Thugpreacha

I took the time to look up a few of the glaring inconsistencies behind Genesis 3. This is what the "Bible experts" say. Any comments?


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Sven

Hello Thugpreacha,
I'd like to invite you to the thread "Why assume inerrancy?" Now on to your post. Most of what you listed didn't interest me in any way, but I have some comments:

Adam and Eve are a myth, they didn't exist. So the following is mostly only of academical interest.

Violating one rule is in no way equal to not loving the person who made the rule. The answer is of no relevance to the question.

Nonsense. Without knowing what is right and wrong, they also could not know that it is wrong to disobey their creator (BTW, I don't see why this should be wrong per se), and thus the test was unfair. Period. Your analogy is very bad. The text doesn't say that they will "experience guilt and evil", but that they will "know good and evil". Seems you are pulling words out of thin air.

Do we? I don't know if he even exists, for a start.

Please give an example for someone who claims this nonsense.

Oh no, not that BS again

Do they? Even if yes: So what?

Yeah. We believe. Because of this, it must be true.

Nice non-sequitur. How about first demonstrating that it was indeed a god who gave it to human writers?

Dean Anderson

I'll give it a go...

The Genesis story has nothing to do with the character of Satan - who is not introduced until much later. The concept of Satan being 'fallen' (rather than just a Puck-like figure is a Christian concept totally alien to the people who wrote the Genesis 3 story.

The Bible does indeed say nothing about this. Since it was written by a Middle-Eastern tribe, I would assume that they imagined that the Adam and Eve characters were of similar racial type to themselves.

It is true that the Bible does not say why Yahweh allowed Adam to eat the fruit - although I disagree with the second half of your answer.

The Genesis story shares a number of features with other creation myths. One of these is the idea of 'food of the gods' which gives divine entities their power.

According to the Genesis story, Adam was created as a slave to tend Yahweh's garden. Yahweh's garden contained such 'food of the gods' common to many mythologies in the form of 'Fruit of Wisdom' and 'Fruit of immortality'.

Nowhere does it say that Yahweh created Adam because he wanted someone to love him - is says quite simply that he wanted someone to do his physical work for him and tend his garden.

Eating from the tree was not a matter of right and wrong. Yahweh didn't command them not to eat the tree. He warned them that eating the tree would kill them - a warning that was a lie. The snake pointed out this lie.

Besides which, you claim that Adam and Eve do not know right from wrong (because they haven't eaten from the tree of knowledge) but that they should have known that going against Yahweh's warning was wrong. You are contradicting yourself here. Either they knew right from wrong - in which case there is no need for the tree to even exist, or they didn't - in which case it was unfair.

The story is quite specific in what is wrong with eating the tree - Yahweh creates slaves that do not have the wisdom to comprehend their position. He lies to them about the tree so that they will not gain wisdom.

Yahweh does not want equals. He wants slaves. When they gain wisdom, he is scared that they will be able to think for themselves and become his equals.

The text is quite clear that it is the achieving of wisdom that Yahweh has a problem with, not the going against his lies.

This is not supported by the text. Neither the fruit itself or the ignoring of Yahweh's warning were deadly. There is no mention of any kind of 'spiritual' death in the story. They died later physically - but this was not directly caused by their actions. Their default state was mortal - and Yahweh simply chose to stop them gaining immortality because he didn't want them to be his equals.

They were also conscious that these threatened consequences were a lie.

Adam did not have all his needs met. For a start he had to toil in the garden. This was the whole reason for his creation. Also there were may ways that he could have disobeyed Yahweh. For example, when Yahweh brought him the animals to name he could simply have refused to do so.

The rest of your answer is simple preaching and warrants no response.

Nowhere in the Genesis story does it say that the snake is anything other than a snake. It is only equated with 'Satan' by later Christian mythology that retroactively re-interprets the Genesis account.

Interestingly, the snake is quite common in this sort of tale. Snakes were thought to be immortal - since they shed their skins and keep being 'reborn'. Many mythologies connect the snake to the story of why people die. Sometimes the snake is the guardian of the 'immortality fruit', sometimes the snake is the accidental benefactor of the message about immortality, etc.

The whole concept of 'sin' is completely alien to the Genesis story. You are trying to make it say things that it quite simply does not say.

Genesis 3:15 does not mention Satan. It tells that the snake's offspring will have a difficult relationship with the woman's offspring. It is a 'Just So' story explaining why people kill snakes and snakes bite people.

Most scholars do nothing of the sort. Only Fundamentalist Inerrantists make these claims.

Any scholar who accepts the 'Documentary Hypothesis' accepts that many books of the Bible have been edited, rewritten, redacted and merged.

Any scholar who accepts the 'Q' hypothesis accepts that the Gospels are not written by eyewitnesses.

Most scholars will be able to readily point out later interpolations and additions to the text (for example the end of Mark).

Any scholar will be able to tell you that the current collection of books we call 'The Bible' did not exist as such a collection until at least the 2nd century CE.

Edited to say: Damn! It took me so long to type this that Sven beat me to it...

Hazel-rah

So, God not only set up the "Don't eat the fruit trap" to test the love of his precious creations - to what sadistic end one can only speculate; He also gave us "Even though your understanding of this cryptic nonsense impacts whether or not I send you and all your descendents to hell for eternity, you figure it out."

Or maybe some monk left out all of God's helpful explanatory footnotes when they were copying it.

Sven

Yes, but it was worth the time - your response is much better

Steven Carr

It would seem out of character for God to curse snakes, knowing that the snake was not a real snake at all, but Satan in disguise.

Even if it was a real snake, why would God curse a whole group of creatures just because Satan possessed one of them? Hardly the snake's fault was it?

Kosh

Yeah, they're all brainwashed by the mythology of Ignorant Bronze Age Goat Herders (tm)

Jack the Bodiless

I have to ask: what "Bible experts" said all this, and what makes them "experts"?

Mageth

Thugpreacha's Q&As were copied, without credit, from:

Copyright (c); Christian Debater(r);, P.O. Box 144441. Austin, Tx 79714. (512) 218-8022.
www.BibleQuery.org.

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Toto

Thanks Mageth.