EVE! Legendary heroine of Humanity!

[Brian2]

And it was brilliant of Eve, even in legend, to secure the knowledge of morality for humankind. God's motives in withholding it were express and ignoble.

I don't see how you could call it brilliant. Nevertheless an interesting choice of words. It sort of suggests a chess game and Eve is trying to outwit God.
Also I don't see how you could know God's motives.

 

[Brian2]

Saving them from the Romans is what a real Jewish messiah would do. Jesus was no more savior of the Jews than Christian antisemitism has been.

The Messiah wouldn't really be the grand thing in Judaism that he is seen to be if all the Messiah would do is save the Jews from the Romans. Many have saved Israel militarily and politically.
This is what God said at Isa 49:6 also.
Isa 49:6 “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
to restore the tribes of Jacob
and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”
Interestingly Jesus actually did try to restore Israel morally and by doing that God would have stopped the destruction of Israel which was to ensue.

Very clearly the God of the Garden story is not omnipotent, any more than [he]'s the only God. All that comes later.

Nevertheless being the creator of the whole universe sort of eliminates all other gods, unless you are a Mormon and think of a picture bigger than the universe and like to deny that God is the only God.

Quote me the words of the Garden story that says God expelled them from the Garden because they ate the fruit. (Hint: You'll find nothing of the kind.)

Gen 3:22 Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil. And now, lest he reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever...” 23 Therefore the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.…
They know good and evil because they ate from the tree. It's a matter of connecting the dots.

On the exact contrary, sin, original sin, the Fall of Man, death entering the world, spiritual death, the need for a redeemer and so on are NEVER mentioned in the story. If you'd ever read it, you'd know that without my telling you.

You say that as if these things should be mentioned in the first couple of pages on the Bible or the whole Bible is not true.

So the snake was correct and God was at best mistaken.

I don't know why you want to say the same things over and over when they have been shown to be wrong. The snake said "you shall not surely die" then Eve ate the fruit and low and behold, she died unless she is hiding somewhere. She was kicked out of the garden and had no access to the tree of life and so could not live forever.

She was denied knowledge of good and evil. So she was incapable of sin.

Sin is the breaking of God's law. God's law at the time was that they should not eat the fruit of the tree and the penalty was given. They would not be able to sin if God had not given them a command with a penalty. They were innocent until the time they broke that law, which they were capable of doing, knowing that God said not to and that it had a penalty.

 

[blü 2]

I don't see how you could call it brilliant. Nevertheless an interesting choice of words. It sort of suggests a chess game and Eve is trying to outwit God.

I think of her as sweetly innocent and yet having that fine common sense that even children can sometimes show.

Also I don't see how you could know God's motives.

Because God states them unambiguously at Genesis 3:22-23. And those are all his reasons.

And [he]'s clearly portrayed as vindictive ─ I may have mentioned before how inexcusably nasty it was of [him] to condemn all women to painful childbirth, for instance.

For Bronze Age writers, a Bronze Age god.

 

[Brian2]

What judgment? What did the Canaanites actually do except have their own God? The Hindus, the Japanese, the theistic Buddhists, still have their own gods, and nothing happens to them.

God is patient. It was over 400 years since God said that the nations in Canaan were sinning and that their sin would not be ready to punish for a while, until the time when God punished them through the Hebrew invasion.

Gen 15:13 Then the Lord said to him, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. 14 But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. 15 You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. 16 In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”

Deut 18:9 When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. 10 Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, 11 or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. 12 Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord; because of these same detestable practices the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you. 13 You must be blameless before the Lord your God.

It's all a matter of moral positions. Either God is moral in [his] thought and actions or [he]'s just another despot and has no claim at all on human respect.

You seem to think that God would be respected and righteous if He ignored everything that people did wrong.
You also seem to think that it might be best if God grabbed people and put them into a machine which changed them in some way so that they could only do what was right.
I guess Adam and Eve made the wrong decision when they decided that they wanted to know good and evil. This meant they were able to do that evil and would no longer be innocent. That sort of meant that there would be quite a number of things which God did not want and which they could be punished for.
Hence joining the dots we have a human race stuck in a place where sin is inevitable for them and a God who insists on just punishment. Hence the need for a redeemer so that we could live forever without having to be perfect to qualify. That living forever stuff is what God wanted and wants for us.

