THE BOOK OF THE FEW
GOOD NEWS: THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS ORIGINAL SIN!
 Genesis, one of the oldest books in human culture, contains stories even older, which by the time they were written down had been told and retold thousands of times. The stories are complex, sophisticated, entertaining, and, for the most part puzzling. Their purpose, supposedly, is to explain the beginnings of things. Where did we come from? Who made us? Why are we different from other animals? Where did we go wrong?
What is expected of us? Where are we going? Why can't we live forever?
These questions have puzzled human beings for all time. They're timeless and universal. And the answers, if they're to be found in Genesis, are subject to perennial reinterpretation.
In The Book of the Few, the late Harry Walter Moss, Sr. takes a fresh secular look at Genesis 2:5 through Genesis 3:24, the story of the so-called Fall of Man, in which Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge and were expelled by God from the Garden of Eden. His humanistic conclusions are startling and rewarding.
Most of us would have no trouble accepting a couple of Moss's basic premises: That the Genesis creation myth is fiction, and that whatever truth it tells is symbolic rather than historic. That the story is not the product of one writer but a compilation of various sometimes contradictory versions. But beyond those basics, Moss gets into new and controversial territory.
Moss was an intelligent, inquiring man who could not help asking, as many of us have asked: What in the world is so bad about knowledge? His answer, once he'd found a key to unlock what he considered the true meaning of the story, was: nothing. Some people would have us believe that by eating fruit from the Tree of Knowledge we were committing the Original Sin. Moss does not believe that. We were meant to eat from that tree, and we were meant to have knowledge. Knowledge, and the thirst for knowledge, are what distinguish us from other animals. There is no Original Sin. There is knowledge, and it is ours. Knowledge is good.
Unfortunately, we were not meant to eat from the other Tree, the Tree of Life, which means that we will not live forever. We will die.
But knowledge itself will not die. Knowledge is immortal, so long as we pass it along. And so long as we pass knowledge along, we may contribute to and enjoy its immortality. Thus a bit of us does live forever after all.
Pass it along. |
