hotei42

i haven't been a member of II for long, but i wonder about the responses i'll get two questions.

1) do people that believe God is honest and lovely and all that (Christians) just ignore the first book of the bible, where God gets caught in a blatant and disgusting lie?

2) what evidence does christianity have for eternal hell? if i am not mistaken, jews believe in death of the soul of evil people; not eternal pain and suffering, just and ending. just curious. (note: i do remember something about an eternal fire in the NT. however, just because the fire doesn't go out, that doesn't mean the thing inside of it doesn't.)

Metacrock

What lie? You mean where he says that Adam and Eve will die when they eat the fruit and they dont'? Well first of all, they did die that very day, but they did die. It's also spiritual death, that doesn't mean their bodies will drop dead.

As for the other thing, most Christians base their belief in hell being etenral on NT passages which say things like, "where the fire is not quenched the worm does not die." And everlasting torment and stuff like that.


But many Christians, such as myself, recognize that no direct statements are made outside of parables or apocalyptics. So hell is a symbol for some sort of seperation. It's not in the OT anyway.


Is the Bible The Word of God?

hotei42

Don't you think that's a little bit of an escapist reaction? It doesn't say "on that day you will surely die spiritualy." or, "on that day your soul will die." or anything like that. It says "On that day, YOU will surely die." If you can read "spiritual death" into this what else can you read into Bible stories?

Jimby

Escapist?

A small bit of knowledge about the Hebrew, reveals that the "thou shalt surely die", is given in the Imperfect mood, which signifies a continuing process.

Therefore what God expressed was, that they would surely begin to die, or that they would die, and continue to die until they were eventually dead. Which is exactly what happened.

Indeed they did die spiritually, and they continued to die until they were physically dead.

God never lied, Eve called His bluff alongside Satan and found God true to His word.

What will you do? Call his bluff?

gravitybow

Are you saying that you, with your bit of Hebrew, are able to say what no team of translators with their PhD.s and years of linguistic experience haven't? That the verse should read "begin to die" or some similar rendition?

Tercel

Hi Hotei,
Your first question has several possible answers.
I have not seen the Jimby's alturnative translation before and do not know Hebrew myself but I would certainly be interested to hear if he can substantiate his translation or if anyone else agrees with him.
Metacrock has touched on the idea of a spiritual death, which I will expand upon. Traditional Christian teachings postulate that humans are composed of three things - Body, Soul and Spirit. The Body is pretty self-explanatory. A Soul is the collection of our intellect, emotions and will and is probably exactly what you think of when you talk about your Mind. A Spirit is probably best thought of as most similar to the Body, but in a spiritual dimension. But our Spirit is different from the Soul and Body in that it's life comes directly from God and how much life it has is related to our "union" with God.
Thus at the very moment that Adam and Eve broke God's commandment and put their own will in opposition to His, their spirits died.
Since our Spiritual life is more important than bodily life we cannot accuse God of lying when He told them they would die, because they did die in the most important way.
An alturnative,
They died "to God". From God's point of view they became under the curse of sin and thus dead to him.
Another alturnative,
They died in their relationship with God. That day as promised, God exiled them from the Garden and their face to face relationship with him was ended for ever. -To use a figure of speech - "dead".

A more literal alturnative: What is a day? This may sound a stupid question but it is actually very enlightening.
The Hebrew word for day is "yom" which can mean:
* 24 hours
* The length of time from sunrise to sunset
* A finite length of time.
This also comes into the discussion of the length of the creation days in Genesis 1. Most of the early (compared to us) Christian writers held that these creation days were 1000 year long periods of time and quoted Peter who writes "A thousand years to the Lord is as a day" and the rest held that each of these days was an Age of unknown length.
Given that other "days" in early Genesis are believed to be not 24 hours long, there appears to be no compelling reason to restrict ourselves to the idea that God was refering to a 24 hour day at all when he used the word.
Thus if we want, we can take the perspective that God was refering to a bodily death but was not talking about a 24 hour day.

So you've certainly got a range of answers to pick from without resorting to a conclusion that God lied.

-Tercel

Jimby

This isnt something I made up..

The footnotes in my KJV indicating the literal meaning of the hebrew read ... "Heb: dying thou shalt die"

The reason they dont translate it as such, is because the literal hebrew doesnt translate too well into English. As you can see below in the Youngs...

"thou dost not eat of it, for in the day of thine eating of it—dying thou dost die." (Youngs Literal)

This one captures the sense well...

"or on the day when you take of it, death will certainly come to you." (Bible in Basic English)

Nevertheless, like someone above previously mentioned above. The meaning of the verse is not that they would physically drop dead the second they ate, but that they would meet death, primarily spiritually, and secondly the a process of physical decay (dying thout will die).

The reason why "surely thou shalt die" is the most popular translation, is because it is interpreted to be primarily and most importantly a spiritual death, which was indeed instantaneous. However the sense of both death and decay is captured in the text.

gravitybow

O.K., it's not something you made up. Still, none of the verses you cite say anything about a spiritual death, and none of them aid your case, particularly the Bible in Basic English: I agree: it does capture the sense well. If this is basic English, English meant to be understood in everyday jargon, then God said Adam would die that day, not a lingering death of any type. Furthermore, you say: If this is the case, that "spiritually" is the primary meaning, the meaning that anyone reading any English translation should come away with, then the translators could have written that meaning clearly in the footnotes without disturbing the translation above. But there is no need to write such a footnote when the primary, and only, meaning is "mortal death that very day."

Don't you think that the translators would have added such a footnote? It would have eliminated a glaring contradiction, wouldn't it?

hotei42

In Genesis, isn't it true that G~d mentions a tree w/fruit that grants everlasting life? G~d supposedly says we can't be allowed to eat of it, for then we not only would have knowledge of good and evil, but also everlasting life. G~d says this would be bad, cause we'd be like him. Therefore, I think that we were not immortal before hand, either physically or spiritually.

== hoe-tie-forty-two
hotei is the "wandering wise fool" of buddhist ancestry. 42, well, i refuse to explain it....

gravitybow

Two trees are indicated. The first is the tree of good and evil: The second is the tree of everlasting life: