenment. He tells us of murdering his brother, as the god of his parents
would only accept blood sacrifice, and of receiving that scar as a mark so that all would
know him as a fratricide.
The poor guy is really a mess psychologically, obsessed with guilt. He is also obsessively
modest, insisting on wearing clothes even in the hottest summer, and he has a hard time
with our penchant for skinny-dipping in the warm inland sea. He seems to believe that he
is tainted by the "sin" of his parent's disobedience; that it is in his blood, somehow, and
will continue to contaminate his children and his children's children. One of our healing
women takes pity on the poor sucker, and marries him... (4:17) Cain had intercourse with
his wife, and she conceived and gave birth to Enoch. He became the builder of a town,
and he gave the town the name of his son Enoch.
With both of their first sons not turning out very well, Adam and Eve decided to try
again: (4:25) Adam had intercourse with his wife, and she gave birth to a son whom she
named Seth... (4:26) A son was also born to Seth, and he named him Enosh. This man
was the first to invoke the name of Yahweh. Now it doesn't mention here where Seth's
wife came from. Another woman from Nod, possibly, or maybe someone from another
neolithic community downstream in the Tigris-Euphrates valley. But her folks also,
cannot be of the lineage of Adam and Eve, and must also be counted among "the other
people." But whatever happened to Adam? After all, way back there in chapter Gen.
2:17, warning Adam about the magic fruit of knowlege, Jahweh had told him that "on the
day you eat of it you shall most surely die." So, when did Adam die? (Gen. 5:4) Adam
lived for eight hundred years after the birth of Seth and he became the father of sons and
daughters. (5:5) In all, Adam lived for nine hundred and thirty years; then he died. Hey,
that's pretty good! Nine hundred and some odd years isn't bad for a man who's been told
he's gonna die the next day!
Well, the story goes on, and maybe next time the Witlesses come to visit I'll tell more of
it. But suffice it to say that those of us who are not of Semitic descent (i.e., not of the
lineage of Adam and Eve) cannot share in the Original Sin that comes with that lineage.
Being that the Bible is the story of that lineage, of Adam and Eve's descendants and their
special relationship with their particular god, Yahweh, it follows that this is not the story
of the rest of us. We may have been Cain's wife's people, or Seth's wife's people, or some
other people over the hill and far away, but whichever people the rest of us are, as far as
the Bible is concerned, we are the Other People, and so we are continually referred to
throughout.
Later books of the Bible are filled with admonitions to the followers of Jahweh to "learn
not the ways of the Pagans..." (Jer 10:2) with detailed descriptions of exactly what it is
we do, such as erect standing stones and sacred poles, worship in sacred groves and
practice divination and magic. And worship the sun, moon, stars and the "Queen of
Heaven." "You must not behave as they do in Egypt where once you lived; you must not
behave as they do in Canaan where I am taking you. You must not follow their laws."
(Lev 18:3) For Yahweh, as he so clearly emphasises, is not the god of the Pagans. We
have our own lineage and our own heritage, and our tale is not told in the Bible. We were
not "made" like clay figurines by a male deity out of "dust from the soil." We were born
of our Mother the Earth, and have evolved over aeons in Her nurturing embrace. All of
us, in our many and diverse tribes, have creation myths and legends of our origins and
history; some of these tales may even be actually true.
Like the descendants of Adam and Eve, many of us also have stories of great floods,
earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other cataclysms that wiped out whole communities
of our people, wherein "I alone survived to tell the tale." Nearly all of our ancestral tribes
(and especially those of us who today are reclaiming our own Pagan heritage) lack that
peculiar obsessive body modesty that seems to be a hallmark of the original sin alluded to
in the story of the Fall. We can be naked and unashamed! Why, our Goddess even tells
us, "as a sign that you are truly free, you shall be naked in your rites." Not being born
into sin, we have no need of salvation, and no need of a Messiah to redeem our sinful
souls.
Neither heaven nor hell is our destination in the afterlife; we have our own various
arrangements with our own various deities. The Bible is not our story; we have our own
stories to tell, and they are many and diverse. In a long life, you may get to hear many of
them... May you live long and Prosper.