wordsmyth

Uh, you do understand that this does not imply the trees were morally good, yes? I sincerely hope you understand the difference. An apple tree is good for food, but an oak tree is not good for food. This does not mean either tree inherently possesses any moral bias.

Volker.Doormann

Never heard, that morality does interfere with the knowledge of good. Morality is a temporary social mode of local culture, but any naked woman in every time and every culture with or without religion doknow, that the tree (of life) is good for food, and that it is pleasant to the eyes .. ". This proves the idea of paradox wrong. If you do not know what the tree of life is, you hardly can argue with apples.

wordsmyth

This might be a language barrier problem, but my point is that good has more than one meaning. The paradox in question specifically refers to moral good and evil, which is not the same meaning of the word good used in the quote you provided.

Tommy was a good boy. (this implies a sense of morality)

Tommy got good grades in school. (this does not imply a sense of morality because grades, like the tree in your quote, cannot be morally good or evil.)

Does this help you to understand the difference between good used as a moral descriptor and good used as an adjective. The only thing they have in common is that they are both spelled the same, but they each carry a different meaning. This is why context is important.

Philosoft

Indeed. If they have no a priori concepts of good and bad, they can hardly ask to have them clarified.
A&E: No more. Is that bad or good?

I really don't see a way out of this. God's explanations of possible consequences are always going to be limited by A&E's total lack of ability to judge them.

Volker.Doormann

'Morality is a temporary social mode of local culture, ..' . Some years ago the woman's in Afghanisthan were good, if they have hidden their faces, and AFAIK it is good, if woman in U.S.A. hide their breast while swimming. If you claim, that the paradox in question spefically refers to moral good .. , then it does refer to a phantom, because moral is a phantom. In Nigeria woman will be stoned, if they bear babies if they are not get married. In Germany a wife does not cares really whether she is married or not, and she is not to be stoned. To base logic on morality is a weak and wet base. Is it a school in Noth Korea? Is this a sunday school in U.S.A.?

Good is linked to an individual knowledge, but not to moral as temporary social mode of local culture.

RRoman

Volker.Doorman, I think the point wordsmyth is trying to get across is that when it says "good for food" it means "it can be eaten" or "It is nutrient rich"

Volker.Doormann

See. We are arguing on the question whether there is a paradoxon or not. To this I have given arguments:

No. She had knowledge of good. “And out of the ground made the god of life to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; ... And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes .. "

But it is senseless to serve rational arguments to fantasy myths. No one ever will be able to prove or disprove the homosexuality of Donald Duck by rationality. The Genesis myth of Judaism is a bad remainder of some prior myths from India and Sumer, which can show, that this claims are in common with other social claims of 'religious' authorities to slave brave beings.

Never heard, that morality does interfere with the knowledge of good. Morality is a temporary social mode of local culture, but any naked woman in every time and every culture with or without religion doknow, that the tree (of life) is good for food, and that it is pleasant to the eyes ...

This proves the idea of paradox wrong. If you do not know what the tree of life is, you hardly can argue with apples.Where do wordsmyth knows from for certain, that it means ‘And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes .. ", the tree can be eaten or is nutrient rich?

See. I have spoken about myth. The genesis is a myth. A very similar myth is the Prolog of the Gilgamesh epic from Sumer from 2500 BCE, in which the woman is hoping for fun from a ‘matured tree’ as 'bed'. There is also a dragon (or serpent) and a warrior who do shield the ‘garden’:

"After heaven and earth had been separated and mankind had been created, after Anucircum, Enlil and Ereskigal had taken posesssion of heaven, earth and the underworld; after Enki had set sail for the underworld and the sea ebbed and flowed in honor of its lord; on this day, a hulupputree which had been planted on the banks of the Euphrates and nourished by its waters was uprooted by the south wind and carried away by the Euphrates. A goddess who was wandering among the banks seized the swaying tree And -- at the behest of Anu and Enlil -- brought it to Inanna's (Goddess Venus) garden in Uruk. Inanna tended the tree carefully and lovingly she hoped to have a throne and a bed made for herself from its wood. After ten years, the tree had matured. But in the meantime, she found to her dismay that her hopes could not be fulfilled because during that time a dragon had built its nest at the foot of the tree the Zu-bird was raising its young in the crown, and the demon Lilith had built her house in the middle. But Gilgamesh, who had heard of Inanna's plight, came to her rescue. He took his heavy shield killed the dragon with his heavy bronze axe, which weighed seven talents and seven minas. Then the Zu-bird flew into the mountains with its young, while Lilith, petrified with fear, tore down her house and fled into the wilderness." (1) Kramer, Samuel Noah. "Gilgamesh and the Huluppu-Tree: A reconstructed Sumerian Text." Assyriological Studies of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago 10. Chicago: 1938.

