Immortality - Blessing or Curse? Part 1
It is said that scientists are searching for a way or a cure to make humans live forever. But sometimes I wonder, do we really want that? Many would say a resounding yes, without much thought. However, I sometimes ponder, does someone, somewhere in this world, possess this gift/curse (and you'll see why I use both terms for it)?First of all, we need to go back to the beginning of time when God created Adam and Eve, followed by their banishment from heaven to Earth, where theoretically, they lived for nearly 1000 years (Adam around 800 and something and Eve around 900, according to the Bible). However, this is what the Bible teaches us, a book that, even though it should be sacred, has been written and edited by many different hands. Therefore, I can't help but wonder if the truth might be different. Could it be that Adam and Eve are still among us, disguised as one of us, and with good reason (but I'll get to their reasons for hiding/disguising themselves a bit later)?
If we think about it, Adam and Eve were the first humans created by God, and a thought crosses my mind in the middle of the night. Would God really create the first two humans with mortal bodies? Would He want His first human creations to perish? Or would He prefer them to live forever, as a constant reminder for both God Himself (to see what His first creations looked like) and for the two of them (to remember the mistakes they made)? Even during the moment when God got angry with them and banished them to Earth to experience life with its ups and downs... would He really punish them by giving them mortality? Or would He prefer to punish them by giving them the opposite of mortality - immortality?
Why do I say this? Well (and here's where you'll learn why they might be hiding/disguising), immortality might be seen as a blessing, but it could actually be a curse. If what I believe is true, if Adam and Eve are immortal, they must have witnessed many pleasant events in their eternal lives, like the birth of their first children and those who followed. But they also witnessed unpleasant and very unpleasant events, such as the deaths of their own children, and the struggle between Cain and Abel, which ended, as we all know, with the first murder ever committed, and not just any murder, but a murder between brothers. And if what I'm trying to say is true, they must have witnessed so many unpleasant events in their eternal lives that most likely, while scientists are searching for immortality, the two (Adam and Eve, that is) are probably searching for death.
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Everything from Scifi to Vampire fiction nails it as a curse.
Everything from Scifi to Vampire fiction nails it as a curse.
Adam's Three Wives
Based off the Biblical account of Adam and Eve, the tale of “Adam’s Three Wives” is an old aggadahic story designed to expand upon and explain the myths and stories of scripture. In this case, the legend of “Adam's Three Wives” arose as an attempt to explain why we read in Genesis 1:27 about Yahweh (????) creating “Adam in His image…male and female He created them” and then later in Genesis 2 find a second account concerning the creation of a (apparently) second woman called Eve.
The explanation eventually reached was that Adam had had more than one wife. The woman from Genesis 1 would come to be identified as Adam’s first wife Lilith; formally a Canaanite demoness who managed to make a cameo in the book of Isaiah 34:14. Later the Midrash would add a third wife to the mix in an attempt to explain why Adam needed to be put to sleep before Yahweh could create Eve.
The best known version of the tale of Adam and Lilith comes from the 7th to 10th-Century text called the Alphabet of Ben Sira, though there are several variants. The tale of Adam’s third wife comes from the Midrash. The best known version of the story of Adam and Eve comes from, of course, the Bible’s book of Genesis, though those interested in variants should consult the 2nd-Century B.C. apocryphal Life of Adam and Eve. The following version is my own retelling…
“Adam’s Three Wives”
In the beginning, Yahweh created Adam. The first Adam was a hermaphrodite, an androgynous giant, simultaneously male and female. Equipped with four arms, four legs, two heads, two sets of s*xual organs, and two bodies joined back to back. But this arrangement made conversation awkward and locomotion next to impossible. So Yahweh decided to separate Adam into two beings. One male, one female. Adam and Lilith.
Lilith was Adam's first wife. She was not only beautiful, with long black hair, but also powerful and intelligent. She was, after all, Adam’s equal. A mirror image of what he was. All was fine between Adam and Lilith until the issue of sex came about. Lilith insisted on being on top, a position of equality, or perhaps even superiority. When Adam refused this arrangement, not wishing to be ‘below’ to his wife, Lilith left.
She headed west towards the Red Sea, and when she got there…the devil was waiting for her. He made her an offer to become his queen and she accepted, becoming the mother of the lilim, the incubi and succubi who have haunted the nights of the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve ever since.
