Buster Daily

Please. God is, at best, being deceptive.

I have five baskets of apples and tell you eat any of them you want but not the ones on the end because if you do you'll die. Now some third party comes up to you in my absence and says, "Naw, that's not what the apples on the end do. They just make you smarter."

Now you decide to eat some of those apples and holy s*&t they DO make you smarter and you didn't die. I come back and I'm really pissed off because of your disobedience and I curse you and the third party and decide that eventually I will kill you at some future date hundreds of years from now. Please tell me that this third party was a liar and that I am not.

The original myth authors probably didn't mind that the god in the garden was a liar. Later editors had to get the god (now Yahweh) off on a technicality, but not until after A and E populate the whole world.

mdarus

I find it easier to believe that we are not "getting it" than that the author (or revisionist) missed the key point in the plot. If the original story was about a lying god and a truth-telling snake, I have trouble reconstructing the point of the story. Maybe you could help. I can't help but read it as a truth-telling God and a lying snake.

Maybe the point is that how you hear the story shows where your loyalties lie.

Buster Daily

I don't have any loyalties that relate to this as far as I know.

I don't like the term revisionist in this case. I envision (I have no proof mind you) someone weaving old legends that explain lots of things that people "know" about the world into a coherent story of man and his relationship with the god Yahweh/El/Elohim. The point was to say, "Remember those stories about this god or that god which you were taught as kids. They are true but that was actually Yahweh the one true god. Here's how they all fit together."

God was either being deceptive or outright lying. If God hadn't decided on man's punishment until after the fruit was eaten, he was lying. If God had predetermined that the punishment for eating the fruit was eventual death then he was being deceptive. He could have said, "If you eat it, I will kill you," rather than imply that it was poison.

The snake was either being truthful or deceptive (or possibly lying). If the snake had no idea that he and A and E would be punished, he was being completely truthful. If he thought that they might be punished, he was telling the truth but holding back info. The only way he was lying was if God and the snake got together before hand and God said explicitly, "This is what I'm going to do to them (and you?) if they eat it." I don't think the snake personally wanted to be punished so how much did he know.

mdarus

Let's consider some alternatives:

1. God lied.
2. They began to die. It was the beginning of a process.
3. They died spiritually.
4. God changed his mind.

Which one is most consistent with the original intent of the author /compiler?

1. I will let others argue for this one. I don't see much merit in it.
2. This is a subtle thing. On the surface it is not satisfying. However, it does pick up on a later theme pondering why evil is not immediately judged. David complains a lot that evil people seem to get blessings instead of what they deserve.
3. The spiritual death idea is the popular Christian interpretation. It could coincide with the contrast between Adam walking with God in the garden vs. being expelled.
4. Today I am sort of liking this one. The God of Genesis changes his mind a lot. Consider that God's original threat of death was based on the scenario of Adam defiantly walking up and munching. It didn't happen that way. There were complications with a snake and Eve taking the first bite. In God's subsequent courtroom there were mitigating circumstances. There is a little bit of 2 and 3 possible to mix in too.

nygreenguy

Understood, i was just throwing in some christian flare.



Yes, yes i am! Sort of.... But Jesus was never Jehovah. As you might know we reject the trinity, so Jesus is merly the offspring of God.




Well, the one day=1000 years is an ACTUALY biblical quote, so it doesnt fit the definiton of an "apologetic" and it also doesnt fit here. From that day, adam DID die, but once again it didnt mean hed literally keel over but begin his path to death.


Not everyone assigns knowing the futue to omniscience. I dont believe even God knows the future because i dont think it CAN be known. OTOH, what if God WANTED Adam to eat the fruit? What if that was a part of his plan? What if he never meant for us to live forever?

Buster Daily

Yeah and Adam presented a good case. He said, "That woman you gave me made me do it."

I have always wondered about the "Tree of Life". It is certainly implied that eating from it once grants immortality just like eating once from the tree of knowledge is enough. If that were the case then eventually dying was the "ground state" and humans not eating from this tree were already going to die. God was clearly threatened by immortals with knowledge of good and evil. At the time that the banishment was handed out they hadn't eaten yet so nothing really changed at that moment. Apologists and others could argue that the Tree of Life was sustaining and that by eating continually from it one never aged but I'm not sure that is actually implied.

It is implied that Adam and Eve knew about procreation. God goes right into talking about their offspring. They didn't say, "Wait a minute. What offspring?" There are obvious population implications for immortals that reproduce.

I think I agree that the author's intent was that God changed his mind due to mitigating circumstances as you said. Either way, he never said, "Eat it and I'll kill you," so I am still sticking with deceptive.

mdarus

I can't quite get to deceptive unless you define it "failure to provide ALL relevant information and avoid any possible misunderstanding." It seems to be that if all that God said was, "You shall surely die" , that would be sufficient to get the point across.

chapka

What's the problem with this one? In most ancient mythologies, gods lie, cheat, and steal all the time.

Like so many other parts of the bible, the tree episode makes perfect sense as a story. It only stops making sense if you insist on taking it literally. For example: consider the Aesop's fable "Sour Grapes," which I'll assume you know. What is your response to this story?

a) Yeah, that's true--people's perceptions of past events are affected by the way the events affected them.

b) Hey, wait a minute--foxes can't talk!

If you answered (b), you've missed the point.

Genesis works the same way. The stories make sense on their own terms. For example, the "tree of life" story is a reflection on what separates humanity both from the "lower" animals (knowledge of good and evil) and from the gods (eternal life). Getting bogged down in "But God can't tell a lie" or "But what does this say about evolution" is just as silly as getting bogged down in "But snakes can't talk" or "Did Adam have a navel".

chapka

That is, however, the way similar trees worked in at least one other mythological systems (Freja's apples kept the gods alive eternally). I don't know how much we know about pre-biblical Hebrew legends of this nature.

Steven Avery

Not in the historic Bible, the King James Bible, nor the generally accurate earlier Geneva Bible. Nor, generally, in Jewish translations.

Amen.