Thread: Who or what was the serpent in the garden of Eden? Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.
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Posted by Steve H (# 17102) on
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Following a suggestion from Matt Black on the 'Prayer Battle' thread, here is a new thread about the serpent. Let me make clear first of all that I'm emphatically not a creationist of any kind - I don't think anyone who's read any of my posts would imagine that I was. The story has value as a fanciful allegory of how humanity got into the mess it's in (Adam to Eve: "Here's another fine mess you've gotten me into!"), but obviously a story of talking snakes, magic fruit, trees with names, and just-so stories of why women have a hard time giving birth and snakes have no legs is comparable to 'The Pilgrim's Progress', which no-one imagines to be true.
Anyway, that's beside the point, and let's not get into a debate about creationism versus evolution. The question is, who or what is the snake? It's widely assumed, and I admit that I've always assumed, that it's Satan, either taking on the appearance of a snake, or possessing the body of one, but Satan, and fallen angels generally, are hardly mentioned elsewhere in the OT, and Genesis simply talks about "the serpent", with no suggestion that it is anything other than a serpent (albeit a talking one).
What do people think?
[Title spello edited]
[ 04. June 2012, 11:13: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by Waterchaser (# 11005) on
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I've always taken the snake to be a metaphor for Satan. If this isn't what the original author intended I would still take this to be a case of them writing more than they "knew" through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It would be interesting however to understand what the original author intended.
I would take the statment about Eve's offspring crushing his head to be a prophecy about what Jesus would achieve "Christus Victor" rather than merely a statment that snakes hurt people and people kill snakes.
Satan is referred to in Revelation a couple of times as "that ancient serpent" which I would assume is the writer of Revelation referencing back to Genesis.
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on
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If you consider the story to be a piece of fiction, then asking who the snake is is a fruitless question. * The snake is a snake is a snake is a snake. The question only makes sense if you grant some larger, truer narrative that stands behind it and gives it additional meaning, such as history itself, or divine inspiration.
* Or the narrative of a single author's intention in telling the story--for example, you could enquire as to the identity of Aslan based on what you know of Lewis' life and writing. But this doesn't work when the author is either totally unknown or else collective (with conflicting threads of intention and meaning being woven together).
Now you could ask what meanings hearers/readers have found in it, but that will give you opinion, not truth--still interesting but different.
Posted by Nicodemia (# 4756) on
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I've always assumed, and maybe been told, that the serpent in Genesis represented deception, or trickery, as he/it got Eve to take that apple by persuading her that (a) God wouldn't strike her dead and (b) more importantly, she would have God's knowledge or wisdom.
Adam and Eve were presumably originally naive and could see that God had all wisdom, or was Wisdom, but they couldn't make out why he was so much better than they were.
Serpent or snake comes along, whispers in Eve's ear and hey presto, sex was discovered and the world went wrong!
Wikipedia gives a great deal of information about serpents and their part in our spiritual lives.
Anyway, it was probably the originator of snake oil. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on
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The snake was Satan's agent if not Satan himself .
I say this because of the emphasis of temptation in the story of the Fall ( though the word used is 'beguiled').
Eve was encouraged to rebel against God's instruction , was thereby deceived and ended up worse off . Sounds pretty much like the work of the old devil to me.
Posted by Steve H (# 17102) on
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Well, I'm glad you all more or less agree that it is, or represents, Satan, but someone on the 'Prayer battle' thread suggested that that was a very naive and untheological view, though they didn't say what the correct view, in their opinion, was.
Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on
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The Bible uses different terms to describe phenomena.
Men have powerful drives which are necessary for survival. When those drives are allowed free reign, men are no different from the beasts of the field , controlled by the law of the wild. This temptation /desire to allow natural drives free reign against better judgment is called yetzer ha ra. When men allow their better side to decide choices, this better inclination is called yetzer ha tov. The concept of Original Sin is hellenistic in origin.
The serpent is a personification of yetzer ha ra. It's curse of being relegated to crawling on its belly is the low rung it occupies in human thought whenever it is subjected to analysis.
PS Personification leads to strange outworkings, they take on a life of their own. The yetzer ha ra that created problem for the Israelites end up nailed to a pole!
Tons of stuff in Jewish commentaries on the subject, some rather fanciful. Judicious choice of reading material advised!
Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on
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Read Paradise Lost . I don't agree with much of Milton's Theology, but his learning of the OT and the various other books of Jewish Tradition is very, very thorough. It will answer this and many other similar questions.
The serpent is a serpent into which Satan enters as a disguise, and the successful temptation is that of Stan, not of the serpent.
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on
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quote:
Originally posted by footwasher:
This temptation /desire to allow natural drives free reign against better judgment is called yetzer ha ra.
Very interesting comment.
Never heard of yetzer ha ra, but it is evidently important enough to merit a full article in Wikipedia:
quote:
In Judaism, yetzer hara (Hebrew: יצר הרע for the definite "the evil inclination"), or yetzer ra (Hebrew: יצר רע for the indefinite "an evil inclination") refers to the inclination to do evil, by violating the will of God. The term is drawn from the phrase "the imagination of the heart of man [is] evil" (Hebrew: יֵצֶר לֵב הָאָדָם רַע,yetzer lev-ha-adam ra), which occurs twice in the Hebrew Bible, at Genesis 6:5 and 8:21.
The yetzer hara is not a demonic force, but rather man's misuse of things the physical body needs to survive. Thus, the need for food becomes gluttony due to the yetzer hara. The need for procreation becomes sexual abuse, and so on. The idea that humans are born with a yetzer ra (physical needs that can become "evil"), but that humans don't acquire a yetzer tov ("a good inclination") until an age of maturity—12 for girls and 13 for boys—has its source in Chapter 16 of the Talmudic tractate Avot de-Rabbi Natan.
What I like about this is the concept that this is not a demonic force but simply the natural extension of physical needs when they are allowed to take precedence.
This is almost what I believe the serpent to be about. Maybe close enough that it is not worth distinguishing, but here is what I would say.
The serpent stands for our senses, or the part of us that is involved in and driven by our physical senses. In our spiritual life, listening to the serpent is about our tendency to want to rely on the evidence of our senses, as opposed to that of the spirit. It is about our reluctance to believe in what we cannot see and our tendency to trust what seems obvious to us, rather than what God tells us.
Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on
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It's a talking snake.
It's a snake that talks.
It's like, there's this snake. It talks.
I've always thought it's the Bible's first attempt at comedy. People will make up anything to get out of a tight situation, even a story about a talking snake. (Note that when Eve says, "The snake made me do it," the snake doesn't pipe up and say, "No I bloody didn't!")
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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Well according to Milton, sex predates the Fall, Nicodemia. It only becomes sinful and lustful and so on AFTER Adam and Eve have fallen.
One of the torments Satan endures is the sight of Adam and Eve innocently canoodling in Book IV. He can't abide the idea of them 'getting it' whilst he remains unloved, loveless and unable to have a stable and loving relationship of his own.
Worth a read.
Better still, get a CD of the whole thing - Anton Lesser reads it well - and sit back with a nice bottle of wine or a whisky and listen to it all unfold ...
Posted by shamwari (# 15556) on
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The snake is nothing more than temptation personified.
As someone pointed out elsewhere the concept of Satan only came into Hebrew thought post Exile and via Persian influence.
Even then ( as in Job which is post-exilic) Satan was no more that Accuser,/ Prosecuting Counsel than the embodiment of evil
[ 04. June 2012, 11:10: Message edited by: shamwari ]
Posted by Steve H (# 17102) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
Read Paradise Lost . I don't agree with much of Milton's Theology, but his learning of the OT and the various other books of Jewish Tradition is very, very thorough. It will answer this and many other similar questions.
I've read it five times so far, with notes. However, though Milton was fiendishly brainy, and incredibly learned - probably the last person in history who knew just about everything that there was to be known in the world at the time, before the expansion of knowledge made that impossible - he was also questionably orthodox, if not downright heretical: he was a subordinationist, which is a sort of semi-Arian. Still, if old Johnny M. says it was Satan, that's good enough for me. quote:
The serpent is a serpent into which Satan enters as a disguise, and the successful temptation is that of Stan, not of the serpent.
