The Garden of Eden Narrative

[Roach Clips]

I'm in a debate with a christian on another forum about the Garden of Eden narrative.

I put forward my interpretation of the story that the Serpent, who is not satan but a sentient animal, didn't decieve Eve into eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil but instead exposed God as liar. The Serpent was freeing man from God who didn't want man have the knowledge. The serpent was cunning enough to see this and didn't want man to be held back by God's jealousy of what he could become. The Serpent said that they wouldn't die, they didn't, and that God would see that their eyes had opened, which he did. God kicked them out of Eden, not because they disobeyed him but because they had Become Godlike. I concluded, that these actions show that God's motive was jealousy.

God wanted obedient servents to tend the Garden of Eden. After man and woman had their eyes opened, they could no longer be under his control. And God, not wanting them to eat from the Tree of Life, kicked them out of the Garden of Eden before they could eat from it and become Gods too.

He responded;
You could explain that in other ways though. You could, for example, say that God planned to kill them if they ate from the tree however loved them too much to actually kill them. In the bible that I've read it says that he sends them away from the garden of Eden to prevent them from eating from the tree of life as well, because if they did they'd become Godly.

Still leaves the question why God didn't want Adam and Eve to become Godly, though.

EDIT: Just had a thought, you could say God wanted to prevent us from living the way we do now, and we would still be running around naked in the garden. Then again it leaves the question why he simply didn't destroy the tree.
I told him that he has to make alot of assumptions for his "explanations."

Then I listed that facts from the story:

1) The Narrative says nothing about Satan controlling the Serpent and gives no reason to believe it had anomosity towards man
2) Serpent is spoken as being the most cunning of creatures
3) Christians assume the serpent must be against man, but it is the serpent that sees through God's lie.
4) The serpent never lied to the woman... though the woman would later claim that she was deceived, over what, the story never tells.
5) God does not throw man from the Garden because he broke the prohibition
6) God throws man out because man had become like God.

I concluded "This is a jealous God's reaction. The truth of the story is quite obvious. God wanted obedient servents that would follow whatever he said. Once the man and woman obtained knowledge of all things, they could no longer be under his thumb. Had they ate from the Tree of Life, they would have been Gods and not servents. God was jealous of the power they then had and fearful of what they would become had they eaten from the Tree of Life."[/i]

He responded;
I'm not making any assumptions, simply giving possible explanations. You say "facts remain this" but I don't feel real comfortable taking the bible as a factifical (no idea if that's a correct word) book.

That's your interpretation of the truth of the story. Why would he need servants? They didn't follow whatever he said, they just lived in and took care of the garden, the way I read it. Perhaps God wanted "creatures" to live happily on his earth without worrying about good and evil. If God was fearful of what they would become, he could have simply destroyed the tree of life couldn't he, he had created it as well.

There are so many degrees of freedom when discussing God, it's not even funny.
I then said "You are giving explanations based on nothing but your own conjecture. They have no scriptural basis, which means you are accepting them as true without proof, a.k.a. an assumption. And I never said the Bible is factual. The facts I brought up are drawn from the narrative itself. They are based on what is known to have happened in the story."

He responded;
The "facts" you brought up are just the way some words were chosen in the story.

1) The Narrative speaks of no muse (Satan) for the serpent, nor does it speak of an anomosity towards man
2) Serpent is spoken as being the most cunning of creatures
3) Christians assume the serpent must be against man, but it is the serpent that sees through God's lie.
4) The serpent never lied to the woman... though the woman would later claim that she was deceived, over what, the story never tells.
5) God does not throw man from the Garden because he broke the prohibition
6) God throws man out because man had become like God.

None of that can be verified to have happened, it's all the way the story is told. So what you're basically doing is assuming the bible is correct in each word that discribes the story then using the word-errors/unclearities that are in it to "prove" God did something out of jealousy, which actually would mean that whoever put the story on paper portrayed him to have done it out of jealousy. You're basically proving that whoever put the story on paper didn't take enough time to think about how Roach Clips or anyone else years later would be able to explain God's actions as jealous (on the internet), that or that the bible isn't factual.

By the way, you seem to fail to understand that I'm not accepting anything as true at all, I'm just giving possible explanations.

I'd appreciate a critique of our debate so far.

[Joan of Bark]

A few points:

1) Why did God create the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the first place?

2) Your explanation reads like that of some gnostic writers. This is just an observation, not a criticism.

3) The Eden story always reminds me of the Greek myth of Prometheus. And Prometheus is generally considered to be a hero.

[Dean Anderson]

It sounds like you're doing well so far. Here (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?p=3677780) is a recent post by me that agrees with your position and goes into more detail about how the text supports it over the usual Christian version.