Meanwhile, Adam found himself alone. He complained to Yahweh who sent three angels – Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof – to retrieve Lilith. But when the three angels found her, and all her demon spawned children, and demanded that she return to Adam, Lilith simply laughed at them. Humiliated and thus powerless the three angels failed to convince Lilith to return to her former husband but as consolation promised Adam that should anyone pray to them or hang their amulet above the bed of a mother in labor that they would shield that person from the lilim.
It was then that Yahweh decided to create a second wife for Adam. This wife was made from Adam’s own body. Yahweh pulled a rib from Adam’s chest and formed it into a woman from the ground up; bones, muscle, sinew, blood, mucus, organs, skin, eyes, cartilage, hair, etc… all right in front of Adam. Now, having witnessing this process Adam was so terrified that he refused to go near his new wife, much less name her. Yahweh then saw the error made in creating the wife in front of Adam and did what He could for the woman and destroyed her, though there are those who claimed that she, like Lilith, was permitted to leave the garden though what became of her is a matter of speculation.
So Adam and Eve left Eden and took refuge in a cave beneath the garden where they carved out a new life for themselves and the rest of humanity.
So Adam and Eve left Eden and took refuge in a cave beneath the garden where they carved out a new life for themselves and the rest of humanity.
Jesus was a Jew and Christianity is merely another cult.
The business about her wandering until the Red Sea is totally based on the Western (post ice age) belief Eden was in the middle East. However the Sumer tablets and some recent archaeology finds of pre-Ice Age constructs suggest that complex may have actually been in the part of the world we now call Southern Africa. In that case Lilith walking up to the Red Sea would have indeed been a long and difficult journey. It is recognized it is very important for several religions and the egos of those believing them that all of Genesis before Abraham took place in the Middle East. Even if that is a rorally false belief.
That this would of course open the door to the possibility that the mark of Cain is White skin is beyond the scope of this blog. Suffice to say that the egos of those with White skin would prefer it not be so. However we do notice in the scripture about Moses when he married an African woman and his friends objected to that, God put them all in their place by making their skin white at dinner time until they accepted the union. How many wives did Moses actually have? More than Cecil DeMills showed in the movie for sure.
Both the Christian Bible and the Sumer tablets attest that the first men were very long lived. I believe the Sumer tablets use the word immortal barring accident or violence. Certainly, someone like Methuselah hanging around breeding children for over 899 years might seem immortal to someone lucky if they barely make it to 115 years. So I am not sure they really meant 10 or 100 thousand year life spans.
Today we know that there is a counter inside our cells that regulates how many times a human cell can undergo mitosis (i.e., replication) before dying. There have been successful experiments on small animals (mice, rats, etc.) at turning the counter off. There are now dozens of lab animals that have lived 3 or 4 lifetimes (in a cage, poor things) more than do others of their kind and many exhibit no visible signs of aging. True Algernons for those that remember that story, or the mouse in the Green Mile. Yes, rich old people follow those experiments closely. I am sure eventually some of them will get the treatment.
As you say, it may turn into a curse. Would I want to live until the Earth's sun goes Nova and learn the hard way if we ever get our species off the planet? Then again immortality without invulnerability may result in a less than full life. Imagine losing both legs and arms in an accident, being 'saved' and for the rest of eternity being stuck in a bed dependent on various attendants coming in and flipping you over now and then or sliding a bowl under you so you can pass your wastes.
Then there is the fun of watching everyone you ever knew grow old and crumble. Almost none of our child hood friends are still alive when we are 80. Imagine how few there are when you are 380. Love becomes a brief fad as every 50 or so years you bury that one (or shuffle them off to a nursing home) and have to find a new one.
Alternatively, you will see and know so much. Nothing social will be new to you. You will probably know dozens of language and be a superb cook as well. You will by the end of the first 1,000 years know all things mechanical and many things chemical and scientific. As civilizations fall and rise, you will learn how to hide lest you be labeled a witch and burned or thrown into a volcano. You will probably become very rich with time. Compound interest in your bank savings account becomes a powerful friend after only a few hundred years. Are you sterile too? If not your girlfriend 400 years from now may be one of your own great great x3 grand children. Will you care or just go with the moment?