"Stan"?!
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
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It's a biblical "Just So" story. How did the serpent end up crawling around? Well.. it's a detail in the far bigger story of "how did humanity get so screwed up?".
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin ...
Creation stories (myths for the less sensitive) are a genre all of their own. I particularly like this observation by Terry Pratchett.
Whether you see the Genesis Creation stories (after all there are two) as mythical poetry or something else will probably determine your answer to the OP question.
"We're screwed up and that bloody talking snake had something to do with it. What does it mean? Well, you know what I think ..."
And off we go, telling our own stories about the story.
My short version. "You know, the Jews knew that the human race was screwed without God. That's why they liked this story. We still are, you know. Let me tell you about Jesus .." And off I go.
Posted by Steve H (# 17102) on
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I've wondered for some time what the correct technical term for 'Just-so' stories, purporting to explain features of the world, was, and now, thanks to your first link, I know: they're 'pourquoi' or 'etiological' tales. Thanks!
Posted by Steve H (# 17102) on
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quote:
[Title spello edited]
Thanks! I was going to ask a host to edit that annoying typo, but you anticipated me. Memo to self - check posts carefully before hitting the 'Add reply' button. (Like just now - I nearly posted "...aks a host...".)
[ 04. June 2012, 11:45: Message edited by: Steve H ]
Posted by LutheranChik (# 9826) on
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My OT teachers were always adamant that "a snake is a snake is a snake"; that assigning the snake an identity as Satan was going beyond the scope of the text as well as the mindset of the authors/redactors, if we accept that this story was a written version of a much earlier oral tradition...the idea of the devil being a fairly recent import into Judaism.
If you want to argue that the snake is a lower-case satan -- simply an "adversary" as the term originally meant, someone/something who acts as a sort of prosecuting attorney (see the Book of Job) reminding God of what weak and faithless yutzes we are...well, you have more traction there, I think.
I've read lots of Ojibwa origins stories from my part of the world, and to me the Genesis story is very similar to their folklore. There's a story of a very greedy, stingy, unfriendly old woman who refused to give a stranger any of her food even though she had plenty stored away -- the visitor was Nanabush, a sort of part Christ-figure, part trickster in Native American mythology -- and as punishment for her greed and lack of hospitality the woman was turned into the first woodpecker, she and her descendants fated to spend all day crying and hammering wood for her sustenance. To me that's reminiscent of the Genesis account of how snakes lost their legs.
Posted by IconiumBound (# 754) on
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Is it possible that the originators of the Genesis myth anticipated the research into brain development and were expressing a view of what is now known as the limbic system or "reptilian" brain?
Posted by Polly (# 1107) on
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I'd agree the serpent represents satan just like Adam represents mankind and Even womankind.
Just because satan isn;t mentioned by name in much of the OT doesn't mean he didn't exist.
The same goes of the Angel Gabriel. I'm sure he existed before he visited Mary.
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
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Reptiles are not evil, of course, they are just reptiles. They are no more evil than kittens.
The serpent represents evil. If you have ever seen the eyes of a sociopath, in an unguarded moment, you will have seen that reptile evil. It is completely void of empathy or compassion.
Posted by Johnny S (# 12581) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Steve H:
"Stan"?!
Eminem is Satan.
(Your biggest fan, this is Stan.)
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Steve H:
The question is, who or what is the snake?
The snake is the creation of God.
The snake is the truthteller.
Posted by LutheranChik (# 9826) on
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quote:
Is it possible that the originators of the Genesis myth anticipated the research into brain development and were expressing a view of what is now known as the limbic system or "reptilian" brain?
Interesting hypothesis.
The late physicist/populizer of science-for-the-masses Carl Sagan -- not a religious believer, to my knowledge -- pointed out in his book "The Dragons of Eden" that the text in Genesis in which God curses Eve with pain in childbirth correlates to the evolutionary development of the human brain; that our craniums have to be so large to support our brains that they're almost too large to pass through the human pelvis; and that if women's pelvises were any wider than they are now, we'd be unable to walk upright. Again, Sagan is in no way an apologist for the Bible in general, let alone a literalist interpretation of same, but he found a sort of poetic coincidence between this scene in Genesis and our advanced ability to reason, which we all know can be a blessing and a curse at the same time.
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
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I'm not sure that "serpent" in Rev 12:9,20:2 is conclusively a back-reference to Genesis, but if so, then that settles that. That the devil was directly involved is also suggested by Wis 2:24.
Posted by LutheranChik (# 9826) on
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No, it doesn't settle that. It simply indicates that believers with a developed idea of Satan (which, again, was a relative innovation in Jewish thought from Exilic times) saw a parallel between their idea of Satan and the behavior of the serpent in the Genesis story.
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
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Serpents are good in other religions, notably in hinduism when a snake is a god.
Posted by LutheranChik (# 9826) on
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quote:
Serpents are good in other religions, notably in hinduism when a snake is a god.
Ditto the non-Hebrew Middle East/Mediterranean. Which may be another reason why the snake got cast as the baddie in the Genesis story -- i.e., "Anything our pagan neighbors/enemies venerate is ipso facto BAD." (This could also explain some of the more head-scratch-provoking Levitical prohibitions.)
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
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quote:
Originally posted by LutheranChik:
No, it doesn't settle that. It simply indicates that believers with a developed idea of Satan (which, again, was a relative innovation in Jewish thought from Exilic times) saw a parallel between their idea of Satan and the behavior of the serpent in the Genesis story.
You say 'conceptual speculation in a theological narrative', I say "Divine revelation', let's call the whole thing off.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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Genesis 3:15 "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.", if this is not about Satan and Jesus, the obvious interpretation, we haven't the faintest idea.
Ezekiel is exilic, Isaiah is pre. They refer to Satan. Satan was alive and well further back - 1000 BCE - at the time of David - I Chronicles 21 - and of course the oldest book in the bible, Job, with characters dating from before Moses c 1800 BCE, including Satan - all edited post-exilically certainly.
As Jack Lewis says somewhere, they are His myths. The Devil serves as the ultimate bad example that so far repudiates universalism: the wind changes and your face can be set.
Posted by LutheranChik (# 9826) on
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The Satan of Job is not the Satan of later Jewish or still later Christian understanding.
Which is not to say that there isn't such a thing as progressive revelation. Progressive revelation is what moved the Hebrews from a henotheistic, "My tribal god can whip your tribal god" religion to a monotheistic one with a fairly sophisticated and universalized understanding of who God is.
I'm not saying that the traditional Christian understanding of Satan is a mistake, or that it was a mistake for the Hebrews to appropriate ideas about Satan from other cultures. What I am saying is that the snake in the Garden of Eden story was...a snake. That's the story told. If later believers read back into it their concept of Satan, that's fine; NT authors do that all the time with OT texts; but it's not what the text says.
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
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It may be worth mentioning that there is a school of scholarship that says the appearance of angels including a fallen angel - in the text is very ancient. Certainly there are scattered references, though often just references to the hosts of heaven. They point to the reforms of Josiah and the deuteronomic "cleanup", which even by the evidence of the canonical texts went well beyond the ejection of pagan cultic practices. In this way of thinking, the extra-canonical writings, such as the "Enochian" literature, the Qumran writings, and indeed some of the Wisdom literature are all acting to preserve the lost myths. This should be interesting for Christian history, as these were also people who regarded the Jewish religious elite as corrupt and fraudulent.
There is quite a lot more to say on this, though I am far from certain about it myself. Nevertheless, I mention it for completeness sake.
Posted by shamwari (# 15556) on
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Who says Job is the oldest book in the Bible? Apart from Martin.
It is post exiliic in its poetry section ( which just happens to be the main section).
The Prologue incorporates an ancient Edomite folk tale. Perhaps this is what Martin is thinking of.