In this myth Lilith is fired, and in Genesis A&E are fired. Who cares on forgeries in myths's?

The 'tree' is a symbol in this Genesis myth. I have written here several times on this symbol and on the symbol were the ‘tree of life’ is ‘planted’ in the ‘garden of joy’ (Gan Eden’). Remember that the dramaturgy needs A&E naked and the subjetct is Genesis, what means ‘How life is to be created’ or ‘How life is coming into beeing’. Not all babies comes from a womans rip.

It is senseless to argue on myths with eatable supermarket food. The hidden meaning of that, what the tree of life is must be recognized, and the symbolic ‘food’ as it is ‘bread, which comes from heaven’, that is mentioned often in the bible (and means spiritual food = knowledge s. also symbolic meanig of bread in the NT), must be recognized behind the surface of that tale.

wordsmyth

I know this because of the context. Words can possess many different meanings and the only way to know for sure which meaning is correct in a particular situation, is to understand the rest of the sentence in which it is applied. The word good is not unique in this respect; many, if not most words have multiple meanings. It is also not a unique feature of the English language, but instead a common feature in many languages, both ancient and modern.

One thing we can do to verify the meaning of a particular word, is to look for synonyms (i.e. different words with similar meanings), that could be inserted in place of the word in question. If the sentence still makes sense, then we can cross check the meaning of both words to verify we have the proper meaning. In most instances where moral good and evil are used in a sentence, we should be able to substitute the words right and wrong.

Example: In the following verse we see the words good and evil used as moral descriptors.

Gen 3:22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil:

Now, if we take the same verse and replace the words good and evil with different words that possess similar meanings, the verse should still make sense.

Gen 3:22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know right and wrong:

Using these synonyms the verse is still coherent and makes sense, so we can deduce that the words have the same or similar meaning. However, lets try using the same synonym in the verse you quoted and see what happens. Here is the original verse.

“And out of the ground made the god of life to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; ... And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes .. "

and here is the verse with the word in question replaced with the same synonym.

“And out of the ground made the god of life to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and right for food; ... And when the woman saw that the tree was right for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes .. "

This verse doesn’t make sense with that synonym, so the meanings must not be compatible. Lets try another synonym and see if we can get closer to the meaning of the original word.

“And out of the ground made the god of life to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and suitable for food; ... And when the woman saw that the tree was suitable for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes .. "

This synonym seems to fit well and the verse makes sense with the substitution, so we can deduce that the meaning of the original word is likely very close to the meaning of this word. I hope this has helped you understand the importance of context to discern the proper meaning of words in language.

Volker.Doormann

No. I think, you are wrong with your context and synonyms, because in your context there is no meaning of the Tree of life and no meaning of the Garden of Joy (Hebrew: gan eden); you did ignore the familarity with the Inanna myth from Sumer, and the ability of the woman to know good in general as it is proved by words in Gen 2. Maybe you can find some new insights from my site doormann.org/slavery.htm on the symbols used in Genesis 2/3. A confuse creation story did not fall down from heaven, to confuse people for more than 3000 years on their reason and cognition. There is the physical life and the god of life Y_HWH (HWH = EVA = SHIVA) and there is the knowledge of good and evil which has nothing in common with physical life. Physical nature doesn't care about death of all beeings and no one can eat knowledge containing kJoule. Good and evil is invariant to life and must be recognized by the individual, perceiving injustice and love. This difference is thematized also in big in the NT by the sayings from Jesus to the short (social) physical life and the eternal life of the soul which has recognized itself by the double meaning of 'bread' as a physical bread, but also as a spiritual knowledge (also known from th OT). This is context.

Volker