Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to myths, legends and folk tales, connecting the stories
of the past to the life and the present. Welcome
back everybody today's story. We're gonna be looking at Genesis
two eight through fourteen. We're gonna be looking at the
(00:22):
Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge, of good
and evil and what they mean psychologically. Well, look at it.
Some of the history between that concept of good and evil,
the dark side, the ying, and the yang. Young used
to mention this kind of dark shadow that we had, right,
It's a dark, unknown world of our unconscious is what
Carl Jung used to refer to it. He dealt a
(00:44):
lot with myths and stories and legends. And this is
one of the reasons we'll be bringing in Young to
this analysis today. Again, the shadow is this unconscious dark
side of our personality and it's instinctive. Sometimes it can
be irrational. What does that have to do with this, Well,
(01:05):
we're going to look at the Tree of Knowledge. I
want you to think a little bit about that as
well as the shadow, and we'll see what happens. So
we look at the garden of Eden in Genesis two eight.
The phrase a garden in Eden Eden means delight refers
to the larger area within which the garden was planted.
At the center of the garden was the tree of life,
indicating that humanity was not created immortal, but needed this
(01:29):
tree to live. Also, there was the Tree of the
Knowledge of good and evil. We'll be looking at that
a little bit more extensively later, because it's foundational to
the Western culture and has influenced the upbringing and psychology
of almost everyone in the US and in Western society.
Maybe many mythologists will look at this as a as
(01:51):
well as some biblical scholars, and recognize the story as
being in the genre of myth, which makes it appropriate
again to analyze it here today. For those who don't
believe it's a myth, that's perfectly fine. You can still
glean a lot from today's analysis. In my opinion, the
tree of the knowledge of fruit are good and evil,
whose fruit provided the ability to make moral distinctions, a
(02:12):
sense of ethical awareness. Knowledge of good and evil is
a merism for full moral knowledge, appropriate for God alone,
since he alone is omniscient or knows everything. You have
to remember, as children, really little one or two, I
mean two or three years of age, when our cognition
is starting to develop or starting to be aware of
(02:32):
our surroundings, and there's something called theory of mind. When
we're aware that other people are thinking like us. There's
still a lack of understanding of evil, right. We have
an innocent look about everything. We don't know that our
parents won't die someday. We don't know much about different
types of pain that can happen. And this awareness will
(02:58):
start dawning us as we get older. They're probably around
five six seven. We start understanding this as we watch
or read stories, or watch cartoons or things of that nature.
We'll start seeing things that are showing death in a
natural way, parents who passed. If you think about Cinderella
whose parents were dead, I'm trying to think some other
(03:21):
fairy tales of that nature. They start to look and
learn about that concept, but they also look at the
concept of evil they start learning as well as people
stealing from them, hurting them, bullying them, those things. This
is an awareness that happens now. If you look at
(03:41):
the world of sexual trauma, some will argue you can
have too early of an awareness, and this is problematic,
very psychological development. Now. The reason I bring that up
is because we see God here says not to each
out of the knowledge of good and tree, the tree
of knowledge of good and evil. And this almost makes
(04:02):
me think that they weren't ready. It's similar to how
we look at children when they can't understand something, some
kind of traumatic event we can't process that we disassociate
from ourselves, and in this case it seems similar. Let's
continue on. Both of the trees were sourced in God.
It was in the garden the proximity of the trees
(04:22):
that guard later manifested himself in order to stroll with
the first couple, and instead found them hiding behind the trees.
The garden was planted towards the east. Thus the entrance
to the garden was toward the east, and so go
into the garden one would walk in from the east,
whereas to leave one would walk out from the west.
This is established as a pattern in the Bible of
distinguishing between east and west in the early chapters. Generally
(04:45):
the west is viewed positively while the east is negative.
This restriction of the garden is not given for the
purpose of finding the garden. The post flood topography of
the Middle East at the time of the Israelites was
fundamentally no different from what it is today. The identifications
of the Pishon and Gihan are unknown, although the Gihan
has described as being in Kush in Africa, south of Egypt.
(05:07):
The Tigris and Euphrates rivers are in Mesopotamia. So now
what we're gonna do is start looking a little bit more.
The other interesting thing, too, is before we start looking
more is in verse fifteen. It sets to answer the
(05:29):
fundamental question of theology and philosophy, why do I exist?
That answer, however, is not to serve as a gardener,
as a traditional reading to cultivate and keep it suggests. Indeed,
this verse also presents a prime, though unfortunate example of
how giving attention both to context and meaning of Hebrew
words is critically important for the proper understanding of any passage.
(05:52):
The phrase put him in the first part put him
in the first part of verse for fifteen. Then the
Lord God took the man and put him into the
garden of It requires a closer look. You see, there's
a repetition that goes on described in verse eight. The
verb used in verse fifteen is different. But let's go
back to the young analysis here. As we mentioned, a
(06:15):
lot of mythologists will look at this as mythology and
the story Yahweh Warren's Adam before Eve is created, not
to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil,
or he will die that very day, And I'm assuming
the dying is the dying of innocence. In many mythologies
and religions, including traditional Canite Israelite religion, sacred trees have
been thought of as conduits for connecting with and directly
(06:37):
experiencing the divine. I think it's because they reach toward
the sky, whereas the Eden's story author insisted upon a
covenant contract between the divine on the one hand and
the human on the other. In the ancient Biblical world,
one way to experience the divine was to partake of
the fruit or other produce of the or other produce
of the sacred tree or plant. Does drink in the
(07:00):
essence of the divinity, ingesting and taking it internally. You see,
when Eve was tempted to eat the forbidden fruit, she
decided to eat it for various reasons, but mainly because
she desired wisdom. She wanted to know what was going on.
This purpose was realized immediately after Eve and then animate
the fruit. The eyes of both were opened, and God
(07:21):
remarked to other divine beings, see, the man has become
like one of us deities, knowing good. And even when
we talked about this, whether or not this is a
reference to Trinity, the questions become what kind of knowledge
did Anam and Eve acquire? What kind of transformation did
they undergo? Some will argue this relates to the psyche
(07:45):
in Asia Near Eastern creation myths, there was no such
thing as creation from nothing. Before the creation, there was
always something a formless, watery substance, even as characterized in
Genesis one one, because at that stage no time, space
or other order exists. The same is true before the
beginning of creation in the Eden story. So we continue
(08:08):
to understand this. The motif of creation from chaos was
universal in ancient Near Eastern common around the world. You
may ask why, Well, let's explain that this is a
natural result of our psyche experiencing its own ego consciousness
coming into being as world becoming. As far as our
(08:31):
psyche has concerned, our becoming of the world and the
world coming into existence were one and the same. This
process occur not only when humans first develop eco consciousness,
but also occurs in any young child's development and in
the life of adults, such as when we wake up
in the morning from an unconscious state and order falls
into place. Our unconscious has no sense of space or
(08:51):
time and a little sense of order. It is indeed
chaotic and has experienced as such. After the creation. Chaos
is not a eliminated but continues outside the cosmos, always
trying to encroach and undo the created cosmos. And in
this story, chaos is viewed as bad evil, while creation
(09:14):
is good. After all, God had created the ordered chaos,
I mean cosmos from chaos, so that's what he wanted.
The cosmos, in this respect has a teleological nature which
should be respected and maintained. That's a purposeful nature. This
is what yahweh Warren's kane about. Sin is lurking at
the door. It's desires for you, but you must master it.
(09:35):
Remember it's the same author of the Eden story. At
least what they surmise the same biblical author later described
as chaotic trade within human nature as wild imaginings of
the human heart in the ancient world, thought to be
the repository of thought and Again, when you look at
(09:55):
the story and you look at the shadow, and you
understan the dark side of ourselves, we have to come
to grips with it. We have to understand that we
have part evil inside of us, but what makes us
good is our ability to control that. There's a lot
of psychological studies that show that most of us have
(10:16):
and evil it dwells in us, but the overwhelming majority
of us control it, and we have that power. So
the story of the Garden of Eden can be looked
in various ways. It just depends on how it relates
to you in your life. Right, Sometimes we learn things
(10:39):
that we really don't want to learn. Maybe it's about
our family history, maybe it's about our own history, things
about people we like, people we love. So anytime you
see this awakening, maybe you'll think about the Garden of Eden.
When you're unconscious becomes conscious. Especially for those who suffer trauma,
(11:01):
it's a scary sight, but they can also help them
resolve conflict, internal conflict. That's it for now.