I'm a little confused by your opponent's statements at the end. He seems to be complaining that you are forming an impression of God's character by reading what the Bible says - and that this is somehow a bad thing since it assumes that the Bible is somehow factual. This is a very strange position for a Christian to take.

[lpetrich]

I think that Joan of Bark is right about that snake being a Prometheus figure, bringing to humanity what the Ruler of the Universe had wanted to keep away from humanity. And in both stories, this ruler not only punished that bringer, but also humanity. The aforementioned Wikipedia article also points out the connection, though I agree with it that the two stories are likely independent inventions.

I also note that the Gnostics had believed the God of the Old Testament to be a wicked demon, Yaldabaoth; in their telling of that story, that snake was a hero rather than a villain.

[Roach Clips]

It sounds like you're doing well so far. Here (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?p=3677780) is a recent post by me that agrees with your position and goes into more detail about how the text supports it over the usual Christian version.

I'm a little confused by your opponent's statements at the end. He seems to be complaining that you are forming an impression of God's character by reading what the Bible says - and that this is somehow a bad thing since it assumes that the Bible is somehow factual. This is a very strange position for a Christian to take.

And that's where I became confused, too. That's why I decided to bring this up here. I don't really know how to respond to that. I mean, if I can't use the wording of the story as a basis for interpretting its meaning then what's the point in even having the story?

I should note that he's an agnostic Christian. Note he's not a literalist and I think that's his point when he says the Bible is not factual.

[Malachi151]

Might want to look into this thread as well, and visit the links:

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=184529

Basically, the Garden of Eden story comes from the Sumerian and Babylonian creation story, where humans are created by the gods to do their work for them. I argue that the Sumerian story is really describing a real earthly early civilization where the leaders were worshiped by slaves as gods.

Read the linked thread for the rest, but this really seems to be the case IMO, and the links give views of scholars who think that the Hebrew telling of the story was in some ways written in opposition to the Sumerian story, i.e. in the Sumerian story the city is good and "Edin" bad, in the Hebrew story "Eden" is good and the city is bad.

In the Sumerian story the gods eventually bring humans the knowledge that being naked is bad, in the Hebrew story the humans break the rules to gain knowledge.

In the Sumerian story people are "bad" (misbehave) because they have been created with the blood of a rebellious god, in the Hebrew story they are bad because of "free will", leading to "original sin" (i.e. in the Sumerian story its not humans fault that they are bad, but in the Hebrew story it humans fault that humans are bad :rolleyes:)

[darstec]

I'm in a debate with a christian on another forum about the Garden of Eden narrative.

I put forward my interpretation of the story that the Serpent, who is not satan but a sentient animal, didn't decieve Eve into eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil but instead exposed God as liar. The Serpent was freeing man from God who didn't want man have the knowledge. The serpent was cunning enough to see this and didn't want man to be held back by God's jealousy of what he could become. The Serpent said that they wouldn't die, they didn't, and that God would see that their eyes had opened, which he did. God kicked them out of Eden, not because they disobeyed him but because they had Become Godlike. I concluded, that these actions show that God's motive was jealousy.


One obvious and glaring mistake, and one made by almost every reader of the Genesis story is that you wrote, "God kicked them out of Eden." But a careful reading of the story shows that god did not kick them out at all. God kicked the man out. The story says nothing about the woman being kicked out of the garden.

[LoungeHead]

Here's some notes from a debate I had recently had that might be of interest:

I argued that God was actually a sinner, which he admits in Genesis. I argued on the basis that to be considered a sinner, a person must know what sin is; and God knows. A criteria and category he admits to this in Genesis 3:22 And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us [a sinner], to know good and evil.

Also, eating the forbidden fruit was not against God's will, because right and wrong were not a feature of human experience at the time. Humans could not understand the choice. So they could not be doing anything against God's will i.e. sinful. For example, many Christians claim homosexuality is against God's will, but animal homosexuality is not included in this, because animals are not bound by the same moral conditions. Adam and Eve were also not bound by those moral conditions.

Also, if it was really God's will that they not eat fruit, God would not have created the option, especially as his omni-temporal vision would allow him to see they would. It's like releasing an unremorseful criminal back into a community without supervision, whom you know is likely to commit crime again, and the denying responsibility by claiming it was against your desires and command that he commit more crime. When it was obviously inevitable he was going too. God is either stupid, irresponsible or both.

