Post-genesis pre-abraham

[rasbat]

this may be a dumb question, but what if anything do we know about the beliefs of those living between being cast out of eden and the time of Abraham? I have always been a bit unclear on what was going on then. People were aware of God at the time of their creation, and then fell in eden. Were they just in a greater fog of ignorance of God until the theophanies and revealations of the old testament began? It would seem they were at least aware of God’s presence such as Abel’s sacrifices etc. but was this ignorance just an immediate effect of the fall, and we were slowly brough back nearer to knowledge or what? What about non hebrew peoples? did they just persist in ignorance because of not being exposed to revealation? I just ask because it would seem that the biblical narratives share themes with old sumerian writings etc. I just wondered if all people would have had some folk remembrance of their origins in eden. Maybe this accounts for the overlap. Everyone had stories but only the scriptures contain their fullness and proper understanding as well as the account of divine revealation. I partially want an argument against people who make foolish claims that the old testament ripped off the epic of gilgamesh and other such rubbish. In other words what happened here? did God pull back temporarily after the fall and slowly come back into contact with us? and what if any understanding of him did people have during this interval?

 

[KLM789]

Read the first book of the BIble, Genesis. It is easy to read, short, and fascinating and provides answers to your questions.

 

[asonct]

I believe God created Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Paradise to be the first parents of all of us. Not for the Fall, we all would have been born with Adam and Eve as our parents in Paradise. After the Fall, Adam and Eve were thrust out of Paradise below to earth. They were given the toils of labor and pains of childbirth. Once Noah reached by descendant of Adam and Eve, there were many people who were bad. God instructed Noah to build the Ark and fill it with his three sons and their wives and two of each animals (male and female). After the Great Flood in which it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, the bad people were destroyed. Noah sent out the raven and then the dove who came back with the olive branch. The rainbow sealed the covenant between God and mankind. God would not destroy the earth again by rainfall.

One sees the New Testament in the Old Testament. The new Adam is Jesus, the only Son of God. The new Eve is Mary, the Blessed Mother who in the new Ark would be conceived the Son of Man through the Immaculate Conception. Jesus grows and is tested in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights. By Christ’s death and Resurrection, a new Covenant is sealed between mankind and God. Holy Spirit is the dove that descends upon us all at Baptism. And we await Jesus to enter into Heaven, infinitely more beautiful and perfect than Paradise. O the Glory of God!

 

[Timothysis]

I partially want an argument against people who make foolish claims that the old testament ripped off the epic of gilgamesh and other such rubbish.

Then you are going to fail miserably. Understand what it means to create a new work based on an old one. That doesn’t make one “ripped off;” it means that the author used something that people already knew and understood in order to make a point. The stories in Genesis were not created in a vacuum. They were based on stories and legends widely known in the ancient world. Just because we don’t know of these stories today doesn’t mean that they didn’t have an influential role in those who were inspired to write scripture.

BTW, the Catholic Church is not fundamentalist in regards to scripture. There are many considerations to be taken into account when one tries to read a text that is over 3,000 years old.