The Bible and its symbolic meaning

A personal investigation into the meanings of the Biblical text

Philip Notley

Copyright © Philip Notley 2014 all rights reserved

All Bible references are taken from the New American Standard Bible unless otherwise stated

"Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard

Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973,

1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation Used by permission." (www.Lockman.org)

THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV®

Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

The text of the King James Version (KJV) of the Holy Bible (also

called the Authorized Version (AV)) is in the public domain. You may copy and publish it freely (http://www.davince.com).

Table of Contents

Introduction Part one Before the flood

I. Genesis 1 The dawn of conscious awareness II. Genesis 2 Eve the sister of Adam III. Genesis 3 The Silver age of farming IV. Genesis 4 The move to city-states V. Genesis 5 Mother Moon and father Sun

Part two The healing myth

VI. Genesis 6 The flood VII. Genesis 7 The Epic of Gilgamesh VIII. Genesis 8 Religion is our way of coping with religious

experience IX. Genesis 9 Quasi historical

Websites List of images

Introduction

To try to analyse the Bible from purely a symbolic perspective is not easy. So many differing elements are found in it, historical cultural and religious, as well as mythological. It is in the mythological stories and the direct religious experiences where its symbolic meaning lies. As these elements are interwoven with possible historic events older mythologies and parts where stories have been edited together to make the whole thing read as one long history make it harder to find them. Nevertheless, they are there to be found. Mythology’s and religious experiences come from the deep unconscious, thereby they can be analysed in the same way that dreams can be analysed. Both dreams and religious experiences are the products of our unconscious minds, there are many passages in the Bible where God talks directly to someone in a dream. As in (New International Version) Gen 20:3-7 But God came to Abimelek in a dream one night and said to him, “You are as good as dead because of the woman you have taken; she is a married woman.” Now Abimelek had not gone near her, so he said, “Lord, will you destroy an innocent nation? Did he not say to me, ‘She is my sister, ’ and didn’t she also say, ‘He is my brother’? I have done this with a clear conscience and clean hands. ” Then God said to him in the dream, “Yes, I know you did this with a clear conscience, and so I have kept you from sinning against me. That is why I did not let you touch her. Now return the man’s wife, for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you will live. But if you do not return her, you may be sure that you and all who belong to you will die.” There are still others where the experiences described sound more like visions than what we would call real events. A vision is very much like a dream but experienced in a waking state. In the Bible you enter a world where fantastic and in reality impossible events happen and are treated as real history. So it would not be hard to dismiss it out of hand as a lot of hocus-pocus. But the meaning in

our lives does not come from concrete reality but from inner meanings. When we dream the dream is not real because it is not something that actually happened. However we did dream it so something has happened, an inner event or experience has happened, it is just that unlike with reality no one else is aware of it unless we can remember it and recite it to them. We all have sides to our personalities that we are unaware of, though our close friends may be more aware of our hidden side than we are. In our dreams however nothing is hidden, dreams only show the reality of our personalities, if we can understand our dreams then we can understand ourselves. As true religious experiences and mythologies are also the products of our unconscious minds, but on a collective level, then the understanding of their symbolic meanings can bring understanding to us as a race and meaning to our existence. In the same way that the understanding of our dreams can bring to us the understanding of ourselves as individuals. The belief in a God or any set of religious belief can only continue from generation to generation if that belief system is reinforced and renewed from time to time with experiences that prove to you that your God is real. As well as God talking to someone in their dreams, there are also instances in Genesis where God or one of his Angels appears to someone and talks directly to them. (New International Version) Numbers 12:5-6 Then the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud; he stood at the entrance to the tent and summoned Aaron and Miriam. When the two of them stepped forward, he said, “Listen to my words: “When there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, reveal myself to them in visions, I speak to them in dreams. We as a race have not changed since ancient times so you would

