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Author | Topic: The First Questions In The Bible | |||||||||||||||||||||||
anastasia Member (Idle past 5983 days) Posts: 1857 From: Bucks County, PA Joined: |
Phat, I think the most you can say for the text is that the succession of xian-ish religions have been based on the concept of duality, so therefore the first recorded story has to incorporate the 'creating' of the duality.
It is not particularly telling IMO that the snake asks the first question, and I don't see how any of it really talks about questioning God. It's just that, in order to explain how humans came to have 'choices', both elements of the choice have to be included. First, God commands, second, snake intervenes. If anything, I could say that the story proves we already had the capability to question God. It does not tell us that we should, only that we can. We were created with free will. We were created with the ability to question. God certainly allows it. We were warned in Genesis that not all choices are equal. As you know, when we talk nowadays about questioning God, we mean something more like Question What You Think Is God. In the Genesis story, it was shown that disobeying what you find worthy can have consequences. Edited by anastasia, : No reason given. Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.
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anastasia Member (Idle past 5983 days) Posts: 1857 From: Bucks County, PA Joined: |
arach writes: god, technically, lies to adam and eve. he indicates that the tree of knowledge will kill them. he might be implying that it's poisonous, he might be implying that he'll kill them himself. neither of these two things happen. maybe it's mercy, but god tells an untruth. the serpent, however, tells them the truth. he tells them that it won't kill them, rather it will open their eyes and they'll be like gods. which god himself confirms after the fact. Of course, arach, not all of us take Genesis literally. Since you will probably do it anyway, how's about a good breakdown in Hebrew about the 'kind' of death we must 'surely die'?
so the question is: should we follow god without regard to reality? or should we ignore the things he says when he's putting us on? it's hard a question. and if god doesn't think it's good that this followers are more like him, what does that say about god? Nothing, necessariy. It may be intended to say someting about us.
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anastasia Member (Idle past 5983 days) Posts: 1857 From: Bucks County, PA Joined: |
arachnophilia writes: anyways, i think the only real reading of this verse is literal: god said they'd die, implied (idiomatic) or stated (literally), and he meant real, physical death. the only apologetic i can think of to avoid a lying god is about a forgiving one. ie: that god meant to kill adam and eve immediately, but commuted their sentance to simple denial of the tree of life and exile. Perhaps God didn't mean to kill anyone? He certainly didn't trade in one punishment for another. He banished Adam and Eve as a preventive measure, not a punishment.
i don't think the "spiritual death" argument cuts it either. it's about like obi-wan's famous "in a manner of speaking" line. god makes sure to emphasize death. adam clearly understands it to mean death when the serpent repeats the same line with a "not" in it. on top of that, on a close re-examination of the entire torah... there's not much in it that's spiritual at all. the closest you even get is someone mentioning "going to the grave" to be with their ancestors, and even that is probably the literal root of the modern idiomatic afterlife meaning. but god is, for the most part, a physical entity in these books. Even so, to extract any literal meaning or significance from the Bible in our day, a literal death does not cut it. Supposing you believe in the Bible, and believe that the Tree of Life is a symbol of something 'real', then unless we know what that something is, we can't discover the kind of death or impact it will have on us when we 'eat' from it.
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anastasia Member (Idle past 5983 days) Posts: 1857 From: Bucks County, PA Joined: |
arach writes: which then leads to their eventual deaths, of course. he also puts a number of other punishment on mankind (and on snakes, too). Banishment leads to eventual death? I am still not inclined to see the banishment as a punishment, just a necessary precaution.