Adam and Eve also may not have had free will. They had no system by which they could decide whether to obey or disobey God's command, because they would understand right and wrong in following his command, which removes the purpose of the tree. Further illustrating the fuck up of placing a tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden. That was God's error; he commanded his zombies to do something and they failed to obey or had a malfunction when ordered by another entity.

[Loomis]

I'm in a debate with a christian on another forum about the Garden of Eden narrative.Why?

Gosh, how do you think it will end?

Who will win?
I put forward my interpretation …If you just base your arguments on “interpretations” and ”creative exercises” then you will never get anywhere because everyone is entitled to his/her opinion. You’re just jacking off.

The only effective way to argue about these things (if there is any effective way) is to find the sources and imagery that the original author (or sometimes authors and redactors) was drawing from.

I admit that that is hard to do. It requres a shitload of time and research. But if you are just making shit up, then how are you any better than the Christian?
…the Serpent, who is not satan but a sentient animal, didn't decieve Eve into eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil but instead exposed God as liar…

If you are genuinely interested in this stuff you might want to read what Leolaia has to say about this:

The Tree of Life, Asherah, and Her Snakes (www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/73244/1.ashx).

I think that that link is a great example of someone who understands the issues and is willing support their claims with facts.

P.S. Sorry to be so negative. I’m not really a foul-mouthed prick. Just foul-mouthed. :D

Good luck with your debate.

[LoungeHead]

If you just base your arguments on “interpretations” and ”creative exercises” then you will never get anywhere because everyone is entitled to his/her opinion. You’re just jacking off.
Sure, but he gets to perfect his technique.
The only effective way to argue about these things (if there is any effective way) is to find the sources and imagery that the original author (or sometimes authors and redactors) was drawing from. I admit that that is hard to do. It requres a shitload of time and research.
You can, however, learn a lot about argumentation by engaging in meaningless discussion.
But if you are just making shit up, then how are you any better than the Christian?
What does being better have to do with it. If you're relying on moral superiority to make your arguments, then you are in bad position to begin with.

[Malachi151]

I argued that God was actually a sinner, which he admits in Genesis. I argued on the basis that to be considered a sinner, a person must know what sin is; and God knows. A criteria and category he admits to this in Genesis 3:22 And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us [a sinner], to know good and evil.

This, again, is because of the Sumerian basis of the story, in which the gods are are basically rulers that live on earth, presiding over a population of primitive slave people.

[Roach Clips]

Well, the guy I was debating left but new Christian took his place.

I'll skip most of the debate because he repetitive, saying the same thing over and over. Here's his last statement "God intended mankind to live forever. They we're in a state where they wouldn't die because they had access to the tree of life. They became mortal and did in fact die by being departed from this earth. The death is also a spiritualy death. You can't take everything in the Bible literally."

I said none of this is backed up scripture and it's also contradicted by what's said in the story, yadda, yadda, yadda

Then he went out and C&P this doosy;

There are some significant differences in the Hebrew words that have been translated as "die" and "surely die" in the recording of the communications of the Lord, Adam, Eve, and the serpent. The quote from the Scriptures that follow are Word by Word translations from the "Interlinear Bible" by J. P. Green and following each passage there is a magnified selection from the "Interlinear Bible" which is included to show in detail the recorded Hebrew words that are translated as die in each Passage. (Remember that Hebrew is read from right to left.)

"... Of every tree of the garden surely you may eat;
but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
not you shall eat from it;
in the day of your eating from it
surely you shall die". (Genesis 2:16-17)

http://img437.imageshack.us/img437/333/gen217sa8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Notice that the Hebrew word ( Strong's # 4191 ) is repeated which is a technique often used in the Hebrew for emphasis and the last of the passage is often translated more literally as "dying thou shall die". A less literal translation is "for as soon as you eat of it, you shall be doomed to die". For we know from reading the rest of the story the penalty was not sudden physical death, but as soon as the disobedience occurred Adam and Eve's relationship with the Lord was drastically changed and they were reduced to hiding in the bushes, the penalties were soon announced, and they were banished from the garden to continue the rest of their life in toil and sorrows.

"And said the woman to the serpent.
Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat,
but the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden had said God,
not shall you eat of it, nor shall you touch it,
lest you die." (Genesis 3:2-3)

http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/4923/gen33hp1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Notice that Eve did not repeat the form of the Words of the Lord! Instead she varied the Hebrew word translated as die and did not use the repeated word form used for emphasis. She also added the phrase about not touching it. The word form she used is unusual and similar forms appear only in Numbers 16:29 and Isaiah 22:14 and in both of these occurances it appears to mean a physical death under conditions of judgment. It would appear that in her statement she was possibly showing her uncertainty or lack of full understanding as to exactly when and what would be the result of disobedience and the seriousness of the penalty. Eve would seem to have no way of knowing about death unless she had witnessed the physical death of a plant or an animal.

