may

For the human family to be genuinely happy, they must have a good relationship with God—one that is voluntary, not forced. Jehovah wants obedience and worship that come from the heart, out of love. (Deuteronomy 6:5) So in the garden of Eden, Jehovah made a restriction that afforded the first man an opportunity to prove his heartfelt loyalty. “From every tree of the garden you may eat to satisfaction,� God told Adam, “but as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die.� (Genesis 2:16, 17) It was a simple test. Jehovah forbade Adam to eat the fruit of just one tree out of all the trees in the garden. That tree symbolized the all-wise Creator’s right to decide what is good and what is bad.

keyser_soze

Prove your loyalty by not eating a fruit. Damn, that's easy. Think I could get a bonus at work if I pretend to be so stupid that I don't know right from wrong and don't steal paperclips. [Assumes the irony will fly right over heads].

Jack the Bodiless

Yes, it was a threat of "premature" death: that's precisely the point!

A&E were already doomed to die: they were created mortal. Only a threat of premature, immediate death would have worked: death that very day.

As Genesis plainly states.

Otherwise, you appear to be on "apologetic autopilot" mode: merely reciting erroneous Christian dogma. You don't seem to have grasped the point that the Fall was inflicted on humanity by God.

God did two distinct things, for two separate reasons. The expulsion from Eden wasn't primarily a punishment: it was preventative action, to stop us becoming immortal. But, on top of that, God cursed all women with painful childbirth. That was unnecessary: gratuitous sadism inflicted on future generations that had done nothing to deserve it.

The author of Genesis appears to have no problem portraying God as the sort of being who is unworthy of worship: one who should be placated only for purely pragmatic reasons. Of course, this isn't the Christian God, that we're supposed to love: nor is it YHWH, that we're supposed to respect. El seems different in character from both of those.

may

A&E were not doomed to die ,it was not inflicted on them.Just as a loving father would warn his young child not to touch the fire because he knows they will get burned if they do, God lovingly told A&E not to eat from that tree, because he knew that they needed devine guidiance to be truly satisfied and happy with endless live . so the tree represented Gods devine prerogative to rulership .their continued happiness depended on their recongnizing this .They where not created to successfully rule themselves independent from God.Their atempt to grasp independance did the exact opposite

Jack the Bodiless

Genesis says otherwise.

If you want to invent your own Bible, go ahead. But this thread is discussing what Genesis actually says, and what its author meant.

BTW, if you're prepared to describe the God of Genesis as "loving", then it appears that you have a strange idea of what the concept means. If your child disobeys you and touches a fire, would you "lovingly" throw that child out of your house, and "lovingly" deliberately cripple that child and all his/her descendants with a debilitating illness too?

It's time to switch off the autopilot. Wake up and smell the coffee!

< snaps fingers >

Jack the Bodiless

Let's just try to integrate the Christian "sin as malfunction" scenario with Genesis, shall we?

I propose the following scenario:

A&E were created immortal. Never mind the lack of Biblical support, and the even more problematic "no death in the world" claim: saber-toothed tigers ate really tough pumpkins.

A&E then disobeyed God, causing an internal malfunction which doomed them to eventual death. God failed to warn them that mere disobedience would have this effect: he still lied about the "immediately lethal" nature of the fruit itself.

Fortunately for A&E, there was an antidote: the fruit of the Tree of Life. Unfortunately for them, God stopped them getting it, for selfish reasons.

We still have a nasty God, and a helpful Serpent who either didn't know about the malfunction (was HE able to lead A&E astray because God had neglected to command him not to?): or, being apparently an expert on magical fruit, presumably knew about the antidote too.

judge

Hmmm..might as well revisit this.

We, today, talk of Immortal and Mortal as if these are the only two options. As I understand it in trying to make sense of genesis (if such is possible) a third option was introduced. Neither mortal nor immortal.

Immortal was understood as meaning unable to experience death

Mortal was understood to mean unable to avoid death , able to postpone it but not to avoid it.

Adam and eve were understood to be capable of experiencing death but able to avoid it indefinitely.

In other words if Adam was immortal then he would never have died (even after disobeying)

Magdlyn

A new word, judge? Amortal perhaps?

Of course the snake was helpful and on A&E's side. Going by the culture of the day in which the myth was invented, a snake (symbol of Her wisdom) in a tree (symbol of Her nuturance) would be an obvious symbol of the Great Goddess whom the author of the myth saw as a competitor for the souls of the Israelites.

Going by the gnostic interpretation centuries later, the snake was Christ the Savior, the creator god an evil short-sighted fellow named Ialdabaoth.

Anat

Let's not forget Eve's name. The interpretation 'mother of all living' like many interpretations of names in Genesis (and also elsewhere in the Hebrew Scriptures) seems a bit contrived - the name consists of a word that is similar to 'living' but lacks any reference to 'mother', which is after all the noun which is the subject of the interpretation as given in the text. OTOH hiwia is Aramaic for snake. So the most literal interpretation of Eve's name would be 'snake woman'.

Clivedurdle

Has this rabbbinical thought got parallels in the idea of immortals in Taoism? Were these ideas travelling back and forth on the silk road for millenia?

The comments about is there a book of Augustine in the Bible reminded me that don't Catholics believe there are two sources of authority - the Bible and the Church?

I think it is unarguable from the Genesis story that humans were made mortal - why else have a tree of life? The fact that God not only lied but also showed he was not omnipotent is also of note - Eve is an afterthought after observing the facts and coming to a conclusion and taking action to put right Adam's loneliness! God made a mistake in the first place - he did not create man and woman together, he was experimenting!

This is a fascinating study of the layers of thinking and argument over millenia and how like chinese whispers the original plot can be completely lost!

We now have a different source of authority that has replaced "the word of God" and the authority of the Church - science!