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This is LONG, but well worth the read....

"We Are the Other People"
by Oberon Zell


"Ding-dong!" goes the doorbell. Is it Avon calling? Or perhaps Ed
McMahon with my three million dollars? No, it's Yahweh's Witlesses
again, just wanting to have a nice little chat about the Bible...

Boy, did they ever come to the wrong house! So we invite them
in: "Enter freely and of your own will..." (Hey, it's Sunday
morning, nothing much going on, why not have a little
entertainment?) Diane and I amuse ourselves watching their
expressions as they check out the living room: great horned owl on
the back of my chair; ceremonial masks and medicine skulls of
dragons and unicorns on the wall; crystals, wands, staffs, swords;
lots of Goddess figures and several altars; boa constrictors draped
in amorous embrace over the elkhorn; white doves sitting in the
hanging planters; cats and weasels underfoot; iron dragon snorting
steam atop the wood stove; posters and paintings of wizards and
dinosaurs and witchy women, some proudly naked; sculptures of
mythological beasties and lots more dinosaurs; warp six on the star-
filled viewscreen of my computer; a five-foot model of the USS
Enterprise and the skeleton of a plesiosaur hanging from the
ceiling; very, very many books, most of them dealing with obviously
weird subjects... To say nothing of the great horned owl perched on
the back of my chair and the Unicorn grazing in the front yard. You
know; early Addams Family decor.

And then, of course, it being late in the morning, you can expect
Morning Glory to come wandering out naked, looking for her wake-up
cup of tea. Morning Glory naked is a truly impressive sight, and the
Witlesses look as if she'd set titties on stun as they stand
immobilized, hands clasped over their genitals. With the stage set
and all the actors in place, the show is ready to begin.

Their mission, of course, it to save our heathen souls by turning us on to "The Word of the Lord" - their Bible. I guess they figure some of us just haven't heard about it yet, and we're all eagerly
awaiting their joyous tidings of personal salvation through giving
our rational faculties to Jesus. Every time they come around, I look forward to trying out a new riposte. Sure, it may be cruel and
sadistic of me, but hey, I didn't call them up and ask them to come
over; they entered at their own risk!

This time should be pretty good. After letting them run off their
basic rap while lovely Morning Glory serves us all hot herb tea, I
innocently remark: "But none of that applies to us. We have no need
for salvation because we don't have original sin. We are the Other
People."

"Hunh? What?" they reply eloquently. It's clear they've never heard
this one before.

"Right," I say. "It's all in your Bible." And I proceed to tell them the story, using their own book for reference:

Genesis 1:26 - The [Elohim] said, "Let us make humanity in our own
image, in the likeness of ourselves, and let them be masters of the
fish of the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all the wild
beasts and all the reptiles that crawl upon the earth."

Elohim is a plural word, including male and female, and should
properly be translated "Gods" or "Pantheon."

27 The Gods created humanity in the image of themselves, In the
image of the Gods they created them, Male and Female they created
them.
28 The Gods blessed them, saying to them, "Be fruitful, multiply,
fill the earth and conquer it. Be masters of the fish of the sea,
the birds of heaven and all living animals on the earth."

Now clearly, here we are talking about the original creation of the
human species: male and female. All the animals,plants, etc. have
all been created in previous verses. This is before the Garden of
Eden, and Yahweh is not mentioned as the creator of these people.
The next chapter talks about how Yahweh, an individual member of the Pantheon, goes about assembling his own special little botanical and zoological Garden in Eden, and making his own little man to inhabit
it:

Gen 2:7 - Yahweh God fashioned a man of dust from the soil. Then he
breathed into his nostrils a breath of life, and thus the man became a living being.
8 Yahweh God planted a garden in Eden which is in the east, and
there he put the man he had fashioned.
9 Yahweh God caused to spring up from the soil every kind of tree,
enticing to look at and good to eat, with the tree of life and the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the middle of the garden.
15 Yahweh God took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden to
cultivate and take care of it.

Now this next is crucial: note Yahweh's precise words:

16 Then Yahweh God gave the man this admonition, "You may eat indeed of all the trees in the garden.
17 Nevertheless of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you
are not to eat, for on the day you eat of it you shall most surely
die."

Fateful words, those. We will refer back to this admonition later.

