Death before the 'Fall'?

Brian writes:

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If anything, the Bible suggests that there was death before the Fall since God threatened Adam with death then surely Adam would have to know what death was!

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More directly: God says that he needs to kick Adam and Eve out of Eden lest they eat from the tree of life and live forever.This means that they were going to die.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Brian responds to me:

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However, this was after the Fall, so they MAY have been immortal.

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And where does one find this in the story? I see no passage anywhere in the story that indicates that Adam was actually immortal. Instead, there's continual talk of the possibility of Adam dying.

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The possible scenario is this. Man created immortal, man disobeys God and eats the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, man thus becomes like God, God takes away their immortality,

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Hold it right there. Where does god "take away their immortality"? Where is that in the story? I've read over the passages and I can't find any inkling of the immortality of Adam being stripped, let alone that he had it in the first place.

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It is a nice wee philosophical tale. Explians why there is suffering in this world, and why we have to die.

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And based upon absolutly nothing. There is no textual justification for this claim. Adam was always going to die. God told him that if he ate of the tree of knowledge, he would die a physical death that very day before the sun set. God panics when Adam and Eve eat from the tree of knowledge and kicks them out before they have a chance to eat from the tree of life and live forever. God hasn't done anything to them and the tree of knowledge hasn't taken anything away from them.Therefore, the only conclusion is that they were going to die anyway.This does lead to an interesting question: Why is god so scared over Adam and Eve becoming immortal?

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

randman responds to Brian:

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Indeed, he must have seen animals eating other animals, even insects being eaten by predators.

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"Must have"??? Please substantiate that. What biblical evidence do you have that animals ate each other prior to the Fall, or ate insects?

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Because lions, for example, are carnivores. Their diet didn't change due to Adam and Eve eating from the tree of knowledge. I've looked through the story and I can't find any mention of such. If you are going to claim that all animals were herbivores, you're going to have to find the textual justification for it.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

randman writes:

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Adam immediately spiritually died as was indicated by his awareness of his sin (nakedness)

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This is another one of those things that makes absolutely no sense.Don't you think that the very first thought Adam and Eve would have had upon eating from the tree of knowledge and becoming as gods would have been, "Oh, no! We just disobeyed god!" There was only one command they were given: Don't eat from that tree. And they did. Shouldn't that be the big thing weighing on their souls?What does nakedness have to do with anything? They've been naked all their lives and god never seemed to mind. The only thing that has changed is that they disobeyed god and understand what that disobeyance means.

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So it sure seems the text indicates spiritual death preceded natural death.

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But that isn't what god told Adam. He told him that if he ate from the tree of knowledge, he would die a physical death before the sun set.Instead, Adam (at least) lived for nearly 1000 years more.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

arachnophilia writes:

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if it wasn't in man's nature to sin, why did he? remember, he had to sin BEFORE the fall.

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Don't forget: They were sinning before they ever ate from the tree: Note: Adam and Eve have just broken the only commandment they have ever been given: Don't eat from the tree. And what is their first shock upon gaining the ability to know good from evil? They're naked. Not that they just contradicted god. They're naked.Therefore, if running around naked, which is a sin since the Bible indicates that they were not ashamed (which they should have been) and it was the very first thing they panicked over upon learning what sin was, was nothing to be concerned about, why was eating from the tree such a big deal?It would seem god created humanity in a state of iniquity from the very beginning. How on earth could they "fall" when they were already dripping in sin?

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

jaywill writes:

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I think eventually the reader has a stake in accepting or rejecting its cardinal claims. One can be neutral about Mody Dick or the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire or War and Peace or Biographies of many many great people. But when it comes to the Bible I think a person has to get off the fence and decide where she or he stands in relation to its claims.

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Oh? Why? Why is the Bible different from any other book?

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

jaywill responds to me...I think...he doesn't say:

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God told Adam that in the day that he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he would die.

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And yet, just like the serpent said, Adam didn't die. Instead, he lived for nearly a thousand years after. It would seem that god was lying to Adam while the serpent was telling the truth.

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As for me I have learned not to take simplicity in the Bible for naivete.

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But how do you take inconsistencies, contradictions, and incredulities? Have you considered the possibility that the Bible is simply poorly written?

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Discovering that one is naked upon disobeying God may sound childish to some.

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No, the problem is not that it is childish. It's that it is a ludicrous response given the context. Adam and Eve have been given one and only one commandment: Don't eat from the tree. But, since they are innocent and thus incapable of understanding good and evil (since they haven't eaten from the tree, yet), they don't understand the point and eat from the tree, anyway.Now, given the fact that they have never known a moment in their lives when they weren't naked, why would their first reaction be shame over their dishabille? One would think that the very first thing in the mind would be desperation over the fact that they just did the one and only thing that they were told not to do. Even if being naked were a sin, that would hardly be the most pressing issue at hand. I should think direct disobeyal of god would be the foremost thing on their minds.Even when they have time to think about what they've done, they're obsessed with being naked. Why do they hide from god? Not because they ate from the tree, disobeying the one commandment they have ever been given, but rather because they are naked.This makes no sense. What a sloppy narrative. We've just had a story with huge consequences ("Eat from the tree and before the sun sets on that very day, you will die") and what happens? Everybody seems to forget about that: Suddenly we're all focused on the fact that Adam and Eve aren't wearing any clothes. But wait a minute! They were supposed to die! What a letdown!