Welcome to myths, legends and folk tales, connecting the stories
of the past to the life and the present. Welcome
back everybody today's story. We're gonna be looking at Genesis
two eight through fourteen. We're gonna be looking at the
(00:22):
Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge, of good
and evil and what they mean psychologically. Well, look at it.
Some of the history between that concept of good and evil,
the dark side, the ying, and the yang. Young used
to mention this kind of dark shadow that we had, right,
It's a dark, unknown world of our unconscious is what
Carl Jung used to refer to it. He dealt a
(00:44):
lot with myths and stories and legends. And this is
one of the reasons we'll be bringing in Young to
this analysis today. Again, the shadow is this unconscious dark
side of our personality and it's instinctive. Sometimes it can
be irrational. What does that have to do with this, Well,
(01:05):
we're going to look at the Tree of Knowledge. I
want you to think a little bit about that as
well as the shadow, and we'll see what happens. So
we look at the garden of Eden in Genesis two eight.
The phrase a garden in Eden Eden means delight refers
to the larger area within which the garden was planted.
At the center of the garden was the tree of life,
indicating that humanity was not created immortal, but needed this
(01:29):
tree to live. Also, there was the Tree of the
Knowledge of good and evil. We'll be looking at that
a little bit more extensively later, because it's foundational to
the Western culture and has influenced the upbringing and psychology
of almost everyone in the US and in Western society.
Maybe many mythologists will look at this as a as
(01:51):
well as some biblical scholars, and recognize the story as
being in the genre of myth, which makes it appropriate
again to analyze it here today. For those who don't
believe it's a myth, that's perfectly fine. You can still
glean a lot from today's analysis. In my opinion, the
tree of the knowledge of fruit are good and evil,
whose fruit provided the ability to make moral distinctions, a
(02:12):
sense of ethical awareness. Knowledge of good and evil is
a merism for full moral knowledge, appropriate for God alone,
since he alone is omniscient or knows everything. You have
to remember, as children, really little one or two, I
mean two or three years of age, when our cognition
is starting to develop or starting to be aware of
(02:32):
our surroundings, and there's something called theory of mind. When
we're aware that other people are thinking like us. There's
still a lack of understanding of evil, right. We have
an innocent look about everything. We don't know that our
parents won't die someday. We don't know much about different
types of pain that can happen. And this awareness will
(02:58):
start dawning us as we get older. They're probably around
five six seven. We start understanding this as we watch
or read stories, or watch cartoons or things of that nature.
We'll start seeing things that are showing death in a
natural way, parents who passed. If you think about Cinderella
whose parents were dead, I'm trying to think some other
(03:21):
fairy tales of that nature. They start to look and
learn about that concept, but they also look at the
concept of evil they start learning as well as people
stealing from them, hurting them, bullying them, those things. This
is an awareness that happens now. If you look at
(03:41):
the world of sexual trauma, some will argue you can
have too early of an awareness, and this is problematic,
very psychological development. Now. The reason I bring that up
is because we see God here says not to each
out of the knowledge of good and tree, the tree
of knowledge of good and evil. And this almost makes
(04:02):
me think that they weren't ready. It's similar to how
we look at children when they can't understand something, some
kind of traumatic event we can't process that we disassociate
from ourselves, and in this case it seems similar. Let's
continue on. Both of the trees were sourced in God.
It was in the garden the proximity of the trees
(04:22):
that guard later manifested himself in order to stroll with
the first couple, and instead found them hiding behind the trees.
The garden was planted towards the east. Thus the entrance
to the garden was toward the east, and so go
into the garden one would walk in from the east,
whereas to leave one would walk out from the west.
This is established as a pattern in the Bible of
distinguishing between east and west in the early chapters. Generally
(04:45):
the west is viewed positively while the east is negative.
This restriction of the garden is not given for the
purpose of finding the garden. The post flood topography of
the Middle East at the time of the Israelites was
fundamentally no different from what it is today. The identifications
of the Pishon and Gihan are unknown, although the Gihan
has described as being in Kush in Africa, south of Egypt.
(05:07):
The Tigris and Euphrates rivers are in Mesopotamia. So now
what we're gonna do is start looking a little bit more.
The other interesting thing, too, is before we start looking
more is in verse fifteen. It sets to answer the
(05:29):
fundamental question of theology and philosophy, why do I exist?
