Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?

wait for the religious quote from someone:

"but we are all created by God"

I don't know. But would it matter if they did or didn't?

It just makes you think!

Assuming they were human (if they really existed) of course they had belly buttons.

I've seen them in meditation. (In another, I slept with Lilith) Eve had puka shell anklets and not much else on. I suppose they wouldn't need them, would they.
Last night I had my first date with a woman I've been hoping to marry. She encouraged me to find my cats belly buttons. One of my cats was jealous and went on a destruction spree while we were together.

fiction

I'm happy for you!

But if they were created not born, why would they have a belly button which is where the umbilical cord leaves a scar.

Oh, I see what you mean. I didn't realize that's what the explanation meant. That is a good question.

"It is the tendency of the future to resemble the past if all other things remain unchanged". No comment.

You mean we'll have test tube babies without belly buttons?

I guess they hardly could have

well, if they were made in the image of God... then I defer to the other survey about whether God has a belly button

How can anyone know except them and God? they were the only people there. And it's not like it's in the Bible...

When the Bible talks about mankind being made in the image of God, it doesn't mean physically. It refers to the nature and character of God, which was evidenced in Jesus who came to Earth as a human being

No, but I don't believe that they existed, so I wasn't sure how to pick the answer, this should have been multiple choice. But I still think it is a good survey.

But Jesus looked like a human physically, so... I don't think your example proves your point.

So, did Jesus have a belly button?

Of course I did! I was born of Mary, and all that jibberish, it's an innie, by the way.

what does the H stand for?

That's one interpretation. But the Hebrew word that the Bible uses for "image" means a physical likeness. It's the same word used for the sorts of figurines of deities used in ritual worship. So I'd say the original intent of the word "image" was a literal one, meaning that people looked like God.

re: enheduanna's words. ..perhaps impyling that this creation and us are made of and are a reflection of the consciousness of God; not something separate from God which could not exist.

Of course! Everybody has a belly button! That is SO silly! It is like asking "Do men have nipples?". Just because they don't serve any purpose...

Well, there is the whole thing about belly-buttons being the place where you were connected to your mom, in her womb. ...but Adam and Eve were never in a womb (according to the Bible). ...then there's God, who probably doesn't have a mother either. So... it's not quite the same as male nipples. It's is silly though.

Oh yeah, I understand the "supposed" logic of the concept. It isn't a new one. I have a much more rational interpretation of Genesis that stands up to all the inconsistencies of the traditional fundamentalist Christian interpretation. Quite simply, the Adam and Eve story is both historical, and parable. They were not in fact the first or only people. Genesis makes reference to Adam and Eve's children marrying others. Cain is sent to another land where he becomes a patriarch. The historical part is probably the most boring stuff in the whole Bible. It goes on and on about Jeconiah begat Edrei etc. etc. for pages and pages. They keep coming back to it. I think you can trace Jesus back to Noah and Adam this way. The parable part is the most interesting though. The whole garden of eden thing is symbolic for why we are all here. We turned our backs on God, and had to leave paradise. We chose knowledge and individual choice over submission to the will of God.

Oh Oh! I'm rambling again...

I was referring to Jesus' nature, not his appearance, and Jesus was born naturally, so, yes, He had a belly button.

Hmmm... in a Bible commentary I'm reading it is said that being made in the image (or physical likeness) of God it is not in the features of man, not in his intellect, not in his immortality, but in the moral dispositions of his soul. More to do with morals and consciences than physical features. It's an interesting topic, huh?? Gives us something to think about!

I agree that the parable of the Garden of Eden is the interesting bit. The price we must pay for eating of the tree of knowledge... Ignorance is bliss, bliss comes from ignorance, knowledge is a burden. Humankind is born of our quest for knowledge, our willingness to be thrown out of paradise for the sake of knowing. Our nature will always be bound up in this quest for knowledge and we will continually be thrown out of paradise at each stage as we gather more knowledge. Powerful stuff.
The other junk: Adam's rib to make Eve, the snake corrupting Eve who corrupts Adam, that's all just old-time sexism though.
I still think 'does God have a belly-button?' is an intriguing question because it asks if God was created and thus undermines the whole idea of God as being the creator because something would still have had to create the creator. If you're willing to saying God has always been, then why not say the universe has always been and thus does not require a creator.

But we are not like God. Our morals and conscience are corrupt. ...or maybe you're saying that God is corrupt as well. Certainly, he's done and said (according to the Bible) some pretty horrible things. He's omnipotent, yet he allows perhaps even causes great suffering and injustice in the universe. Yes, perhaps we do share the morals of God after all.