expect such visionary projections of God to still be taking place today. Today however if someone has such an experience outside of an organised religion, for instance, their taken by aliens in a trip in their flying saucer. Then instead of being treated like a prophet, they are likely to be given psychiatric help, but in some instances, a new religion can start from the new “truth” that comes from the new gods. Within the big organised religions, this renewal process continues with instances like in 1858 Bernadette Soubirous finding a new spring at Lourdes that is today visited by thousands of Catholics for the claimed healing properties of its waters. Another example is Julian of Norwich in the 14th century who received messages from God. Monks will live a life of hard work and sleep deprivation with many hours of prayer every day to get into a state of mind where they can become closer to God. Whirling Dervishes put themselves into a trance state in which it is the world that is spinning and they are at its still centre. There have also been many Jewish mystics. Someone who is not mentally unbalanced in any way can still have a vision, this may fit in with their belief system and reinforce their religious commitment, or they can become “born again” or converted to something that they did not previously believe in. Personal experiences of God like this may then become part of the shared collective experience. For the majority who have never had God speak to them personally, mystics and profits who have received Gods word directly will benefit all who are willing to believe. The construct of organised religion brings a structure with strict rules to be lived-by; group ceremonies that everyone joins in;

and priests conducting rituals to commune directly with God on the congregation’s behalf. None of this would mean anything or stand the test of time unless these ritual experiences did not also commune with an individual’s inner world, which may not manifest but is still present inside.

I. Mountain

Part one

Before the flood

Chapter 1

Genesis 1 The dawn of conscious awareness

The Bible starts as everyone knows with the Genesis story of the six days of creation, the creation of the heavens and of the earth and of all life on the earth. This is still believed by many to be an accurate account of how the world was made by God, however in our world of scientific discovery and Darwinism’s alternative rational explanations it is easy to dismiss this account. Nevertheless, for a story to be so revered for so many centuries Genesis and all of the Bibles stories must mean something. They must be fulfilling a deep psychic need for them seem true even in the face of reason. If there is a God, the world is far older than the Bible tells us and took much longer to create than six days, if there is no God then we are just left with a myth with little or no real meaning for us today. So why then are these stories still believed by so many on a literal or abstract level to be the truth? After all no one still believes in Valhalla or the gods on mount Olympus. On the other hand, the anti-God pro-Darwinian movement does little to give us any understanding of ourselves or give any meaning to our lives. Therefore, for the Genesis creation stories to have lasted so long their meanings must lie deeper than a mere description of how the world was made. For these stories to mean something to us on a deep level, they have to be about us. The Genesis 1 creation story is very old and comes from the time or is about the time when the last ice age was ending, the first farming starting, and large permanent settlements were being formed for the first time. In that sense, the world is being created. It is the start of the new age of the human race, the forming of nations and the decline of the hunter-gatherer way of life. I think the story is also about something even older than that, the very dawning of our self-awareness, of human consciousness itself. All our lives parallel the development of consciousness in the human race, when as small

children we first are able to differentiate ourselves from our surroundings. The world is “created” by us, both as individuals and as a race when it is perceived as something separate from us. The all-seeing, all-powerful god’s that make our world are our parents when we are children and this is then projected onto our tribal or religious leader with the growth of society, or the head of the family in a smaller group. Then in turn, God is seen as bringing order and meaning to the world, the projection coming back to us from the vastness of nature that we are now psychically separate from. The Darwinists who do not believe there is a God may say that the Genesis 1 creation myth contains no truth and has no meaning at all. However although I do not myself believe in God in the way a religious person does and I do think that Darwin makes a lot of sense; surprisingly then it is the Darwinists that have that view that I have the most disagreement with. It can only be pure folly to suggest that a book that is so old and that is still read worldwide by ever-increasing numbers of people (According to The Atlas of Global Christianity, the number of Christians around the world has nearly quadrupled in the last 100 years from 612,028,000 in 1910 to 2,292,454,000 in 2010.) could have no meaning. It must have great meaning to have survived for so long. It is not as if it is read as a work of fiction. The truth can take many forms; information can be conveyed symbolically as well as factually. A well-known story like Beauty and the Beast for instance can be read as a children’s story, but its meaning if looked at on another level is of a young girl refusing the advances of a man. Then when she reaches puberty the ugly hairy smelly “Beast” turns into a handsome prince, who she then of course falls in love with and marries. The less developed story of kissing a frog carries the same meaning. Now I am sure I have offended some of my readers by comparing the Bible with a fairy tale. However I am just trying to point out that stories that are passed down from generation to generation told and retold over and over again are something very different from a modern day novel and carry underlying meanings that can add to and enrich our lives. Looking at the Bible stories symbolic meaning as well as their literal sense gives completely new meanings to things like the six days of creation, Eve taking the fruit from the tree of knowledge, and the flood. We now know the world was not created in six days, though some religious people still think so, but it was nevertheless created. There may not have been a tree