"And said the serpent to the woman,
Not surely you shall die." (Genesis 3:4)

http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/8193/gen34lz4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

The reply of the serpent is phrased negatively and returns to the repeated word form but uses the same word form as the Lord for the first word and the word of Eve for the second word. This repeated word form is unique and appears no where else in the Scriptures. Therefore, the reply seems to be directed to how Eve had phrased her answer and to be correcting her statement or adding special emphasis in a negative way. There surely must be meanings within these Hebrew word changes that are not fully revealed by the translations. Looking in Strong's "Dictionary of the Words in the Hebrew Bible" we find the following.

http://img430.imageshack.us/img430/2174/muwthjm7.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Verse 3:8 says that Adam and Eve heard the voice/sound of the Lord in the garden and 3:17 says Adam listened to the voice of Eve. However, the Hebrew word used in the verses concerning the serpent, the Hebrew word usually translated as said, and transliterated as "amar" (Strong's #559) per Strong is a primary root, to say, but "used with great latitude". This translation latitude includes "said in his heart" of Genesis 17:7 and 27:41. "Think" of II Samuel 13:33 and of II Chronicles 13:8. And "commune" of Psalms 4:4. Therefore the Hebrew word can cover communications from vocal speech to private thoughts of the heart. We are told that the "serpent" was more "subtil/wise/cunning/clever" of all the "wild beasts". Ask any pet owner that has a "clever" pet and most usually they will say that they can know what their pet is thinking and wants from its owner. Even many wild animals not considered as being so clever have a way of communicating with humans. The editor recently had an experience when they were watering their garden inside a six foot high fence on a very hot evening and there appeared a wild hen turkey and three babies just outside the fence, and even though being far from one "who talks with the animals", we could readily see that the birds wanted water and sprayed a puddle on the ground outside the fence from which the birds rapidly quenched their thirst.

[Roach Clips]

Why? Because it's fun and one of the best methods of learning. ie, I never knew of the Summerian connection to the Garden of Eden, until Malachi151 brought it up.

Gosh, how do you think it will end? I don't know.

Who will win? Most likely no one, unless he conceeds, which I have yet to see anyone ever do. It's not who wins that matters, it's the journey I'm in it for.



If you are genuinely interested in this stuff you might want to read what Leolaia has to say about this:

The Tree of Life, Asherah, and Her Snakes (www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/73244/1.ashx).

I think that that link is a great example of someone who understands the issues and is willing support their claims with facts.

I checked that link out but I must be stupid or something because I don't understand what that person is saying.

[Malachi151]

I think that these discussions and the research that they instigate, is a great way to learn and explore concepts and get a better understanding. You learn a lot better this way than by simply reading some book.

[hatsoff]

I've always read it kind of like this:

God makes man, gives him eternal life, a sexy girlfriend, a really cool place to live and regular communication with his maker. He asks but one thing in return: "Let me keep this secret; I know that sounds weird, but you'll just have to trust me. Don't eat the fruit from that one tree. That's my only rule. In the mean time, eat anything else you want, frolick in your Garden and if you ever get bored just give me a buzz. Oh, and you can thank me later for your curvy companion."

Adam thumbs his nose, eats the fruit, and then tries to lie about it. God gets pissed off (who wouldn't?) and says, "Holy cow, did you really need to do that? Didn't you know it would piss me off? Okay, well here's what we'll do about it: You can still keep your eternal life and paradise pad, but now you're going to have to spend about 75 years dealing with pain and suffering, first. Oh, and if you piss me off again by, say, not believing I exist, then I'm just not going to deal with you at all."

[Anat]

hatsoff, you forgot the part about Adam being created to work in the garden. You also forgot that the author of the story did not believe in an afterlife. And Adam lived 900+ years. It isn't even clear to me God intended Adam to eat from the tree of life. Of course the whole situation is silly. A sane and humane person does not dangle a temptation in front of another that way.

[hinduwoman]

What were Adam and Eve meant to do in the garden anyway except multiply?
If it was really Paradise why were they working?