Yeah, I think that's a decidedly modern interpretation, is all. It's reading the Bible as a living document which needs to be reinterpreted again and again with the times, so that it always remains alive. I think that's great, since we don't live in the same sort of society in which the Bible was written. But I also think it's important to have a sense of that society and their history and language, so that you can understand original intentions of passages as well. If you're interested, I'd be happy to refer you to some more academic, historical-critical commentaries. But be forewarned that they're the type of commentary that doesn't assume that God exists and/or had anything to do with the writing of the Bible.

But Adam and Eve weren't willing to be thrown out of the garden for eating the fruit. Being thrown out of the garden had nothing to do with it. God told them they would die if they ate it, and the snake told Eve that that was a lie and that they wouldn't die. Which was true. They didn't die. But they lost their chance at immortality; once they had knowledge, God became afraid that they would also eat from the tree of life, and become "like" him. So he tossed them out before they had the chance. Which would seem to indicate that Adam and Eve could have eaten from the tree of life whenever they wanted, so long as they also didn't eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. But they weren't immortal in the first place, so really they would have died anyway, if they hadn't eaten from the tree of life. Also, Adam didn't "trade" anything for the fruit; he just ate it because Eve gave it to him to eat.
As for the creation of people being "old-time sexism," I don't think that's entirely the case. There are two versions of the creation of humans in the Bible: one in Genesis 1:27 and one in Genesis 2:7 (man) and 21-22(woman). In the first one, man and woman are created at the same time and equally:
"God created man in his image,
in the image of God He created him,
male and female he created them" (1:27).
So while I take issue with the whole "man = man and woman" thing in general, I think this is a pretty clear instance of that being the case. Semantics aside, they were both created simultaneously and in God's image.
The version in chapter 2 has man created first: "the Lord God formed man from the dust of the earth. He blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being" (verse 7). In an attempt to find a mate (the so-called "fitting helper") for the man, God created all the other animals, which is kind of odd when you think about it. Why didn't God know that the other animals wouldn't match Adam? So God created woman:
"So the Lord God cast a deep sleep upon the man; and, while he slept, He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh on that spot. And the Lord God fashioned the rib that He had taken from the man into a woman; and He brought her to the man" (verses 21-22).
I'm not entirely sure I believe that account is "old-time sexism" either, although it's certainly less egalitarian than the first one. But it's also more dramatic; man is created lonely, without a "fitting helper," and the dramatic tension of the passage requires that the woman be created last. Some argue that this is a culmination of creation, saving the best for last, as it were. She is also created to be a "fitting helper" for the man; the phrase "fitting helper" is better translated as "an equal helper." The word "helper," keep in mind, is one which is most frequently used for God in the Bible, in reference to his coming to the aid of people. It's certainly not a negative term of subservience. So even though the woman is created from the man, as the man is created from the dust of the earth (which is none too auspicious a beginning, really), it's not clear to me that she's meant to be a lesser being than the man.

*reads some relevant bits of Genesis...chapter 3*
When God asks what's happened, Adam blames Eve and Eve Blames the serpent. God curses the serpent, then punishes Eve with pain in child birth and that her husband 'shall rule over' her. (God establishing the patriarchy?) Adam is cursed with toiling and eating from the fields. Part of the reason Adam is punished is that he listened to Eve.
I thought it was fairly common interpretation that Eve was blamed for making the decision to eat the fruit while Adam was more a victim for not thinking on his own. I was under the impression that leaders of Christianity used this part of Genesis to validate their subjugation of woman for centuries (millennia?). The same Puritan doctrine that lead to the burning of "witches". Woman were not to be trusted, all stemming from that damn piece of fruit. Well, I guess you're making the point that the Bible isn't anti-woman, more that some religious leaders chose to interpret it that way. I do agree that this bit of the Bible isn't clearly sexist, but I think there is some leaning toward inequality that must have come from the people who wrote it. Their God is a He, after all.

...as I re-read this bit of Genesis, I see all sorts of stuff to pick apart. God says "Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil". us? is God part of a pantheon? Zeus? Actually, I think you may have pointed this out to me months ago. I think there are other references to (the one true) God being a one-of or plural. I'm no bible scholar though... (I'm quaking in fear that you're going to rub anything I say about the Bible in my face because the truth is I just went to some Catholic Sunday School type stuff when I was a kid and I barely paid attention at the time. but... it's still fun to talk about).

Yeah, I really like that the serpent told the truth. That would make a good t-shirt. "The Serpent told the truth in the Garden of Eden; God lied."