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Cain, the one on whom Adam and Eve set their hopes for some deliverance, turned out to be a murderer.

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There's another huge problem: Where on earth did Cain's wife come from? There's only four people on the entire planet, three of them male, and Cain manages to find a wife? And he manages to build a city? And people it with whom? Where did all of these people come from?What a sloppy narrative.I ask you again: Have you considered the possibility that the Bible is simply poorly written?

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

jaywill responds to me:

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Did he ”surely die” or did he not ”surely die?".

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Non sequitur. Please try again.The simple answer to the most intelligible part of your comment is that no, he did not surely die. Remember, you have to look at what god told Adam in comparison. God told Adam that if he were to eat of the tree of knowledge, then he would die a physical death before the sun set on the day he ate. That's what Gen 2:17 means: "for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."It didn't happen. Ergo, god wasn't telling the truth.

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You may object that he didn’t die within 24 hours so the serpent told the truth. But this is not the case because Adam did ”surely die”.

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If he did, then how did he manage to live for nearly a thousand years afterward? "Surely die" means "physical death." Adam did not physically die, therefore he did not "surely die" and therefore, god wasn't telling the truth.

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And it is likely that the process of dying began as soon as Adam disobeyed.

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For nine hundred years? If you told anybody that something would happen by the end of the day and it didn't actually happen for another nine hundred years, would you really claim that he was telling you the truth?

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This fact would dispense with the objection that it took over ninehundred years for death to have its full effect.

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Incorrect. It merely shows that not only was god not telling the truth, he was telling a whopper of a lie. God told Adam that he would die a physical death by the time the sun set on the day he ate. Instead, Adam didn't die his physical death until nearly a thousand years later. Ergo, god didn't tell the truth.

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It could be that in the eyes of God entering into the degrading and irreversable process dying was what Him meant by ”in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die”

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No, it couldn't. That isn't what the text says.

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I think it is terribly twisted and self deceiving to argue that God lied and the serpent told the truth.

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And I think it is terribly twisted and self-deceiving to argue the plain language of the text doesn't actually mean what it so clearly indicates.

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The most major tenets are repeated from many different angles and in many different ways.

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As you would expect from a book that was redacted from sources who were drawing on common source material. This is not a plus for you. Multiple people telling the same sloppy narrative simply means none of them could get it right.

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I think that some rather not very significant copyist errors are to be found.

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Excuse me? We're not talking about spelling mistakes. We're talking about major continuity errors as well as errors of fact. As an example, take Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona. Valentine is sent from Verona to Milan...by ship. Excuse me? You can't get to Milan by ship from Verona...it's inland. It isn't even on a river.

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There are contradictions which are not really contradictions.

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Of course. When the text says black is white, it doesn't really mean that.

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And there are contradictions which I admit are difficult to reconcile according to our limited human logical powers.

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Of course. when the text says black is white, then it means it in a way that we can't understand. Humans don't really understand what "black" and "white" are.

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As for incredulities, they manner in which they come in pairs suggests that their inclusion is quite diliberate.

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Huh? I'm not talking about the duplications. I'm talking about things that on their face are impossible such as the flood. In order to flood the earth, it would require an order of magnitude more water than the earth has...and you can't use any of the water actually present on the earth because it's already at the lowest point and we need to get above that. The earth only has on the order of 10⁸ cubic miles of water. We need an additional 10⁹. Where did it come from? And even more importantly, where did it go?Forget all the other problems with the concept of a global flood such as the nonexistence of a global flood layer, no water damage on the Great Pyramid which was completed four hundred years before the flood going by biblical chronology, etc. All those things require examination of specific details. I'm talking about just the sheer concept. It is physically impossible to do.

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For instance many of the miracles mentioned in the Bible come in pairs. There are two instances of the same type of miracle or something very similar. It is as if the writer is saying “That’s right. That is what I said.”

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No. It's as if the two people were cribbing the same story. When two of your students turn in the exact same paper down to the spelling mistakes, we don't claim that a miracle occurred. We claim that they were cheating.

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Plus the fact that if you take a book like Exodus and notice that miraculous things of an encredible nature are mentioned along with other things which obviously called for both a high degree of intelligence and integrity to write

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BWAHAHAHAHA! By this reasoning, all scifi/fantasy books are works of god. Such miraculous things of incredible nature are mentioned along with other things that obviously called for both a high degree of intelligence and integrity to write. All hail Diane Duane. Surely Spiderman exists.

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The detailed discription of the priesthood, the ceremonies, the dimensions, measurements, and physical characteristics of the tabernacle are extremely intricate.

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Hmmm...a priestly caste writes details about priests. This is a shock? You are forgetting that the Bible wasn't written by peasants. It was written by theologians, edited by theologians, compiled by theologians, none of whom had any direct experience with the subjects of which they were writing, editing, and compiling.

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The writer was no dummy.

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Then why is it such a lousy book? Back to the flood again: They can't even figure out how long it is. Forty days or 150 days? Did the animals go in by pairs or by sevens? Why do Noah and his family enter the ark TWICE?Well, a simple bit of literary analysis shows why: It's actually two stories being told simultaneously. Pull them apart and each one makes individual sense. But who was the fool who thought you should try to tell them both at the same time? They contradict each other.

