What do you make of Adam being ashamed of being naked in the presence of God?
To me, that seems to be just something a clothed adult in a pudic society would think, not something the first man would actually feel.
To me, that seems to be just something a clothed adult in a pudic society would think, not something the first man would actually feel.
First: "Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame."
Then, later: "Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths."
I don't know, or care to focus on, how literal or figurative the story is. Perhaps it's describing a change that occurred during evolution to (or within) homo sapiens, a change that caused us to be more self-aware (in a bad way?), self-reliant, conscious of good and evil. Just speculation here.
This is something I think about sometimes. We now know that anatomically modern humans shared a timeline and even bred with Neanderthals and Denisovans, probably others. So there was a period when anatomically modern humans, probably cognitively modern (thus capable of language) or close to it, were interacting with these other archaic homo sapiens and probably became aware of their cognitive differences. Maybe these ancient stories reflect an early rationalisation of how human-neanderthal or human-denisovan physical and cultural practices differed. Of course the stories would have to be transmitted for thousands of generations...
Bonus armchair biblical hermeneutics: the Nephilim [1] are the biblical reflex of older stories about one or more archaic homo sapiens.
Though I don't think that's really about Denisovans and Neanderthals. It's just a transition from creation myth to other kinds of myth, and not reflective of any real events. I'm a Christian, and I'm firmly convinced that the first half of Genesis (possibly all of it, but definitely the first part) is just a collection of older mythological stories shaped into a somewhat cohesive whole, with some mention of God shoehorned in, whether it makes sense or not. It's certainly not meant to be taken literally in any way. There might be a kernel of truth to some of them (there probably was a big flood where someone saved a lot of animals), but that kernel is small. From Abraham onward, it starts to look more like it might be based on real events.
* As we get closer to the modern human, we lose body hair to better suit our hunting style. The trade off is we're much more vulnerable since our skin is pretty bad compared to almost every animal out there.
* We make up for this by literally taking other animals' skins and putting it on top of our own.
* Hunting societies begin to emerge in parallel to this change, and shame is a key element of the social interaction that allows that. Shame allows reinforcement and communication of expectations, all without violence or even language. Being exposed means that you cannot even take care of yourself, so you have to be able to show you are ashamed otherwise it means you're absolutely clueless and why would the group want you around if you're clueless?
These observations support my view that the statement "Being exposed means that you cannot even take care of yourself" is not universally correct.
Is it shame?
Is it something else?
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160919-the-real-origin-of-c... comments that it might be decoration.
> Gilligan points out that humans were probably decorating themselves long before clothes even existed. "When you look at contemporary hunter-gatherers who don't use clothing, they decorate themselves brilliantly with body painting. You don't need clothing in order to do that."
https://www.thesouthafrican.com/lifestyle/debunking-colonial... points to several "contexts and situations where elements of dress [broadly speaking] seem to have been of particular relevance." One example is:
> a hunter, before he tracks his prey, must cut himself and rub the cuts with a root called ssho /oa. And he must rub his body with it and wear ssho /oa in a band around his shoulders. This is to get the game to “run foolishly”, not knowing that it is afraid, and to approach the hunter as an equal. ...
> Far from being naked, or nearly naked, the Bushmen of colonial southern Africa had a complex and meaningful practice of dress. It was intimately related to subsistence, identity and their perception of how to live life in the world as they knew it.
The author's book is at http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/dress-as-social-relations/ .
Our skin is awesome compared to almost every animal out there. No other animal can sweat like we do, which is essential to keep our body temperature down during long periods of exertion. Humans can hunt almost any animal to exhaustion. We may not be fast, but we've got way more endurance than any other land-based animal, and our skin is a big part of that.
(Admittedly you alluded to this with "to better suit our hunting style", but I thought I'd make this more explicit. Human skin is fantastic.)