The text says explicitly that [he] did exactly that, in each case. That [he] changed [his] mind regarding Isaac and Jonah is neitehr here nor there ─ everyone involved believed [he]'d do it, and as Jephthah's daughter and the sons of Saul and (for Christians) Jesus shows, they were absolutely correct.

The text shows that it was a silly vow made by Jephthah's father.
The text shows that God told David what the problem was and David then complied with the requests of the Gibeonites to appease them and their sense of injustice.
In both cases it was not God who ordered it.
Jonah story also is God stopping Jonah from shirking his responsibilities as a prophet, but it was not a sacrifice or attempted sacrifice.

There God and I differ. Were I omnipotent &c, I'd get straight to the point and have it all fixed by lunchtime.

That would be a difference, true. God considers what people have decided and does not just see the whole thing as some sort of mistake in the way He created us or something and that it can be fixed by a tweak here and there in the programming. (and that is probably what it would be, programming, we would be programmed to behave a certain way).

According to the Pew surveys, there'll be more Muslims than Christians in another twenty years or so. What will that prove?

It will prove nothing. There are also reports coming out of Iran and other Muslim nations that many are turning to Jesus in spite of the threats of death. God is giving many Muslims dreams that show Jesus to be the way.

Certainly everyone in the bible is happy with slavery and the inferior status of women, and murderous religious intolerance. God [him]self affirms and re-affirms those values.

The status of women is a result of the fruit eating incident in the garden.
Slavery also is a result of that. They are both a break down in the relationship between people.
In God's dealings with people He took into consideration what humans could and could not do and did not give His highest standard straight away. That came later in what is called by some, the Kingdom ethics, which we see in the New Testament, in such places and the sermon on the mount.

Maybe she would have if [he]'d just let her have knowledge of good and evil,

Is that the way you brought up your kids?

 

[blü 2]

The Messiah wouldn't really be the grand thing in Judaism that he is seen to be if all the Messiah would do is save the Jews from the Romans. Many have saved Israel militarily and politically.

This is what God said at Isa 49:6 also.
Isa 49:6 “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
to restore the tribes of Jacob
and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”
Interestingly Jesus actually did try to restore Israel morally and by doing that God would have stopped the destruction of Israel which was to ensue.[/quote] First of all, that's addressed the "Servant", the nation of Israel, which is to be a light to the nations. (I can't say that "light" idea makes me think of Netanyahu.) In other words, it's not postulating an individual human.

And 'salvation' means the independence of the Jewish state, and here, apparently, the idea that the world should at the least admire, and perhaps be voluntarily subservient to, that Jewish state.

Nevertheless being the creator of the whole universe sort of eliminates all other gods, unless you are a Mormon and think of a picture bigger than the universe and like to deny that God is the only God.

Whether there's only one God, and who God is, depends on who you ask, of course. The Hindus, the Buddhists, the religions of China and Japan, have spent thousands of years seeing the world differently.

Gen 3:22 Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil. And now, lest he reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever...” 23 Therefore the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.…

They know good and evil because they ate from the tree. It's a matter of connecting the dots.

God says [he]'s chucking them out to make dang sure they can't live forever and become rival gods to him.

You say that as if these things should be mentioned in the first couple of pages on the Bible or the whole Bible is not true.

I point out that the idea of original sin isn't found anywhere in the Tanakh, and in particular is totally absent from the Garden story.

I don't know why you want to say the same things over and over when they have been shown to be wrong. The snake said "you shall not surely die" then Eve ate the fruit and low and behold, she died unless she is hiding somewhere.

This depends on that thousand-year day nonsense. It's mentioned in Psalm 90.4:

For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.
​

That doesn't imply, let alone state, that God ever uses the word "day" to denote a millennium. No such argument is available to you.

And when whoever wrote 2 Peter said,

... with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
​

that means when God says 'day' [he] means 'day'. Or do you think God is perpetually muddled about what time it is?

She was kicked out of the garden and had no access to the tree of life and so could not live forever.

