Dr. Dylan Johnson

Of course, he lives extraordinarily long life.

Not the longest in biblical tradition, but by that point in the narrative, extremely long, 120 years, I think he dies at.

He's, of course, the lawgiver.

And there's certain episodes, such as with our previous discussion, when Moses descends the mountain with the Ten Commandments, his face is shining like the sun, so he gives off divine luminosity.

So again, it's best to think of divinity not as a binary, but as a spectrum, and it's ephemeral.

Moses doesn't stay a god.

Of course, he dies, right?

And this is very important when we think of the ancient Near East, which is loaded with royal ideologies that are often presenting these kings as something more than human beings.

It's embedded in the creation stories.

They are

not quite gods, but something more, and yet there's the fundamental dilemma that they die.

And this has been a tradition that continues throughout all history, into the medieval period, the king's two bodies.

How can the king be a representative of God on earth?

How do you perpetuate the idea of the state?

These myths are created, and I think that's partially what we're getting in the Eden story.

But again, it's been democratized.

It's not about kings.

It's about all humanity.

I think they would have interpreted it or been told that this is a story about being human, about

the orders of creation, how we're different from the animals from which we interact with every day, but also why do we worship the gods?