of knowledge, but the human race has acquired knowledge and I am sure there was a flood even if it was not a worldwide one. These stories from the creation of the world through to the flood are very old, though Genesis was written in the Iron Age as we can see here. (New International Version) Gen 4:17-22 Cain made love to his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch. To Enoch was born Irad, and Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael was the father of Methushael, and Methushael was the father of Lamech. Lamech married two women, one named Adah and the other Zillah. Adah gave birth to Jabal; he was the father of those who live in tents and raise livestock. His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all who play stringed instruments and pipes. Zillah also had a son, Tubal-Cain, who forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron. Tubal-Cain’s sister was Naamah. It would not be possible for Tubal-Cain to have been making iron tools if Genesis 4: had been written in the Bronze Age. Still it must have its origins in the Bronze Age or earlier because it is telling the story of a pre-Bronze Age time. It would be foolish as I said to dismiss the Genesis stories because there is no God and equally foolish to give them only a literal interpretation if you think there is a God. I see God’s “creation” of the world in Genesis 1 symbolically on three levels, the coming about of the conscious awareness of us as a race at the deepest level, the story of the development of modern humans and our domination of the world and lastly of our individual experience of achieving self-awareness in childhood. I suggest that this story of the creation is the story of our development from more basic unconscious beings into ones who have an understanding of the world we inhabit. This making of the world this coming into existence of all things though our growing awareness of them is our story seemingly the reason we were created at all. By being conscious of the world, we make the world conscious of its self. Our earth with no awareness has no meaning the story of Genesis is the story of our development from unconscious beings into the modern human race.

The Beginning Gen 1:1-2 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. The world formed from nothing by God in a miraculous act of creation. But the world already exists before we become aware of it. This is the first coming of awareness that there is a world, that something exists outside of us but it is still formless and dark, so still unknown. Both from the dawn of time of human consciousness and from the first awakenings of self-awareness of a child the knowledge that something outside of us exists is first perceived, but not yet understood. So the darkness is the unknown world, the deep waters our unconscious minds and the spirit of God our spark of consciousness, our will to understand and develop. Shining the light of awareness into the world for the first time and giving it form. Gen 1:3-5 Then God said, "Let there be light "; and there was light. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. Becoming aware of the day, understanding that night is followed by daylight the next morning must be one of our first steps towards understanding. We, as all life, instinctually follow the passage of the sun, day and night regulating our behaviour. The first feed a baby misses out is a night feed, before being developed enough to understand the difference between day and night. This is instinctual behaviour, becoming aware of the difference between night and day and that a new day follows the next is the second step in understanding a world that is separate from us. Distinct from pure instinct this is real awareness. God’s separating the light from the darkness is describing how human consciousness first grew to understand day and night above an instinctual level. Gen 1:6-8 Then God said, "Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters." God made the expanse, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was

so. God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. It is often argued, by Christians who do not hold the young-earth view, now that we have an idea of how incredibly old the world really is that a day spoken of in Genesis 1 is in fact not one day but a period like an epoch. As in English, we can talk of days gone by or say those were the days when we are talking about pastimes. This idea is of course put forward by those who know how old our world is but also still believe that God created it. It would be useful for me to go along with this idea because the dawn of our conscious awareness would have taken or through a small amount of time on the evolutionally scale and an even smaller no more than a blink of an eye amount of time compared with the great age of the earth itself. Still it would have been happening slowly over many thousands of years peppered with just a few eureka moments. The facts however refuse to fit the theory, “the Israelites” way of measuring a day was from sunset and this is how the day is described as starting from the evening and you can hardly have an evening and a morning if your day is billions of years long. However I do see the day as being symbolic of a step in the evolution of the human mind, not as a real day at all. But it is clear that in Genesis the first week in the existence of everything was meant to be just that, one week. When the story says God created all these things in six days then this is what they believed took place. Dividing the year into weeks of seven days each with one day for recreation originates in Mesopotamia the Babylonians and the Sumerians both using this system of time, they named each day after the Sun Moon and planets that we still used in modern day English (Dividing a day into 24 segments of equal length starting with the ancient Egyptians). It is interesting then that the Hebrew God should choose to make the earth and the entire universe in a week the same length as one that is dedicated to the worship of other gods. We now think of our solar system as having nine planets, but no one knew that before the invention of the telescope, and the earth itself is not counted so you are left with the five planets visible with the naked eye plus our Moon and the Sun. All of which were seen as deities. So it seems obvious then that the week of six days work one day religious worship existed before our Bible story was written, at least in the form that it is passed down to us