[Roach Clips]

"... Of every tree of the garden surely you may eat;
but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
not you shall eat from it;
in the day of your eating from it
surely you shall die". (Genesis 2:16-17)

http://img437.imageshack.us/img437/333/gen217sa8.jpg

Notice that the Hebrew word ( Strong's # 4191 ) is repeated which is a technique often used in the Hebrew for emphasis and the last of the passage is often translated more literally as "dying thou shall die". A less literal translation is "for as soon as you eat of it, you shall be doomed to die". For we know from reading the rest of the story the penalty was not sudden physical death, but as soon as the disobedience occurred Adam and Eve's relationship with the Lord was drastically changed and they were reduced to hiding in the bushes, the penalties were soon announced, and they were banished from the garden to continue the rest of their life in toil and sorrows.
I'm reading this, which is my Christian opponents best evidence in favour of his "spiritual death" thoery. And this part strikes me "the passage is often translated more literally as "dying thou shall die". A less literal translation is "for as soon as you eat of it, you shall be doomed to die".

A less literal translation? What is the more literal translation? Is it "thou shall surely die"? I'm not familiar with translations, so can anyone more experienced help me out with this? Because it sounds to like they're just trying to change the meaning to better fit their view.

[Y.B]

And why did God create such a wicked creature as the snake? For fun? And couldn't he have warned Adam and Eve about the cunning snake?

[Malachi151]

What were Adam and Eve meant to do in the garden anyway except multiply?
If it was really Paradise why were they working?

This is where we get back to the Sumerian roots.

The Genesis story is just a derivation of the earlier story, so parts of it don't make sense if you don't know that context, which is what we have done today, and thus we have fabricated ideas into the story which were never really in the minds of the writers.

The story as presented by the Hebrews isn't really all that bad, in some ways its a positive retelling of the existing Sumerian and Babylonian stories, but in others its not.

The twists are this:

Sumerian/Babylonian:

1) The gods exist on earth and create naked humans to do their work for them.
2) The gods keep knowledge from the humans so that they will continue to work for them.
3) The flaws of humans are created by the gods.
4) The gods eventually grant knowledge to the humans, and invite them to "become like them".
5) The city is depicted as good, and "edin" is depicted as bad. "Edin" is the wilderness, and the city is civilization, where the gods live.
6) The naked humans leave edin to enter the the city after the gods give them knowledge.

Making sense so far?

Hebrew:

1) God is not of the earth, he creates everything.
2) God creates humans as his favorite beings, and sets them to work in the wilderness. (Why are they working? No reason, its just a hold over from the Sumerian story)
3) God creates humans as perfect, and gives them "free will"
4) God tells the naked humans not to obtain knowledge, but due to trickery and free will, they disobey God and bring a curse on themselves, creating the flaws of humans and gaining knowledge through disobedience.
5) God says "they have become like us" (another hold over from the Sumerian story) - so we have become "like God", against his will in this case.
6) "Eden" is good, and the city is bad. When the humans get knowledge they are expelled from the wilderness, and Cain, the "bad one" is the first to go to the city. The city and civilization represent "bad", and the preexisting naked condition in the wilderness represents "the good".

God, also, in the Hebrew story, grants a day of rest, while in the Sumerian there is no day of rest.

So, the Hebrew story came about some 1,000+ years after the Sumerian story originated andit puts a different spin on basically the same story.

Why these specific changes? I'm not sure. Perhaps the Hebrews were of a more privative people, who lived outside the cities, and they viewed cities and city dwellers as bad and corrupt, and thus they idealized rural/nomadic life. So, it seems to be a story about how the rural/nomadic people are God's people and the city dwellers are bad people, which would pretty much fit with other elements of early Hebrew mythology.

[LoungeHead]

3) God creates humans as perfect, and gives them "free will"
4) God tells the naked humans not to obtain knowledge, but due to trickery and free will, they disobey God and bring a curse on themselves, creating the flaws of humans and gaining knowledge through disobedience.
God didn't give humans free-will. The tree of knowledge gave them free-will.

In order to have free-will, a person needs to be able to understand the consequences of choices, which require value judgments. Positive and negative values are based on principles or standards of good or right. In other words morality.

Only the The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil could give humans that knowledge. Therefore God did not give humans free-will because they would have known it was bad to eat from the tree. God had commanded Adam and Eve to not eat fruit from the tree, but the obedience to a command is not equivalent to understanding the value of the command. For example, your computer understands a command prompt and can perform it within software parameters, but does not have the ability to choose whether to obey the command prompt. It obeys or disobeys in relation to compliancy of the command. In the case of Adam and Eve an alternative command from a puppet sock complied with their ability to perform the act of eating forbidden fruit. :devil:

[Loomis]

Making sense so far?
You’re doing pretty good except …
1) God is not of the earth,
and …
"Eden" is the wilderness
If you look into this a little more you might come to agree that Yahweh was of the earth - just like the Sumerian roots. At least as far as the Garden of Eden narrative in Genesis 2-3 is concerned.