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Does this kind of detailed care given to discribing ordinance after ordinance in Leviticus reveal a sloppy minded writer?

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When you read the whole thing? You bet.

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I somewhat agree with this. Aside from being fruitful and multiplying to replenish the earth, they were only told to be careful what they eat. I agree. What is your point?

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(*blink!*)You did not just say that, did you? Didn't you read my post? The point is that they have been given only one commandment. They break it which allows them to understand what "breaking commandments" means. Do they immediately panic over having broken that one commandment? No. Instead, they panic over something that nobody has ever told them is wrong and they have been doing constantly from the moment they came into existence.

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They understood what they were not supposed to do.

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No, they didn't. That's what innocent means: You don't understand what you're not supposed to do. It isn't that they were stupid. It's that they were innocent. In order to understand disobeyance, you have to understand right and wrong. But they don't know right from wrong because they haven't eaten from the tree yet.

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They were not suppose to negate God’s authority and disobey His command.

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And how are they supposed to know that? They don't know right from wrong. They haven't eaten from the tree yet. They're still innocent.

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Whatever else they did or did not understand was not attributed to them as a transgression.

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Why not? The very first thing they panic over is being naked. Nobody seemed to mind that they were naked before. Why should it be such a big deal now? If they were incapable of understanding why being naked was wrong, then they were also incapable of understanding why disobeying god was wrong. That's the point behind innocence: You don't understand the difference between right and wrong.

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It was the action of eating which they understood they were not to do. They understood the authority of the One Who created them.

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Impossible. They were innocent. Understanding authority requires understanding the difference between good and evil, which they didn't have yet since they hadn't eaten from the tree.

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I don’t think that we can rescue them from this responsibility by any amount of philosophical, theological, or psychological arguments.

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Only because, once again, you are starting with the conclusion and ignoring any evidence that doesn't lead to it.

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I don’t know what their first thought was.

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Yes, you do. The Bible tells you: Are you about to say that the Bible isn't telling you the whole story?

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I know what the Bible records for us to know. There may have been many more things which constituted their reaction or details surrounding what happened.

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Yep, you are. This is very strange. For someone who practices such idolatry of the book, claiming that it holds so much wisdom and truth and perfection, you are very quick to point out that it has flaws when you can't find any justification for your claims.

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What is recorded is economically selected by God’s wisdom to teach us what we need to know that we may partake of God’s salvation.

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And the great wisdom we need to take from this event is that it's a sin to be naked? Wouldn't the better lesson be that it's a sin to disobey god?

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I believe that what we are told indicates that another source of knowledge began to tell Adam and Eve of their condition.

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That's not what the Bible says. Why do you feel the need to contradict the Bible? No other source is ever mentioned. Why would god try to mislead you into thinking that it came from somewhere else? The name of the tree is the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

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Throughout the Bible Satan is a slanderer.

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Satan? Who said anything about Satan? Satan isn't in the garden. It's a snake. You're not confusing the snake with Satan, are you?

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God asked Adam ”Who told you that you were naked?” God did not tell him. God had not said anything was wrong with them being naked. So under whose authority are they now? And who has informed them that they should be clothed.

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Their new-found knowledge from the tree has told them that they were naked. That's what the Bible says: Who are you to contradict the Bible?

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I believe that the answer lies in the fact that they stepped out from under God’s authority and came under the authority of Satan the accuser, the slander, and the enemy of God. First he slandered God by questioning God’s motive and God’s heart of love. He insinuated that God was the enemy and that God was jealously withholding some blessing from them.

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But none of that is anywhere in the text. Where do you find anything even remotely like that in Genesis 3? The snake in the garden is not Satan. It's simply a snake. The Bible directly says so: "Beast of the field." That means the snake is a plain, ordinary animal.

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When they took the fruit they crossed the line of God’s command.

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But they had no idea that that was what they were doing. They were still innocent. They did not know right from wrong.If you have a priceless, delicate Mhing vase that you want to protect from being shattered, you don't put it on a rickety pedestal and leave your toddler alone in the room with it. No matter how much you tell the toddler, "Don't touch," the kid cannot be responsible for disobeying you: He doesn't understand. It isn't because he's stupid. He knows what you've said. He just doesn't understand the moral point behind it because he's innocent.When we hear the crash from the next room and find the vase in pieces around the child, we don't blame the child. We blame the parent for thinking that it was a good idea to leave such a delicate item around people who don't know any better.

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As I wrote before, the action of the eating was the transgression. It is not important what they knew or did not know as long as they obeyed God not to eat the fruit, which command they failed to obey.

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(*blink!*)You did not just say that, did you? It isn't important that they were innocent? Doesn't that form the whole foundation of just punishment? You don't throw a temper tantrum against people who don't know any better. It was only a matter of time before Adam and Eve were going to eat from the tree. They were innocent and didn't know any better not to disobey god, especially when they were told the truth about the tree by the serpent. God says don't eat from the tree or you'll die. The serpent says you won't die, you'll just know the difference between good and evil.Now, how on earth are Adam and Eve supposed to know that they should believe god over the serpent? They don't understand good and evil. They haven't eaten from the tree, yet.Here. Time for you to make a choice: Beetaratagang or clerendipity. One of these is the commandment of god and the other is the foul evil of the devil. Choose carefully for your immortal soul is on the line. Which is it? Beetaratagang or clerendipity? Why do you hesitate? This is such a simple choice.