Then Yahweh decides to make a woman to go with the man. Now, don't
forget that the Pantheon had earlier created a whole population of
people, "male and female," who are presumably doing just fine
somewhere "outside the gates of Eden." But this setup in Eden is
Yahweh's own little experiment, and will unfold to its own separate
destiny.

21 So Yahweh God made the man fall into a deep sleep. And while he
slept, he took one of his ribs and enclosed it in flesh.
22 Yahweh God built the rib he had taken from the man into a woman,
and brought her to the man.

Right. Man gives birth to woman. Sure he does. But that's the way
the story is told here.

25 Now both of them were naked, the man and his wife, but they felt
no shame in front of each other.

Well, of course not! Why should they? But take careful note of those words, as they also will prove to be significant . . .

Now this next part is where it starts to get interesting. Enter the
Serpent:

Gen. 3:1 - The serpent was the most subtle of all the wild beasts
that Yahweh God had made. It asked the woman, "Did God really say
you were not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?"
2 The woman answered the serpent, "We may eat the fruit of the trees in the garden.
3 "But of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden God
said, 'You must not eat it, nor touch it, under pain of death'"
4 Then the serpent said to the woman, "No! You will not die!
5 "God knows in fact that on the day you eat it your eyes will be
opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil."

What a remarkable statement! "Your eyes will be opened and you will
be like gods, knowing good and evil." The Serpent directly
contradicts Yahweh.

Obviously, one of them has to be lying. Which one, do you suppose?
And, if the serpent speaks true, wouldn't you wish to eat of the
magic fruit? Wouldn't it be a good thing, to become "like gods,
knowing good and evil"? Or is it preferable to remain in ignorance?

6 The woman saw that the tree was good to eat and pleasing to the
eye, and that it was desirable for the knowledge that it could give. So she took some of its fruit and ate it. She gave some also to her
husband who was with her, and he ate it.
7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realized that
they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together to make
themselves loincloths.

The author makes an interesting assumption here: that if you realize you are naked you will automatically want to cover yourself. Further implications will unfold shortly...

8 The man and his wife heard the sound of Yahweh God walking in the
garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from Yahweh God among
the trees of the garden.
9 But Yahweh God called to the man. "Where are you?" he asked.
10 "I heard the sound of you in the garden," he replied. "I was
afraid because I was naked, so I hid."
11 "Who told you that you were naked?" he asked. "Have you been
eating of the tree I forbade you to eat?"

And so the sign of the Fall becomes modesty. Take note of this. The
descendants of Adam and Eve will be distinguished throughout history from virtually all other peoples by their obsessive modesty taboos,
wherein they will feel ashamed of being naked. It follows that those who feel no shame in being naked are, by definition, not carriers of this spiritual disease of original sin!

12 The man replied, "It was the woman you put with me; she gave me
the fruit, and I ate it."

Right. Blame the woman. What a turkey!

13 Then Yahweh God asked the woman, "What is this you have done?"
The woman replied, "The serpent tempted me and I ate."

So of course she blames the serpent. But just what did the serpent
do that was so evil? Why, he called Yahweh a liar! Was he wrong?
Let's see...

21 Yahweh God made clothes out of skins for the man and his wife,
and they put them on.

Out of skins? This means that Yahweh had to kill some innocent
animals to pander to Adam and Eve's new obsession with modesty!

And now we come to the crux of the Fall. Yahweh had said back there
in chapter 2:17, regarding the fruit of the tree of knowledge,
that "on the day you eat of it you shall most surely die." The
Serpent, on the other hand, had contradicted Yahweh in chapter 3:4-
5: "No! You will not die! God knows in fact that on the day you eat
it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good
and evil." So what actually happened? Who lied and who told the
truth about this remarkable fruit? The answer is given in the next
verse:

22 Then Yahweh God said, "See, the man has become like one of us,
with his knowledge of good and evil. He must not be allowed to
stretch his hand out next and pick from the tree of life also, and
eat some and live forever."

Get that? Yahweh himself admits that he had lied! In fact, and in
Yahweh's own words, the Serpent spoke the absolute truth! And
moreover, Yahweh tells the rest of the Pantheon that he intends to
evict Adam (and presumably Eve as well) to keep them from gaining
immortality to go with their newly-acquired divine knowledge. To
prevent them, in other words, from truly becoming gods! So who, in
this story, comes off as a benefactor of humanity, and who comes off as a tyrant? THE SERPENT NEVER LIED!

