Talk:Tree of Life (Judeo-Christian)

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Contents 1 Tree of life (biology/evolution) 2 Case sensitivity/ambiguity 3 Questions about this page... 4 Bahrain Tree of Life 5 NPOV 6 Finno-Ugaritic? 7 Tree Of Life 8 Removed Pop Culture Reference 9 A pic for the Neo-Assyrian Tree of Life 10 New Jerusalem? 11 "Four Rivers Flow from Lake Heatless" in the Avatamsaka Sutra 12 Darwin 13 Merge/Title?

[edit] Tree of life (biology/evolution)

Moved from Organism

• The Tree of Life. Its basic goals are:
  • to provide a uniform and linked framework in which to publish electronically information about the evolutionary history and characteristics of all groups of organisms
  • to present a modern scientific view of the evolutionary tree that units all organisms on Earth
  • to aid education about and appreciation of biological diversity
  • to provide (eventually) a life-wide database and searching system about characteristics of organisms
  • to provide a means to find taxon-specific information on the Internet, both taxonomic and otherwise

• Green Plant Phylogeny, Research Coordination Group, "DEEP GREEN", Understanding the Diversity of Plants. A five-year effort to reconstruct the evolutionary relationships among all green plants has resulted in the most complete "tree of life" of any group of living things on the planet, including animals.

lunaverse 01:07, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC) I belive the above comment belongs under Evolutionary tree or tolweb.org?

[edit] Case sensitivity/ambiguity

Shouldn't this page be better named as Tree of life (christian)? The other meanings are disambiguated with parentheses, such as Tree of life (Kabbalah), and it seems inconsistant and confusing to have 2 pages distinguished only by a single capital. --Ricky 07:57, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree, although other cultures are mentioned in the article in passing. Maybe these references would be better in Tree of life, to stop muddying the article, whose first paragraph concentrates solely on the Judaeo-Christian Tree of Life - Tree of life (Judaeo-Christian) might also be a better title? The Yeti 14:33, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Questions about this page...

I think the comparisons to other tree/serpent/creation-myths is useful to an extent, but NPOV is lost a few times. It's mostly bad when it creates confusion, i.e. seems to be speaking on a topic other than the Tree of Life. For instance, this paragraph below:

The first person to give an overview of world myths and to attempt to provide a unified theory of religions was James Frazer in "The Golden Bough" (1890). By then many people were prepared to accept the book of Genesis as mythology, not history. Since then feminists have re-analysed the stories and interpreted the temptation of Eve as a symbolic way of describing a change in society.

This seems to indicate the theme is "world myths" and "unified theory" of these myths. Which it is not. It also leans towards trying to convince the reader of this theory, rather than maintain an informational, neutral tone.

Don't get me wrong; I did find it very interesting, but if no one has any objections, in a few days I'd like to summarize quite a few of these paragraphs to keep this article on-theme, more clear, and neutral. Discussion?

lunaverse 01:12, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Bahrain Tree of Life

I could be wrong, but Bahrain Tree of Life I believe belongs on the disambiguation page with an article of its own. Discussion is welcome, otherwise I'll just do it. :)

lunaverse 01:15, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV

I wrote the second part of this article when I was still anonymous. The only part of "The Golden Bough" that is relevant is chapter one. It's just a diversion to ramble on about general theories of unified religion. The "Tree of Gnosis" book is interesting but doesn't explain anything about why the myths existed in the first place. I think that para should be removed altogether. I don't actually believe the feminist theories about patriarchal societies replacing matriarchal ones. Please tone it down.

A stone age matriarchal religion was replaced by a patriarchal one in the bronze age. Robert Graves suggests this in "The White Goddess" (1947) by literary analysis, and Baring and Cashford use extensive archaeological evidence to present the same case in "The Myth of the Goddess" (1991). A serious theologian Elaine Pagels says much the same in "Adam, Eve and the Serpent" (1988).

Um. This is not my field or anything, but I'm pretty sure that this theory of a stone age matriarchal religion being replaced by patriarchy is not widely accepted by scholars these days - but this articles gives the impression that it is...

[edit] Finno-Ugaritic?

The reference to Finno-Ugaritic confuses me no end. Finno-Ugric is a language group, and Ugaritic a language, but they're not even in the same linguistic family, so if it's not simply a typo for the former, it's opaque to me what's meant. Alai 20:45, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Tree Of Life

um, I think the depiction of the kabbalahistic tree of life is somewhat confusing for this article since it focus' on the biblical tree of life and the Kabbalahistic tree of life already has an article. Jaynus _Izanagi 11:59, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Removed Pop Culture Reference

I removed the "Neon Genesis Evangelion" link. I don't think that a cartoon deserves inclusion on a topic about a religious item. If it is included, other ones should be included because there must be bigger pop culture things that reference the tree of life.

As a fan of the series I find that pretty funny that someone put a link in, but I agree that it doesn't need to be here. I can't really think of anything much bigger, its kinda an icon, but thats not the point. Evangelion, although it made extensive use of christian terms and iconography, was not really a religous/cristian show. Its actuall story concepts more explored philosophy.

[edit] A pic for the Neo-Assyrian Tree of Life

A pic of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, or Assyrian Tree of LIfe, with its Cuneiform inscribed upon it, as the running story, would be appropriate for this article. ... a cuneiform, Amarna letters, junkie-Michael in the Sonoran Desert, --Mmcannis 04:04, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New Jerusalem?

What is this "New Jerusalem" thing at the beginning of the article? Is it encyclopedic? I've never heard of it before and I studied the Creation story in depth. I think it calls for speculation beyond the Bible, whichever version you hold as true. Valley2city 03:28, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Four Rivers Flow from Lake Heatless" in the Avatamsaka Sutra

I wonder if anyone would care to comment on this: a parallel, or just a coincidence? "Lake Heatless" might well be taken for paradise in a hot climate.

"... with omniscience in all its aspects, as it gradually becomes manifest. It is like the water flowing from the lake Heatless; by four great river currents it suffices the continent. inexhaustible, ever increasing, benefiting infinite beings, and finally pours into the ..."

page 800, The Flower Ornament Scripture : A Translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra (Hardcover) by Thomas Cleary

[edit] Darwin

The Darwin section seemed very out of place here , I have moved it to a new article on the Tree of life (Science) where the scientific use of this metaphor can be properly described. Lumos3 13:21, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge/Title?

Should this article be merged with Tree of life? I'm failing to see why there are two articles with only a capitalization difference. Either better disambiguation is needed or they need to be merged. Or we could re-name this article Tree of Life (Biblical) and leave the other to discuss all religious views of the tree of life. -Visorstuff 00:19, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with seperating the Biblical Tree of Life from other religions (but not a merge). See also the 'case/ambiguity' para above. If no one objects, I may eventually get round to doing this. The Yeti 14:48, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

And now I have. The Yeti 16:28, 25 March 2007 (UTC)