Folklore for Thought

Today I decided it would be a good day to read some of Frazer's book about the Old Testament. I was not quite sure what to expect as I opened it and began reading. I assumed it would be a dense work filled with big words and very hard to follow one thought from sentence to sentence. However, my reaction to the book was quite the opposite. I found it to be very easy to follow and reflect upon as I read. I chose to read the first part about the fall of man, I related it to the way Plotz talks about his reading of the Bible, in that it followed the story along chronologically and analyzed it as it went. Frazer, although, has a different approach to Plotz in what he relates his reading to, where Plotz looks at his life, Frazer looks at history and human existence in general. It is a great way to get more out of the Biblical readings in an understandable and concise way. In this chapter I learned more about the fall of man than I had known before, even considering my own readings of Genesis. Perhaps I missed it in class and other places but Frazer talked much about the existence of two trees in Eden. One was the tree of knowledge and the other the tree of life. Frazer looks at this book with an etiological lens, claiming, "The gist of the whole story of the fall appears to be an attempt to explain man's mortality, to set forth how death came into the world." He goes on to assert that man was given a choice to either die or live forever. He picks up on the notion that God gave man encouragement to eat from any other tree, suggesting that when the tree of knowledge was picked death was assigned and immortality was missed. Another interesting topic Frazer touched on was the idea that only one tree could have been picked, otherwise if both trees were eaten from man would be comparable to God, in that he would be all knowing and immortal. The other interesting lacuna Frazer discusses is the purpose of the serpent in the Garden and his deceit of Eve and Adam. He questions the serpents motive for deceiving Adam and Eve, saying he had nothing to gain from it and as a result of his actions he came out losing, by being doomed to crawl on his belly. He goes on to argue that the serpent actually is immortal because he can cast his skin and renew his life. All of these ideas I found to be very compelling and gave me a new way to look at reading the Bible. Frazer's sense of witty playfulness and knowledgeable insight showed me the light that is the Bible, and I hope to use it as I read on.