Yahweh lived on Mount Zion, and the temple on Mount Zion was the equivalent of the Garden of Eden. Zion was the “mountain of the gods.”

Ezekiel 28:13~14

You were in Eden, the garden of the gods.
Every precious stone was your covering,
the ruby, topaz, and emerald,
the chrysolite, onyx, and jasper,
the sapphire, turquoise, and beryl;
your settings and mounts were made of gold.
On the day you were created they were prepared.

I placed you there with a winged guardian cherub;
you were on the holy mountain of the gods;
you walked about amidst fiery stones.

See?

Eden was covered by a thousand gems including rubys, topaz, diamond, chrysolite, onyx, jasper, sapphire, carbuncle, emerald, gold, etc. It was guarded by a cherub.

Not a wilderness. It was a garden in the gods’ back yards - next to the tennis courts - high atop a mountain.

FYI, there are other verses that suggest that Yahweh lived on earth. For example Psalm 89:6 asks:

Who in the skies can compare to Yahweh?


God, also, in the Hebrew story, grants a day of rest, while in the Sumerian there is no day of rest.
If you read it carefully you can tell that the “day of rest” was added later. Genesis 1 uses a literary formula to delineate each of the seven days of creation. At the end of each day's activities, except for the second and seventh days, God reviewed what he did and declared, "it was good."

See for yourself. The phrase "it was good" occurs seven times.Gen 1:4 - first day
Gen 1:10 - third day (first instance)
Gen 1:12 - third day (second instance)
Gen 1:18 - fourth day
Gen 1:21 - fifth day
Gen 1:25 - sixth day (first instance)
Gen 1:31 - sixth day (second instance)
The days are all fucked up (the delineations are out of whack) because someone rearranged the events so that they could squeeze in the “day of rest.”

Am I making sense? :confused:

[LoungeHead]

Out of curiosity, can you refresh of what happened on the days he didn't think were good? It was the animals wasn't it, that weren't good.

[Roach Clips]

"To say that "you will surely die" when you eat from the tree of knowledge implies that you will not die if you do not take and eat the fruit."

But that's not all that was said, your purposely leaving out the rest of the passage. God said "for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." He's not implying that Adam will never die or that he is immortal but saying he will die on the day he ate of the Tree of Knowledge.

"The second death comes later in the story but is contingent upon the formation of the ego consciousness in the tree of knowledge wherein we will consciously know that we will surely die."

I don't understand. When did the first death happen? What is the second death?

So Adam and Eve didn't know what death was until after they ate of the Tree of Knowledge? If so, how could God threaten them with death?

[Malachi151]

Thanks Loomis, good info!

[xaxxat]

I've always read it kind of like this:

God makes man, gives him eternal life, a sexy girlfriend, a really cool place to live and regular communication with his maker. He asks but one thing in return: "Let me keep this secret; I know that sounds weird, but you'll just have to trust me. Don't eat the fruit from that one tree. That's my only rule. In the mean time, eat anything else you want, frolick in your Garden and if you ever get bored just give me a buzz. Oh, and you can thank me later for your curvy companion."

Adam thumbs his nose, eats the fruit, and then tries to lie about it. God gets pissed off (who wouldn't?) and says, "Holy cow, did you really need to do that? Didn't you know it would piss me off? Okay, well here's what we'll do about it: You can still keep your eternal life and paradise pad, but now you're going to have to spend about 75 years dealing with pain and suffering, first. Oh, and if you piss me off again by, say, not believing I exist, then I'm just not going to deal with you at all."

Why bother having the tree there in the first place? Can you say SETUP?...

[hinduwoman]

This is where we get back to the Sumerian roots.

The Genesis story is just a derivation of the earlier story, so parts of it don't make sense if you don't know that context, which is what we have done today, and thus we have fabricated ideas into the story which were never really in the minds of the writers.

The story as presented by the Hebrews isn't really all that bad, in some ways its a positive retelling of the existing Sumerian and Babylonian stories, but in others its not.

The twists are this:

Sumerian/Babylonian:

1) The gods exist on earth and create naked humans to do their work for them.
2) The gods keep knowledge from the humans so that they will continue to work for them.
3) The flaws of humans are created by the gods.
4) The gods eventually grant knowledge to the humans, and invite them to "become like them".
5) The city is depicted as good, and "edin" is depicted as bad. "Edin" is the wilderness, and the city is civilization, where the gods live.
6) The naked humans leave edin to enter the the city after the gods give them knowledge.

Making sense so far?