Dang right ─ exactly as God intended from the beginning.

Sin is the breaking of God's law.

No, sin is breaking God's law (and of course God doesn't frame the tree prohibition as a law, but as a warning) deliberately. There is no sin in the absence of an intention to do wrong, or a reckless indifference as to whether it's wrong or not ─ and Eve was never in a position to form either of those attitudes, because she had no idea what good and evil, right and wrong, were.

God's law at the time was that they should not eat the fruit of the tree and the penalty was given. They would not be able to sin if God had not given them a command with a penalty. They were innocent until the time they broke that law, which they were capable of doing, knowing that God said not to and that it had a penalty.[/QUOTE]

 

[Brian2]

Because God states them unambiguously at Genesis 3:22-23. And those are all his reasons.

How do you know God's motives in Gen 3:22,23?

And [he]'s clearly portrayed as vindictive ─ I may have mentioned before how inexcusably nasty it was of [him] to condemn all women to painful childbirth, for instance.

For Bronze Age writers, a Bronze Age god.

Working was good for Adam, kept him off the streets.
We all die, we all have to work, all women have labour and pain in childbirth. (these things aren't 100% so as some seem to avoid these things)
The motives of God are unclear to us but work has it's good side for us and so with childbirth and the relationship between women and men
We may not see the benefits but there would be some.

 

[blü 2]

How do you know God's motives in Gen 3:22,23?

Why don't you read it and work out for yourself what [he]'s trying to do? After all, [he] states his purpose unambiguously.

We all die, we all have to work, all women have labour and pain in childbirth. (these things aren't 100% so as some seem to avoid these things)

My point was that the author or authors of Genesis paint God as vindictive and concerned only with [his] own best interests.

The motives of God are unclear to us

In reality? Reality proceeds exactly as if the only place God is, or gods are, found are as things conceptualized or imagined in individual human brains. Check it out and see if you don't agree.

but work has it's good side for us and so with childbirth and the relationship between women and men We may not see the benefits but there would be some.

The benefit is learning what a nasty piece of work God is. Even in Christianity, sacrificing [his] own son to [him]self is extraordinarily self-indulgent ─ especially for an omnipotent being who needn't have spilt any blood at all to get [his] own way, or whatever effect [he] was trying to achieve.

 

[thomas t]

The Garden story is a tale of how humans obtained moral awareness.

you need this to be that way, it seems. Otherwise your "contradictions" desintegate quickly.

Why? That's what the Garden story is all about.

according to you.

Then what does the text mean when it says the eyes of both of them were opened and they saw (for the first time) that they were naked?

This was what I was going to ask you:
If the tree was really about moral awareness, what's so immoral about going around naked? I mean for an atheist?
Christians have the Bible telling them that there must be certain standards for having sex and the more naked you show up in public the more sex they might have also...
But for you as an atheist... what's wrong with going around naked? I mean *morally* wrong?


To answer the question that you asked me... it's very little elegant to be naked in public, as I see it. Clothing almost always make people look more sophisticated.

And whatever Strong says, 14 sets of translators agree the tree's name is "knowledge of good and evil".

I answered it in the previous post.
I permit myself to copy-paste, as I did last time you reiterated yourself:

...in blue color bolding the important parts

ok.
But that was not the question.
Evil in what sense?
What kind of knowledge you could get from the tree?
The knowledge conerning "right and wrong" (evil in the sense of wrong) or concerning "good and bad" /evil in the sense of bad).
That was the point we are debating here, Blü.

Citing from Strongs dictionary, the term "evil" as used to describe what the knoweldge from the tree was about.... can mean:
2 bad, unpleasant, giving pain, unhappiness, misery: ימים רעים evil days (of trial and hardship) Genesis 47:9 (P) Proverbs 15:15; עִנְיָן רע Ecclesiastes 1:13; Ecclesiastes 5:13; עִנְיַן Ecclesiastes 4:8, compare Ecclesiastes 2:17; Ecclesiastes 9:3; הַמַּעֲשֶׂה הָרָע Ecclesiastes 4:3; הדבר

(bolded mine)

You see: even days can be referred to by "evil".
However, a day cannot be morally corrupt, the meaning of evil that you kept claiming for the knowledge of the tree, just bad.
So it's evil in a sense of bad as opposed to wrong, I think.

