Anat

Because he chose so. The way he chose to give Torah by Moses and not Akiva, although Moses thought Akiva would be more worthy. And then he chose to have Akiva martyred. Even when he shares his decisions with Moses he does not explain his reasons. See Rewards of Torah.

A quote that is relevant to this thread in general:
Adam and Eve rebeled, and that rebelion was necessary for humanity to grow up. OK, this is my atheist reading, but it is atheism with Jewish roots. After all, one of the proudest moments in Jewish tradition was when Rabbi Yehoshua told God to shut up, and God was happy to agree. The Oven of Akhnai

Anat

I sense goalposts moving. Sure, belief A can evolve into belief B via a chain of interpretation. That does not mean the two beliefs are the same and have been all along.

John Kesler

This isn't a very intellectually satisfying answer. If "new arrangements had to be made" and "there was a necessity to provide for an alternate means for making a living," then God was reacting to circumstances. The Moses example is not parallel since Yahweh chose in advance to use Moses rather than using him out of necessity when the preferred lawgiver didn't work out.

Gamera

I didn't mention a curse. I just quoted what Genesis 2 says God says, which is if they eat of the tree, they would die that very day. They didn't die that very day physically, which suggests that something other than physical death is intended.

Solo

[QUOTE=greyline;3697454]

My mother, who was a pretty sophisticated Catholic, would have been in stitches reading something like that.

Excuse me ? It is not a reasonable interpretation because I am not quoting the text verbatim ?

Would any interpretation of the text be "reasonable" by that standard ? Is that a "reasonable" thing to say ?

Jiri

greyline

You didn't say why.


I don't find it reasonable to add a heap of stuff that's just not there in the text.

The text says:
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. (Gen 2:17)

which you interpreted as "you will become aware of your mortality". This makes no sense to me. He just told them they'd die - which means he's just made them aware of their mortality and they haven't even eaten the fruit yet!

The tree is called the tree of "knowledge of good and evil" - it seems fairly obvious that eating the fruit gives someone knowledge of good and evil.

Solo

Look I don't what know you think you know, but I can tell you this form of argument does not impress me. What I meant was roughly the Reform and Humanistic (agnostic) Judaism.

I don't mind, really, that's just fine.....

You say it does not support my point, but I don't think you really understand what my point is. I did not quote the teshuvah prescriptions to argue that the Hasidim believe in original sin but that that 'original sin' of the X-tians is psychologically prefigured by the type of man-God relationship that the redemptive ritual bespeaks. Interestingly, the Hasidim, like the original Jesus followers, are ecstatics.

So, in other words, if it is not white it must be black, and if it is Christian it cannot be Jewish. St. Augustine's doctrine of the original sin is a system of belief that is consistent with religious doctrines and personally with his obsessions, which are at loggerheads with Jewish monotheism. This should not obscure the historical fact, that the doctrine developed from a very Jewish sense of separation from God, and a sense of guilt before God, which other religious systems either don't know at all or have only a very faint inkling of.

But since this guilt before God, or a metaphysical sense of shame, gives us a moral compass, and builds up conscience in us, I see the original "original sin" of the Jews, as a necessary psychic stepping stone to humanity that is truly human.

Jiri

Solo

You may be seeing things. I think I have been pretty consistent (though I should have been a little more careful about wording some things).

I have never claimed that the Jewish and Christian beliefs systems around the Fall are the same, merely that they have a common starting point. I lampooned the strident assertions that Jews are innocent of any notion of original sin, pointing to Genesis, as the ultimate proof that the Jewish God's creation fell out of favour with God generically, for an individual act of disobedience of a presumed common ancestor. How this is grasped theologically today, is of a very limited import here, since we are chatting on BCH.

Jiri

Solo

I was not adding; I was interpreting.

It goes back to Woody Allen: "I don't mind dying, I just don't want to be there when it happens". It is the thought of death that is the terror, not death itself. So, what the scribe might have wanted God to say was "you do that, and that day you are just as good as dead".


No, he made Adam's immortality contingent on his obedience. Eve was not around yet. Come to think of it, Eve could have argued the banishment was unfair to her, since she only had the info second-hand from Adam.
You may also argue that since in paradise death was unknown, the idea would have made no sense to Adam, but as one of my favourite theologians begged, one needs to make some allowances for the intellectual level of sophistication that speaks to us here.

The other point to consider, is "the day". Does that mean, "twenty four hours" ? Does that mean "at that moment", does that mean liturgical "day", i.e. the 930 years that Adam lived afterwards ?

...this "gnosis" naturally would have been superfluous if Adam and Eve had agreed to live under God's tutelage forever.

Jiri

Anat

But mankind never fell out of favor of God. How could the Talmudists have said, "haviv adam, shenivra b'tzelem" - unless in their view mankind was still in favor of God? The Noachide covenant is evidence that all of humanity is viewed as capable of doing good.