That answer, however, is not to serve as a gardener,
as a traditional reading to cultivate and keep it suggests. Indeed,
this verse also presents a prime, though unfortunate example of
how giving attention both to context and meaning of Hebrew
words is critically important for the proper understanding of any passage.
(05:52):
The phrase put him in the first part put him
in the first part of verse for fifteen. Then the
Lord God took the man and put him into the
garden of It requires a closer look. You see, there's
a repetition that goes on described in verse eight. The
verb used in verse fifteen is different. But let's go
back to the young analysis here. As we mentioned, a
(06:15):
lot of mythologists will look at this as mythology and
the story Yahweh Warren's Adam before Eve is created, not
to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil,
or he will die that very day, And I'm assuming
the dying is the dying of innocence. In many mythologies
and religions, including traditional Canite Israelite religion, sacred trees have
been thought of as conduits for connecting with and directly
(06:37):
experiencing the divine. I think it's because they reach toward
the sky, whereas the Eden's story author insisted upon a
covenant contract between the divine on the one hand and
the human on the other. In the ancient Biblical world,
one way to experience the divine was to partake of
the fruit or other produce of the or other produce
of the sacred tree or plant. Does drink in the
(07:00):
essence of the divinity, ingesting and taking it internally. You see,
when Eve was tempted to eat the forbidden fruit, she
decided to eat it for various reasons, but mainly because
she desired wisdom. She wanted to know what was going on.
This purpose was realized immediately after Eve and then animate
the fruit. The eyes of both were opened, and God
(07:21):
remarked to other divine beings, see, the man has become
like one of us deities, knowing good. And even when
we talked about this, whether or not this is a
reference to Trinity, the questions become what kind of knowledge
did Anam and Eve acquire? What kind of transformation did
they undergo? Some will argue this relates to the psyche
(07:45):
in Asia Near Eastern creation myths, there was no such
thing as creation from nothing. Before the creation, there was
always something a formless, watery substance, even as characterized in
Genesis one one, because at that stage no time, space
or other order exists. The same is true before the
beginning of creation in the Eden story. So we continue
(08:08):
to understand this. The motif of creation from chaos was
universal in ancient Near Eastern common around the world. You
may ask why, Well, let's explain that this is a
natural result of our psyche experiencing its own ego consciousness
coming into being as world becoming. As far as our
(08:31):
psyche has concerned, our becoming of the world and the
world coming into existence were one and the same. This
process occur not only when humans first develop eco consciousness,
but also occurs in any young child's development and in
the life of adults, such as when we wake up
in the morning from an unconscious state and order falls
into place. Our unconscious has no sense of space or
(08:51):
time and a little sense of order. It is indeed
chaotic and has experienced as such. After the creation. Chaos
is not a eliminated but continues outside the cosmos, always
trying to encroach and undo the created cosmos. And in
this story, chaos is viewed as bad evil, while creation
(09:14):
is good. After all, God had created the ordered chaos,
I mean cosmos from chaos, so that's what he wanted.
The cosmos, in this respect has a teleological nature which
should be respected and maintained. That's a purposeful nature. This
is what yahweh Warren's kane about. Sin is lurking at
the door. It's desires for you, but you must master it.
(09:35):
Remember it's the same author of the Eden story. At
least what they surmise the same biblical author later described
as chaotic trade within human nature as wild imaginings of
the human heart in the ancient world, thought to be
the repository of thought and Again, when you look at
(09:55):
the story and you look at the shadow, and you
understan the dark side of ourselves, we have to come
to grips with it. We have to understand that we
have part evil inside of us, but what makes us
good is our ability to control that. There's a lot
of psychological studies that show that most of us have
(10:16):
and evil it dwells in us, but the overwhelming majority
of us control it, and we have that power. So
the story of the Garden of Eden can be looked
in various ways. It just depends on how it relates
to you in your life. Right, Sometimes we learn things
(10:39):
that we really don't want to learn. Maybe it's about
our family history, maybe it's about our own history, things
about people we like, people we love. So anytime you
see this awakening, maybe you'll think about the Garden of Eden.
When you're unconscious becomes conscious. Especially for those who suffer trauma,
(11:01):
it's a scary sight, but they can also help them
resolve conflict, internal conflict. That's it for now.
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