Posted by LutheranChik (# 9826) on
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Shamwari: That was what I was thinking as well. It's an old story, but it's been redacted over the years. And, again, Satan is certainly a different personage in Job than he is in his appearances in the New Testament or in the popular Christian imagination. In Job he and God remind me of two former employers of mine, partners who approached business in two entirely different ways -- a cautious, analytical way and a spontaneous, intuitive, experimental way. They called themselves the "brake" and the "accelerator," and maintained that their business would not have been successful without that ongoing tension.
Posted by ken (# 2460) on
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quote:
Originally posted by IconiumBound:
Is it possible that the originators of the Genesis myth anticipated the research into brain development and were expressing a view of what is now known as the limbic system or "reptilian" brain?
Pretty cool of them to have not only anticipated a theory that wouldn't be thought up till the middle of the 20th century, but one that would have been discarded as nonsense before the end of it.
Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on
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quote:
Originally posted by LutheranChik:
Shamwari: That was what I was thinking as well. It's an old story, but it's been redacted over the years. And, again, Satan is certainly a different personage in Job than he is in his appearances in the New Testament or in the popular Christian imagination. In Job he and God remind me of two former employers of mine, partners who approached business in two entirely different ways -- a cautious, analytical way and a spontaneous, intuitive, experimental way. They called themselves the "brake" and the "accelerator," and maintained that their business would not have been successful without that ongoing tension.
Absolutely! Satan is a pitbull, but he's Gods pitbull!
In the crash test dummy scenario creation is the car and Satan is the immovable concrete block.
Romans 3:2May it never be! Rather, let God be found true, though every man be found a liar, as it is written, "THAT YOU MAY BE JUSTIFIED IN YOUR WORDS, AND PREVAIL WHEN YOU ARE JUDGED."
[ 04. June 2012, 17:40: Message edited by: footwasher ]
Posted by HCH (# 14313) on
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Like various other Shipmates, I do not read the story as literal truth. It does seem necessary to have some interpretation.
If you say "a snake is just a snake", a problem arises as follows: The snake is himself misbehaving--notice that he is also punished. Why is the snake misbehaving? Did someone tempt him to do so? This simply pushes it back a level.
If you say the snake was possessed by Satan, then it seems unfair to punish the snake.
If you say the snake is an embodiment of Satan, then you must wonder how he got into the garden.
I think there are interesting parallels to the story of Job.
Posted by LutheranChik (# 9826) on
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HCH: I think that, like many other folktales, the originators don't attempt to tie up all the loose strings...because it's not the point of the story. You can't analyze a folk story the way you'd analyze a news story.
Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on
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Oh! Satan will do God's bidding, but he still gets punished!
Israel is the apple of God's eye, but gets spanked for her sins. But the spanker gets spanked for touching God's blue eyed boy!
Exodus 9:16 But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.
Jer 51:23 And with you I shatter the shepherd and his flock, And with you I shatter the farmer and his team, And with you I shatter governors and prefects.
24 “But I will repay Babylon and all the inhabitants of Chaldea for all their evil that they have done in Zion before your eyes,” declares the LORD.
Jer 50:17 “Israel is a scattered flock, the lions have driven them away. The first one who devoured him was the king of Assyria, and this last one who has broken his bones is Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. 18 “Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: ‘Behold, I am going to punish the king of Babylon and his land, just as I punished the king of Assyria.
There's a pattern...
Posted by WhateverTheySay (# 16598) on
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I have always believed the snake to be a representation of Satan, or if not then a demon.
Posted by HCH (# 14313) on
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LutheranChik: I agree with you about folktales, but some people want to find theological meaning in the Garden of Eden story, and "theological" requires "logical". As a folk tale, this is just the story of why the snake has no legs (as someone commented earlier). If you want a deeper meaning, then you need to work differently.
Posted by churchgeek (# 5557) on
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quote:
Originally posted by footwasher:
The Bible uses different terms to describe phenomena.
Men have powerful drives which are necessary for survival. When those drives are allowed free reign, men are no different from the beasts of the field , controlled by the law of the wild. This temptation /desire to allow natural drives free reign against better judgment is called yetzer ha ra. When men allow their better side to decide choices, this better inclination is called yetzer ha tov. The concept of Original Sin is hellenistic in origin.
The serpent is a personification of yetzer ha ra. It's curse of being relegated to crawling on its belly is the low rung it occupies in human thought whenever it is subjected to analysis.
PS Personification leads to strange outworkings, they take on a life of their own. The yetzer ha ra that created problem for the Israelites end up nailed to a pole!
Tons of stuff in Jewish commentaries on the subject, some rather fanciful. Judicious choice of reading material advised!
I really like this interpretation. [Although I wonder what it means for women ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
- seriously, is it that hard to type "humans" instead of "men"?]
I like that this takes seriously the fact that the Genesis myths are ancient Hebrew in origin, not Christian or even Jewish. And that the story continues to have a life of its own, speaking to later generations and faith traditions. The prophecy, then, that the offspring of the woman will crush the serpent's head points to a moral development over time, as human cultures and religions help us to recognize the yetzer ha ra and reject it. All of this fits well with a faith that embraces evolution - and it fits well with Irenaeus' idea that the humans in Eden represent humanity's infancy, not a perfection we've fallen from.
Once we've been bitten by our animal nature/ yetzer ha ra, we lose that childlike "innocence" which is really ignorance, and begin a struggle of growth toward an innocence which is a hard-won virtue.
It should be remembered that this myth probably had a long life of being orally told, re-told, embellished, and fine-tuned before it was ever set down in writing. There's probably no one "author." In all likelihood, the serpent symbol was pretty vague at first, as it may have come from a very visceral place - humans are naturally afraid of snakes, and snakes are naturally dangerous to humans.
When you're working with metaphor, often (as poets and other artists will attest) you intuitively grasp a metaphor or image that you can then explore to extract meaning. In other words, the analysis comes later. It is not necessarily the case that an author knowingly chooses a metaphor or image because it contains all the information or meanings s/he wants to convey. That would assume s/he could have written in straight prose to communicate some pretty static ideas.
And as any poet or other artist can attest, it's surprising to the author of a work to hear what meanings others have derived from it - not because they're wrong, but because they exceed the artist's own vision.
That's how metaphor works. If you can put it in a story, e.g., that has internal cohesion, then you might be able to explore the story itself to discover something about the world outside the story. The more that happens, the more people will preserve and pass on the story.
Posted by Ahleal V (# 8404) on
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One theory is that the serpent was merely the shadow of a highly advanced, supernatural race called the Grigori. True fact.
Read Andrew Collins' 'From the Ashes of Angels: The Forbidden Legacy of a Fallen Race.'
AV
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Ahleal V:
One theory is that the serpent was merely the shadow of a highly advanced, supernatural race called the Grigori. True fact.
Read Andrew Collins' 'From the Ashes of Angels: The Forbidden Legacy of a Fallen Race.'
AV
Pffft! The Grigori is what 2 Enoch calls the "Sons of God" or fallen ones in that mysterious passage in Genesis 6. It's been cited as part of the evidence for very early "fallen angel" beliefs.
Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on
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quote:
Originally posted by churchgeek:
Once we've been bitten by our animal nature/ yetzer ha ra, we lose that childlike "innocence" which is really ignorance, and begin a struggle of growth toward an innocence which is a hard-won virtue.
I really like the way you put that. Some may object to the idea of characterizing a virtue as "hard-won" as though we win it for ourselves by our own effort, but I think God allows us to feel as though that's the case as a way for us to freely and fully commit ourselves to our choice, as long as we recognize that the real transformation is actually something God accomplishes for us.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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Evensong, the snake LIED. The snake is a liar - slanderer, "across-thrower", diabolos, devil - from the beginning. Is Satan. The Adversary. Ours. The Muslims have it right, a scintillation in their facet at least, Satan is not God's enemy, God can have none, he's ours. Satan is as real as it gets as the most powerful possible freely evil person in creation. And therefore inevitable. If he did not exist it would be necessary to invent him ... but creation ALWAYS goes as bad as it can.
And shamwari, it isn't just Martin and hasn't been for ooooooh 3500 years.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Evensong, the snake LIED.
What about?