Hebrew:

1) God is not of the earth, he creates everything.
2) God creates humans as his favorite beings, and sets them to work in the wilderness. (Why are they working? No reason, its just a hold over from the Sumerian story)
3) God creates humans as perfect, and gives them "free will"
4) God tells the naked humans not to obtain knowledge, but due to trickery and free will, they disobey God and bring a curse on themselves, creating the flaws of humans and gaining knowledge through disobedience.
5) God says "they have become like us" (another hold over from the Sumerian story) - so we have become "like God", against his will in this case.
6) "Eden" is good, and the city is bad. When the humans get knowledge they are expelled from the wilderness, and Cain, the "bad one" is the first to go to the city. The city and civilization represent "bad", and the preexisting naked condition in the wilderness represents "the good".

God, also, in the Hebrew story, grants a day of rest, while in the Sumerian there is no day of rest.

So, the Hebrew story came about some 1,000+ years after the Sumerian story originated andit puts a different spin on basically the same story.

Why these specific changes? I'm not sure. Perhaps the Hebrews were of a more privative people, who lived outside the cities, and they viewed cities and city dwellers as bad and corrupt, and thus they idealized rural/nomadic life. So, it seems to be a story about how the rural/nomadic people are God's people and the city dwellers are bad people, which would pretty much fit with other elements of early Hebrew mythology.

Perhaps there were conflicts between Sumerians and Hebrews in the far past? So citydwellers are bad but shepherds are good! :grin:

[Jack the Bodiless]

The repetition of "death" is indeed a form of emphasis. "Surely die" is a reasonable translation: "doomed to die" is not. Exactly the same repetition emphasis is used in the previous verse, Genesis 2:16, to describe eating: hence "certainly eat", or "surely eat", or "freely eat". But who translates that as "doomed to eat"?

[Toto]

A few posts have been split out here: Chili digression (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=185204)

[driver8]

From:

http://cc.usu.edu/~fath6/contents-bible.htm

An Anthropologist Looks at the Judeo-Christian Scriptures

and this section:

http://cc.usu.edu/~fath6/worldview.html

The Creation: The Ancient Semitic Cosmology

Eden and Its Garden
Like Dilmun, the ancient paradise of Sumer, the Hebrews envisioned a paradisical garden [Hebrew, gan] that lay somewhere in the east of Eden. In Hebrew, eden had come to mean "paradise" as well as "delight, luxury, and pleasure". The origin of the word is uncertain, but might be have originally meant "plain" (as in the flat lands between the two great rivers of Mesopotamia) as did the cognate Akkadian edinu. This Semitic word might actually have originally been borrowed from the language of the original civilization of Sumer, in which the word E.DIN has the same meaning. As in Dilmun, the garden was watered by a mist that arose from the ground. Its inhabitants did not age, and its animals lived in harmony.
Sumerian mythology had a number of motifs that survived down into Hebrew times. They referred to the paradisical garden that the gods inhabited as Dilmun. One of the stories that was set in Dilmun deals with punishment for eating a sacred plant and the creation of a goddess called the Lady of the Rib:

In Dilmun the raven utters no cry,
The ittidu-bird utters not the cry of the ittidu-bird,
The lion kills not,
The wolf snatches not the lamb,
Unknown is the kid-devouring wild dog,
Unknown is the grain-devouring . . ,
Unknown is the widow,
The bird on high . .s not his . . ,
The dove droops not the head,
The sick-eyed says not "I am sick-eyed,"
The sick-headed says not "I am sick-headed,"
Its [Dilmun's] old woman says not "I am an old woman,"
Its old man says not "I am an old man,"
Unbathed is the maid, no sparkling water is pourined in the city,
Who crosses the river [of death?} utters no . . ,
The wailing priests walk not round about him,
The singer utters no wail,
By the side of the city he utters no lament.

In other words, Dilmun was a true paradise in which there were no nuisances, carnivores did not present a threat to the herbevores, and there was no sickness, old age, or death. Another section tells that there was no pain in pregnancy or childbirth. But a problem arose. The Great Mother goddess, Ninhursag, had created eight sacred plants, and shortly thereafter Enki, the god of wisdom, came upon them and ate them one by one. Ninhursag was not pleased:

Thereupon Ninhursag cursed the name of Enki:
"Until he is dead I shall not look upon him with the eye of life."

Thereupon, Ninhursag departs and Enki languishes, suffering from eight illnesses. Eventually, Ninhursag is convinced by a fox to return and remove her curse. To do this, she creates eight goddesses, each of whom is endowed with the power to cure one of Enki's eight illnesses. One of the goddesses was named Nin-ti, who had the power to cure the illness of Enki's rib. Her name was an interesting play on words in the Sumerian language: Nin-ti means both "Lady [Nin] of the Rib [ti]" and "Lady of Life". This play on words was lost in Hebrew, although it did preserve the story of death entering the world because the first couple ate a forbidden plant and of a woman created from a rib, whose name Eve meant, according to Hebrew folk etymology, "Life".

