by Stauros 71 Replies latest watchtower bible
Jeffro, take your finger on your left hand and poke your eyeball on the right side of your face. Experience the slight pain, and tell me how many functions it took to accomplish this. Its cool how the body was designed to enjoy all that life has to offer isn't it.......you can thank GOD for that. Have a great night.
Estephan
Stauros:
Jeffro, take your finger on your left hand and poke your eyeball on the right side of your face. Experience the slight pain, and tell me how many functions it took to accomplish this. Its cool how the body was designed to enjoy all that life has to offer isn't it.......you can thank GOD for that.
If you want to go around poking yourself in the eye and imagining that somehow 'proves' the existence of 'god', go right ahead.
The "tree of life" is a sexual symbol, as is the whole story.
There are two Creation myths; the account at Genesis 2:4b and following was written first, and its objective is the religious sanctity of marriage.
(The objective of Gen 1, which was written by a differnt group of scribes - they did not use YHWH at this stage - was the universal obligation of the Sabbath)
Doug
Well, DM how in the world did you derive these conclusions from what you read? At least give explanation as to how you did.
E.
Stauros,
I remember reading that exposition of the sexual symbolism (tree of life) "somewhere" but right off the top of my (balding) head, I do not recall which book I read it in. I am so sorry.
Going further, that source saw a similar symbolism in the snake - perhaps it had such a meaning in ancient times? Similarly with the "apple".
Maybe a www search?
The religious intent of the two Creation Myths (Marriage and Sabbath) is generally accepted - just look at the structure of each account and their respective climaxes.
Apologies.
Doug
Well, Stauros how in the world did you derive these conclusions from what you read? At least give explanation as to how you did.
LC.
(Not what your conclusions are - but how you derived them). If it's a good enough question to be asked...
"We are not responsible for the sins of our fathers, sons or daughters, ect. ect."
(Exodus 20 v 5, 6)
Stauros,
In the following posts, I provide an extract from a book by a renowned Jewish Biblical scholar, Marc Zvi Brettler. I divided the posts simply because of the length of the citation.
In his book, "The Lost World of Genesis One", John Walton observes that it is not sufficient to translate a language, we have to translate a culture. We must not impose our culture onto the Biblical text but we have read it through the concepts of the culture that produced it.
I hope the following is of interest and use. It comes from pages 44 to 47 of "How to Read the Jewsih Bible".
Doug
The Meaning of Genesis 2:4b – 3:24
The story as widely known has been filled out through various (Christian) interpretations. For example, nowhere does the text itself tell us what the forbidden fruit was. In early Christian tradition it was generally understood as an apple, whereas early Jewish tradition offered several opinions as to the fruit's identity, with the fig being the most popular—and contextually the most appropriate (see especially Gen. 3:7).
Other dearly held views of this text are also not borne out by a close reading. Thus, we might believe that its main theme is the curse received by the woman (and all women), yet the word "curse" is absent in God's comments to her (Gen. 3:16), while it is present in God's statements both to the serpent (3:14) and to the man (3:17). Moreover, the doctrines of the Fall of Man or original sin are nowhere to be found in this passage, though they appear in early Christian interpretation of the text.
The Garden Story is about immortality lost and sexuality gained. It begins from a simple premise: originally, people were immortal. In fact, the huge life spans recorded in the early chapters of Genesis are part of an effort to make a bridge between that original immortality and "normal" life spans. As immortal beings, they were asexual; in the Garden story God does not tell them to "be fertile and increase" as they were told in the first creation story (Gen. 1:28). Sexuality is discovered only after eating from the tree, when "they perceived that they were naked" (3:7). In fact, the divine command of 2:17 should not be understood as often translated—"for as soon as you eat of it, you shall die" (so the JPS translation)—but rather "for as soon as you eat of it, you shall become mortal." The connection between (procreative) sexuality and mortality is compelling and was well understood even in antiquity—if people were to be both sexually procreative and immortal, disastrous overpopulation would result.
Many details within chapters 2-3 support this interpretation. The tree that is first forbidden is (literally) "the tree of knowledge of good and bad." Here da-at ("knowledge") is being used in a sense that it often has in the Bible: intimate or sexual knowledge. "Good and bad" is being used here as a figure of speech called a "merism": two opposite terms are joined by the word "and"; the resulting figure means "everything" or "the ultimate." (Amerism is likewise used in Genesis 1:1, "heaven and earth," which there means the entire world.) The words "good and bad" have no moral connotation here.
