The original sin

onacruse

This is a question I've had for a long time.

According to the Biblical account, Adam and Eve's sin was to eat fruit from the forbidden tree.

Now, ordinarily, when we get caught doing something "wrong," we try to hide the "offending" member (the child tries to hide his hand that has the 'stolen' cookie; we hurriedly try to pull our pants back on when Mom walks in unexpectedly while we're masturbating, etc.).

So, if the "sin" of Adam and Eve was eating a forbidden fruit, then why wasn't their first impulse to hide their hands? or to wipe off their mouths? Or, to grab another one of the permitted fruits and say "This is what I was eating!"? Why, instead, did they feel the need to cover their private parts? What did their sexual organs have to do with the "original sin" of eating something?

tetrapod.sapien

it's not so much about the eating, or the action of eating. the sin was in the shame of the knowledge of our separateness. suddenly, humanity had alienated itself psychologically from its obvious and qualitative relatedness to nature, biologically. and in the alienation was shame, and a melancholy remembering of a time of oneness not so long ago.

tetra

onacruse

four-legged-human:

it's not so much about the eating, or the action of eating. the sin was in the shame of the knowledge of our separateness.

Why should there be shame in realizing what we are by nature? Perhaps the Biblical characterization of the Devil's "original lie" assertion was rather more of a confirmation, than a deception?

suddenly, humanity had alienated itself psychologically from its obvious and qualitative relatedness to nature, biologically.

Granting that that might have been true for Adam and Eve, how could it be true for their descendants? What "qualitative relatedness" to nature was so utterly obliterated from the human soul by the actions of these two Biblical characters?

and in the alienation was shame, and a melancholy remembering of a time of oneness not so long ago.

If anything, I suggest that the Biblical account would infer otherwise: "Now that they have become like us...!" Does that sound like an alienation? I think not. It sounds more like a competition...or, perhaps, something else?

Frannie Banannie

Craig, ask yourself how many generations that story passed through until it finally reached Noah's ears and he put it into writing. And how many personal points of view skewed the true version of the event? And what human was present and made privy to the exchange in which "Now they have become like us " occurred?

Frannie

Leolaia

Because in the narrative (which says nothing about "sin" per se, this is a later interpretation), the "knowledge" that they gained -- among other things (such as agriculture, cf. v. 17-19) -- was that nakedness was shameful. This is reinforced by a pun in the Hebrew; the serpent had knowledge about the wisdom that one would gain in eating the fruit (v. 5), and the serpent itself was described as `rwm (clever, intelligent), and when Adam and Eve ate from the fruit, they "knew" (yd`w, cf. yd`y in v. 5, that they would "know" good and evil) that they were `yrm (naked). There is a subtle twist here that they realized not that they were clever but that they were naked.

JamesThomas

Tetra:

it's not so much about the eating, or the action of eating. the sin was in the shame of the knowledge of our separateness. suddenly, humanity had alienated itself psychologically from its obvious and qualitative relatedness to nature, biologically. and in the alienation was shame, and a melancholy remembering of a time of oneness not so long ago.

I agree, For a long time I have felt that the eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad, is a metaphor for allowing the mind to dictate "reality" in a dualistic nature, rather than seeing and living the perfection of united completeness that it actually IS. Once this false division happens -- it is "me" against the universe, and suffering begins. We leave out natural paradise.

So then, eating from the Tree of Life, is awakening to our real nature and Identity.

j

onacruse

Frannie, I have no disagreement with the three points you make. However, those are points that have been debated from all sides, and will continue to be, until the moon crashes into the earth.

My question would mean that, regardless of such arguments, the basic premise of the whole "story" is illogical.

You've had kids, right? Then you know what I'm saying: Would you slap your kids hands if they had just kicked the dog? Would you wash out their butt with soap if they had just said a bad word?

onacruse

Leolaia, welcome home from your trip!

Very interesting etiology (new to me), but:

There is a subtle twist here that they realized not that they were clever but that they were naked.

And how, within the Biblical parameters, would simply "being naked" be a deficiency? God created them that way to begin with! If all his works are perfect, then how could their "sudden awareness" of uncoveredness be a shame? or a sin? or a matter for God to even take further action and give them something more than fig leaves to achieve 'coveredness?'

onacruse

JamesT:

So then, eating from the Tree of Life, is awakening to our real nature and Identity.

Would you then agree that the Devil's 'original lie' was actually a supernatural revelation to Adam and Eve of what they really were?

I'm not trying to be controversial simply for the sake of controversy, but, in fact, this is essentially what the Russelites taught.

tetrapod.sapien

hey onacruse!

it's good. i think it's good we keep having these types of discussions about the nature of our old beliefs.

first off, just let me say that i am approaching the genesis myth from an athropological perspective, and not a christian perspective. i am not thinking in terms of its literalness. i am thinking in terms of what it might represent humans having gone through on our journey from animals to who we are today. adam and eve are none more than metaphors to me. i have good reason to believe that at the time the bible says that they sinned, there were already thousands of neolithic homo sapiens in the area of the cradle of civilization.

Why should there be shame in realizing what we are by nature?

but the catch for me here is, that by nature we were not alienated at all. we were animals that lived in unconscious and weaved co-existence with nature. we did not fight nature. we simply went with it, which also included survival in it. not control of it. but at a certain point we came to have the impression that we were separate from nature, and came to abhor nature as a result. this is where the shame of our bodies (our selves) began, because we no longer identified ourselves with our bodies (which fit the ecological niche so well) anymore. we identified ourselves with a new abstraction in our mind, that for all of its wobbilyness and immaturity, was still an obvious imposter in the landscape. and so the long quest for knowledge and a yearning to be one again with nature. the problem is that for a long time we could not tell the difference between dominating nature and being at one with it. perhaps because we came to hate our animal past? our minds no longer wanted to view ourselves as animals.

Perhaps the Biblical characterization of the Devil's "original lie" assertion was rather more of a confirmation, than a deception?

yes, i see it as simply a confirmation that we had abilities far beyond that of the animal. a reminder of greatness that we could achieve with this new mind that we began awakening to. if there was a deception anywhere, it was in our explanation to ourselves that we needed to control, and *own* nature in order to feel at one with it. and indeed, that is a great deception!

Granting that that might have been true for Adam and Eve, how could it be true for their descendants?

What "qualitative relatedness" to nature was so utterly obliterated from the human soul by the actions of these two Biblical characters?

again, i don't personally approach it anymore from the angle of dealing with the myth literally. i see adam and eve as human representatives in the collective experience of our awakening to a highly abstracted human mind in the niche of culture. the abstraction capabilities in our minds, instead of remaining a tool, came to eventually dominate us. in other words we came to identify ourselves with our minds. the adam and eve characters, for me, represent that alienation. and i don't see the traits as being obliterated. indeed the inner peace that humans experience in being close to nature is testament that we have been alienated from it, imo.

even in cultural terms, the descendants of "adam and eve" inherited the ideas of the humans who came before them, and since the brains were so similar from generation to generation, so the pathologies were also passed on down from parents to children. and so in a way, early humans passed on both "sin" and "salvation" to the rest of us: that pathological alienation from nature is a sin, but that we must strive to still keep the gifts of our outstanding minds, and reunite the two again eventually. hence the history of philosophical contemplation, inluding religion and spirituality.

i dunno. just me chatting away. at first i wasn't sure how to answer your questions, and paused to reflect. the above is just what came out. but at least you know my slant a little better now! what do you think?

have a nice sat night! talk soon,

tetra

The original sin

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