It's also fairly odd that knowledge of good and evil equates to embarrassment over being naked. Surely, there's more to good and evil than that.

I think the details of the story are pretty messed up, they don't make a lot of sense. But if you take a step back, I think there's some metaphorical value to it (as I was going on about before, "knowledge versus paradise, a choice").

What's with God saying to the serpent: "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed" ...seed? What are we to make of that?!

Here's the Genesis, chapter 3 text I am using.

bill, I have to blame you all of all people for making these diatribes a burden to read,
scrolling back and forth, back and forth, because you didn't substitute a word for your
lengthy hyperlink?
I think naked means transparent; We could see ourselves as cut from the same cloth
till we got egos.

What are there the first documents pertaining to Lilith?

diatribes! ...well, I fixed it for you.

There's a reference to a lilith (small "l") in Isaiah (roughly late 8th century BC), but the reference there is just to a generic demon of the lilith-type. The lilith was a demon in Mesopotamian (Babylonian, primarily) demonology; she was a succubus, and liked to trick men (especially married ones) into sleeping with her and getting her pregnant. The first references to Lilith (with capital "L") as a specific character in Judaic lore don't come until the Babylonian Talmud, roughly 1st-2nd centuries AD. This is anywhere from 500 to 1000 years after the creation stories of Genesis were written. Genesis 1 is generally dated (roughly) around the late 6th or 5th century BC, and Genesis 2 (roughly) between the 10th and 8th centuries BC. There is nothing about Lilith in either of the creation stories in Genesis, nor is there any statement in either of them that the woman created in Genesis 1 was disobedient and that she was killed and another woman created in chapter 2. The two versions of the creation have no cognizance of each other and therefore no relation to one another. They are simply two separate versions of the creation myth. While the Lilith story is interesting as folklore, I think it's a serious stretch as an interpretation of the text of Genesis 1-2.

"Well, I guess you're making the point that the Bible isn't anti-woman, more that some religious leaders chose to interpret it that way." Yup. Well, parts of the Bible, anyway. Other parts of it are blatantly sexist, in my opinion. I think the creation story has been misinterpreted for millennia. I also was specifically limiting my discussion to the act of creating man and woman. It's true that the "curse" section of chapter 3 appears much more sexist. But if you read that section, you'll notice two things: 1) It never actually says that the woman is cursed. (Technically neither is the man; the ground is just cursed because of him.) 2) It's just describing the way things are. Granted, it's a patriarchal view of the way things are, and this passage is probably responsible for centuries of oppression, but I don't think the woman is really singled out for much worse than the others. And the man is certainly punished for not thinking for himself; but think about it: that means the woman is the one who was doing the thinking!

"God says "Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil". us? is God part of a pantheon?" Yup. (I didn't go into this before because my response was already long enough.) At least, that's one common interpretation, and the one I'm partial to. In fact, one of the names used for God, Elohim, is a plural. In the earlier sources of the Bible, God clearly exists among a pantheon of other divine beings, although he appears to be the supreme member of the pantheon. This is called monolatry. It is only later that the concept of "radical monotheism" is introduced into Israelite religion. Check out Genesis 6:1-4 and 11:7. Good job noticing that! And please don't quake in fear of my reaction! I love it when people pause to really read the text and take time to think about it and ask questions. Any time you have questions, please feel free to ask me what I think! I love talking about this stuff, as you can tell by my absurdly long responses!

And "seed" is just another word for "offspring." It's just Bible-ese.

And another thing to think about: if (following Gen 1) "the image of God" equals "male and female," then what does that say about the nature of God?

Merci

thank you so much. i'm slanting more towards polytheism on all levels these days. of course it's all god and of a single origin, but consider the possibility that god opted for amnesia and provided a safeguard of infinitely recombinant thought-matter that has no choice after an infinite period of time of regaining ultimately comprehensive self-awareness. it would explain a lot of my experience.
I didn't really expect lilith reference in genesis (just maybe). I have seen what I believe was a mesopotamian(?) earthly demon-lord in a meditation. (12' tall goat-locust looking thing on throne in desert with slaves and whips) (baal? anything similar to so something documented?) But now you strike my curiosity about how old testament writings may have inherited if at all from other more ancient or neighboring cultures like mesopotamia.
I'm glad you're finally offering your knowledge. If you publish a book, I want to buy the first signed copy. (hand manuscripts or interactive animated CD's would work too.)

So, that seed thing is just saying that human kids will be enemies with snakelettes? ho hum

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. huh? What a confusing jumble or words!

