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Berzerker
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topeka, kansas,USA
May 1999
time: 23:30
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The Actors:
God - apparent owner or part owner of Paradise known as the Garden of Eden
Adam - man and occupant of Paradise
Eve - woman and occupant of Paradise
Serpent - apparent trespasser in Paradise
Apple - knowledge of Good and Evil
Plot:
God places Apple near Adam and Eve instructing Adam to not touch it. Serpent advises Eve the opposite... She does what the Serpent instructs followed by Adam. God finds out by seeing loincloths on Adam and Eve.
What is the real message here? I once thought Adam and Eve had learned to procreate and God was angry since he later sent the Flood to cleanse the land of all the people who were becoming a nuisance (Babylonian version of the Flood) or corrupt (Genesis).
I still believe the ability and knowledge to procreate upset God, but I'm changing my thinking a bit. The symbolism in this story is very intriguing. If the loincloths represent shame or knowledge of procreation and the proof God needed to know Adam and Eve had attained the knowledge of good and evil, do they also represent humanity's perceived departure from the animal world?
Given the scientific evidence, we know anatomically modern humans appeared roughly 150-200 centuries ago and I expect maybe 50,000 years before that which is an approximate provided by some DNA evidence charting our ancestral "Eve". Why does the Bible describe a "transition" scientifically "known" to have happened 200,000<500,000 years ago?
More peculiarities, what is the nature of this "Serpent" and its relationship to God? If God is as described, how can the Serpent waltz into town and screw up his Paradise? Why does God react to the Serpent's troublemaking with a mere tongue-lashing that is laughable on its face? Cursed to slither about and be stepped on by Eve's progeny? That would suggest the Serpent is an actual snake but doesnt explain the rationale for cursing snakes in general which were created by God and seen as "good". Was this a curse on a bloodline? The Serpent's progeny or followers?
Jesus advised his followers to be wise like the Serpent and gentle like the Dove, strange advice if this Serpent is worthy of condemnation. It went from beguiling - a trickster cursed by God - to a source of wisdom valued by Jesus.
In the more ancient versions from Mesopotamia, the gods found a creature roaming about and "bound" their image onto the creature to create man for the purpose of labor, the Bible echoes this when God asks or instructs his colleagues to make man in God's/their image. If we combine these stories with the scientific evidence, it appears "evolution" was accelerated to create man less than a 1/2 million years ago.
How can a biblical story span eons describing events ~300,000 years ago? How could the biblical authors even know about our departure from nature and implicitly, about evolution?
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Eli
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Israel
Jul 2000
time: 07:30
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quote:
How can a biblical story span eons describing events ~300,000 years ago? How could the biblical authors even know about our departure from nature |
This "Departure from nature" does not have to imply biological evolution. The authors were part of a "civilized" society but they could've been aware of other, very primitive, tribes who in their eyes behaved not unlike animals. From the difference between themselves and these groups they could assume some "departure from nature".
Edit:
Those tribes might've been sexually promiscuous while the authors' society was much more closed about sex. So the loincloths thingie might symbolize not the discovery of sex, but the discovery that sex is an act that has shame attached to it(all the 3 religions that result from the bible treat sex that way). And knowing shame is knowing Good and Evil.
Last edited by Eli on 06-09-2005 at 13:41
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molly bloom
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Lundenwic
Oct 2001
time: 15:30
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quote:
Originally posted by Berzerker
God places Apple near Adam and Eve instructing Adam to not touch it. |
Not quite.
The divine horticulturalist tells Adam not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge before he goes to the operating theatre and makes Adamrib into Eve for Adam:
quote:
Genesis Chapter 2
16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
....
21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
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Berzerker
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topeka, kansas,USA
May 1999
time: 23:30
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Molly, I said God instructed Adam. Eve received the instruction at another time or from Adam. The chronology you cite is irrelevant to the story and my analysis.