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We may speculate on the nature of their weakness to even listen or reason along with the serpent.

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We don't have to speculate at all. The Bible comes out and tells us directly: They were innocent. They hadn't eaten from the tree of knowledge, yet, and thus didn't know the difference between good and evil.

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But it is the action of transgressing the command at which the Bible traces the loss of innocence.

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Irrelevant. Their action is not one of sin because sin requires knowledge of good and evil and willed choice to do evil. Since Adam and Eve did not have any knowledge of good and evil, none of their choices could possibly be deemed sin, no matter how wrong they are. That's why we don't punish people for having an accident. Back to the vase example above: Recently in a museum in Cambridge, England, a man tripped on some stairs and fell down. Unfortunately, some vases from the Qing dynasty were in sconces along the stairway and in falling down, he knocked them over and they shattered.No charges were filed, no accusations made, the museum's statement was that they were happy the man didn't hurt himself.This shouldn't be a shock to anyone: The man had an accident. He didn't break the vases on purpose. He committed no sin. It's sad and tragic and I'm sure the man feels awful about what he did, but he didn't commit any sin and it would be wrong for anybody to punish him for it.So why does god throw a temper tantrum when the inevitable happened?

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And it is at that point the spirit of the authrity of the air began to operate in the sons of disobedience (Eph. 2:2).

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Excuse me? What does Ephesians have to do with anything? We're talking about Genesis 3 here. Stick to the topic at hand.

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One would think that the very first thing in the mind would be desperation over the fact that they just did the one and only thing that they were told not to do.

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Don’t you see indications of the same? They ran away and hid from God.

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Because they were naked, not because they had disobeyed: Why do you feel the need to contradict the Bible?

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The account is economical.

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See, here you go again proclaiming the book is flawed when just before you were claiming it was perfect and without flaw. When the plain text contradicts your preconceived opinion as to what it should have said, you claim that the narrative didn't include the justification you so desperately seek but that it is really there.Why do you feel the need to contradict the Bible? The story simply doesn't say what you claim it says.

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I think other things happened in connection to the story.

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Why? I thought the Bible was a well-written, complete, and perfect story. And yet, here you are saying that there are things that aren't included in it that are critical to understanding the plot and intent. But if it's missing the character development required to understand the motivations of the key players, then it's not a very good piece of literature.So we're back to my original question: Have you considered the possibility that the Bible isn't written very well?

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Had they not eaten, they would not have had any problem of either a dilemma of being unclothed or fear of facing God.

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That's my entire point: They hadn't eaten from the tree yet when they ate from the tree so they cannot be held responsible for eating from it. They committed no sin. Sin requires knowledge of good and evil and the willed desire to do evil. Since Adam and Eve had no such knowledge, they could not possibly sin.

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The problems all are traced back to their disobedience in eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

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Precisely. You seem to want to ascribe motivation to that act that they couldn't possibly have since they hadn't eaten from the tree yet. You can't sin without knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve had no knowledge of good and evil. Therefore, they were completely incapable in all ways of ever sinning. Their disobeyal of god was not a sin precisely because they were innocent.

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I don’t think it is sloppy.

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Of course you don't. You're working from the conclusion backwards, ignoring all evidence that doesn't lead to your preconceived notion of the work.

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I rather think that you would be hard pressed to find such an economical account of the major matters about human existence.

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No, not "economical." Piss poor is more like it. The text does not put god in a very good light. He puts innocents into the lion's den, lies to them, and then when the inevitable happens, he throws a temper tantrum and curses the victims having the temerity to destroy the one character who told the truth.

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Can you point to another book which in 10 chapters of typical biblical length tells us these things:

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Any good book on Greek mythology should do it. You act like there are no other authors out there.These matter are all covered in the first ten or so chapters of the book of Genesis. Can you think of another book in which so many major and important themes about human life are covered in such an economical fashion?So I don’t think the concisesness nor the economy of what is written in Genesis reveals “sloppiness” at all. I perceive a divine Author behind the writing communicating with the world in near universal terms in which the most number of people can get the important points.

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It mentions three.

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Because there are only three.

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Why do you assume that there were only three because it only mentioned three?

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Because it directly states that there are three and only three.Adam was created, but Adam is alone. So god creates Eve. Thus, there are now only two people in the entire world. Eve has two children, Cain and Abel. So now there are four people in the entire world. Cain kills Abel. So now there are three and only three people in the entire world.But wait, Cain is worried about what other people will do to him if they find him: Huh? Who are these "every one" of which Cain speaks? There's only two other people in the entire world: His parents. Remember, Adam and Eve are the first two humans. You even say it, yourself: "The names and history of the first human beings." Therefore, if there are any humans at all to be found, they necessarily must be the children of Adam and Eve. But the only children Eve has had thus far are Cain and Abel. So who are these other people? Where did they come from?

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The focus of the story only requires Cain and Abel to be mentioned.

