Near the end of the Book of Genesis, it is recorded that Joseph is abandoned in a well by his brothers, found by slave traders, and sold to Egypt. He becomes an advisor to the pharaoh.
Can it be that Adam, Eve, and Noah had also served in this capacity?
Ancient kings and even some kings in the modern era were thought to be divine. Can it be that when Moses recorded his peoples' earliest memories of themselves, the verbal accounts he relied on had blurred the distinction between "God" and "king?"
Perhaps ancient kings depended on people to serve as royal advisors to the court and to the people. Perhaps the people were told the advisors were demigods and were worth praying to. (Dem·i·god [ˈdemēˌɡäd] noun: a being with partial or lesser divine status, such as a minor deity, the offspring of a god and a mortal, or a mortal raised to divine rank: "some Roman emperors claimed descent from demigods such as Hercules") Perhaps living in the royal court and having everything they wanted was too corrupting. Perhaps they got savvy about how to game the system. The Book of Genesis implies strongly that Adam and Eve somehow got too wise.
If they learned to cheat and manipulate their handlers, perhaps the people of their day copied their ethic and learned to cheat and manipulate one another.
So how to breed worthwhile royal advisors along the lines of Joseph? Cast them out into the wilderness and let them live by their own wits. Let them build honest morals by having to grow food and maintain their shelters. Perhaps the king cleared the land "east of Eden" just for them. If you're not honest about whether you've built a good enough house or whether you've grown enough food, then you starve or freeze or get attacked by wild animals, and the harder you work, the more you have. Good for morals and work ethic.
Adam and Eve's recollections of the Garden of Eden may have been hazy because they felt no pain. They may also not have passed on the fullness of what they had been doing there. The garden was probably something like a large park in downtown Babylon or Ur or Persepolis. The streams had been named after the mighty rivers of the world, perhaps for whimsy's sake, or perhaps to represent the major rivers of the world for some form of divination, or something else entirely.
Perhaps, if not Noah, then someone like him had been leading the people of his day into corruption. Perhaps their role was some sort of demigod advisor to the farmers or tradesmen. Perhaps they cheated or manipulated their neighbors to get out of working hard instead of actually working hard and honestly, because their guide had learned to outsmart his royal handlers and they copied his crafty ways. Perhaps such corrupt advisors were sailed out of sight of land and told there was a flood, then taken to a place which was unpopulated or had been cleared of people in order to regain their morals and work ethic by having to work hard to survive and prosper.
There may have been a few families in each case because the intention was to start a society of non-sociopathic equals who would prosper or fail based on whether they were moral or hard-working. Then perhaps the plan was that kings here and there would find a way to obtain a few of them to help advise their people and their hardworking, moral epigenetics would preserve the worth of their advice for a while. It does say in Nehemiah 5:8 that Jews were always having to buy back their brethren from slavery.
Can it be that Adam, Eve, and Noah had also served in this capacity?
Ancient kings and even some kings in the modern era were thought to be divine. Can it be that when Moses recorded his peoples' earliest memories of themselves, the verbal accounts he relied on had blurred the distinction between "God" and "king?"
Perhaps ancient kings depended on people to serve as royal advisors to the court and to the people. Perhaps the people were told the advisors were demigods and were worth praying to. (Dem·i·god [ˈdemēˌɡäd] noun: a being with partial or lesser divine status, such as a minor deity, the offspring of a god and a mortal, or a mortal raised to divine rank: "some Roman emperors claimed descent from demigods such as Hercules") Perhaps living in the royal court and having everything they wanted was too corrupting. Perhaps they got savvy about how to game the system. The Book of Genesis implies strongly that Adam and Eve somehow got too wise.
If they learned to cheat and manipulate their handlers, perhaps the people of their day copied their ethic and learned to cheat and manipulate one another.
So how to breed worthwhile royal advisors along the lines of Joseph? Cast them out into the wilderness and let them live by their own wits. Let them build honest morals by having to grow food and maintain their shelters. Perhaps the king cleared the land "east of Eden" just for them. If you're not honest about whether you've built a good enough house or whether you've grown enough food, then you starve or freeze or get attacked by wild animals, and the harder you work, the more you have. Good for morals and work ethic.
Adam and Eve's recollections of the Garden of Eden may have been hazy because they felt no pain. They may also not have passed on the fullness of what they had been doing there. The garden was probably something like a large park in downtown Babylon or Ur or Persepolis. The streams had been named after the mighty rivers of the world, perhaps for whimsy's sake, or perhaps to represent the major rivers of the world for some form of divination, or something else entirely.
Perhaps, if not Noah, then someone like him had been leading the people of his day into corruption. Perhaps their role was some sort of demigod advisor to the farmers or tradesmen. Perhaps they cheated or manipulated their neighbors to get out of working hard instead of actually working hard and honestly, because their guide had learned to outsmart his royal handlers and they copied his crafty ways. Perhaps such corrupt advisors were sailed out of sight of land and told there was a flood, then taken to a place which was unpopulated or had been cleared of people in order to regain their morals and work ethic by having to work hard to survive and prosper.
There may have been a few families in each case because the intention was to start a society of non-sociopathic equals who would prosper or fail based on whether they were moral or hard-working. Then perhaps the plan was that kings here and there would find a way to obtain a few of them to help advise their people and their hardworking, moral epigenetics would preserve the worth of their advice for a while. It does say in Nehemiah 5:8 that Jews were always having to buy back their brethren from slavery.