Eli quote:
This "Departure from nature" does not have to imply biological evolution. The authors were part of a "civilized" society but they could've been aware of other, very primitive, tribes who in their eyes behaved not unlike animals. From the difference between themselves and these groups they could assume some "departure from nature". |
And yet the Bible says the people alive then were descendents of the Ark survivors. Btw, the Israelites weren't advanced compared to many neighbors, they were a hill tribe surrounded by great civilisations. But your point is valid, when advanced peoples meet primitives there is a tendency to see them as more animal-like. But this is about the Garden and man's fall, not the fall of Israelites. The Bible accurately describes an ancient transition from animal to human...
quote:
Edit:
Those tribes might've been sexually promiscuous while the authors' society was much more closed about sex. So the loincloths thingie might symbolize not the discovery of sex, but the discovery that sex is an act that has shame attached to it(all the 3 religions that result from the bible treat sex that way). And knowing shame is knowing Good and Evil. |
I agree, the loincloth symbolism refers to sex (or procreation) but it has an implied message - the Bible's author(s) knew man's fall was his ascendency from nature and it happened long ago. There is a passage in the Bible where God says his spirit will reside in man for 120 years. But these years are not human years, they are God's years. And according to the Mesopotamians, God's year lasted 3,600 human years. Thats 432,000 years, within the range of the scientific evidence of our "enolution".
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Eli
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Israel
Jul 2000
time: 07:30
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quote:
Originally posted by Berzerker
And yet the Bible says the people alive then were descendents of the Ark survivors. Btw, the Israelites weren't advanced compared to many neighbors, they were a hill tribe surrounded by great civilisations. But your point is valid, when advanced peoples meet primitives there is a tendency to see them as more animal-like. But this is about the Garden and man's fall, not the fall of Israelites. The Bible accurately describes an ancient transition from animal to human... |
Yes.
The creation story didnt have to originate among the Israelites. I'm doubtful of the ability of a tiny nomad tribe to create such a story. It makes more sense that it was created by those advanced civilizations and adopted by the Israelites who then attached to it their own history.
And I'm not sure I understand what you meant with the first sentence about the Ark.
quote:
I agree, the loincloth symbolism refers to sex (or procreation) but it has an implied message - the Bible's author(s) knew man's fall was his ascendency from nature and it happened long ago. There is a passage in the Bible where God says his spirit will reside in man for 120 years. But these years are not human years, they are God's years. And according to the Mesopotamians, God's year lasted 3,600 human years. Thats 432,000 years, within the range of the scientific evidence of our "enolution". |
Well, you have to make some significant leaps to reach this conclusion. What is the exact passage you're talking about?
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Immortal Wombat
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in perpetuity
Dec 2000
time: 05:30
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quote:
Originally posted by The diplomat
The loincloth cannot refer to sex because God specifically instructs Adam and Eve to "be fruitful and multiplify". In other words, God told Adam and Eve to have a lot of sex. |
The directive to be fruitful and multiply is not given to Adam and Eve. It is given in the first chapter of Genesis, to the unnamed man and woman who are to populate the earth. Adam and Eve are created in the second (and contradictory) chapter of Genesis, in sexless isolation in Eden, who don't lay with one another until the third chapter, after their expulsion from Eden.
If God is pro-procreation, and if the fruit of the tree genuinely does confer knowledge of good and evil, then why would Adam feel shame if nakedness was not an aspect of evil?
Eli: Genesis 6:3: "He said: 'My spirit will not remain on people (sab') forever for they are flesh. Their lifespan is to be 120 years."
It seems to refer to the lifespan of individual humans rather than the species. That whole section is confusing though, with separate references to the daughters of men, the Sons of God and the Nephilim.