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Incorrect. The Bible doesn't skip over generations of people. Genesis 5 makes it very clear that Adam's other children come after Cain and Abel. Seth doesn't show up until Adam is 130 and only then does he have other sons and daughters.Remember, when Seth is born, Eve directly and distinctly declares that he is a replacement for Abel: Thus, there are no other children other children between Seth and his sole brothers, Cain and Abel. Why do you feel the need to contradict the Bible?

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I think the sloppiness is in your assumption that the account is not logical because it is not exhaustive, i.e. the names of the hundreds of possible other people born at that time were not mentioned.

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No, the problem is not that it doesn't list every name. It's that it doesn't list any. It doesn't even mention the existence of these other people until the plot has painted itself into a corner and the only way to save it is to introduce a fact out of thin air, completely unjustified by anything that has happened before.It's like listening to a story told by a four-year-old. "And then he went out into the woods and then he wandered onto the lake and then the ice started cracking and then he fell in and then...um...oh, yeah! His dog pulled him out!" Dog? What dog?Perfect example of this in the new movie, Firewall. Near the end of the movie, Harrison Ford is looking for his family. For some reason, the kidnappers have taken the dog along with the family (there is no scene showing how the family is kidnapped or any discussion as to why to take the dog...it's just there.) How on earth is he going to find them? Oh, that's right! The dog's collar has a GPS signal in it! See, the dog was always running away so they got a special collar with a GPS unit in it so they could find him!In classic Greek dramaturgy, it's called "deus ex machina." The plot of the story has painted everybody into a corner and there is absolutely no coherent way to get them out of the predicament. So rather than realize that you've created a bad narrative, you physically bring in Zeus on a machine to wave his magic wand and make everything alright again.And that's precisely what we have in Genesis 4: The author, having forgotten that there's only three people in the entire world suddenly realizes that the only place for Cain to go is back to his parents. That won't work. He has to go out into the world. But he can't just be cast out alone in the world. God has already said that it isn't right for people to be alone. Damn. Have to give him a wife. Oh, yeah! There's other people! That's it.Well, no. No, there aren't.

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Obviously Cain married one of his siblings, which God permitted at that time. It has always surprised me that people make a big deal out of Cain’s wife.

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Perhaps it's because we're under the impression that sin doesn't change. If it's a sin to have sex with your sister (Leviticus 18), then it has always been a sin to have sex with your sister. Cain couldn't have married his sister because that would be a sin. Adam and Eve, who know good from evil, would never allow it.That's why the text doesn't say Cain married his sister. Instead, it invents an entirely new set of people out of the blue, hopes you'll forget that there aren't any other people around, and lets Cain slink off into the margins.

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Only two sons were mentioned because the account of the first murder only needs the focus of these two people - Cain and Abel.

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Incorrect. It only mentions two people because there are only four in the entire world. The Bible does not skip generations.

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Genesis 5:4 says that Adam begot more sons and daughters.

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Sorry, but that's my argument to you. Those sons and daughters only happen AFTER Cain kills Abel and flees with his new wife. They only happen AFTER the birth of Seth who, as Eve directly declares, is a replacement for Abel. Thus, there are no other people in the entire world at the time Cain kills Abel than Adam and Eve.

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Cain married one of these.

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But that's a sin, always and forever. Adam and Eve would never allow it. They know good from evil and no other sin is ever ascribed to them.

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Even if Cain had no contemporary sister at the time he murdered Abel he could have married a sister younger to himself by decades latter. There is no problem here.

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Except that there were no sisters for him to marry. He runs off with his wife BEFORE Adam and Eve have any other children. Seth is the replacement for Abel. Thus, there are no other children between Seth and his sole siblings, Cain and Abel.Where did Cain's wife come from? There are no other people in the world.

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And if I do encounted problems in the Bible, I put them aside to be dealt with latter, as I would would any other book with difficultites.

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See, you prove my point: You have a preconceived notion as to what it is suposed to say and then ignore all evidence to the contrary.

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I don’t stop reading, throw up my hands and say “Its all just too sloppy. I won’t consider it.”

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Ah, but you should. It's what adults do. Sloppy narrative results in sloppy stories. Any attempt to derive meaning is lost as the details of the narrative defy any coherent analysis.

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Did you do that with Origin of Species or A Brief History of Time?

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Of course. But then again, those books aren't stories. They're scientific treatises. Thus, I treated them the same as I did A History of Mathematics. It's only a little over 600 pages long (ignoring the references and index and such), but it took me seven years to get through it. Why? Because I worked on every single problem that was described on my own before moving on. When the book describes the work that was done in an attempt to square the circle, it describes some of the accomplishments that were made along the way such as the method to square the lune. OK, time to stop and figure out how to do it on my own. It's not enough to simply look over the description, I have to know that I could do it for myself (being a mathematician). And once I knew how to do it, I would compare notes with my method to the one that was presented.The book that managed to kill me was Godel, Escher, Bach. But then again, I find that a lot of people are in the same predicament I am in: Lots of attempts to get through it, but everybody dies. I don't personally know anybody who has made it all the way through. I am certain that if Martin Gardner had written it instead of Douglas Hofstadter, it would have been a much better read. Some day.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Phat writes:

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In Brief: Bible Study is for the faith based interpretations (philosophically and theologically) of the text.
Accuracy/Innerrency is the scholars and their attempts at explaining the history of the authors, the identity of the authors, and the secular based questions and academic disciplines surrounding the text.