"our day" is irrelevent. the question i'm more interested in is "what did the authors mean when they wrote it?" from the meaning in THAT day, we can extrapolate IF and how a story has meaning and significance to us, today. i do not see any point in reading the story through anachronistic eyes, reinventing it as we go to suit our needs. Well, what DID the authors mean? The thing which strikes me about Genesis is that it is so 'sensible' in some ways, telling just-so stories and providing mythical origins for simple concepts like why we wear clothes or how we got here...and then in the middle of that there is this strange 'Tree of Life' that seemingly has no parallel in the 'real' world or no bearing on the rest of the tale of 'how things got here'.
perhaps this comes from a need to find some kind of truth in the text, some validity, some inspiration of the divine. whereas i actually couldn't care less -- i'd rather let the facts and the texts speak for themselves. if we don't like what they have to say, well, it's not a big deal. certainly not a big enough to try to apologize for it. I have no need to find some truth. Although it is not better at all in the eyes of others, I simply have a belief that there is some truth to find, rather than a need to find it. That does not render me incapable of examining the original intent, but it is the same with all myths to me. There is some kernel of truth in them, some reflection of the perceptions of life at the time. I do not know what the Tree of Life represented then, in fact I don't know what the Knowledge of Good and Evil meant then either. It may not be complex symbology, but it is symbology nonetheless, which is still clouded in the mists of time. The difference in outlook can be explained not so much as inspired/not inspired, but as meaningful/dead. I don't find Genesis meaningful as 'the only recorded and true history of the origins of life', hell no, but as a Christian I believe it contains important symbology at least so far as origins of our faith. That being said, if a book WAS inspired, then dang all of the authors' intent. What kind of death was God talking about?
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anastasia Member (Idle past 5983 days) Posts: 1857 From: Bucks County, PA Joined: |
Bailey writes: The tree of knowledge offered the process of differentiation between good and evil. A separation from God's wisdom. In other words, Adam and Eve had a choice of the self-process of differentiation between good and evil without immortality, or immortality with God’s absolute wisdom instinctually. The self-process of differentiation between good and evil immediately started causing people to kill each other . (ex. jealousy, murder, war, blah, blah, blah . see Cain and Abel). I am familiar with the traditional take on the tale. For myself, I lean towards the spiritual death scenerio when I think about this scripture. I don't know that it says anything about immortality. What tends to provoke my comment in otherwise played out topics, is the continual 'God is a liar' claim from people who say they only want to read the books as ancient stories. If that is true, then the story is pretty clear about who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, even tho the story sure portrays God as lying, or at least wrong compared to the serpent. In pure story telling, it's an inconsistancy, a loose end. You have to assume that these people were lousy at telling stories, not detail oriented, copied wrong, remembered wrong, something of that nature. OR they were not concerned with the 'honesty' of God, but moreso with His power. 'God lied' is not the intent of the story, IMO. So one can either take the whole thing with a grain of salt and realize we will never know the 'true, original' intent based on some manuscripts from centuries later, or we can act on blind faith all around about the providential preservation of something important.
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anastasia Member (Idle past 5983 days) Posts: 1857 From: Bucks County, PA Joined: |
jar writes: Except of course, there is NOTHING in the story even hinting at spiritual death and it most certainly does speak of immortality as the very reason God becomes fearful and kicks them out. Perhaps you misunderstood where I was coming from. I was referring to the common assumption that was part of my catechism, and which says Adam and Eve were created with immortality, subsequently losing it when they ate of the Tree. I concur that there is no mention of spiritual death, but I am somewhere in the middle of word for word literalism, and bland Bible study without exegesis.
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anastasia Member (Idle past 5983 days) Posts: 1857 From: Bucks County, PA Joined: |
jar writes: Are you sure that is what you were taught in your catechism, because it really makes God an idiot. Probably not something I learned from church or school catechism, but yes, I did for a long time hear that Adam and Eve were 'perfect', never got sick, never had pain, never would have died, until after the Fall.
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anastasia Member (Idle past 5983 days) Posts: 1857 From: Bucks County, PA Joined: |
Shooting oneself in the foot while trying to save a toe.
Obviously an attempt to take 'you shall surely die' literally. Maybe God is not a liar in the story because the Tree of Life was still available to Adam and Eve before they ate of the Tree of Knowledge, so they have the possibility of immortality versus the assurance of death if they were banished? Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.
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