Paradise lost: it’s a story central to Christianity justifying the need for a saviour. For centuries Adam and Eve have been viewed as the archetypal man and woman. Dr Francesca Stavrakopoulou, Bible’s Buried Secrets 3/3: The Real Garden of Eden
I think the real story of Eden is too important to ignore. ibid.
It’s not just Christians who have read into the story details which are just not there. ibid.
It’s had a very negative impact in the way women are viewed. ibid.
I think it was a particular place in history. And there are clues to the real Eden in the Bible itself ... A garden constructed by human hands much later in history. ibid.
I think Eden was a garden built by humans for their God. ibid.
I think Adam was originally a king too. ibid.
There’s another version of the Eden story [Ezekiel 28] rich in detail and which many scholars believe is older than the Genesis version. In it there is no Eve and no serpent. ibid.
I think Eden was in the city of Jerusalem ... Everything points to the Jerusalem Temple being the real Eden. But how can a temple, bricks and mortar, be a garden? ibid.
The Biblical portrayal of the Jerusalem Temple is almost identical to the remains of this ancient temple in Syria – Ain Dara. ibid.
The Garden of Eden was found inside the Temple. ibid.
There’s no reference in Genesis to the snake being Satan the Devil. So what exactly is it doing in the story? ibid.
And it’s not just Eve who is ultimately condemned. It’s all of womankind. A damning indictment, but we now know that this was never the original intention of the Eden story. ibid.
The Gospel of Thomas found at Nag Hammadi was given a Carbon 14 test ... 300 - 400 A.D. Melvyn Bragg, The King James Bible: The Book that Changed the World, 2001
We travel from trailer park to trailer park spreading the good news. Trailer Park Boys s2e5: The Bible Pimp, Bible salesman
One tiny nation conquered again and again – it was the Israelites. Empires Special: Kingdom of David: The Saga of the Israelites: By The Rivers of Babylon PBS 2003
They were the people of the Book, the people of Abraham. ibid.
The Israelites would change human history as much as any empire that ever existed. ibid.
The Judaeans decided to fight for their survival as a people. They chose to fight not with spears and swords but by writing a book. ibid.
A guide to how the Judaean exiles should live. ibid.
The Judaean scribes began to re-write and edit together stories about their past ... the Hebrew Bible. ibid.
God gave Moses his laws ... The Ten Commandments were the heart of a binding covenant between God and the Israelites. ibid.
The story of King David ... The Israelites already had a king called Saul ... David was like a son to Saul. ibid.
The last remaining tribe of Israel: Judah. ibid.
The Book of Deuteronomy banned the worship of Asherah and other pagan gods. ibid.
After Josiah’s death the kings that followed him re-established the worship of Ashara and other gods. ibid.
God decided to send the Judeans into exile and start over. ibid.
In the 6th century B.C. Judaean captives in Babylon wrote the first edition of the Hebrew Bible. After they returned to Jerusalem this new book would define the Judaean people. Empires Special: Kingdom of David: The Book and the Sword
In 63 B.C. the Roman general Pompeii led his legions into the land of Judea. Empires Special: Kingdom of David: The Saga of the Israelites: The End of Days
The triumph of the Romans produced a crisis of faith amongst the Jews. ibid.
The zealots made a public declaration of war against Rome. ibid.
In 70 A.D. after a siege marked by starvation and terror of crucifixions the Roman army broke through the walls of Jerusalem. Empires Special: Kingdom of David: The Saga of the Israelites: The Gifts of the Jews
There would also be a monumental challenge from within: a breakaway form of Judaism called Christianity. ibid.
Masada: one rebel group was still holding out against Rome. ibid.
The rebellion began among a band of outlaws living in the countryside. Their leader was called Simon bar Kokhba. ibid.
The Roman now set themselves the goal of wiping the Jews from Judea. ibid.
The Romans changed the name of the region from Judea to Palestine. Then they banned all Jews from Jerusalem. ibid.
In the centuries ahead, this new prejudice of Christians towards Jews would lead to anti-Jewish laws, violent attacks and mass evictions. ibid.
You can’t be sure what materials are historical and what aren’t. This debate has been going on for two and a half centuries now. Professor Robert Eisenman
The [Christian] Gospel stories are no more historic than the Genesis creation accounts are scientific. They are filled with exaggerations, miracles and admitted propaganda. They were written during a context of time when myths were being born, exchanged, elaborated and corrupted, and they were written to an audience susceptible to such fables. They are cut from the same cloth as other religions and fables of the time. Taking all of this into account, it is rational to conclude that the New Testament Jesus is a myth. Dan Barker, Godless
The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the kingdom of God, who founded the kingdom of heaven upon earth and died to give his work its final consecration never existed ... He will be a Jesus, who was Messiah, and lived as such, either on the ground of a literary fiction of the earliest Evangelist, or on the ground of a purely eschatological Messianic conception. In either case, He will not be a Jesus Christ to whom the religion of the present can ascribe, according to its long-cherished custom, its own thoughts and ideas, as it did with the Jesus of its own making ... It is not given to history to disengage that which is abiding and eternal in the being of Jesus from the historical forms in which it worked itself out, and to introduce it into our world as a living influence. Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus ch20 results