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
The snake is a liar - slanderer, "across-thrower", diabolos, devil - from the beginning. Is Satan. The Adversary.
No. The devil wasn't around in Genesis. God created. And it was GOOD.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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You shall not surely die. And there is no contradiction in the fallen angelic realm predating ... Eden's perfection by millions of years.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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They didn't die.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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I'm sorry? I don't see them around.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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And (sorry, I know, double post, bad form) of COURSE I'm aware of all the Salon des Glaces echoes (yeah, yeah) of Satan telling the truth if one wants to make the resurrection implicit in certain death.
He lied. They died. They're dead.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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They didn't die when they ate the fruit. Like God said they would.
They died of old age.
Posted by LutheranChik (# 9826) on
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It isn't logical to assume that organisms weren't meant to die. Life is only sustainable on this planet because organisms die; we all, in fact, are dependent in some way on other organisms dying. Why should human beings assume that we're somehow not a part of this process? (Setting aside discussions of "new heaven and new earth," the nature of the resurrected body, etc.)
It was perhaps C.S. Lewis or some other apologist who suggested that the curse of death in Genesis was really a new fear of our mortality, based on our broken relationship with God -- that in some theoretically sinless Edenic scenario death would have been a peaceful passing from one state of being to another, but after our alienation from God we would come to fear death.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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quote:
Originally posted by LutheranChik:
It isn't logical to assume that organisms weren't meant to die.
It isn't biblical either.
Adam and Eve were not created immortal.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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They died as the result of eating the fruit. Which is what God said.
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
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The story of the garden of Eden is always a bit more complicated than we seem to remember it. At the centre of the garden there were two trees, not one. The tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God told Adam they could eat the fruit of any tree except the latter one, "for when you eat of it you will surely die". The implication is that they should have eaten of the tree of life, but chose the other, which led to death.
The second point is that the serpent was capitalising on Adam embellishing God's instruction. Eve reports quote:
We may eat of the trees of the garden; but God said 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die'
Which tree? And what's this about touching it?
If you read the rabbinical commentaries, many of them refer to all this as the sin of Adam - he put "a fence around the truth", i.e. he obscured it and made it more difficult to comprehend. And of course the serpent was wily about that.
Posted by Moo (# 107) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by LutheranChik:
It isn't logical to assume that organisms weren't meant to die. Life is only sustainable on this planet because organisms die; we all, in fact, are dependent in some way on other organisms dying. Why should human beings assume that we're somehow not a part of this process? (Setting aside discussions of "new heaven and new earth," the nature of the resurrected body, etc.)
Some people suggest that everyone was meant to end their life on earth the way Enoch did.
Moo
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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What, murdered?
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
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Assumed, Martin. Hebrews 11:5
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
They died as the result of eating the fruit.
I suppose they produced Cain and Abel when they were dead then did they?
Posted by Matt Black (# 2210) on
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Nope, but they did die.
I've always thought of the Serpent as the Devil, FWIW.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Matt Black:
Nope, but they did die.
But not when God said they would.
And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.
The snake did not lie.
The snake never lied.
The snake was correct on both counts.
The snake is the truthteller.
Posted by Matt Black (# 2210) on
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Define 'day'.
Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
The snake did not lie.
The snake never lied.
The snake was correct on both counts.
The snake is the truthteller.
Is using factually correct information to deceive and subvert lying or telling the truth? If I were a con artist, I would be more intent on using true facts to accomplish my goals than I am in trying to accomplish less nefarious goals.
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
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"in the day" or "on the day" in Hebrew just means "when". In Exodus 10:28, Pharaoh tells Moses to get out and never show his face again. "Never see my face again, for on the day you see my face you shall die". etc. etc.
"You shall surely die" is the translation of "dying you shall die" - a semiticism that emphasizes the inevitability of death, not its chronology.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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He was murdered by Lamech HRB. The death he didn't see was the Flood.
Far more rational than some bizarre paleo-rapture.
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
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quote:
He was murdered by Lamech HRB.
What?! Where does it say that?
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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“Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
Wives of Lamech, listen to my speech!
For I have killed a man for wounding me,
Even a young man for hurting me.
If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold,
Then Lamech seventy-sevenfold.”
—Genesis 4:19-24 (NKJV)
Both Lamech and Enoch belonged to the seventh generation after Adam.
They were contemporaries.
Enoch died young: Genesis 5:23-24 (NIV) 23 Altogether, Enoch lived a total of 365 years.
24 Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.
A mere boy compared with his contemporaries.
Much myth making went on since this post-exilic redaction of Moses as we know, as in the C3rd cabbalistic fantasy Book of Enoch, affecting Priscilla:
Hebrews 11:5 (YLT) By faith Enoch was translated (μετετέθη taken up) -- not to see death, and was not found, because God did translate him; for before his translation he had been testified to -- that he had pleased God well,
Hebrews 11:5,13 (NIV) By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death: “He could not be found, because God had taken him away.” For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. 6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
...
13 All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth.
As the dead are all dead, Enoch (and of course Elijah) can be no exception.
There again I'm the Stupid in K.I.S.S.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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Ooh, and Evensong, much as He was incarnate, He was being oracular.
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Matt Black:
Define 'day'.
Indeed, in particular with an eye to Gen 1:5,8,13,19,23,31,2:2.
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
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Good grief, Martin, that's a bit speculative, isn't it?
To be honest, I'm a bit uncertain about any arguments based on these somewhat archetypal-sounding early narratives. I'm really only interested in the fact that the legend, history or whatever you want to call it concerning Enoch's transporting off to heaven seems to have been firmly entrenched in first century Judaism of both the Zadokite and the Enochic varieties. Jesus seems to have ignored it, along with the similar case of Elijah*, and various other luminaries of the post-exile period, piously hinted at in assorted Jewish pseudepigraphical works.
I'm not sure about your reference to Enoch as cabbalistic. Which work are you thinking about? 1 Enoch is usually reckoned to be around 200-300BC, apart from one section. There are other later works, including some Manichean.
Quite what they represent (apart from the non-Christian ones) is a big subject of debate. Suffice to say there are themes and references throughout the NT to Enochic themes, and Jude and 2 Peter quote from 1 Enoch. The business of regarding the second temple as a huge fraud verging on a blasphemy, the antipathy to the pharisees in their heightened application of torah, the symbology of teachers of righteousness, walking in the light etc. etc. are all right there from the start in Christianity. Is Enoch a convenient peg to hang a certain kind of Judaism on? A Judaism that perhaps we have underestimated in its importance to early Christians?
I'm sure we can disregard the later stuff as beyond the remit of these issues, interesting and weird though some of it is. But there is an issue about Enoch in there, no doubt about it.
(* though John's gospel doesn't - he has the Jewish authorities asking John the Baptist if he is Elijah. Not much point in doing that if you think he's dead)
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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Elijah wrote a letter from heaven then ?
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
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Why not? Moses apparently wrote of his own death after the same.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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Riiiight.
That's a far more elegant, rational, Occamic explanation than Joshua finishing off the book ?
Moses' body isn't found but he ghost writes ?
If that works for you, great.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Adam and Eve were not created immortal.
And you know this how?
We have to separate the "truth as meaning" of a story from the historicity of a story.
Here is part 2 in 1 Corinthians 15.
The story of the Fall is essentially that death came into the world through sin. The story of Redemption is that Christ somehow has reversed that.
1. If you believe in a literal Adam and Eve, and have a YEC world view, there is no problem in believing that.
2. If you do not, and most of us do not, then you will tend to take the story as an allegory about the underlying causes of suffering and death. Maybe even different kinds of death.
Speculating about whether Adam and Eve were created immortal is, in option 2, not really appropriate. Real people die. Characters in creation myths are not bounded by such prosaic real world considerations. The purpose of the story is not to point out the obvious (people suffer and die), but to seek to understand the unobvious (why suffering and death?)
If the story makes no sense to you on that level, fine. That may mean that the Fall makes no sense to you either. Or maybe a different kind of sense?
Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Matt Black:
Define 'day'.
Precisely what I invited the Senior Sunday School to do last Sunday, when we were discussing what of a series of biblical events we doubted.