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But don't you think that before you can possibly get into a meaningful discussion of the interpretation of the text, you have to have a solid grounding of what the text actually says? Of the structure of the piece? Of the plot and the characters, the timing and sequence of events, etc.?I'm reminded of a coworker who had gone to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. She said she didn't like it because there was no reason for anybody to be worried about this sword.Huh? Well, after some further discussion, we find out that she had fallen asleep at the beginning of the movie and had missed the first 45 minutes or so. That makes a huge difference in how you're going to handle the rest of the story, don't you think?There's a rule in what is considered a "good" murder mystery: No character is irrelevant. If you have spent the time and energy to create a character and involve him in your plot, then he better have a good reason to be there. And, indeed, that's what we see in the literature that is best received: You don't understand how all of these people are involved, but by the time you get to the end of the tale it becomes obvious how each had a hand in getting you to where you are. Every detail is important and must be included in the analysis.Only then, once you understand how each part led you from beginning to end can you truly come up with a coherent analysis of what it all means. This doesn't mean that there is one and only interpretation that can be gleaned from a story. Instead, it means that any intepretation you come up with needs to take into account everything the story includes.There's a play by Baraka called The Dutchman. It takes place on a subway between a black man and a white woman. Question: Who is the main character? In my script analysis class, we all had our justifications for why it had to be her or him. The professor told us, however, that we had forgotten a third option: The other people on the train. They don't have any lines. They don't directly interact with two people. But they bear witness to what happens. The play does not take place in a vacuum that looks like a subway train. It takes place in front of other people. You have to remember that and include it in your analysis. You may conclude that they aren't the main character, but you cannot forget them. If you decide that it is the man or the woman, you have to take into account that their actions are happening in front of others and you must consider that effect upon why they say and do what they say and do and how they say and do it.So any interpretation of the Bible has to take into account the actual text first.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

jaywill responds to me:

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Non sequitur. Please try again.

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I see no need to try again.

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I know. And that is precisely the problem. You refuse to consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, you might have made an error. How can you claim to have an honest understanding of your analysis if you refuse to consider that you might have made a mistake?

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The serpent lied. Adam and Eve did ”surely die.

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No, they didn't. Adam lived for nearly a thousand years afterward. You're forgetting that god didn't just say they would "surely die." Instead, he said they would "surely die" before the sun set on the very day of which they ate.If I tell you that you will die before sunset today and you don't die, was I telling you the truth?

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It simply says that he would surely die.

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Incorrect. Let's take a look at the actual verse, shall we? What do you think "in the day that thou eatest thereof" means? It's not talking about some nebulous, vague, will eventually happen within the next thousand years time period. It means, given the Hebrew method of measuring days by sunset to sunset, that it would happen before the sun set. And "surely die" is referring to a physical death, not a spiritual one.Ergo, "in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" means "you will die a physical death before the sun sets on the day you eat."

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It is a fact that from the time we are born we begin to surely die ourselves.

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Incorrect. Instead, we spend most of the time during our formative years doing everything except dying. It's only when the body has passed through its full growth that it starts to deteriorate.

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That Adam embarked on a downhill inescapable process in which he must surely die is enough of the indication of the truthfulness of God’s word.

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Incorrect. God told him that he'd be dead by the time the sun set. Instead, he lived for another thousand years.

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The Hebrew word for ”day” is the same as is used in Genesis 2:17 - “for in the DAY that you eat of it you shall surely die”.

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Indeed. It's referring to a single, 24-hour, literal "day." Remember, Genesis 2 has no connection to Genesis 1. They were written by different people recounting different creation myths. The order in which things happen differs and contradicts. For example, the sequence in Gen 1 is plants, animals, male and female humans together. In Gen 2, it's male human, plants, animals, female human. You cannot use Gen 1 to inform Gen 2.

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Preceeding 2:4 we are told that God made the heaven and the earth not in one day but in six days (Gen. 1:5,8,13,19,23,31).

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But we were also told that humans were made at the same time, male and female together, after everything else had been created. Therefore, Gen 2 cannot possibly be referring to anything in Gen 1 because we find that a male human shows up before anything else was created. Remember, according to Gen 2 there were no plants at all: That's part of the reason that god created Adam: To make the earth green.

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So the usage of the word ”day” in 2:4 is general time span not necessarily one sunrise to sunset span.

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Incorrect. It cannot be interpreted any other way.

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My Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary for entry # 3117 - yowm, - is not restricted to this meaning for that Hebrew word, as you would like to have it.

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Incorrect. The word, just like English, can be used to refer to individual days as well as to large spans of time, but you have to phrase it the right way in order to do that. Context will tell you. You cannot just choose which one meaning you want because it's convenient for you to do so. "On the day you eat" is a reference to a specific, individual moment in time, not an era.

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Accordingly, you cannot insist that because Adam’s heart did not stop beating before that day’s sunset, therefore the serpent told the truth and God mislead Adam.

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Incorrect. It cannot be interpreted any other way.

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It didn't happen. Ergo, god wasn't telling the truth.

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I don’t have a interesting logical fallacy term to defind this statement, like “non sequitor.”

