A Long Way from the Garden

Here we are, 6-10,000 years later if you think Adam and Eve really existed and Moses wrote the Torah. I've been reading some smart stuff at www.thejewishatheist.com, which I recommend.

Adam and Eve were kicked out into the world, and we're still struggling to figure out the book that recorded their story. Milton gave it a try and wrote Paradise Lost to "justify the ways of God to man." Why did Milton think God's ways needed justifying? Mark Twain hadn't even written Letters from the Earth yet. But someone had written the Book of Job, and it wasn't Moses--at least, no one has ever claimed that Moses was the author. Which is a good thing, since most dating I've seen puts the Job story in the fifth or sixth century BCE, and Moses, if he lived at all, probably dates to some seven or eight hundred years earlier.

You'd think if God had a clear plan for us all, he wouldn't have made it so easy to disagree about. I'm reminded of the Native Americans who rejected the arguments of Christian missionaries that they (the Native Americans) ought to accept a new religion. The Native Americans wanted to know why, if God so wanted everyone to believe in Him, He didn't provide them with a copy of the Bible. They had also observed that Christian belief had not made the Europeans any more kind, honest, or open-hearted.

This is just the beginning of the puzzles.

Milton felt he had to justify the ways of God to man, because on the face of it, to anyone who thought about the story, God's ways (the whole human history) could seem pretty a) far-fetched b) mind-boggling.

So, Milton came up with a long, long, long poem to explain a short, short, short story.