Berz: God himself fashioned loin cloths for them (3:21). He discovered that they ate from the tree when Adam realises his nakedness and hides in shame from God as he comes looking for Adam. Despite the little details, a more fundamental flaw in your argument appears to be the assumption that because some myth describes the arrival of humanity, it must necessarily understand evolution.
quote:
How can a biblical story span eons describing events ~300,000 years ago? |
Oral tradition and then writing. Note that the events described are clearly not passed on with any great deal of accuracy until writing, since many of the more major details (like one couple inventing morality, like snakes talking, like the existence of Eden, God, the tree, etc) are allegorical or just plain bullshit just-so-stories. Given that, I would be surprised if there were no such story claiming to describe such events. The fact that they loosely correlate with fact is coincidence: of course humanity and morality had a point of inception.
quote:
How could the biblical authors even know about our departure from nature and implicitly, about evolution? |
Is that the departure from nature where we are created out of clay by an omnipotent deity? I can think of much better ways to display an understanding of evolution that saying "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."
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Eli
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Israel
Jul 2000
time: 07:30
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IW's quote above reminds me that I learned more bible quotes from playing SMAC than in 10 years of bible lessons in school.
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Jon Miller
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quote:
Originally posted by SpencerH
I wrote a paper whose thesis was that god tossed em out of eden after eating fruit from the tree of knowledge in order to prevent em from eating from the tree of life and becoming gods themselves i.e. to prevent competition. |
a pretty common idea..
at least now
JM
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lord of the mark
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FUKCOV - Former United Kingdom Colony of Virginia
Dec 2000
time: 00:30
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'Topics in this digest: Bereishit 5764
The story of Adam and Eve eating of the tree of knowledge is a troubling story. The tree is officially called “eitz hada’at tov v’ra,” the tree of the knowledge of good and bad. So if prior to eating from this tree Adam didn’t know good from bad, how could he possibly be punished for eating from it? We all know that in secular law there is what is called the “insanity defense,” an excuse which Jay Handel unsuccessfully tried to invoke in his recent murder trial in Campbell River.
But the insanity defense is older than that. It is also a principle in halacha, in Jewish law. People who were considered mentally incompetent were not held responsible for their actions, and were not permitted to enter into contracts. It has come to be accepted logic that someone who does not know good from evil needs treatment, not punishment.
So if Adam didn’t know good from evil, couldn’t he have invoked the “insanity” defense? Couldn’t he have said, “well, God, until I ate from that tree I didn’t know that eating from it would be doing anything wrong. I didn’t know the difference between good and bad. Now that I do know the difference because I ate from the tree, OK, now I’m warned!”
Rabbi Yosef Horowitz, the Alter of Novardok, gives an explanation in his Mussar book “Madreigat HaAdam,” the Levels of Man.
Even if Adam didn’t know good from evil, he still should not have done what he did. Adam was the first man, created directly by the hand of God. Obviously someone at a very high spiritual level. God’s child. Someone God spoke to. Even if Adam didn’t know good from evil, it doesn’t say he didn’t know truth from falsehood. If God had told him not to do something, how could he possibly do something that was contrary to God’s will? Children obey their parents even before they understand the difference between good and evil.
Rabbi Horowitz suggests that when God told Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and bad, it wasn’t a commandment. Rather, it was advice. God was telling Adam, “that tree in the middle of the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and bad—listen to me, don’t eat from it. Boy, if you eat from it, you’ll be sorry. If you eat from that tree, you’ll die.”
Adam, being created b’tzelem Elokim, in God’s image, had free will. He could choose whether to follow this advice or not. So why did Adam choose not to follow God’s “aitzah tova,” Her good advice?
What the tree of knowledge unleashed was physical appetites. When first created, Adam was like an angel—he didn’t have physical needs and desires at all. He knew such things existed, but only in an abstract, intellectual sort of way. The effect of eating from the tree of knowledge was to implant physical desires into the person. After eating from the tree, Adam would no longer be like an angel with no physical desires: he would become a person with all of the accompanying appetites for food, drink, sex, comfort, and so on.
So why give up the life of an angel to become a true human? Because Adam figured that if he could have all of those physical desires, and conquer them, he would be at an even higher spiritual level than he already was. That if he could be tested in this way, and remain true to God, if he could control those desires, he would advance spiritually. There is a teaching in the Talmud that a tzadik gamur, a completely righteous person, cannot stand in the place of a ba’al teshuva, a person who has sinned and repented.