today. A week of that length is used by God because that is how a long week was. Later the Romans had a week that was eight days long. If that had been the system of time in use when Genesis was written then I feel sure God would have made the world in seven days and rested on the eighth. So a day in the week of our creation story is only a symbolic day after all. The ancients perceived the world very differently to how we do today. It may seem strange to us to hear the sky talked about as being the water above, but water does come out of the sky. The separation of the waters by the making of the sky is our first perception of the sky. The key word here is separate, when we can separate one from the other and perceive the sky we are further down the road to awareness. Gen 1:9-10 Then God said, "Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear "; and it was so. God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters He called seas; and God saw that it was good. On our journey to becoming sentient beings, we “create” our world as our perception of it grows. The oceans and the land, not created but organized, gathered together in one place to form them as separate things. And God saw that it was good. God seeing is the key here; it is through our eyes that things are seen. The world is being made as we “see” and understand it. Gen 1:11-13 Then God said, "Let the earth sprout vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them"; and it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good. Would not our conscious understanding of food i.e. the fruits and seeds come before the awareness of the trees and plants that produced them, the holding seeing smelling, tasting, and the satisfying of hunger making a lasting impression. Properly it would but this part of our Bible story is about a more advanced knowledge of edible plants than just the experience of eating them. The catalogue of plants according to their kinds showing the ability to

remember what trees and plants are producing what edible seeds and fruits and presumably, when they are in season and where they are to be found. Essential knowledge for hunter-gathers whose existence relied far more on the gathering than on the hunting, but our world on day three has no animal life and seeing as plant and animal life evolved simultaneously a world of grass lands and forests without animals has never existed, except in the very distant past before air breathing animals had made their way out of the oceans. Therefore, our time here in the story of our species is from a pre hunter-gather, gather only vegetarian race. Which we now know is how our distant ancestors lived before they started hunting. (Scientific America 23 July 2012, Human Ancestors Were Nearly All Vegetarians By Rob Dunn) Plants are what our apey and even earlier ancestors ate; they were our paleo diet for most of the last thirty million years during which our bodies, and our guts in particular, were evolving. So naturally, it is these seed and fruit bearing plants that our verging consciousness next understands. Gen 1:14-19 Then God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years ; and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth"; and it was so. God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night ; He made the stars also. God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day. The biggest idea that I have problems conveying to others is that it is though our eyes that God sees the world. Self-awareness is a form of seeing and it is through our consciousness that the world becomes visible. This idea falls on deaf ears or produces blank expressions with believers in God because of course; God is everywhere and is all seeing. But that is the problem; you have to be in one place to look at something else. If you are everywhere all at once, you cannot do that and out of all the life that has ever lived on our world it is only us who have become conscious. When we

moved on from our archaic identity, which is a primitive form of consciousness where the subject and object are not separated. We brought for the first time into the world the eyes that can see it. When God saw that it was good it is our conscious awareness that make this possible because the passage of the seasons of the year of the days was first understood by us on a higher than instinctual level. It is easy to point out that you cannot have day and night on earth as in day one, before the Sun is formed on day four. In any case, the Sun is far older than the earth. However, seen from the point of view of awareness you know what a day is before you understand that it is the Sun that gives us the daylight to see by. A child will know about day and night before they have gained knowledge of the Sun its self. The same must have been true of the early human’s growth in understanding of the seasons. Knowledge of the seasons themselves before there connection to the Sun and its passage though a year is made. The ability to work out the time of year so you know when to sow and when to reap is of great importance to all farmers. Understanding that the passage of the Moon and Sun is in a yearly cycle and learning how to mark seasons and days and years, is the one event that has made it possible for us to move successfully from hunter-gathers to farmers. Extract from The Bible and its Symbolic Meaning Book available on amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008VAGIN4