There's no "Fall of Man" in Genesis

[Yohanan ben Yaaqov]

You couldn't be anymore clueless if you tried.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

..., you most likely know that to be true but go along with it for your own self interest ( Narcissistic personality disorder)

That was a rather stupid ad hominem, its sole redeeming feature being that it is fully congruent with the rest of your ugly little tirade.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

You couldn't be anymore clueless if you tried.

Don't be so sure.

 

[Magus]

You couldn't be anymore clueless if you tried.

says Mr Eastern European with a fake Canaanite name, pretending to be an assimilated people in the Torah whom managed to unassimilate themselves in East Europe.

The entire land of Israel as it is today is Disney Land for Abrahamic people, everything is fake or falsely associated, Tomb of David, Temple of Solomon, Nazareth, Western Wall of Solomon all these fakes tombs of Patriarchs, Golgotha, burial site of Virgin Mary, Yardenit, ***mod edit***

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

How very sad. This thread started with actually quite a good post (and decent exegesis) by @blü 2 , and has turned into another unfortunate back-and-forth. This does a real disservice to the opening poster.

 

[blü 2]

Yes, good people, as evangelicalhumanist said, please respond with head before heart, and with largeness of outlook.

Who knows but you may find these traits useful in other situations too.
.

 

[blü 2]

First sin… woman lying to the snake.

How could the woman sin?

To do that she'd have to have a bad intention.

But she didn't yet know the difference between good and evil, so she couldn't form an intention to act badly so she couldn't sin.
.

 

[Yohanan ben Yaaqov]

How could the woman sin?

To do that she'd have to have a bad intention.

But she didn't yet know the difference between good and evil, so she couldn't form an intention to act badly so she couldn't sin.
.

All human beings are created with both the yetzer hatov and the yetzer hara; the good inclination and the bad inclination.

Hunger is part of the evil inclination, without hunger no one would have the desire to eat. Sex drive is part of the evil inclination, without sex drive there would be no reproduction.

Without the evil inclination, they would not have been capable of disobeying God. The evil inclination had to exist in order for them to have the ability to make a choice. Just because they did not have the knowledge of what was good and what was evil, does not mean that both did not exist.

 

[blü 2]

All human beings are created with both the yetzer hatov and the yetzer hara; the good inclination and the bad inclination.

If Eve had bad inclinations, she had no way of knowing that she did or what they were. She had very specifically been prevented from knowing the difference between good and evil ─ and by Yahweh. if there's blame here, it's his. It can't be Eve's.

Without the evil inclination, they would not have been capable of disobeying God.

First, Yahweh had not commanded them not to eat the fruit. He'd said, "Don't eat the fruit because if you do you'll die the same day." That's a warning, not an order. And Yahweh never mentions disobedience.

So there was nothing to disobey.

Second, if there had been something to disobey, Eve had no way of knowing that disobedience was wrong. She'd been expressly denied the knowledge of right and wrong.

QED
.

 

[Thief]

Some strands of Western Christianity say that Adam and Eve ‘fell’ when they ate the fruit; that this was the sin of disobedience; that this was the ‘fall’ of all humans; and this made a ‘savior’ (Jesus) necessary.

But if you read Genesis carefully, you’ll find no mention of

a fall of man
a charge of disobedience
original sin
death entering the world
a need for salvation​

All of these are later add-ons. (I’ve read somewhere the view that the roots of the ‘fall’ are found in the debates of Alexandrian Jews around 120-100 BCE about Platonic and Stoic ideas that humans are essentially good. If so, this may be the basis of Paul’s remark in Romans 5:12, which Augustine picked up and ran so hard with in the 5th cent CE. Certainly questions about the heritability of guilt were being discussed by the 5th century BCE ─ see eg the Ezekiel quote at the end.)

The Garden story says this –
Genesis 2:

16: Yahweh says to Adam, Eat any fruit you like
17 except the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (‘tree of kge’) BECAUSE if you eat it you’ll die the same day.​

Note 1: it does NOT say, ‘because I’ve told you not to’.

Genesis 3:

1. The snake was ’aruwm [‘cunning’, ‘prudent’, ‘crafty’ ‘sensible’, ‘subtle’].
3. Eve quotes Yahweh to the snake.
4. The snake says, You won’t die.
5. Instead, like Yahweh, you’ll be able to tell the difference between good and ra [that which is ‘bad’, ‘hurtful’, ‘displeasing’, ‘unhappy’, ‘unkind’, ‘wicked’, ‘evil’].​

Note 2: the snake speaks the truth.

6. Eve saw that the fruit was desirable to make one wise, and ate it. And she gave one to Adam and he ate it,​

Note 3: Until she ingests the fruit, Eve can’t tell good from evil. The same is true of Adam. Therefore at the moment they respectively eat the fruit, each is in a state of innocence, and so incapable of forming a bad (evil, sinful) intention. Without intention to do bad, there can be no disobedience, no sin, no evil on their part. This proposition is never contradicted in the text.

7. Then they both became aware of the difference between good and bad. Their nakedness then became uncomfortable to them and they covered their external genitals with ‘aprons’.​

Note 4: by inference the author assumes nakedness is ‘bad’.

11. Yahweh sees and says, Have you eaten the fruit of the tree of kge?
12. Adam says, It was HER fault,​

Note 5: In the text, giving Adam the fruit is the immediate next thing Eve does. Whether Eve had kge when she did this therefore depends on how fast you think the fruit worked to impart kge. And it leaves open the question of whether (if indeed she had kge) Eve did wrong to give Adam the fruit.