See Strong's Hebrew: 7451. רָע (ra') -- adversity

and in the following post I wrote:

Strong's Concordance
ra': adversity
Original Word: רַע
Part of Speech: Adjective; noun masculine; noun feminine
Transliteration: ra'
Phonetic Spelling: (rah)
Definition: bad, evil
Brown-Driver-Briggs
I. רַע226 adjective bad, evil (distinction from noun, and verb Perfect 3masculine singular, is sometimes not easy, and opinions differ); — masculine singular רַע Genesis 6:5 +; רָ֑ע Genesis 31:24 +; plural רָעַים Genesis 13:13 +; construct רָעֵי Ezekiel 7:24 (strike out Co); feminine singular רָעָה Genesis 37:2 37t. (this form usually noun), plural רָעוֺת Genesis 28:8 14t.; רָעֹת Genesis 41:27 (18 t. noun); —
1 bad, disagreeable, malignant: of a woman, רָעָה בְּעֵינֵי Exodus 21:8 (E; perhaps, with changed accent, verb 3feminine singular רָ֫עָה) disagreeable, unpleasing in the eyes of, plural Genesis 28:8 (P); of poisonous herb 2 Kings 4:41, malignant boils Deuteronomy 28:35; Job 2:7, diseases Deuteronomy 7:15; Deuteronomy 28:59; 2Chronicles 21:19; Ecclesiastes 6:2, deadly sword Psalm 144:10, arrows Ezekiel 5:16, severe judgments Ezekiel 14:21, wonders Deuteronomy 6:22; מַלְאֲכֵי רָעִים Psalm 78:49 = fierce messengers (of God; Ew§ 287 a Ges§ 130e), wild beasts Genesis 37:20,33 (JE) Leviticus 26:6 (H) Ezekiel 5:17; Ezekiel 14:15,21; Ezekiel 34:25; unclean thing Deuteronomy 23:10.

2 bad, unpleasant, giving pain, unhappiness, misery: ימים רעים evil days (of trial and hardship) Genesis 47:9 (P) Proverbs 15:15; עִנְיָן רע Ecclesiastes 1:13; Ecclesiastes 5:13; עִנְיַן Ecclesiastes 4:8, compare Ecclesiastes 2:17; Ecclesiastes 9:3; הַמַּעֲשֶׂה הָרָע Ecclesiastes 4:3; הדבר הרע evil report Exodus 33:4 (J), so דִּבָּה רָעָה Genesis 37:2 (JE) Numbers 14:37 (P), שׁם רע Deuteronomy 22:14,19; Nehemiah 6:13, שְׁמוּעָה רָעָה Jeremiah 49:23; Psalm 112:7; of things: painful discipline Proverbs 15:10, evil occurrence 1 Kings 5:18, evil (-bringing) net Ecclesiastes 9:12, instruments Isaiah 32:7: כל הדבר הרע Joshua 23:15 (D) all evil (injurious) things; רַע it is bad, harmful Isaiah 3:11 Jeremiah 2:19; of speech, דבּר, רעאו טוב Genesis 24:50 (J) in proverb, speak bad or good = anything at all, מטוב עד רע Genesis 31:24,29 (E), לְמֵרָע ועד טוב 2 Samuel 13:22, of the divine spirit as producing an ecstatic state of frenzy and violence 1 Samuel 16:14,15,16,23; 1 Samuel 18:10; 1 Samuel 19:9 (see רוּח 9).
[...]

Don't be silly.

Can you please adopt another tone for debating? Thank you.
See above, there's nothing silly about it.

With regards to your example with feeling pain: feeling something does not necessarily imply knowledge about it, as I see it.

 

[blü 2]

The text shows that it was a silly vow made by Jephthah's father.

You obviously haven't read it.