This story, to digress slightly, bears a remarkable resemblance to a contemporary tale from ancient Greece. In that version, the Serpent
(later identified as Lucifer, the Light-Bearer) may be equated with
the heroic titan Prometheus, who championed humanity against the
tyranny of Zeus, who wished for people to be mere slaves of the
gods. Prometheus, whose name means "forethought," gave people
wisdom, intelligence, and fire stolen from Olympus. Moreover, he
ordained the portions of animal sacrifice so that humans got the
best parts (the meat and hides) while the portion that was burned to the gods was the bones and fat. In punishment for this defiance of
his divine authority, Zeus condemned Prometheus to a terrible
punishment for an immortal: to be chained to a mountain in the
Caucasus, where Zeus' gryphon/eagle (actually a Lammergier) would
devour his liver each day. It would grow back each night. Zeus
promised to relent if Prometheus would reveal his great secret
knowledge: Who would succeed Zeus as supreme god? Prometheus refused to tell, but history has revealed the answer...

The interesting thing about all this is that the Greeks properly
regarded Prometheus as a noble hero in his defiance of unjust
tyranny. One may wonder why the Serpent is not so well regarded. On
the contrary, snakes are loathed throughout Christiandom.

23 So Yahweh God expelled him from the garden of Eden, to till the
soil from which he had been taken.
24 He banished the man, and in front of the garden of Eden he posted the cherubs, and the flame of a flashing sword, to guard the way to
the tree of life.

So that's it for the Fall. But the story of Adam and Eve doesn't end there.

Gen 4:1 - The man had intercourse with his wife Eve, and she
conceived and gave birth to Cain...
2 She gave birth to a second child, Abel, the brother of Cain. Now
Abel became a shepherd and kept flocks, while Cain tilled the soil.
3 Time passed and Cain brought some of the produce of the soil as an offering for Yahweh,
4 while Abel for his part brought the first-born of his flock and
some of their fat as well. Yahweh looked with favor on Abel and his
offering. But he did not look with favor on Cain and his offering,
and Cain was very angry and downcast.

Well, why shouldn't he be? Both brothers had brought forth their
first fruits as offerings, but Yahveh rejected the vegetables and
only accepted the blood sacrifice. This was to set a gruesome
precedent:

8 Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let us go out;" and while they
were in the open country, Cain set on his brother Abel and killed
him.

Accursed and marked for fratricide,
16 Cain left the presence of Yahweh and settled in the land of Nod,
east of Eden.

We can assume that the phrase "left the presence of Yahweh" implies
that Yahweh is a local deity, and not omnipresent. Now Eden,
according to Gen. 2:14-15, was situated at the source of the Tigris
and Euphrates rivers, apparently right where Lake Van is now, in
Turkey. "East of Eden," therefore, would probably be along the
shores of the Caspian Sea, right in the Indo-European heartland.
Cain settled in there, among the people of Nod, and married one of
the women of that country. Here, for the first time, is specifically mentioned the "other people" who are not of the lineage of Adam and
Eve. I.e., the Pagans.

So let's look at this story from another viewpoint: There we were,
around six thousand years ago, living in our little farming
communities around the Caspian Sea, in the land of Nod, when this
dude with a terrible scar comes stumbling in out of the sunset. He
tells us this bizarre story, about how his mother and father had
been created by some god named Jahweh, and put in charge of a
beautiful garden somewhere out west, and how they had gotten thrown
out for disobedience after eating some of the landlord's forbidden
magic fruit of enlightenment. He tells us of murdering his brother,
as the god of his parents would only accept blood sacrifice, and of
receiving that scar as a mark so that all would know him as a
fratricide. The poor guy is really a mess psychologically, obsessed
with guilt. He is also obsessively modest, insisting on wearing
clothes even in the hottest summer, and he has a hard time with our
penchant for skinny-dipping in the warm inland sea. He seems to
believe that he is tainted by the "sin" of his parent's
disobedience; that it is in his blood, somehow, and will continue to contaminate his children and his children's children. One of our
healing women takes pity on the poor sucker, and marries him...

17 Cain had intercourse with his wife, and she conceived and gave
birth to Enoch. He became builder of a town, and he gave the town
the name of his son Enoch.

With both of their first sons not turning out very well, Adam and
Eve decided to try again:

25 Adam had intercourse with his wife, and she gave birth to a son
whom she named Seth...
26 A son was also born to Seth, and he named him Enosh. This man was the first to invoke the name of Yahweh.

