Soul Invictus

In Gen 2:16-17 it states:

16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:

17 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.

Pretty simple OP. I don't know Hebrew, however I am curious if this is a literal meaning (the day you eat=the actual day you will die) OR if it's some sort of figurative phrase (the day you eat=the day you will not have immortality/be severed from god, etc)

Logic&Reason

of course they will spin it to not mean literal, because clearly if their theory of adam and steve is true then he did not die the day he ate it. Ergo we can assume that nothing in the bible is neccesarily literal and consequently don't need to bother to follow what it says other than our own skewed interpertation. Or we can get a clue and realise there is no god.

Chili

Not sure if it means that we shall die ON that day but THAT we will die becomes known IN that day.

In other words, until we become rational it is not possible to reason and know that we will die.

WishboneDawn

Naw. I think in the context of the myth, God meant it literally. One, the God in that story wasn't a perfect guy and that wasn't the first mistake he made. Two, it allows the writer to later show God's grace by sparing Adam and Eve and even clothing them before he sends them on their way with a warning of the hardship they'll face.

Jack the Bodiless

God lied. He didn't want A&E to eat the fruit, so he lied about its toxic effect.

It's a rip-off of a similar "toxic lie" in Sumerian myth. The mortal Adapa is about to eat the food of the gods and become immortal, so his god (Enki) tells him that it will kill him, because he doesn't want Adapa to have that power.

Previous thread: Adam and Eve: there was no "spiritual death"

RUmike

Until Adam and Eve became rational and thus able to reason, how were they supposed to know to not disobey God? Afterall, they hadn't eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, yet. How could they have known that disobeying God was evil?

Chili

They (as in we) did not know (and neither do we) of their existence until they ate from the tree of knowledge. Adam was created as the imago of man that is without substance and thus from where he can take a good look at himself but is also the place wherein he can and will die as a separated identity.

The idea here is that man is formed as the being to which Adam is attached as a second identity. The creation of this second identity is by conjecture and is made known in the shame-no shame distinction between Gen 2 and Gen.3 that called for the fig leaf.

It makes Adam the shadow image of man who's eyes were opened to say that only the imago can go by the light of common day that henceforth is subjected to the curses upon our physical being.

nygreenguy

Well, whats the definiton of "day"? The bible says to god, it can mean thousands of years. So, if thats what it meant, then it doesnt need to be literal or figurative as that is a day to god.(i think this "day" would also apply to Adam, as he shouldnt have diffrent definitons from God and is supposed to have "infinite wisdom" {but not enough to know right from wrong}) But if it meant a 24-hour period, then we must assume that this also applied to creation which would invalidate a good portion of the bible, along with the basis of many Abrahamic religons.

JW's always tool almost all of the OT as not being literal, but as a book of morals and lessons. But this makes one wonder why a book inspired by God has no factual basis.

Jack the Bodiless

The notion that "a day is as a thousand years to God" is part of the New Testament excuse for the embarrassing no-show of Jesus (his failure to return within the lifetimes of his followers, as prophesied). It has no Old-Testament basis. A Hebrew "day" was a 24-hour period. A "week", however, was sometimes used in a figurative sense to indicate a period of seven years rather than days.

Chili

History is made by the shadow image of reality that we call human activity while the real story is written before-hand. Sounds weird, perhaps, but who are we to argue with if we don't see it that way.