The logic is simple. If you grew up in a completely observant home and never tasted treif, you have no idea what you are missing. You have no particular appetite for things you’ve never had, so it’s no big deal to keep kosher. On the other hand, if you know just how tasty a pepperoni pizza is—or freshly fried abalone, or shrimp scampi, or a Philly cheese steak—and you still give it up to keep kosher, that shows a very serious commitment to God. It takes someone at a higher spiritual level.
So Adam decided to challenge himself in this way. He said, thanks God, for the good advice, but if I’m to grow spiritually, I need to do this. Any parents of college age kids can probably relate to this: we try to give them advice on how to do things to make life easier for themselves, but they have to do it their own way anyway.
According to this view, Adam didn’t sin at all. Rather, he simply chose not to follow God’s advice, because he thought he would be up to the challenge and he would grow as a result. Unfortunately, Adam’s descendants, Mankind, was NOT up to the challenge—in a few generations, by the days of Noah, people were being ruled by their appetites and God found it so repugnant He decided to start over.
I would suggest that this decision of Adam’s—the decision to take a chance, to take a risk, in order to improve himself—is what makes Adam Man. If you look at the stories our tradition tells around angels you will find that angels have no desire for improvement. In Hollywood language, angels have no “character arc.” They are what they are. You don’t see Rafael or Micha’el striving to be Metatron. The angels all have their assigned role, and they all seem content with whatever it may be.
While being given free will may be what made Adam “God-like,” having this urge for self-improvement is what made Adam “Man-like.” We each have a desire for improvement. Rare is the person who is completely satisfied with the status quo. Some of us long for spiritual improvement, like Adam did—longing for a closer relationship with our Creator. Others may simply desire a better physical lot in life—more money which translates into more “fun,” and more “goodies.” But all of us are looking for something. We all have some realm in which we hope to see improvement.
Adam chose to take the test. He chose to eat from the tree in his quest for spiritual improvement. In a way, each of us is given that test of Adam’s. When we reach the age of puberty—roughly Bar Mitzvah age—we have an experience not unlike what Adam went through. Physical desires are aroused in a new way. Not just the obvious budding of sexuality, but even our tastes in food and drink change. Whether we ask for it or not, God has us eat from the tree of knowledge of good and bad. Children are seen as “angel-like” in their purity and innocence. We give that up to become adults.
Our tradition does not say “bad idea! No!” and deny it. We do not have a tradition of monks who strive to go back to a state similar to Adam before he ate from the Tree. We do not say “deny sex, deny physical comfort, be an angel.” Not at all. To the contrary we are told that Adam was right in a way: those physical desires—what we would call the yetzer hara, the evil inclination—can be used as a vehicle for spiritual advancement. The difference between us and Adam is that we have a tool that Adam didn’t: we have the Torah. The guidance of the Torah tells us to take those negative inclinations—the potentially harmful tendencies we have—and direct them toward holiness. Don’t deny the desire for sex and intimacy by trying to imitate an angel by being celibate, but rather express that desire in the context of love and marriage, thereby elevating that physical desire into something holy. And thereby becoming greater, holier, than we would have been without that desire in the first place.
We learn from Adam that to be human is to be on a quest, to seek improvement. We must remember to seek the right things, as it says in Proverbs chapter 2: Indeed, if you cry after knowledge, and lift up your voice for understanding; If you seek her like silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures; Then shall you understand yirat Hashem, fear of the Lord, and find the da’at Elokim, knowledge of God.
It is a great mitzvah to serve God with great joy, always...R. Nachman of Breslov
Rabbi Barry Leff
Beth Tikvah Congregation
9711 Geal Road
Richmond, BC V7E 1R4'
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06-09-2005 12:58
).
Try reading 6:3 in Hebrew. I dont even understand two of the words.
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