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
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Martin - I am only tweaking your nose!
As Barnabas62 has just said, quote:
Speculating about whether Adam and Eve were created immortal is, in option 2, not really appropriate. Real people die. Characters in creation myths are not bounded by such prosaic real world considerations. The purpose of the story is not to point out the obvious (people suffer and die), but to seek to understand the unobvious (why suffering and death?)
Some of these stories come to us in fragmentary form. Some come in multiple forms that don't entirely agree. It's not really a problem unless you are determined to make it all march to a single drumbeat.
As I said earlier, or would have done if I had thought about it, the Enoch story is a locating point for a problematic and probably rather important substratum of second-temple Judaism that appears to be increasingly relevant to understanding the milieu that gave rise to Christianity. That these people did indeed seem to believe that Enoch was assumed into heaven - even if Jesus may have expressed no views on the matter - seems to be the case.
But Enoch is becoming a bit of a tangent now, so I'll bow out.
Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on
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All of us create universes, systems. They represent our beliefs and some of these constructs have inbuilt tests.
For example, we may have a jerry-rig that tests for consideration, a necessary attribute in our books for prospective friends to possess.
We invite home a prospective friend and offer him chocolates. Half the chocolates have soft centers, the other half doesn't. We leave him for a while and check if he has eaten up all the nice ones on our return. If he has been considerate, he would have left enough of either variants.
Maybe we have a battery of these tests. If so our guiding principle takes on a life of it's own. And the conglomeration of the opposing attitudes/schools of thought do the same. The two opposing views potent their arguments and defend those arguments, as seen in the opening scene in heaven in the book of Job. Even Jesus, empowered by the filling of the Holy Spirit can use that power for good or evil, and his personal demon takes him into the wilderness and tempts Him to do just that.
Our philosophy of living, our begotten child, versus the rest of the world, tested in the laboratory we call Creation:
Quote
We conclude by revisiting what we have herein discussed. Jesus is the personified Wisdom of Proverbs. He is not the attribute, but a person that personifies the attribute. As the first of God’s creation, he personifies it because all of God’s wisdom is seen in the creation of him and it continues to be seen in this one's works.
http://responses.scripturaltruths.com/jesus/wisdom/
[ 07. June 2012, 01:46: Message edited by: footwasher ]
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Ooh, and Evensong, much as He was incarnate, He was being oracular.
Ah yes. When the straight forward reading doesn't fit, invent another one.
If "day" means whenever then God's admonition makes no sense. Why bother saying it?
And God said: " Don't eat of the tree because one day, eventually, you will die, just as you would even if you didn't eat of the tree. So really, there's no real urgency either way. It doesn't really matter what you do."
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Adam and Eve were not created immortal.
And you know this how?
Well. I'm a little old fashioned you see. I read the Genesis passage without new testament blinkers.
It's pretty clear from Gen 3:22 that Adam and Eve were not created immortal.
Then the Lord God said, ‘See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever’—
Terribly sorry folks.
You've all been the victims of Paul's very creative reading of scripture.
Take off the blinkers and it's amazing what you can see.
Posted by Johnny S (# 12581) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Take off the blinkers and it's amazing what you can see.
That's rich considering Ron has pointed out that you are using the word day in Genesis 3 exactly like Ken Ham does.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
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A little learning is a dangerous thing, Evensong. You may be missing the significance of the "now" in Genesis 3:22. For they are "now" fallen. And living forever, in a fallen state, condemns them to eternal judgment does it not. They are safer outside the garden. There are all sorts of crap and death, but there is also the possibility of redemption. That's better than the alternative. That works, both literally and allegorically.
So you don't strike me as being a very good literalist or interpreter of allegory on this point, but I'm sure your mileage will vary! BTW, this view, that we all risk being blinkered by Paul (or is it Augustine's understanding of Paul?) when it comes to understanding these ancient stories, can create its own blinkers.
Heck, lots of us Ship's veterans know that one. We had it pushed at us over and over again by andreas1984. It's simply an overstatement of a potential risk.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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They weren't created immortal but with the potential, another tree away, to be. They chose the tree that guaranteed that their telomeres would continue to unravel.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
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Sure, Martin. You can see it that way if you like. Or maybe not!
For that's not the only way of looking at it. I think the Orthodox see Adam in the garden as an immortal "child", different to the angels in the way in which he communes with and learns from God. That throws the story into a different kind of relief. As does reflection on the difference between men and angels, fallen or not.
A lot depends on the significance of the trees as well. Particularly the Tree of Life, which gets a fair bit of coverage in scripture and tradition.
Maybe that's a good Kerygmania topic? I'll think about that one.
Evensong's confidence may be misplaced. I'm not that confident about what immortality might mean in this garden context anyway. Did Adam and Eve have resurrection bodies, fitted for eternity? Did Adam have a navel? if so, why? And what might have happened if only that snake had kept his big gob shut? Lord, people have speculated endlessly about this stuff.
Personally, I think there are a lot of red herrings in that particular fishing box. What's unarguable about the story is that the garden is no longer the right place for Adam and Eve to work out their destiny.
"You think you understand good and evil? Here's a different place to learn some more about that. Not safe here in the garden any more. You don't trust me in the same way you did. That's a bloody shame, but not much to be done about that right now.
Don't think you'll like it all that much out there. Well, not all of it! But before you go, here are some clothes I've made specially for you to wear. 'Garments of skin'. It can get bloody cold out there. Off you go".
B62 misinterpretations always available, whether asked for or not.
[ 07. June 2012, 08:58: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by W Hyatt:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
The snake did not lie.
The snake never lied.
The snake was correct on both counts.
The snake is the truthteller.
Is using factually correct information to deceive and subvert lying or telling the truth?
What was the snake subverting?
quote:
Originally posted by Johnny S:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Take off the blinkers and it's amazing what you can see.
That's rich considering Ron has pointed out that you are using the word day in Genesis 3 exactly like Ken Ham does.
I haven't the faintest idea who Ken Ham is. But it's irrelevant. If you translate "day" in any other way than the literal way then God's admonishment is redundant. As I explained above.
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
They weren't created immortal but with the potential, another tree away, to be. They chose the tree that guaranteed that their telomeres would continue to unravel.
Theological fancy. Not based on the text.
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
A little learning is a dangerous thing, Evensong.
Gosh. That's quite the most condescending someone has said to me in a while.
Try ten years of studying theology.
I have almost completed a four year tertiary level Bachelor of Theology and have multiple awards for academic excellence under my belt.
If you think I have little learning, then I would suggest you just dislike the learning I have received.
My learning has been based around the historical-critical method developed post enlightenment and founded by the father of liberal hermeneutics Schleiermacher.
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
You may be missing the significance of the "now" in Genesis 3:22. For they are "now" fallen.
Fallen are they? How so?
They became more like God.
Eve chose wisdom over ignorance.
And wisdom is a trait highly prized in the OT and the NT.
"Fallen" is another New Testament lens.
I prefer to seek the original authors intent. Only in that way can we learn God's revelation to them. Then interpret it for our own time.
That you see, is the historical critical method.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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How can an immortal have their immortality removed ? Be killed ? Die ? Once immortal, always immortal. Unless it's a game playing switch setting, a mode.
Posted by Matt Black (# 2210) on
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If I drink a slow-acting poison which is invariably fatal, from that moment, I'm a dead man. It may take me some days to die but the comment, "I'm a dead man", whilst not literally accurate, is nevertheless 100% true.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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Eve chose autonomy and all the ignorance that entails. Not trust.
Posted by Matt Black (# 2210) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Eve chose wisdom over ignorance.
And wisdom is a trait highly prized in the OT and the NT.
Not exactly - Eve chose knowledge not wisdom. Knowlegde is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable. Wisdom is not putting one in a fruit salad.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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quote:
Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
How can an immortal have their immortality removed ? Be killed ? Die ? Once immortal, always immortal.
Q: "What must I do to convince you people (that I lost my immortality)?"
Worf: "Die.
