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{"id":17460,"date":"2015-08-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-08-05T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=2285"},"modified":"2015-08-05T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-08-05T00:00:00","slug":"the-fall-basari-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2015\/08\/the-fall-basari-style\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fall, Basari Style"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<\/head>

In his very short introduction to\u00a0African Religions<\/a>, Jacob Olupona summarizes the creation-and-fall myth of the Basari of Northern Togo and Ghana: \u201cA creator god named Unumbotte who makes man, a snake, and an antelope; he then places them on unrefined earth with one tree. Unumbotte gives them seeds to plant, and one produces a tree that bears red fruit. The creator god eats these fruits without offering any to the human, the antelope, or the snake. The snake convinces the human and the antelope to eat the fruits. Unumbotte is surprised to find that they have done so but does not punish them for it. Rather, the antelope gets to live out its days eating grass, as it prefers. Human beings received new food from the Creator: yams, sorghum, and millet. The narrative says that humans ate in groups around separate bowls and that was the beginning of different languages forming on the earth. The snake received venom from the Creator, with which he strikes humans and animals, often leading to their deaths\u201d (11).<\/p>\n

From a biblical angle, this conflates fall and Babel. As Olupona points out that this myth has a \u201cvery different resolution and moral valence\u201d from the Genesis account. There is no punishment for disobedience, but rather a separation of human and animal life. Cultural and linguistic diversity is likewise not a punishment for human arrogance.<\/p>\n

One other crucial difference: The Basari myth is a version of Genesis as if told by the serpent. It\u2019s the serpent, after all, who says that God refuses to let Adam and Eve eat out of jealous protection of His rights; the serpent is the one who says God doesn\u2019t want to share. In the Basari myth, Unumbotte himself takes this satanic position, eating from the fruit of the land but not sharing it with human beings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That is the most revealing and fundamental difference of all, the difference between a God who gives of His infinite abundance to His creatures and a god who hoards.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"