“Whether the Bible (or Tanakh) is authentic or veridical has nothing to do with it. Those first few stories, in Genesis? There’s a treasure there so profound that nearly every person who ever looked at it overlooked it — whether they thought this was about God or literature. In fact, had they -not- overlooked it, they would have unlocked the Garden.

They -actually hid the answer to the Tree incident in the story of the Tree incident-! And, typically, (almost) no one noticed.

Now listen, that story is full of keys; and they are keys to urgent problems in human relation, the origins of our minds, and cognition. They unlock doors. Yes, even the one behind the ‘angel with the spinning sword’. Stop fighting over what doesn’t matter. Retrieve the treasures in the stories.”

— an anonymous aficionado of dead languages