Tuesday, November 27, 2007

The Modern Telephone Game Illustrates The Possible Validity Of Ancient Interpretations
"The Telephone Game" is a game where people sit in a circle and repeat a story. The further you get from the original source, the more distorted the message becomes until it is almost unrecognisable. By the time a story goes full circle, "Johnny has a new bike" becomes "Jenny has a blue kite!" Granted, just because stories concerning intercourse between Eve and the devil were widespread among ancient Jews, that, all by itself, doesn't prove that Eve actually did have intercourse with the devil. Nevertheless, since these Jews were much closer to the original source of the story than we are, they are more likely to be accurate than later interpretations. Perhaps the descendants of Adam and Eve passed the story of how they were banished from the garden on from generation to generation via oral traditions. Perhaps Noah was familiar with this story and passed it on from generation to generation, again via oral traditions. Or perhaps the Israelites heard it directly from Moses and passed it on from generation to generation via oral tradition. This could logically account for why, as Tennant said, "various stories concerning the monstrous sexual intercourse of Adam and Eve with demons, and especially of Eve with the serpent or Satan, were both widespread and ancient among the Jews" (Ibid.).