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Originally Posted by romansh  So you don't buy Joseph Campbell's explanation of giving up the concept of good and evil, to get back to Eden (a state of mind)? |
Because my explanation is much simpler. A question that ancient peoples asked themselves is: "If there are gods, why are they not here?" Genesis 3 is how the Hebrews answered it, and as such, it's a very simple answer. Campbell's model requires an additional layer of abstraction; i.e. the peoples who believed in gods, had beliefs about those gods and what they did; they decided that the gods and humanity once had a "place" where they were together, in which humanity no longer lives. They then expanded upon this abstraction, making of it even more than just that it was a place where humanity and the gods (or God) lived together ... they assigned it certain metaphysical qualities and expanded it into a reality of its own.
None of this added abstraction is necessary, however, if one goes by my explanation.
I generally follow the principle of parsimony (which is that the simpler the explanation, the more likely it's true). Campbell and others don't follow that. I'm not sure why, but they don't. (Note, much earlier in his career, Campbell's ideas were, in fact, much simpler; I think what happened is that he became too enmeshed in his own speculations and they grew around him, and he never saw the unnecessary complication for what it was. Many scholars of various types typically fall prey to this, so it's not unusual or unexpected.)