Now it doesn't mention here where Seth's wife came from. Another
woman from Nod, possibly, or maybe someone from another neolithic
community downstream in the Tigris-Euphrates valley. But her folks
also, cannot be of the lineage of Adam and Eve, and must also be
counted among "the other people."

But whatever happened to Adam? After all, way back there in chapter
2:17, warning Adam about the magic fruit of knowlege, Jahweh had
told him that "on the day you eat of it you shall most surely die."
So, when did Adam die?

Gen. 5:4 - Adam lived for eight hundred years after the birth of
Seth and he became the father of sons and daughters.
5 In all, Adam lived for nine hundred and thirty years; then he died.

Hey, that's pretty good! Nine hundred and some odd years isn't bad
for a man who's been told he's gonna die the next day!

Well, the story goes on, and maybe next time the Witlesses come to
visit I'll tell more of it. But suffice it to say that those of us
who are not of Semitic descent (i.e., not of the lineage of Adam and Eve) cannot share in the Original Sin that comes with that lineage.
Being that the Bible is the story of that lineage, of Adam and Eve's descendants and their special relationship with their particular
god, Yahweh, it follows that this is not the story of the rest of
us. We may may have been Cain's wife's people, or Seth's wife's
people, or some other people over the hill and far away, but
whichever people the rest of us are, as far as the Bible is
concerned, we are the Other People, and so we are continually
referred to throughout. Later books of the Bible are filled with
admonitions to the followers of Jahweh to "learn not the ways of the Pagans..." (Jer 10:2) with detailed descriptions of exactly what it
is we do, such as erect standing stones and sacred poles, worship in sacred groves and practice divination and magic. And worship the
sun, moon, stars and the "Queen of Heaven." "You must not behave as
they do in Egypt where once you lived; you must not behave as they
do in Canaan where I am taking you. You must not follow their laws."
(Lev 18:3) For Yahweh, as he so clearly emphasises, is not the god
of the Pagans. We have our own lineage and our own heritage, and our tale is not told in the Bible.

We were not "made" like clay figurines by a male deity out of "dust
from the soil." We were born of our Mother the Earth, and have
evolved over aeons in Her nurturing embrace. All of us, in our many
and diverse tribes, have creation myths and legends of our origins
and history; some of these tales may even be actually true. Like the descendants of Adam and Eve, many of us also have stories of great
floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other cataclysms that
wiped out whole communities of our people, wherein "I alone survived to tell the tale." Nearly all of our ancestral tribes (and
especially those of us who today are reclaiming our own Pagan
heritage) lack that peculiar obsessive body modesty that seems to be a hallmark of the original sin alluded to in the story of the Fall.
We can be naked and unashamed! Why, our Goddess even tells us, "as a sign that you are truly free, you shall be naked in your rites." Not being born into sin, we have no need of salvation, and no need of a
Messiah to redeem our sinful souls. Neither heaven nor hell is our
destination in the afterlife; we have our own various arrangements
with our own various deities. The Bible is not our story; we have
our own stories to tell, and they are many and diverse. In a long
life, you may get to hear many of them...

I love it!!!! This is great XD I like to listen to my mom, she does the same type of thing, only she goes against the LDS church when they send out missionaries... she's Baptist... but it's very amusing to me because she will argue and fight her for her religion, and will get out her bible and prove things they say wrong ^_^

She knows I'm pagan, and doesn’t try to change that, and I don't try to change her mind... although I've got half a mind to show her this just to make her think LOL.

o my!!!! that was so amazing"" heart love it!!! wish i could show this to my mother..i'll like to see her face...well...thnks a lot for posting this!! wow...it was amazing..

I've decided that I am ganna have to have my mom read this... She will appreciate it as another view of the bible, if nothing else lol.

This one diserves to be bumped up and stay out of the archives... ^_^;;

I find that that is the reaction from most people....it leaves them speechless!
Oh, I appreciate you taking it out of the archives!

Oh, and I kept it out of the archives because I think it's a very interesting peice and it would probably do most of us some good to read it ^_^

Yay ^^ I luff this whee Since I was a little bitty kid I've wondered where their wives came from xd It was essentially little things like that which made me stop believing the Bible xd

One of these days when I get some more ink I'm going to print this off and have lotsa people read it 3nodding