Judges 11:29 Then the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah, and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh, and passed on to Mizpah of Gilead, and from Mizpah of Gilead he passed on to the Ammonites.
30 And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD, and said, "If thou wilt give the Ammonites into my hand, 31 then whoever comes forth from the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the LORD's, and I will offer him up for a burnt offering."
32 So Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them;​

Note that the Spirit of the Lord was on Jephthah when he made that vow. Jephthah, we assume, had no idea who'd first come through the door. God, we assume, did. And so knowing ─

[32] and the LORD gave them into his hand.
​

And when Jephthah carries out his part of the vow, God raises him up to be Judge (Boss) of the show:

Judges 12:7 Jephthah judged Israel six years.​

The text shows that God told David what the problem was and David then complied with the requests of the Gibeonites to appease them and their sense of injustice.

Who told David [he]'d sent the famine because of Saul's blood-debt to the Gibeonites?

Who knew in advance what the Gibeonites would ask for?

Who looked on while the sons of Saul died by impalement?

Who, only after that was done, lifted the famine?

You know the answer to those questions is, God. So who set up these human sacrifices of innocent people and saw to it they were carried out?

Yup, you got it! ─ God.

 

[blü 2]

you need this to be that way, it seems. Otherwise your "contradictions" desintegate quickly.

You're the apologist, you're the defense attorney, you're the whatever-it-takes man here.

I don't require the documents to say one thing or another thing. My only concern is to find what they in fact say.

You demand whatever reading can be contrived to make the contradictions go away, Like the defense attorney, truth is not your aim. Truth is only something the defense attorney uses when it suits him.

If the tree was really about moral awareness, what's so immoral about going around naked? I mean for an atheist?

Unbelievers have morality just as believers do. There are times, according to the customs you're dealing with, when it's appropriate to be naked, and times when it isn't. Clearly the morality of the Garden, which I assume reflects the morality of the Hebrews writing the story, requires modesty, the covering of at least the genitals. (Modesty of that kind is very usual around the world, both in advanced and primitive cultures.)

 

[thomas t]

You're the apologist, you're the defense attorney, you're the whatever-it-takes man here.

I don't require the documents to say one thing or another thing. My only concern is to find what they in fact say.

You demand whatever reading can be contrived to make the contradictions go away, Like the defense attorney, truth is not your aim. Truth is only something the defense attorney uses when it suits him.

you're bringing forward the accusation against God for witholding knowledge that would have been necessary for a dilemma they were supposed to solve.

As in court: the onus is on the side that accuses.
Let God profit from the benefit of the doubt here, please.
Same rules for God, too.

I'm interested in truth, btw.

Unbelievers have morality just as believers do. There are times, according to the customs you're dealing with, when it's appropriate to be naked, and times when it isn't. Clearly the morality of the Garden, which I assume reflects the morality of the Hebrews writing the story, requires modesty, the covering of at least the genitals. (Modesty of that kind is very usual around the world, both in advanced and primitive cultures.)

point taken.
So, this part of the story makes sense from a morality point of view also.
The clothing issue makes sense for both scenarios (right and wrong / god and bad), I think.

 

[blü 2]

you're bringing forward the accusation against God for witholding knowledge that would have been necessary for a dilemma they were supposed to solve

And doing so perfectly in accordance with the text.

As in court: the onus is on the side that accuses.

More accurately, in criminal cases, the state, and in civil cases, the plaintiff must make their case, the former beyond a reasonable doubt and the latter on the balance of probabilities.

Let God profit from the benefit of the doubt here, please.

There's no doubt. [His] Bronze Age authors thought [he] saw things as Bronze Age heavies did, and they've painted [him] accordingly.

I'm interested in truth, btw.

But only to the extent that it doesn't lead to a biblical contradiction. That principle seems to be much more important to you than any objective view of what's written.

So, this part of the story makes sense from a morality point of view also.

Yes, that's the way it's presented.

The clothing issue makes sense for both scenarios (right and wrong / god and bad), I think.

I'd have thought it would only make sense in the good / bad way if Eden were having a cold winter; whereas the Garden appears to be constantly pleasant, and presents no problems for walking round naked, before the fruit.

 

[Brian2]

This is what God said at Isa 49:6 also.
Isa 49:6 “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
to restore the tribes of Jacob
and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”
Interestingly Jesus actually did try to restore Israel morally and by doing that God would have stopped the destruction of Israel which was to ensue.

