Ramble With Me?

Ramble with Me?

Every morning my desktop calendar has a new cartoon from The New Yorker magazine. Today’s cartoon arrives along with this month’s e-bill from Kristen’s college.

“Sleeping with the Enemy - What happened between the Neanderthals and us?” (The New Yorker, August 15 & 22, 2011) visits a genome-sequencing project at an institute in Leipzig. They hope to discover DNA “differences that enabled humans, unlike the Neanderthals, with which they interbred, to build complex societies.” 

Neanderthal bones were first discovered in a limestone cave in the Neander Valley north of Bonn, Germany. There’s lots about them on the internet, my Google search this morning yielded 6,700,000 results. A report from Discovery News says genome research shows that if you’re not African you are part Neanderthal.

Anyone studying the Old Testament is likely to start with Genesis, where there are two wonderful Sunday School stories about the beginnings of God’s relationship with human beings. Genesis chapter one is the seven-day story. Some scholars believe it was written because the exiles who returned from Babylon found that while they were away, those left behind in Palestine had assimilated with the pagan society around them, worshiping objects of nature, sun, stars, sea monsters, the sea itself, the mountains, gods of weather, seasons, moon, fields and crops. They say the first creation story was meant to set the record straight about who it was that created and controls all this, and that it certainly was not the creation itself. That is to say, it’s absurd to worship the sun, moon, sea and ground: we worship the One God who created them and us. And God gave us authority over creation, not creation authority over us. 

The second creation story, Genesis chapter two, is said to be much older, even pre-historically timeless. The Lord God is in the Garden, and there creates the first human from dirt, which makes us earthlings, doesn’t it. Breathes life into us, loves us and raises us up. Both are faith stories about God's relationship with us.

Bruce Feiler in Where God Was Born takes us deep into ancient Mesopotamia, to the land of Abraham and Adam. Feiler’s Walking the Bible DVD has a wonderful adventure into the low country where he feels the Garden might have been. His are journeys of faith and exploration, a fascinating You Are There. 

Stirring up Eden, Adam, Neanderthal, homo sapiens and imagination, makes for intriguing Sunday School discussion. And watching TV in election year reveals that while most are Neanderthal, some are more Neanderthal than others, eh?

TW+