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It's "non sequitur," with a u. And there is no logical error.God says Adam would die. The serpent says Adam would not die. God is said to be all knowing.Adam does not die. Ergo, since god knows everything, it cannot be that god was mistaken or misspoke himself. Therefore, god lied.Remember, god admits to lying. We shouldn't be surprised to catch him at it.

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You lose the case because you insist that sunrise to sunset could be the only valid usage of yowm.

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Incorrect. I don't say that yowm can only mean a literal day. I say that in this particular context, it can only be interpreted as a literal day. Because the word has multiple meanings, you have to look at the rest of the utterance in order to provide information about what is going on. "On the day you eat" is not a reference to a multi-year time span. It's a reference to a specific moment in time.

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Excuse me? We're not talking about spelling mistakes.

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I wasn’t refering to spelling mistakes.

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Then what, pray tell, did you mean by "copyist errors."? The copyist's job is to make a duplicate of the text, letter by letter. If they make a mistake, it will be in spelling or punctuation or some such.Unless you're insinuating that entire tracts of text have been accidentally excised from the book? If so, then we can't take any of the work for an accurate statement.

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[ We are ] talking about major continuity errors as well as errors of fact.

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Like errors concerning how many horses Solomon really had.

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I don't recall mentioning that. Please stick to the argument at hand.

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I think you should consider this passage in the light of how wise it is for you to teach people that God lied and the serpent told the truth.

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I have. What makes you think the Bible is a book of god? Wouldn't that be the ultimate coup for the forces of evil? To put out a tract that so clearly shows god to be evil and yet have people still come to insist that the "god" described therein is the embodiment of good? And with so many warnings right in the text!That would be the ultimate sucker play, wouldn't it?

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I don’t think that most serious Bible readers would not want to admit that there are deep paradoxes in the Bible which are hard to reconcile. For example God as one God yet Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

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See, the Unitarians came up with a solution: The "trinity" is a bunch of hogwash.That's one of the reasons that Judaism doesn't treat Jesus in the same way as Christians do. According to Judaism, there is only one god. There cannot be a "son of" god. The Messiah is not divine. That's one of the huge points behind the story of Moses: Moses did not perform a single miracle. All the miracles were performed by god. Only god is divine.

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Or perhaps free will and predestination are difficult to reconcile. These matters are difficult to reconcile.

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It isn't difficult at all. Free will and predestination are completely incompatible. If you know with absolute certainty, no chance for error, what I am going to do, do I really have any choice in the matter?

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Do you think the writer meant the entire planet?

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Of course. The Bible directly says so. Or does "all the high hills" mean something other than ALL? Or does "under the whole heaven" mean something other than WHOLE? But wait, there's an even more direct statement: Does "the waters were on the face of the whole earth" mean something other than WHOLE?

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I think he could have meant where all the human beings were living.

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That's not what the Bible says. Everything died: How does one interpret a statement that ALL flesh died and EVERY living substance was destroyed and that ONLY Noah and the other inhabitants of the ark remained alive to mean that there was some holdout?

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At any rate whatever Moses meant Genesis 1:1

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Ahem. Moses didn't write Genesis. The Pentateuch describes the funeral of Moses. How could he possibly have written about his own funeral?

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indicates that it should not be a problem for God to carry out what He wants to do. He created the heavens and the earth. His power has no limit.

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Hey, if you want to resort to magic, you go right ahead, but that isn't what the Bible says happened. The water did not magically appear through god zap-poofing it into existence. Instead, it came down as rain and welled up from underground. But there isn't enough water on earth to do that. If all the water suspended in the atmosphere were to condense out as rain right now, you'd get an inch of water which would immediately seek the lowest point in the oceans and start evaporating back into the atmosphere. No flood.Over 97% of all the earth's water is in the oceans. That puts it at the lowest point. And yet, there is still dry land. Therefore, to flood the entire earth as the Bible says means we can't use any of that water. We need to put new water on top of it.

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I came to believe Genesis indirectly through trusting Jesus Christ.

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But that makes no sense. Genesis was written by Jews for Jews and can only be understood in a Jewish context. To accept Jesus is to deny Judaism.

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I guess some who are insistent that a globe wide flood engulfing the whole planet might want to take up a debate on it. I’m not sure what Moses meant.

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(*blink!*) You did not just say that, did you? What is not to understand?

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All the people and animals were wiped out except for the 8 souls in the ark.

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Physically impossible. And even if we could figure out how it happened, that would make you an even more insistent advocate of evolution than evolutionary biologists. The genetic diversity of such a culling of the animals would require every single individual in the first generation to be a new species. No biologist claims that speciation happens that fast.That said, we still have a problem: As new species, they would be incapable of breeding with any other individual. All life would die due to inability to reproduce.

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I think that is the important point of the record. I don’t know if Moses meant that South America or Australia were under water.

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What part of "the waters were on the face of the whole earth" are you having difficulty with?

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The queen of Sheba ”came from the ends of the earth” (Matt.12:42) to hear the wisdom of Solomon. But by modern standards of travel that really wasn’t that far away.