(Deja Q)
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
How can an immortal have their immortality removed ? Be killed ? Die ? Once immortal, always immortal. Unless it's a game playing switch setting, a mode.
Irrelevant question. They weren't created immortal.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Matt Black:
If I drink a slow-acting poison which is invariably fatal, from that moment, I'm a dead man. It may take me some days to die but the comment, "I'm a dead man", whilst not literally accurate, is nevertheless 100% true.
Bad analogy in this context. Eve was going to die anyway.
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Eve chose autonomy and all the ignorance that entails. Not trust.
Not in the text. Try again.
quote:
Originally posted by Matt Black:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Eve chose wisdom over ignorance.
And wisdom is a trait highly prized in the OT and the NT.
Not exactly - Eve chose knowledge not wisdom.
Wisdom is not the knowledge of good and evil?
It is precisely that. And the snake such as much.
Posted by Stejjie (# 13941) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Wisdom is not the knowledge of good and evil?
It is precisely that. And the snake such as much.
Not necessarily. Someone could know, in any given situation, what is good and what is evil, the consequences and still make an unwise choice. Knowledge of something doesn't necessarily give one the wisdom to use the knowledge, er, wisely.
Perhaps that's why God was so anxious for Adam and Eve not to eat the "forbidden fruit": that God reckoned that they simply wouldn't be able to use this knowledge and wisely and would end up screwing the whole thing up. And, given the history of the world, who's to say God was wrong?
Edited to fix code.
[ 07. June 2012, 12:51: Message edited by: Stejjie ]
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Matt Black:
If I drink a slow-acting poison which is invariably fatal, from that moment, I'm a dead man. It may take me some days to die but the comment, "I'm a dead man", whilst not literally accurate, is nevertheless 100% true.
Only in the sense that any man might say that he is a dead man because he is mortal. That is to say, in no meaningful sense whatsoever.
--Tom Clune
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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Agreed Evensong. It wasnee asked of thee! Otherwise, for a pomo, I'm astounded at your woodenism!
Posted by Matt Black (# 2210) on
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quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
quote:
Originally posted by Matt Black:
If I drink a slow-acting poison which is invariably fatal, from that moment, I'm a dead man. It may take me some days to die but the comment, "I'm a dead man", whilst not literally accurate, is nevertheless 100% true.
Only in the sense that any man might say that he is a dead man because he is mortal. That is to say, in no meaningful sense whatsoever.
--Tom Clune
Well, no, not really.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Stejjie:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Wisdom is not the knowledge of good and evil?
It is precisely that. And the snake such as much.
Not necessarily. Someone could know, in any given situation, what is good and what is evil, the consequences and still make an unwise choice. Knowledge of something doesn't necessarily give one the wisdom to use the knowledge, er, wisely.
Perhaps that's why God was so anxious for Adam and Eve not to eat the "forbidden fruit": that God reckoned that they simply wouldn't be able to use this knowledge and wisely and would end up screwing the whole thing up. And, given the history of the world, who's to say God was wrong?
Edited to fix code.
Never heard that one before. Not bad.
Yet before wisdom can develop, knowledge has to be present.
God just comes across as having a very small dick in this passage of scripture. Like he does at the Tower of Babel.
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Agreed Evensong. It wasnee asked of thee!
My bad. Cross posted with Barnabas. Looked like you were talking to me.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
A little learning is a dangerous thing, Evensong.
Gosh. That's quite the most condescending someone has said to me in a while.
I apologise and withdraw the remark.
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Try ten years of studying theology.
Try forty. Just not all in an academic setting (though I have done some). I'm a well-read lay person. Never claim anything else.
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
If you think I have little learning, then I would suggest you just dislike the learning I have received.
Your suggestion is wrong. I don't dislike other people's ideas when I disagree with them.
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
"Fallen" is another New Testament lens.
Sure is. A distinctive which separates Christians from Jews. Christians interpret the whole of the OT through the lens of the NT don't they. Jews and Muslims see the Genesis story through different lenses.
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
I prefer to seek the original authors intent. Only in that way can we learn God's revelation to them. Then interpret it for our own time.
That you see, is the historical critical method.
Ah, I see. You are talking about recovering what Genesis 3 meant originally within the Jewish tradition. All is clear. Wasn't it treated simply as an historical event? But given the Judaic methods of handling scripture, I'm sure it didn't stay there. Must have been some allegorising going on with some of the Rabbis. Should think there were, and still are, many views on meaning and significance within Judaism. I'm not sure any of that should be taken to reduce the range of possible understandings of the meaning of creation myths. We all wear lenses.
But handsome is as handsome does. I do know what the historical-critical method is, even try to apply it. But I don't feel you have been condescending in assuming you need to explain it to me. I probably deserved the jibe.
No intention of rubbishing you, or your hard academic work, Evensong. Sorry, again, for doing that. Congrats on all your good marks.
[ 07. June 2012, 13:55: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
Here is an article on the Jewish view of sin. It summarises quite neatly the differences between Jewish and traditional Christian views. It coheres with a view of the Genesis Creation account that human beings are brought into the world with free will, are morally neutral, with both good and bad inclinations.
Adam and Eve are therefore seen as made "typical", in some sense. This quote from the Jewish Encyclopedia is interesting in this context.
quote:
"Man is responsible for sin because he is endowed with free will ("behirah"); yet he is by nature frail, and the tendency of the mind is to evil: "For the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth" (Gen. viii. 21; Yoma 20a; Sanh. 105a). Therefore God in His mercy allowed people to repent and be forgiven.
Here is a link to the Jewish Encyclopedia article on the Fall of Man. Towards the end of the article, there is a link to another article on Original Sin.
Of course there are summaries, behind which there are many references to more detailed Rabbinical thought, both from antiquity and present day. I've yet to find online a detailed exegesis by a Jewish scholar of the text of Genesis 3, but there may be one out there.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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Evensong - we are alienated from God. Separated. Autonomous. Self-lawed. We choose what's good and what's evil. We choose to learn in ignorance by bitter experience. We couldn't not. It's ALL the ultimate experience of aversion therapy: we WON'T do that again. When God asks if we trust Him, we won't hesitate.
Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on
:
Originally posted by Evensong:
"Fallen" is another New Testament lens.
Barnabas62: Sure is. A distinctive which separates Christians from Jews. Christians interpret the whole of the OT through the lens of the NT don't they. Jews and Muslims see the Genesis story through different lenses.
I wonder if you both could clarify where you stand on this issue. Is the argument that "fallen" is just one of several NT lenses, or THE NT lens?
IMO it's an idiosyncratic hare that Paul sets off! I'm not sure that this Christian sees it differently from the Rabbi.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
Originally posted by Evensong:
"Fallen" is another New Testament lens.
Barnabas62: Sure is. A distinctive which separates Christians from Jews. Christians interpret the whole of the OT through the lens of the NT don't they. Jews and Muslims see the Genesis story through different lenses.
I wonder if you both could clarify where you stand on this issue. Is the argument that "fallen" is just one of several NT lenses, or THE NT lens?
IMO it's an idiosyncratic hare that Paul sets off! I'm not sure that this Christian sees it differently from the Rabbi.
I guess what you mean by "how the Rabbi sees it" is something like this from the Jewish Encyclopedia.
quote:
"Man is responsible for sin because he is endowed with free will ("behirah"); yet he is by nature frail, and the tendency of the mind is to evil: "For the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth" (Gen. viii. 21; Yoma 20a; Sanh. 105a). Therefore God in His mercy allowed people to repent and be forgiven.
I've said loads of times on SoF that I'm not a TULIP i.e the whole Total Depravity thing doesn't work for me. Nevertheless, I think the Jewish Encyclopedia gives a description of the human dilemma with which I agree. The difference, I suppose, is encapsulated by that phrase "therefore, God, in His mercy.."
I think the Christian position is that we need help with that repentance thing. Without the grace of God, we're stuffed. The Incarnation (God with us) and the Crucifixion/Resurrection (God for us) are specifically Christian themes which assure us that we are not stuffed. Repentance is certainly an act of the will. But saying we will, and doing it, are two different things.
Which is where the specifically Christian understanding of salvation comes in.
