aa5874

Now, I dont buy yours either, and I believe others will not buy mine, yours and those of others.

So, you see, we all fabricate what we think of the characteristics of God, therefore God is a fabrication of man's imagination.

Tigers!

I seem to recall reading in the Bible somewhere that Adam died.

Jack the Bodiless

Previous thread on this:

Adam and Eve: there was no "spiritual death"

It seems rather obvious that "God lied" is the correct original interpretation (as he did in the Sumerian original). He didn't want Adam and Eve to become more powerful as a result of eating the Fruit (an act which isn't described in Genesis as having any directly negative effects: all the bad stuff is God's wrath and paranoia).

Mihilz

That's exactly what I thought.

WishboneDawn

Yeah, I'm sort of stuck on intent there but I can buy the lie thing. I had an initial reaction but the God of Genesis is a pretty jealous and brutal guy, a lie wouldn't be out of character.

Mihilz

The reason that God threw Adam & Eve out of the garden was because he didn't want them to eat from the Tree of Life wasn't it (because they would become like him)? But if they had access to the Tree of Life before they ate from the Tree of Knowledge then either a) God didn't mind them being immortal as long as they didn't have knowledge too or b) the writers of this myth hadn't thought that part through properly.

I think b since I wouldn't have thought that the fruit which gives immortality would have been overlooked like that.

Mihilz

Yeah, and only nine-hundred and thirty years later BANG! he's dead.

mikem

I agree that when God said that Adam would surely die, he meant literal death, not some indefinable "spiritual death". However I think it is being too literalist to interpret day as a 24 hour day. Reading through Genesis 1 & 2 again, I find that the word day is used in 3 different ways:

1. Day as period of daylight as distinct from nightime (1:16)
2 Day as in one of six "days" of creation. ("The evening and the morning were the first day", and so on for each of the first 6 days.
3. Day as the whole period during which God was creatively active (Genesis 2:4)

And of course the yet to be defined "day" in which Adam would die if he were to disobey God.

Given the different meanings assigned to this one word in but two chapters, it seems reasonable to say that it is not necessary to interpret the warning of God to Adam as meaning a literal day. I think the emphasis is not on how long it would take Adam to die, as in the fact that his death would be the inevitable outcome of his disobedience. Perhaps this was the author's way of expressing the inevitability of the outcome. Since I do not speak or read Hebrew, I would be very reluctant to accuse a writer of saying something misleading in his own language, when all I have to go on is a translation into my language, and there is a gap of over 2000 years between his writing it in his language, and me reading it in mine!

Mihilz

The serpent said to A&E that if they ate the fruit their eyes would be opened, knowing good and evil. When they ate the fruit the effect was instantaneous; they immediately realized that they were naked etc. This suggests that God was also talking about the effect being instantaneous.

There is nothing to suggest that God meant that they would die eventually. What kind of threat would that be anyway?

Gooch's dad

If Adam and Eve died a "spiritual death" on that same day that they ate the fruit, what does that even mean? That they had no "soul" anymore? That for 930 years, Adam had no spirit, but was just a golem walking around?

The fundy defense is meaningless. The contradiction is clear, and inescapable.