Comix

Had a mental health day. Bought X-Treme X-Men 45 (written by Claremont) and Ultimate X-Men 44 (written by Bendis, whom I know from his Hollywood true story Fortune and Glory). Enjoyed them both hugely, after overcoming my initial dislike of the glossy pages - the art looked dull in UX looked dull, with people standing around having a lengthy near-monochrome conversation; but when I actually sat and read the dialogue, it clicked. Little Katie Pryde - who I've only now really realised is one of my favourite characters - has grown up, and despite a silly bare midriff, has correctly small breasts. Whew. Claremont's writing is much crisper than the seventies/eighties stuff I've been reviewing - less is explained, more is shown or is assumed knowledge. (Did anyone else have that thing where your eyes glaze over during the wordy moral at the end of an issue?)

Heck of a contrast with the early X-Factor (by the Simonsons) I've been reading over the last few days.

Further to this: just read that Claremont will be wrapping up XX, moving over to Uncanny X-Men, and restarting Excalibur, all in May. Wheee!

Genesis 3

Here 'tis. Notes to self for later research:

- OK, why does the serpent talk to the woman? Does he reckon Eve is dumber, smarter, more corruptible, or braver than Adam? I guess it's to justify her punishment in verse 16, which is a sort of retcon comparable to the explanations of patriarchal evolutionary biologists - it didn't get that way, it always was that way. (Similarly, the Mesopotamian stuff explains why we have kings and why the temples own everything.) It's interesting that this needed explaining - is it comparable to Paul laying down the law for early Christian women? OTOH, Adam is also punished by being made to work for their food. It's literally the end of their childhood - they're kicked out of home, him to be a worker, her to be a wife. God is creating the respective roles of adult women and men. (And yup, they're apparently still vegetarian - but they wear "coats of skins".)

- Why a serpent in particular? Obviously Adam and Eve, being mere children, couldn't have come up with this scheme themselves, but what did the serpent hope to gain?

- Is there a comparable story of the Fall in other contemporary mythologies? I can't recall any comparable concept from Mesopotamia.

- There's also nothing comparable in the Mesopotamian sources about being embarrassed about being naked. Rather the opposite, in fact.

- Why does God use the royal we in verse 22?

Just to accompany all this Creation stuff, the words of a beautiful hymn.

At the library I saw J. Stephen Lang's What the Good Book didn't say : popular myths and misconceptions about the Bible (2003) which triumphantly mocked those who call the Bible fiction for mentioning the Hittites, a people for whom evidence has never been found. I'd already heard of them, and not from the Bible, by the time I saw Ghostbusters in 1984 - perhaps because they've been known to archaeologists for over a century. I suspect Mr Lang might've been a bit desperate for material there.

Mondy - are there different versions of the Torah the way there are versions of the Bible? Must be much simpler not having to peer through layers of translation!