14-18. Yahweh punishes snake, Eve and Adam.​

19. Yahweh says to Adam (inter alia), “‘In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”​

Note 6: Those who say that Adam and Eve sinned, and that this caused death to enter the world, rely on 19 to justify the latter claim. However, 19 can’t mean that Adam and Eve were immortal until they ate the fruit – it’s flatly contradicted by 22.

Note 7: Adam and Eve ate the fruit but they did not die the same day (rather, they lived on for a serious number of years). So the snake spoke the truth, and Yahweh – ahm – misspoke.

22 Yahweh says, “Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever"
23 ‘therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken.’​

Note 8: So it’s explicitly stated that the expulsion from the Garden is to prevent Adam and Eve from obtaining immortality. It is NOT because they disobeyed.

So there you have it. The Garden story is NOT about the ‘fall of man’.

(If you ask me, it’s a parable about childhood (innocence), puberty (no longer naked), and adulthood (partnering and leaving home).

Note 9: Oh, and on the subject of original sin, Ezekiel 18 has this to say –

20 The soul that sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.​

apparently you have been reading my handiwork
good for you

but you seem to have skipped the part about Adam being the first to walk with God
it is written....Adam is a chosen son of God

Eve is a clone
no navel
and therefore Adam was given his twin sister for a bride

and the garden event was a manipulation unto the nature of Man

 

[blü 2]

you seem to have skipped the part about Adam being the first to walk with God

But that won't stop your dad doing his block, telling you to get a job, and kicking you and your girlfriend out of the house.

Which is my best guess at what the story's really about.
.

 

[Thief]

But that won't stop your dad doing his block, telling you to get a job, and kicking you and your girlfriend out of the house.

Which is my best guess at what the story's really about.
.

nice rimshot....

but I think it was God introducing Himself to a person
someone had to be first

and the details of that story make it clear ( to me anyway).....
the garden event was a deliberate intervention

and the apple trick was to make certain the alteration had taken hold

 

[blü 2]

nice rimshot....

Thanks.

but I think it was God introducing Himself to a person
someone had to be first

As persons go, he hadn't given himself a lot of choice at that stage, when you think about it.

and the details of that story make it clear ( to me anyway).....
the garden event was a deliberate intervention

and the apple trick was to make certain the alteration had taken hold

The alteration being the experimental prototypes HSap 1 and HSap 2?

 

[Yohanan ben Yaaqov]

Think about this rationally for a second. Why would there been a need for a tree of the KNOWLEDGE of good and evil, if both good and evil didn't already exist?

 

[blü 2]

Think about this rationally for a second. Why would there been a need for a tree of the KNOWLEDGE of good and evil, if both good and evil didn't already exist?

I don't argue that they didn't exist.

I argue that if you're denied knowledge of them then you can't form an intention to do wrong / evil, and without such an intention you can't sin, can't be guilty.

(And further that the story doesn't involve disobedience anyway and never mentions it.)

 

[Thief]

I don't argue that they didn't exist.

I argue that if you're denied knowledge of them then you can't form an intention to do wrong / evil, and without such an intention you can't sin, can't be guilty.

(And further that the story doesn't involve disobedience anyway and never mentions it.)

well.....yeah.....sort of

on Day Six...Man as male and female
no names, no garden, no law.....
go forth, be fruitful, multiply, subdue the earth
dominate all things

No sin at this point.
just Man as a species

that was fine...until we turn that domination unto each other

so.....Chapter Two
a reboot, an upgrade....an alteration
and the apple test to make sure the manipulation took hold

if you want to label the specimens before release into the environment
Adam and Eve would be sufficient

 

[blü 2]

that was fine...until we turn that domination unto each other

We're tribal and often violently so. (As Jonathan Haight said, "Sport is to war as porn is to sex".)

If any quality's deeply, deeply embedded in the system, it's survival. Survival between tribes gets sorted by domination. As the Tanakh makes clear, that included annihilation (but keeping the breeding-age females as stock).

But for all that, if Pinker's thesis is correct, that violent deaths measured as a proportion of population have been declining for centuries, then perhaps we're making progress.

Fingers crossed.

 

[Thief]

We're tribal and often violently so. (As Jonathan Haight said, "Sport is to war as porn is to sex".)

If any quality's deeply, deeply embedded in the system, it's survival. Survival between tribes gets sorted by domination. As the Tanakh makes clear, that included annihilation (but keeping the breeding-age females as stock).

But for all that, if Pinker's thesis is correct, that violent deaths measured as a proportion of population have been declining for centuries, then perhaps we're making progress.

Fingers crossed.

oh oh.....

the documentaries that catch my eye are the draining resources that support us
Our numbers....and the lack of responsible management....
will put us all at risk of thirst
(a report on NPR.....just last night!)

 

[blü 2]

oh oh.....

the documentaries that catch my eye are the draining resources that support us
Our numbers....and the lack of responsible management....
will put us all at risk of thirst
(a report on NPR.....just last night!)

I suspect that my grandchildren's generation will use "neoliberal" as the vilest obscenity.

 

[blü 2]

oh oh.....

the documentaries that catch my eye are the draining resources that support us
Our numbers....and the lack of responsible management....
will put us all at risk of thirst
(a report on NPR.....just last night!)

Before you can have responsible management you must first have management, and I see no sign of it so far.

In fact the whole thing's like Groundhog Day where every day's different and yet Punxatawney stays the same deeply nasty and absurdist carnival.