Then, the traditional family unit would be unwaveringly patriarchal, with mother the gentle nurturer, father the stern disciplinarian and several subservient children who would, ideally, “be seen and not heard”.
It’s difficult, nowadays, to grasp how very different our lives were then, in a world without television, where only the wealthy would own a car and where behaviour, of adults and children alike, was judged against Biblical standards, so that Sundays, for example, would be days of lengthy silences, when the otherwise ever-present radio would be muted and comic books banished in favour of Bible study.
One positive, I gained from this period in my young life was an abiding enthusiasm for those wonderful stories which abound in the Old Testament: Cain and Abel, Samson and Delilah, Jonah and the Whale, Daniel and the Lions' Den and, of course, the story to trump them all, of Paradise and of Paradise lost: Adam, Eve, Eden, and the Forbidden Fruit.
If you’re not familiar with the tale, you can read it here http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/246606/jewish/The-First-Human-Beings.htm or settle for the Short Version below.
EDEN: THE SHORT VERSION
God gave Man
Paradise.
It all went
pear shaped.
Ha! Love it.
ReplyDeleteThanks Peter.
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