Do you know much about the rapture and Daniel? I saw on a recent Frontline (PBS news magazine TV show) about apocalyptic writings that the term "rapture" was invented by John Darby, it's not in the bible. But... I tried to track that down and I didn't have much luck. I saw writing about the rapture make reference to various part of the book of Daniel. I tried to read those parts, but they barely made any sense at all.
I had thought that Revelation was where all the apocalyptic writing was, but Daniel is something different. Any comment?

You might enjoy reading Towing Jehovah. ....this gives away the ending a bit, but... they determine that God kills himself in order to allow humanity to grow up. To step aside and let us become 'adults', not falling back on Him for support and moral backbone anymore. I found it a surprisingly poignant conclusion to an otherwise sarcastic novel.

Are you familiar with this little paradox: "If God is omnipotent, is He able to dig a ditch so wide, that even He could not leap across it?"?

yummy

I don't really know enough about iconography to answer your question, although I think Baal tends to appear in the form of a bull. Hence the "golden calf" episode in the Bible.
As for Mesopotamian influence on the Bible, there's plenty of it! You have only to read the Epic of Gilgamesh or Enuma Elish (the Babylonian Creation) to see it. In Enuma Elish, people are created from clay, just as Adam is made from dirt. In Gilgamesh, Enkidu, the wild man, lives in the wilderness, a place which is represented by the Sumerogram "EDIN." Sounds an awful lot like "Eden" to me. Plus Enkidu lives with the animals until the harlot comes and "civilizes" him; in Genesis, God creates the animals and doesn't find a fitting mate for Adam among them, and so creates woman. Some see this as a conscious rejection of the Enkidu tradition where man does live happily with the animals. There's also a Mesopotamian flood story called Atra-hasis which is remarkably similar to the biblical version. It's difficult to say how and when Mesopotamian myths, or thought in general, influenced Israelite ones (mostly because of issues of dating of texts), but it's certain that they did. If you're interested in reading some of these myths, Stephanie Dalley's Myths from Mesopotamia is a good source. It's a Penguin Classic, so it's affordable and fairly easy to find.

Yup, little snakelettes always biting at little human-baby-heels. Pretty prosaic.

OK, look at Gen 1:27 broken up into three parts:
"God created man in His image,
in the image of God He created him,
male and female he created them."
The first two lines say the same thing, just inverted in order. The third line restates the second one, but switches the sentence order and explains that "him" (i.e. man) really equals male and female. If man is A, God's image is B, and male and female is C then it's sort of like A = B, B = A, C = A. And therefore, C = B as well!
That probably didn't help, did it?

As for apocalyptic literature, it's not really my area of expertise. It tends mostly to be fairly late in composition, generally in the Roman period when things were pretty crapty for the Jews and they were predicting the end of the world a lot. Daniel is one of the latest biblical books (usually dated to the second century BCE*), and the only real apocalyptic literature that's preserved in the Hebrew Bible, although some of the prophets do have apocalyptic visions as well. As far as New Testament goes, I believe Revelation is the only apocalyptic text as well. However, there is a fairly large corpus of deutero-canonical and non-canonical apocalyptic literature from the Roman period. The deutero-canonical, or apocryphal, books are those which are included in the canon by the Orthodox and Catholic Churches (so you might be familiar with them): books like Tobit, Judith, Maccabees. The Apocrypha is generally sandwiched in between the two testaments in bibles which contain it. Part of one apocryphal book, 2 Esdras, is apocalyptic (other parts of the Apocrypha might be as well; I'm just not very familiar with it). There is also a large corpus of non-canonical apocalyptic literature collected in J. Charlesworth's Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, which I occasionally see at bookstores around here, if you're interested. The Harvard Bookstore might have it. Pseudepigrapha means "false writing," and is generally used of writings attributed to an author (say, Moses) but not actually written by that person. They didn't have quite the same standards on plagiarism in the ancient world that we have today! "The Pseudepigrapha" referred to as a corpus of writing generally includes those texts which didn't even make it into the Apocrypha. There's also a fair amount of apocalyptic literature among the sectarian writings of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Apocalyptic cults were fairly common in the early centuries CE, right around and just after the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem temple.

* I prefer to use the abbreviations BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (Common Era), rather than BC and AD, since the latter are explicitly theological. Even though the BCE/CE system uses the same theological date as its turning point, it's a slightly more academic way of referring to the eras.

thank you both.

also written 'can you make a rock so heavy it can't be lifted?'

One wonders if the original language which Genesis was written in had ambiguities relating to the use of him/her. Have you studied the original language of Genesis? (is it Hebrew?) I know I've heard of other cases where the Bible makes more sense when you take into effect the original language and what might have been lost in translation.