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Irrelevant. We can live with colloquialisms. You can drive 100 miles out of town and still have people of the modern age exclaim, "We're in the middle of nowhere!"But that isn't what we have in the story of the flood. "The waters were on the face of the whole earth." What part of that are you having trouble with? Does "whole earth" mean something other than WHOLE earth?

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The census of Ceasar Augustus was commanded to go out to all the world (Luke 2:1).

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See...here's the problem: They thought they knew the whole world. They were very much mistaken. That's part of the reason that we know the Bible can't be universal. It makes claims about the entire world which are handily proven to be false.Therefore, if you refuse to accept the Aztec mythos and its proclamations about what happened to the whole world, why do you expect them to accept your mythos?

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I don’t think the writer meant the Chinese were taxed by Ceasar or the American Indians on the North and South American contenient.

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Of course not. That's because he didn't know it existed.But that's just Caesar. He's a man. We don't expect a mere mortal to understand. The story of Noah, however, is inspired by god, is it not? Even if Moses were the one who wrote it, he wasn't there. He was getting the information from god. Surely god would know if everybody died or not. Surely god would know if the entire earth were flooded. Surely god wouldn't lie to Moses.

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One thing does seem pretty clear. The account of a large flood wiping out human populations seems to have surfaced in cultures in many places.

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But you will notice that it only happens in places that experience floods. In areas where there are no floods, there is no flood myth.

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I think as the survivors multiplied and spread through the earth, some collective memory carried along embelishments of one kind or another of a great flood story.

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You mean like the flood in the Bible. It's cribbed from Gilgamesh and the story of Ut-Napishtim.

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I think this explanation is a conspiracy theory.

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So you would expect that the students somehow managed to come up with the exact same paper, character for character, and there was no funny business taking place?

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I am not talking of miracles mentioned in the same story. I am talking about pairs of miracles where each instance appears in a different history.

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It's called "common themes." You don't really think the story of Jesus was original, do you? It mirrors the stories of Osiris, Dionysus, and Mithra. Why do you deny them?

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These uncanny pairing seems a deliberate attempt to make sure that we really did get it as to what God was able to do.

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No, it seems as if you had people cribbing from the same source. As they say, there are only a dozen or so original plots.

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Conspiracy theories stretched over 1,600 years don’t make plausible explanations of this design to me.

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You are assuming that the "originals" have anything to do with the text of the Bible. Don't you think that the redactors and editors and compilers might have had a hand in how it got put together? After all, the Bible contains two distinct and mutually inconsistent versions of the flood. And yet, it tries to tell them both at the same time.

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Calm yourself Rrhain. I lose interest in conversing with people who go from showing off their mastery of logical fallacies to ridiculing laughter.

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If you don't like being ridiculed, perhaps you should endeavor to be less ridiculous.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Phat writes:

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allegory \a-le-gor-e\ n, pl -ries : the expression through symbolism of truths or generalizations about human experience allegorical \a-le-gor-i-kel\ adj allegorically \-k(e-)le\ adv

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Hmmmm....Truths or generalizations?

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You misread. The "or" is not coordinating "truths" and "generalizations." Instead, it is coordinating "symbolism of truths" and "generalizations about human experience."Even if we are going to interpret the "or" to be coordinating "truths" and "generalizations," you cannot ignore the words around it: The "truths" or "generalizations" are about "human experience" and even so, those "truths" or "generalizations" are symbolized.A symbol is something that stands in place of another by association, similarity, or custom. That is, the color red is a symbol for anger not because anger actually is red but because we have agreed to the convention. The flag of a country is not the country, but it symbolizes it. The country is real, but it would be a mistake to think that what happened to the flag was actually happening to the country.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

purpledawn writes:

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Maybe that is what the serpent meant. He knew that God wouldn't actually kill them instantly.

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That would impute an entirely different motivation on god that is not justified in the text. After all, not too long after he does go around and kill everything on the planet except for a few creatures in a boat. Given the bloody-mindedness of the god described in the Old Testament, there is no real justification to say that "god didn't really mean it" in Genesis 3. By all indications, he really did.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Garrett writes:

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That makes it pretty clear that animals were to only eat plants in the initial scheme of things.

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Then why was Abel a shepherd? And why did Abel slaughter a sheep in sacrifice to god? And what did you think was done with the sacrificed meat?It wasn't just for the wool and feta cheese.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

iano writes:

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One might as easily say to the child in a womb. "On the day you are conceived you will surely die"

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Then what was the point of the tree of life? After all, god panics as soon as he hears that Adam and Eve have eaten from the tree of knowledge and kicks them out lest they eat from the tree of life and become immortal.Thus, they must have been mortal before.Thus, they were going to die, anyway.And since carnivores don't survive on vegetarian diets, this must mean that there was death before the fall or a great many animals would have starved to death.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Garrett writes:

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I disagree that death is a natural part of existence.

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Biologically, this makes a bit of sense. Prokaryotes have existed longer than eukaryotes. In fact, bacteria outweigh the eukaryotes by two to one.Now, when a bacterium splits, did the original one "die"?

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The Bible asserts that it wasn't.

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Yes, it does. Why does god tell Adam that he would die if there was no such thing as death? Why is there a tree of life that grants immortality if there was no such thing as death?

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As to procreation...the purpose was to multiply and fill the earth

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And then what? A biome can only support so many organisms before it collapses and the population dies.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.