The Four Rivers of Eden

The Yahwist text portrays the garden as set in an environment that conformed to the delta lands of Sumer where civilization first flourished, and identified great rivers that flowed through this region from four different highland watersheds. These four great rivers are described as coming together like branches of a single great river in Eden and then flowing out of Eden into the garden. The four are identified as the Gihon, the Pishon, the Tigris, and the Euphrates.

.........

Sumer, the Garden Watered by Four Rivers
From this description of the four rivers of Genesis, it can be seen that the biblical story of Eden corresponds with the lands of ancient Sumer, the world's earliest civiliation. Sumer arose in southern Mesopotamia about 3500 BCE in the form of a series of city-states that were linked to one another by trade and to regions to the north and west by land and south by sea as well. By their own accounts, the earliest of these Sumerian city-states was the city of Eridu, which like the later Sumerian cities of Ur and Erech was founded on the banks of the Euphrates River. The ruins of these ancient cities now lie about 400 miles upstream from where the Euphrates enters the Persian Gulf, but in that day the Gulf extended all the way to where these cities of commerce were founded. Their agriculture flourished in the rich delta soils deposited by the Euphrates and Tigris River, a process that gradually filled the northern reaches of the Gulf with silt, gradually moving the coast over the millenia toward the south to its present location. At the writing of the Genesis account around 1000 BCE, the silting process had moved the coast far enough south, that instead of flowing directly into the Gulf itself, as they had done in earlier times, the Gihon (which no longer flowed regularly) and the Pishon flowed directly into the Euphrates south of where it is joined by the Tigris, the configuration described in the Genesis account. Thus, the Eden of the Genesis story can be identified as the great flood plain of the Euphrates south of the ancient cities of Sumer.

I've tried to condense it a bit. The whole page is worth a read, as is the entire website.

[Malachi151]

From the link above:

Hellenistic astrology was not unknown in Palestine. Lester Ness has summarized the role of astrology in late Judaism. He argues that although Jews held that the destiny of Judea was controlled directly by their God, Yahweh, the movement of the stars and planets could be the mechanism through which Yahweh's will was worked, and the constellation of Pisces was particularly associated with Judea.

Oi vey, is this perhaps why the fish was the symbol of the Christians?!

Also note, one of the earliest Christian images that we have, from the church at Megiddo :

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/photogalleries/oldest_church/images/primary/fish_circle.jpg

Also, I noticed that in the Jewish zodiacs that I have been able to find images of, only two admittedly, Pisces is at the top!

[Malachi151]

I was looking into the passage cited by Loomis and it says this:

Ezekiel 28:

11 Moreover, the word of the Lord came to me: 12Mortal, raise a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say to him, Thus says the Lord God:
You were the signet of perfection,*
full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
13You were in Eden, the garden of God;
every precious stone was your covering,
carnelian, chrysolite, and moonstone,
beryl, onyx, and jasper,
sapphire,* turquoise, and emerald;
and worked in gold were your settings
and your engravings.*
On the day that you were created
they were prepared.
14With an anointed cherub as guardian I placed you;*
you were on the holy mountain of God;
you walked among the stones of fire.
15You were blameless in your ways
from the day that you were created,
until iniquity was found in you.
16In the abundance of your trade
you were filled with violence, and you sinned;
so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God,
and the guardian cherub drove you out
from among the stones of fire.
17Your heart was proud because of your beauty;
you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendour.
I cast you to the ground;
I exposed you before kings,
to feast their eyes on you.
18By the multitude of your iniquities,
in the unrighteousness of your trade,
you profaned your sanctuaries.
So I brought out fire from within you;
it consumed you,
and I turned you to ashes on the earth
in the sight of all who saw you.
19All who know you among the peoples
are appalled at you;
you have come to a dreadful end
and shall be no more for ever.

Does this not say that man was thrown out of Eden for becoming greedy and amassing wealth?

[Toto]

12 Mortal, raise a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say to him, Thus says the Lord God:
. . .

15 You were blameless in your ways
from the day that you were created,
until iniquity was found in you.
16 In the abundance of your trade
you were filled with violence, and you sinned;
so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God,
and the guardian cherub drove you out


I read it as saying that the King of Tyre was rich until he became filled with iniquity and violence. The reference to Eden must be some sort of symbolic reference to wealth, and being cast from the mountain a symbolic reference to his fall from wealth and power.