Tec,
The story of Adam and Eve long predates the Gospels and story of Jesus Christ. How is it that you use Jesus to explain Genesis? What about the thousands of years where this information was not present.
-Sab
Adam and Eve and free will
by inbetween 125 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
-
-
sabastious
Were talking about this story in it's historical context, not it's continuity in the Bible.
-Sab
-
Pistoff
The story of Adam and Eve as a literal story of course makes no sense at all; it makes sense to me only when seen as a mythological tale, like so many others. It is both similar to and different from others; the real story is why did the redactors keep it?
To me it is one of many tales in the OT that illustrates the fractious relationship between the israelites and their god/gods; Is ra el does literally mean to struggle with god, after all; this is the faith that says god wanted abraham to butcher his son but changes his mind. It is also the tale of a god who sends his prophet jonah to nineveh, and then pulls the plug on his plans. Ecclesiastes is a very cynical take on life, despite what the last chapter says.
It makes sense as a treatment about the dilemma of free will, good and evil.
-
sabastious
It is just another fable that muses about how and why, etc.
The problem, as tec has demonstrated, is that it is in the same book as Jesus, and if you call the story of Adam and Eve stupid that it somehow degrades the Christian Concept.
-Sab
-
sabastious
If the story was just a mere fable it might be an interesting historical read, it would provide more insight into the TIME PERIOD it was written and the current mental state of the writer.
But it is not and never will be a "mere fable" because of it's surrounding context.
-Sab
-
Pistoff
But it is not and never will be a "mere fable" because of it's surrounding context.
The context cannot be taken literally; it is insulting to the texts to take them at face value.
This is what makes the bible both interesting and a maddening challenge; it changes the game by mixing mythology, sometimes very similar to surrounding cultures', and mentions at least some historical figures.
Without researching the bible's history/source/forms against the time it is really considered to have been written, the mistake of taking it literally is obvious: people believe that God really killed children for making fun of a bald prophet, or that he slew 70,000 israelites because David counted heads.
The texts make the most sense when considering the social/religious/political realities at the time of their last redaction.
-
tec
The story of Adam and Eve long predates the Gospels and story of Jesus Christ. How is it that you use Jesus to explain Genesis? What about the thousands of years where this information was not present.
I'm not sure I totally understand your question? God is in that story. His motivations and reasons are being called into question. I look to Christ to understand God. He (Christ) did come and correct many of the false understandings that the Jews had - including false understandings from the very beginning.
So who says the information wasn't present and just misunderstood? In fact, I believe there are parts of the OT that liken being removed from God's presence or sight as death. (I'll have to look for them, mind you, and I will if you like.)
Tammy
-
alice.in.wonderland
A godless worldview leaves much less in the way of freewill if you're implying that mortality cancels out freewill. Mortality cannot be willed away. Not that the biological basis of aging and death is an integral part of evolution, but assuming it is, at best it's just a means to an end. You have more options if the report in Genesis about the first humans is not an allegory, but a true event.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1288306/
A Means to an End: The Biological Basis of Aging and Death.
The questions of how and why we age have great intrinsic intellectual appeal and major societal implications. William Clark, an Emeritus Professor of Immunology at UCLA, has written a popular book in an attempt to introduce the subject to nonspecialists. That he himself is a nonspecialist is probably a good thing, since there is the potential to bring a fresh new perspective. He has succeeded in producing a very readable review that does indeed outline the major ideas. Unfortunately, although he quite properly emphasizes the evolutionary theory of why we age, his language in many sections of the book indicates a belief that a genetic program has evolved to produce senescence.
All serious students of the evolutionary biology of aging would agree that the senescent phenotypes that emerge in age-structured populations are the result of a decline in the force of natural selection with respect to the age of gene effects.
-
notverylikely
Dude, I already told you, I don't want it to mean anything at all, Genesis is just a story and liek any story, you get out of it what you came in to it with.
Weird then that you are arguing so hard for it to mean something it totally doesn't say.
Spiritual death. They did die in that day.
Awesome! Show me the scripture that says spritual death...
As pointed out, God didn't even kill them, just gave them a long life full of bountiful efforts and lots of kids !
So he didn't do what he said? Weird....either he lied, was wrong, or changed his mind, meaning his original intent wasn't right.
What else can a loving father do?
I sure don't say "If you guys eat candy before dinner you have to go to bed an hour early" and then send them to bed TWO hours after their bedtime and claim it was a spiritual hour.
-
Pistoff
If you take the story of Adam and Eve literally, you are accepting a talking snake. And/or you are accepting that the snake was the christian version of Satan, something no serious scholar, christian or otherwise, thinks is true. The king of darkness view of satan is a late, 2nd temple view of the satan/resister that is imported from other faiths, including zoroastrianism.
If you take this story literally, you really need to accept all of the stories in the OT literally, or else how do you parse them out?
And, if you take the Bible's tall tales as literally true, then you must accept the stories from the surrounding cultures. Else, it devolves into a case of my crazy stories are true, and theirs are false. They are neither true or false; they are symbolic.
But, taken as the writers and redactors likely intended them, they portray a people who believed god was good, and they were his people, and that he would always back his people, if they followed his laws. The bad things that happened to them they saw as evidence that god was withdrawing his protection because of wicked kings, priests or populace; it was the only way for them to keep believing that God was in control, that he was good and powerful, and they were his people. It was their way of understanding evil.
The bible, the OT I mean, is not a book, but a library of books with slightly different takes on this idea (excepting Job, Ecclesiastes and maybe Jonah),and it makes sense when understood in that context.