First of all, that's addressed the "Servant", the nation of Israel, which is to be a light to the nations. (I can't say that "light" idea makes me think of Netanyahu.) In other words, it's not postulating an individual human.

And 'salvation' means the independence of the Jewish state, and here, apparently, the idea that the world should at the least admire, and perhaps be voluntarily subservient to, that Jewish state.
Whether there's only one God, and who God is, depends on who you ask, of course. The Hindus, the Buddhists, the religions of China and Japan, have spent thousands of years seeing the world differently.
God says [he]'s chucking them out to make dang sure they can't live forever and become rival gods to him.
I point out that the idea of original sin isn't found anywhere in the Tanakh, and in particular is totally absent from the Garden story.
This depends on that thousand-year day nonsense. It's mentioned in Psalm 90.4:

For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.
​

That doesn't imply, let alone state, that God ever uses the word "day" to denote a millennium. No such argument is available to you.

And when whoever wrote 2 Peter said,

... with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
​

that means when God says 'day' [he] means 'day'. Or do you think God is perpetually muddled about what time it is?
Dang right ─ exactly as God intended from the beginning.
No, sin is breaking God's law (and of course God doesn't frame the tree prohibition as a law, but as a warning) deliberately. There is no sin in the absence of an intention to do wrong, or a reckless indifference as to whether it's wrong or not ─ and Eve was never in a position to form either of those attitudes, because she had no idea what good and evil, right and wrong, were.

God's law at the time was that they should not eat the fruit of the tree and the penalty was given. They would not be able to sin if God had not given them a command with a penalty. They were innocent until the time they broke that law, which they were capable of doing, knowing that God said not to and that it had a penalty.[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]

 

[Brian2]

Why don't you read it and work out for yourself what [he]'s trying to do? After all, [he] states his purpose unambiguously.

Yes the purpose was to get them away from the tree of life so they would not live forever. (It looks like God knew that they would live longer than a day it seems)
There is nothing in there about motive except that God did not want them living forever now that they knew good and evil.
That made them like God in that way but there was never any question that we humans could become the rivals of God.

The benefit is learning what a nasty piece of work God is. Even in Christianity, sacrificing [his] own son to [him]self is extraordinarily self-indulgent ─ especially for an omnipotent being who needn't have spilt any blood at all to get [his] own way, or whatever effect [he] was trying to achieve.

What? Vindictive towards His Son?
We are told pretty much that God could not achieve what He wanted with a snap of the fingers. But you insist He could. I guess you must know.

 

[Yahcubs777]

Yes the purpose was to get them away from the tree of life so they would not live forever. (It looks like God knew that they would live longer than a day it seems)
There is nothing in there about motive except that God did not want them living forever now that they knew good and evil.
That made them like God in that way but there was never any question that we humans could become the rivals of God.



What? Vindictive towards His Son?
We are told pretty much that God could not achieve what He wanted with a snap of the fingers. But you insist He could. I guess you must know.

If GOD didn't want Man to live forever, then why is it written that Enoch pleased GOD and lived without dying at all? And what of Elijah who also lived forever? And finally, what of the Gospel of Ever lasting Life that Jesus His Pre-Eminence preached.

What that was pointing to, is that if they then ate from the tree of life, the altar that was set for mortality, would be now reset to a higher degree of immortality than they had before the fall. And the reason that is not good, is because the Fall of Man was needed for the Procreation of the Mankind Race. So here it is simplified.

1. Man before the fall could not die. Else eating the fruit that would cause death doesn't make sense. And stating that Man is like GOD but can die is also a blasphemy against GOD.
2. Man in the fall can now die.

If they now ate from the tree of life, it would have brought them not to the state before the fall, to a state where the fall is no longer possible.

Saul Paul preached a message in 1 Cor 15:50-56, and he revealed that Man must put off mortalilty, and corruption,and put on immortality, and incorruption.

That incorruption, is what im referring to here. That what they had before the fall was not at a level of immortality that the tree of life gives. If they ate from the tree of life, it would have been impossible to migrate the body once again to the state where procreation is possible... That is to say, that even if they ate from that tree called "The knowledge of good and evil" it would not be able to cause the fall again. That name is a parable, the actual name of the tree is the tree for procreation.

