MortalWombat

The way he is portrayed in the story, he doesn't seem to be omniscient at all. Take a look at the verses just after the fruit-eating incident in Genesis 3:

Javaman

I was going to put that in there as I also found it odd. It reminds me of when Satan comes to hang out with God (in Job) but God keeps asking him where he's been... shouldn't he know? Good stuff.

NobleSavage

Were you expecting to find logic in the Bible?

Biff the unclean

I think that one of the biggest problems with this story is that most people take it from Milton's Paradise Lost and not from Genesis.

In Milton the snake is the devil, it's sneaky and dishonest.
In Genesis it's just "snake." Snake is neither sneaky nor does he tell anything but the truth. In Genesis it is actually God who lies to Adam & Eve and not the talking snake.

In Paradise Lost they are punished for not knowing right from wrong.
In Genesis they are punished for becoming like gods and gaining the knowledge of good and evil, not for ignoring orders. God complains about this but says nothing about disobedience.

They are punished for gaining the ability to have free will.

They are thrown out of the garden and a monster with a flaming sword is placed on guard so that they won't lay their paws on the fruit of eternal life and become even more god like. Thus showing that it is the gaining of the abilities that God is opposed to instead of the act of disobedience, which was, however, his gripe in Milton.

Literalist Xian's aren't being literal at all. That or they got the wrong book.

beastmaster

Actually, in Genesis, god punishes A&E twice. First, he does in fact punish their disobedience, by taking away the snake's legs, cursing the woman with painful childbirth, and condemning the man to hard labor. Then, he "punishes" them for becoming "like gods," as you say, by kicking them out of the Garden.

Tod

The way he is portrayed in the story, he doesn't seem to be omniscient at all. Take a look at the verses just after the fruit-eating incident in Genesis 3:

Yeah, and don't forget the test of Abraham in regards to Yahweh's orders to kill Isaac in Gen chapter 22. Why do you test somebody if you already know everything? Humans test each other, either scholastically or situationally, precisely because they DON'T know something. We don't know our students have learned their subject adequately, so we give them a test. A suspicious spouse doesn't know if his/her spouse is faithful, so they test them. Etc....

When Abraham is stopped from killing his son moments before he does so, he is told: "Do not harm him, for now I know you fear God. You have not refused me your own beloved son." (vs 12)

"Now" he knows, indicating he didn't before.

Biff the unclean

I just went back and reread Gen 3 and frankly don't see that at all.
The first set of punishments were because " Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil...," not for the act of disobedience but for the gaining of a "superpower."

The second set were not to punish them for something that they had done. But to prevent them from using their newly acquired knowledge of good & evil to figure out that eternal life was very good indeed. "... and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever 3:23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden...

I can't find any implication in Genesis that disobedience was the problem. Rather it was what they gained by being disobedient that god complains about.
Milton, as I already mentioned, is another story.

Biff the unclean

It's like Superman. When the first comics came out he could run really fast and jump really really high. Then later on other authors stopped him from all that silly hopping and made him able to fly. When the author of Abraham was writing his novel the character God didn't have this superpower yet.

beastmaster

Ok, let's go through this verse by verse.

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3:13
And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

3:14
And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed ....

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Look at the bolded language. God punishes the snake because the snake beguiled Eve.

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3:16
Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

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It doesn't exactly say why he is punishing Eve, but the implication is because she "did eat." See Gen 3:13 supra.

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3:17
And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life...

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Well, if that doesn't convince you, I don't know what will. It can't be much clearer that god is punishing Adam for eating of the tree in *disobedience* of god's command.

Then, after that, god decides to punish A&E a second time, like you say, by kicking them out of the Garden because "behold they have become like one of us."

Amos

That's a poor translation beastmaster and I would rather burn it than read it.

Sorrow whas nothing to do with it and no man shall ever "rule over thee" even if he is the master.