Thanks for the info on apocalyptic literature. The program I watched talked a lot about that period after Rome destroyed the temple. They even got into how most Jewish apocalyptic writing began after Babylon invaded and destroyed the temple the first time, and took the Jews off to Babylon (which they really hated). Oh, one bit that caught my attention was that the Babylonian king who did this to the Jews was Nebuchadnezzar, which was the name of the ship in "The Matrix". "The Matrix" has some other Jewish references in it. Their secret rebel city is named Zion.
I think that's where my interest lies, for the most part, regarding apocalyptic writing. I tend to be attracted to media that leverages it to make fiction, so I like to know where it comes from. I don't think my interest is strong enough to read an academic book about it though.
I agree that BCE/CE is a better choice, though I have to admit that BC/AD are so common now that it's probably unlikely their use will ever cease.

Genesis was written in Hebrew. In fact, the entirety of the Old Testament, except for a few chapters of Daniel and a few chapters of Ezra (which were written in Aramaic), was written in Hebrew. Hence the term "Hebrew Bible," which I prefer to "Old Testament," basically for the same reason I prefer BCE/CE. The "New Testament" is often referred to as the "Greek Bible" in contrast to the "Hebrew Bible," again to avoid the whole Christian-viewpoint thing.

There are so many references to the Bible in popular culture, and in older literature as well; that's one big reason I think people should be more familiar with the Bible. I had noticed the reference in "The Matrix" as well, and I was trying to figure out what its significance is. After all, Nebuchadnezzar was a bad guy. So it doesn't really make sense to me. I think they just chose it because it's a cool name!
As for the Charlesworth book, it is an academic book and has some introductory background material and such, but it's mostly just a collection of the texts in translation. So it would be a good place to go if you just wanted to find a collection of apocalyptic texts to browse at your leisure.

Imagine, if you can, speaking with no adjectives other than names of colors; they would all have a metaphoric content that synthesised meaning into any context, but could easily be misconstrued. Hebrew is a bit like that only every letter has a narrative gestalt, and every word is formula of meaning.
Almost every episode of Star Trek Voyager has a reference to ancient hebrew kaballism when naming or borrowing principles for characters or technology.

Oh, and Hebrew is mostly, but not entirely, gender-specific. It is gender specific for second and third person singular forms (so he/she is), and for some of the second and third person plural forms. It's not specific for the first person forms in most cases, although there are ways in which it can be. God is pretty nearly always marked as masculine, and even in places where there is female (especially maternal) imagery used of him, he's still referred to as a he. Hebrew nouns also have gender; there is no neuter gender.
But Hebrew also has a feature which most languages with gender have: if there is a plural subject of mixed gender, it is referred to as masculine. So a mixed group of, say, divine beings, would all be referred to in the masculine plural form "elohim."

and is God a plural subject?

When we were first created, we were created perfect, but then sin entered the world. We are born into a sinful nature, but by God's grace and mercy, if we accept His free gift of love, we become new people in Christ. We are not perfect, but God sees us as perfect - just as He sees Jesus - if we will simply believe and accept Him.
And God does not cause suffering - people cause suffering. Sometimes He may allow things to happen for reasons we cannot yet see, but because He is God, and He has a plan for each of our lives, He knows best. I've learned just to trust Him.

You might have been born with a sinful nature. My daughter was born with an innocent one.

Well, not exactly, but it depends on whom you ask! One of the divine names, "Elohim," is a plural, but is probably a holdover from an earlier, polytheistic system and always occurs with a singular verb form. "Adonai" is also a plural, but is used less frequently; the other names for God are singular. There are a few places (which I think were mentioned in some earlier comments on this survey) where there is a plural form (other than a divine name, that is) used in reference to God, and these tend to be interpreted in one of two ways: God takes the so-called "plural of majesty" (like "let us make man in our image..." [Gen 1:26]), or he's talking to other divine beings. I tend to go with the latter argument, and say that in the earlier stages, God was clearly conceived of as being a member of a pantheon. The overwhelming majority of instances where God is the subject, he's in the singular.

that would explain why he inherited an air of corporeality by this time.

Amen!

I spent my first few years destroying all I could. All the windows were boarded up because I tied a hammer to the curtain cord and would swing it at the windows. I tied our dog to the sprinkler and used a leathar cutter to make it half through the cat's ear. At five I learned remorse, and wouldn't harm a bug. My daughter was an innocent, but did need explanations on why you shouldn't poke sticks at tide pool shell life.

good question...

Male nipples do serve a purpose-at least sexually.