1. Man before the fall could not procreate, but can be altered to a state where procreation is possible.
2. man in the fall now has the kind of body that can procreate.
3. The tree of life would have made it impossible to procreate.

This was revealed in the lives of Sarah, and Mary, who both were not in state where Procreation was possible.Sarai was 90. After she fell pregnant, her name became Sarah, the mother of many. Like Father Adam said to Mother Eve, thou shalt be called Eve because thou art the mother of all the living. Yet, she had not had any children. What woman can conceive and give birth at that age of 90? Mary was 12, not even knowing a man. These Great Women of GOD were pointing to that body that could not procreate because the systems of their body were not in a state where procreation was possible.

And what made procreation possible is the blood cell system; the cell system that reproduces itself, the cell system that divides and can die. And that blood cannot inherit the kingdom. That blood is why the body is mortal. That is why it is when a woman menstruates for the first time, it is a sign that she can now conceive. Because the Woman is defining the body, the Man is defining the Spirit. (Epehsians 5).

So the reason why GOD did not let them eat from the tree of life, is because the fall was required to procreate. And that is the mission they were given: Be fruitful and multiply, and subdue the earth.

 

[thomas t]

And doing so perfectly in accordance with the text.

only if you assume that the tree of knowledge must mean knowing right from wrong.
We have discussed it, already.
Your scholars say: knowledge about good and evil.
And you have nothing in your hands to rule out that it was evil in the sense of bad.

There's no doubt.

see above. It could mean evil in the sense of bad

I'd have thought it would only make sense in the good / bad way if Eden were having a cold winter; whereas the Garden appears to be constantly pleasant, and presents no problems for walking round naked, before the fruit.

As I sad:
quoting ...

[...] it's very little elegant to be naked in public, as I see it. Clothing almost always make people look more sophisticated.

Please don't make me go round in circles with you again.

 

[Katzpur]

Nevertheless being the creator of the whole universe sort of eliminates all other gods, unless you are a Mormon and think of a picture bigger than the universe and like to deny that God is the only God.

The Bible does mention other "gods," Brian. Even Paul says that while there are others who are called gods, to us there is only one God. That's what Mormons really believe. No other beings except God have anything to do with our universe. They had no part in creating it and have no part in controlling it today. But if you're going to deny the mere existence of other "gods," and explain them away as being "false gods" or "fake gods," you're going to have to explain what the Bible means when it speaks of God as being the "God of gods." Is He the God of false gods or the god of fake gods? Of course He isn't. Mormons worship the very same God you do. We may understand Him in somewhat different terms, but it's just not fair to make statement like the one you just did, which misrepresent our doctrine.

 

[1213]

... no knowledge of good and evil.

Please explain, if that is true, how then she could say this:

When the woman saw that the tree was good for food…
Gen. 3:6

 

[Harel13]

I haven't read the entire thread. I think sometimes people miss out on the fact that Eve strayed from God's word by adding a warning He did not give: touching the tree. This was not said by God.

Another point to note is that the OP vaguely reminds me of those Jewish feminists who dress up their daughters like Queen Vashti for Purim, rather than Queen Esther, just because Vashti was a "strong woman fighting against the evil forces of masculine chauvinists", when in reality, what was going on was a battle of egos (not the point of this thread, so I won't get into details), while quiet Esther achieved much more. But sure, find your heroes wherever you wish. Democracy and all that stuff.

 

[Rival]

I haven't read the entire thread. I think sometimes people miss out on the fact that Eve strayed from God's word by adding a warning He did not give: touching the tree. This was not said by God.

Another point to note is that the OP vaguely reminds me of those Jewish feminists who dress up their daughters like Queen Vashti for Purim, rather than Queen Esther, just because Vashti was a "strong woman fighting against the evil forces of masculine chauvinists", when in reality, what was going on was a battle of egos (not the point of this thread, so I won't get into details), while quiet Esther achieved much more. But sure, find your heroes wherever you wish. Democracy and all that stuff.

*Looks at picture of Yehudit on wall*