Pathfinder627
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- Sep 26, 2020
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Pathfinder: "Even the Sumerians, who shared the basic underlying template of the story, presented Eden as a physical place. Except in their case, the Sumerian "gods" built this home for themselves."
Pagans are not a good source. Actually the notion that Eden was paradise in the sense that we use the word today seems to be a misconception. "Paradise" is a Persian word for garden but modern Christians take it as Heaven. Yet Genesis never says that Eden was a heavenly paradise, only that God prepared it for Adam and Eve as a place to live.
I'm only illustrating that someone as wrong as Sumerians would still not budge into the realm of Gnosticism. It's amusing to me that even they had a threshold here. That's all I'm pointing out. Projecting Gnosticism into all of this is an anachronism anyways. It's a school of thought that came thousands of years (or at least a thousand) later and doesn't exactly belong in the hopes of the ancient world or their ideas of paradise.
*Some* modern Christians aren't very informed either. Jesus comes back to make a new heaven and earth. Not just heaven. The Church has historically squashed the over-spiritualizing tendencies of the Gnostics, and taught the importance of both material and spiritual reality. Not just the latter. The core of the Church's teaching is that Jesus is both God and Man. And this is the hope behind his Resurrection itself as well. That we will be raised in glorified, but flesh and bone bodies. Not simply go to heaven. The Lord's Prayer itself is a call for the Kingdom of God to come on earth: "On earth as it is in heaven". The real work of the Kingdom starts in the here and now, not elsewhere. This is also why there are so many calls for down to earth justice throughout the scriptures. Not meditations and contemplation about other realities. But improving life here first. The more Christians get away from a social, down to earth "gospel", the less it becomes "gospel" (that is, good news). Few want to hear good news about somewhere else, but good news for this world.
"Stop bringing meaningless offerings!
Your incense is detestable to me.
New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—
I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.
Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals
I hate with all my being.
They have become a burden to me;
I am weary of bearing them.
When you spread out your hands in prayer,
I hide my eyes from you;
even when you offer many prayers,
I am not listening.
Your hands are full of blood!
Wash and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds out of my sight;
stop doing wrong.
Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow." - Isaiah 1:13-17
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