[ 07. June 2012, 22:28: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
quote:
Originally posted by W Hyatt:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
The snake did not lie.
The snake never lied.
The snake was correct on both counts.
The snake is the truthteller.
Is using factually correct information to deceive and subvert lying or telling the truth?
What was the snake subverting?
The snake was subverting the relationship between Eve and her creator.
In Genesis 3:1, the snake is described as crafty and in verse 13, Eve says the snake deceived her. I'm struggling to understand the approach you're using that leads you to see the snake as the truthteller. On the one hand, you seem to want to use rather precise definitions for words like "day" or "die" and you seem to be trying to extract a carefully constructed meaning from the text as a whole with all the details lining up nicely. But on the other hand, you don't seem to be trying to interpret the text as a whole in a literal way. Care to try to help me understand? Have you encountered any interpretations that seem to you to fit well with the text? (My apologies for missing it if you already answered that.)
Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on
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The following is my view, aided by the Holy Spirit. All the glory for truth to Him. Any tainted material can be laid at my door. You know where I live! Use the material freely wherever you want, to His Glory.
The point is that Paul goes through great effort to say that ALL are sinners, against the interlocutor's stand that Jews are without sin through circumcision. His proof, sin has entered the world through a common ancestor Adam.
Romans 5:12 So then, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all people because all sinned –
To understand how this statement influenced Christian doctrine, we need to trace it's use by the early church. The Latin translation is ”in whom all sinned”, a mistranslation that definitely conveys a different meaning, that we were physically present in Adam's loins when he sinned.
Ambrosiaster discussed this difference and, based partly on Platonic philosophy (as per Ireneus and Tertullian) and partly on the practice of infant baptism, he endorsed the Latin version as the better textual choice. (This requires that he believed that either Paul or the copyist made an error: quite a liberal attitude!)
But what did St Paul really say (!)?
Here I need to digress a little with a little autobiography as Paul did in Galatians 1.
When I worked as an expatriate in different locations in the world, I enjoyed a tax free salary. My country of residence required me to pay income tax if my total period of stay during visits home per year exceeded six months. You can be sure that I took great care that my visits home never exceeded that total! Once however, my son got into trouble at school and my presence was required, and THAT year, I fell out of COMPLIANCE, leading to me paying the full tax.
You can say that because of a relative, non-compliance came into my world.
Which is what Paul says: because of Adam, non-compliance came into my world.
Man had to leave a law free zone and enter a zone where law had JURISDICTION.
The ”fall” involved not a change in disposition, but in position. Not in vocation, but in location! The very thing Paul says in the very next verse:
Romans 5:13 for before the law was given, sin was in the world, but there is no accounting for sin when there is no law. 14 Yet death reigned from Adam until Moses even over those who did not sin in the same way that Adam (who is a type of the coming one) transgressed.
Posted by Johnny S (# 12581) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
I haven't the faintest idea who Ken Ham is. But it's irrelevant. If you translate "day" in any other way than the literal way then God's admonishment is redundant. As I explained above.
Ken Ham is an Aussie Creationist based in Queensland. (Banana Benders and Sandgropers are all alike to me; I assumed you'd heard of him.)
He also argues that the Hebrew word 'yom' must be translated literally. However, like you, he seems to be confused over what the word 'literal' means in this context.
Like Ken Ham you are merely asserting that your translation of the word is correct. As others have already pointed out the context of Genesis 1 and 2 suggests that your translation is incorrect.
A good example is found in Genesis 2: 4.
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Wisdom is not the knowledge of good and evil?
It is precisely that. And the snake such as much.
I'm not comfortable with this generalisation but for the sake of brevity you are using a very greek view of knowledge here. The Hebrew sense of knowing is much more experiential. Hence the famous euphemism for sex.
You seem to be talking about the ability to discern between good and evil but the text is talking about knowing evil in the sense of experiencing it.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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quote:
W Hyatt: Is using factually correct information to deceive and subvert lying or telling the truth?
Interesting question. I believe that the truth can never subvert. But I would be interested to look at examples if you have them.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
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I think the truth can undermine the structure of a false, (or partially correct) but well established understanding. But I think that is correction, or improvement in understanding. Not subversion. Subversion is more about overturning an established order of government, not correcting false ideas.
Though I guess there is some overlap of use.
In the garden of Eden story, what is the serpent doing? Correcting a statement by God he perceives to be false, or undermining God in Eve's eyes? Or both?
I take it there is no argument that in that garden, God is the Governor? It's his garden.
Taking the argument to the limits, the serpent, being a creature of God, and under His governance, could very well have approached God independently and said, "well, as I see it, you are misleading these two. Can we talk?" That would have been respectful, and non-crafty. The story strongly suggests otherwise, i.e. the crafty includes "behind God's back". Which makes the serpent "a priori" subversive. Even if he has a point.
Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on
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I did convey to Evensong that the biblical understanding of death is "separation from God", as opposed to the normal understanding of it as the cessation of neural function!
QUOTE
Whoever believes in Christ never dies. Even if he dies, he still lives. Death is separation from God.
John 11:23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” 24 Martha said to Him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?” 27 She said to Him, “Yes, Lord; I have believed that You are the Christ, the Son of God, even He who comes into the world.”
http://forum.ship-of-fools.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=016904;p=11#000545
A bit like the biblical understanding of "yom"!
Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on
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I hope we're all agreed than in literal terms what we're dealing with here is a fiction. There never was an Adam, there never was an Eve, there never was a talking snake.
On the more profound level, though, what we're dealing with is myth. I hope we're all agreed on that too.
But surely one of the key aspects of myth is that, beyond what the text says, you're free to make of it what you will? The reason that myths endure is that they mean new things to every generation that encounters them. Sure, the community of which you're a part will have its normative interpretations of the myth, but you have also to have the freedom to let the myth inspire you in perhaps surprising ways.
So if you ask, was the snake A or B or C or D - isn't the only possible answer, "yes, all of those"?
Posted by Calindreams (# 9147) on
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I am preaching on the curse this sunday and I'm taking the angle of the snake being the 'truth teller'. I see the story as a just-so story answering questions such as:
- Why do snakes crawl on their bellies?
- Why do we toil and die?
- Why is their pain in childbirth?
Posted by Calindreams (# 9147) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
The story of the garden of Eden is always a bit more complicated than we seem to remember it. At the centre of the garden there were two trees, not one. The tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God told Adam they could eat the fruit of any tree except the latter one, "for when you eat of it you will surely die". The implication is that they should have eaten of the tree of life, but chose the other, which led to death.
The second point is that the serpent was capitalising on Adam embellishing God's instruction. Eve reports quote:
We may eat of the trees of the garden; but God said 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die'
Which tree? And what's this about touching it?
If you read the rabbinical commentaries, many of them refer to all this as the sin of Adam - he put "a fence around the truth", i.e. he obscured it and made it more difficult to comprehend. And of course the serpent was wily about that.
I always saw this as Eve's 'embellishment' - not to obscure the truth but rather to add another layer of protection over the tree.
Posted by Calindreams (# 9147) on
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How much currency in modern biblical studies does the idea that the story was written as a way to criticize/suppress goddess worship?
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
I hope we're all agreed than in literal terms what we're dealing with here is a fiction. There never was an Adam, there never was an Eve, there never was a talking snake.
On the more profound level, though, what we're dealing with is myth. I hope we're all agreed on that too.
But surely one of the key aspects of myth is that, beyond what the text says, you're free to make of it what you will? The reason that myths endure is that they mean new things to every generation that encounters them. Sure, the community of which you're a part will have its normative interpretations of the myth, but you have also to have the freedom to let the myth inspire you in perhaps surprising ways.
So if you ask, was the snake A or B or C or D - isn't the only possible answer, "yes, all of those"?
There's a lot in that, of course - in fact I was arguing that very point a few posts ago. The snake as truth-teller just seems to me to be pretty far-fetched. [It's a bit like saying Noah was really imprisoning those animals, showing in advance the nasty and wrong-headed human tendency to stick animals in zoos for preservation purposes. If he had really respected the natural world, rather than been driven by religious impulses, he'd have let them drown, rather than interfere.]