Only after the primordial couple eat from the tree do they gain sexual awareness. Indeed, immediately after this story concludes, we read "Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain" (Gen. 4:1). That is, eating from the tree of "knowledge" leads to a very specific type of "knowing." Nowhere in the text is this knowledge depicted as intellectual or ethical.
This reading also explains why the tree of life is mentioned only toward the end of the story (Gen. 3:22). Early in the story, people were immortal, so that tree offered no advantage, and thus was not mentioned. However, only after eating from the tree of ultimate "knowledge," becoming sexual, and becoming mortal, does the tree of life come into focus. Eating from this tree would allow people to become both immortal and sexual, creating an overpopulation problem. The first couple was expelled not as punishment, but so that they might not "take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever!" (3:22).
The renaming of the woman as Eve, chavvah ("progenitress"), "because she was the mother of all the living" (Gen. 3:20), happens only after eating from the tree. This too bolsters the "sexual" reading of this story—eating of the tree of ultimate "knowledge" turns the wife of Adam from ha-ishah ("the woman") into a (potential) mother.
God's response to the woman after she eats from the tree is not a curse. The words "And to the woman He said, / 'I will make most severe / Your pangs in childbearing; / In pain shall you bear children. / Yet your urge shall be for your husband, / And he shall rule over you” (Gen. 3:16) are a description of women's new state: procreative, with all the "pains" connected to procreation in the premodern world, including the natural pain of childbirth. This verse is not stating (as a harmonistic reading of Genesis 1-3 might imply) that before eating the fruit women gave birth painlessly, but now they would have labor pains. Furthermore, it notes that women will not do what most people do—try to avoid pain at all cost—because "your urge shall be for your husband, / And he shall rule over you." The meaning of this last section is ambiguous. The root m-sh-1 ("to rule") has a general sense, so that its use might suggest an overall hierarchy of male over female. However, the context of this verse suggests that it means merely that men will determine when couples engage in sexual intercourse.
It is difficult to determine the attitude of this mythmaker toward the new state that he is describing. Is he happy that a boring life as asexual immortals in Eden has been traded for a challenging, sexual life outside of Eden? Or does he miss immortality? Or is he being merely descriptive, noting how humankind moved from an earlier stage to its current one? The Bible (in contrast to much of Victorian and post-Victorian society) has a generally positive attitude toward human sexuality, as may be seen most clearly from the Song of Songs. In various places, it sees women in particular (in contrast to men) as very sexual beings (see especially Proverbs 1-9). Thus, it is quite reasonable within a biblical context to see Eve as a type of Pandora figure, who is to be commended for bringing sex into this world.
Implications and Conclusions
Genesis 1:1-2:4a and 2:4b-3:24 are two separate stories, written by different authors using different styles. They are both myths—neither aims primarily at offering a scientific description of "the earth and everything upon it" (Neh. 9:6). They are metaphors on the story level, traditional tales dealing with issues of collective importance. As such, they are "creating" worlds.
The first story describes a very good world, which is highly structured and controlled by a most powerful God who in some ways is so dissimilar from humans that he even has his own word, bara, to express his creative activity.
The world of the second story is much more ambiguous. Its God, a master potter (Gen. 2:7), is much more humanlike, walking and talking, even sewing (3:21). Also this world is unlike that in the previous story: it lacks the gender equality of the previous story, and it is not "very good."
Modern "critical" biblical scholarship fosters these observations by allowing the stories to be disengaged from each other, allowing each to be seen as an independent story, reflecting its author's perspectives. It understands them as constructive myths, which helped to frame the very essence of Israelite self-understanding, as well as their understanding of their relationship to their God, and to the world that they believed He had created. (“How to Read the Jewish Bible”, Marc Zvi Brettler, pages 45-47)
The story as widely known has been filled out through various (Christian) interpretations. For example, nowhere does the text itself tell us what the forbidden fruit was. In early Christian tradition it was generally understood as an apple, whereas early Jewish tradition offered several opinions as to the fruit's identity, with the fig being the most popular—and contextually the most appropriate (see especially Gen. 3:7). [DM]
Well let us reason upon this for a minute. The tree of knowledge (as I have spoken of prior), is not a literal tree because no where in existence is a tree that grows knowledge. Let's compare the fruit (forbidden) to the "fruitage of the spirt". How do we know what they are if not by what we read in the bible? We obtain Godly knowledge by reading the scriptures and learning his Laws. We learn good and evil by what we see from others, and by what we might engage in ourselves. The "forbidden" fruit is wickedness, or sin. Makes sense, does it not?
Estephan