But the primary function of myths is to stimulate imagination and understanding by means of story. So I guess on one level "anything goes".
I'm not sure Evensong is saying that, but I guess she might be. It seemed more likely that she was saying something like this. Close historical-critical study of the texts had persuaded her that traditional understandings could not be sustained. Her understanding represented a better exegesis.
The simplicity to me is something like this. The preservation of the story within Judaism, and then, later, Christianity, means that the story and traditional meaning are inextricably intertwined. Even though the meanings given in Judaism and Christianity are somewhat different. Fall means different things.
Which I guess shows the power of the myth to stimulate imagination! Trying to find an objective independent and better meaning of a myth is a bit like hunting the Snark.
"For the Snark was a Boojum, you see."
[ 08. June 2012, 10:55: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
I hope we're all agreed than in literal terms what we're dealing with here is a fiction. There never was an Adam, there never was an Eve, there never was a talking snake.
Nope, not all agreed. But that viewpoint was ruled out by the OP, which is why I'm slightly bemused at the thought of trying to find the "true identity" of an allegedly fictional character. Never mind.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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Agreed Lamb Chopped. Why Christians feel compelled to be better materialists than Hawdawkings I dinnee ken.
As Satan doesn't believe a word God says - for 'good' reason once you let go of trust and become self-reliant, autonomous, proud - when it comes down to it, he LIED.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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*sigh*
I've had a long and rather unsettling day and I can't possibly respond to all of youse. My apologies.
quote:
Originally posted by W Hyatt:
But on the other hand, you don't seem to be trying to interpret the text as a whole in a literal way.
In a literal, superficial way, the text is an explanation for the difficulties of life (as Calindreams has mentioned).
Disobedience is punished by God. A more difficult life than was the Garden of Eden follows.
Disobedience is a hefty and universal theme in the OT.
quote:
Originally posted by W Hyatt:
Care to try to help me understand? Have you encountered any interpretations that seem to you to fit well with the text?
If you want to take it beyond literalism, plumb the narrative's massive depths and get beyond St Paul's shoddy exegesis in Romans then I recommend What Rough Beast?.
I don't agree with it all, but it forms the premise of the arguments I have espoused here.
Basically, God is a git here.
He does not want humankind to be like him or the other gods.
He does not want them to be like God(s) knowing good and evil and he does not want them to be immortal.
Why then, does he place the trees there in the first place?
quote:
Originally posted by footwasher:
I did convey to Evensong that the biblical understanding of death is "separation from God", as opposed to the normal understanding of it as the cessation of neural function!
More rubbish metaphorisizing of what is essentially a very difficult text.
The Jews in the OT are not separated from God. God is always there. Continuously. That's what the covenants are about.
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
But the primary function of myths is to stimulate imagination and understanding by means of story. So I guess on one level "anything goes".
If only that were the case. This story is indeed profound myth but Christianity has straitjacketed it into Paul's understanding.
Which, IMO, is exegetically weak.
Normally I don't worry so much about dodgy midrash on OT texts interpreted into the New Testament but this one bothers me exceedingly on two counts:
1) The Christian notion of "Original Sin" damning everyone for eternity exists nowhere in the Old Testament.
This is why Paul's exegesis cannot be taken literally. It does not fit the context.
2) Christianity has taken this notion WAY too far, based on Paul's exegesis and has caused a great deal of harm in the process.
YES we are not whole. Yes we are not perfect. Yes we are broken.
But neither are we insufferable wretches totally alienated from God and separated by a massive chasm.
That's more rubbish exegesis.
Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on
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Dem are fighting words!
Yippeee! Fight! Fight! Fight!
Now we want a clean fight, no clinching and when you come out, come out swingin'!
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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Ohhhhhhh yes we are. They're synonymous.
Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on
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What impresses me is that the creation stories in Genesis seem to have had virtually no influence on the development of Judaism, and there is no hint that the teachings of Jesus were influenced by it. Indeed, the incarnation questions 'original sin', unless it is claimed Jesus was necessarily infected by it. Immaculate conception and virgin birth do not convincingly solve the problem.
Christianity can get on without the Genesis story, sometimes necessarily so. When Donovan told the creation stories to the Masai they were appalled. They knew that tilling the soil destroyed pasture. What made matters worse was that the first farmer killed the first cattleman and got away with it. They concluded it was a version of events got up by the government. Donovan says he never told those stories again, holding that the Massai had adequate creation myths of a more veterinary nature. It did not prevent his bringing many of his hearers to an adequate faith.
What we need to do is develop a theological understanding of sin and the nature of human beings that addresses the fact of natural selection, rather than worrying over the symbolic significance of elements in the Genesis story. As Evensong has indicated it might well involve setting aside part of a Pauline text.
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
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Without wishing to channel the former squiggleAndrew, some of these ideas about the fall sound all rather Augustinian to me. There's no need to cast it in those terms.
This is a creation myth. Creation myths address why certain foundational problems exist. If you have to exegete them to make them say something else, you are over-analysing them. By then they are no longer a foundation myth, but something else. Why would the OT need to refer to them constantly? They are straightforward narratives, not requiring any significant explanation. So far as the OT is concerned, they simply establish that the creation is itself good, but that man cannot be relied upon to choose the good.
The rest is simply the demonstration of that writ large, and how the restoration of God's shalom is put in hand by God himself, in giving the law, and the initiative for making atonement to restore the [I]shalom[/I (because humanity cannot do such things).
I don't think I can agree with the ditching of Paul either. If you've ever read any commentaries by the rabbis of this period, you'll find all manner of far-fetched allusions, cross-references, "oh that reminds me" anecdotes, speculations, jokes and astronomical tips. Paul's exegesis is seriously sober by comparison. And he is doing exactly what Jesus did when asked about marriage - he goes back to man's condition, and explains how that is to be addressed.
Seriously, stop reading Paul as an Augustinian, or worse, a reformation propagandist. He is a first century Jew, trained in one of the major schools of Jerusalem. And that implies a number of things, but not the least in this case would be that he would never use just one illustrative framework for making a point. Which of course he doesn't. This one works here so he uses it.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
Seriously, stop reading Paul as an Augustinian, or worse, a reformation propagandist.
That's it, really. The legacy of andreas1984? Often wonder what he's doing these days. He was infuriatingly stimulating to have around!
I'd add also the acceptance that, as LutheranChik has often put it, the understanding of the nature of God shows development, changes, both in the OT and the NT. The fierce tribal Jahweh of henotheist beliefs gives way to the monotheistic light to the Gentiles in some of the prophets, and the God of the NT who is not only Love but encourages us even in love of enemies. It's not Marcionite to see developing understanding - that way you can still see the really good stuff in the OT without getting so uptight about the "Rough Beast". At least I think that's what Evensong's "What Rough Beast" encouragement is about. In my case, she's pushing on an open door.
I realised when reading the Jewish Encyclopedia articles that I'm much more an Ezekiel 18 "personal responsibility" person, these days. I think I prefer the Orthodox "ancestral sin", rather than "original sin" view i.e. that it's better to look on Adam and Eve as typical representatives than starters of a kind of "plague on the earth". The settled picture of the ongoing frailty of human nature when facing moral choices just works better for me. An enduring framework for salvation and grace.
Plus it means I don't have to get all that uptight about creation myths. They are what they are, and folks see different things there.
As Evensong says, they are "difficult" scriptures, both in terms of interpretation and implication. For me, they still make the snake a symbolic trouble-maker, but you can definitely see other patterns there. If you want.
I think the folks who still hold to original sin may, nevertheless, recognise something else. That we can hold simultaneously, in tension but not contradiction, the twin beliefs of the image of God in human beings and the enduring weakness of human nature. I know folks like that.
We don't necessarily have to get lost in the tulgey wood of Total Depravity. Don't like it there myself - spent enough time stumbling around before I found a way out the other side. From where I stand, it's not much what folks make of the creation myths that matters; rather it's what we make of a whole lot of other stuff.
[ 08. June 2012, 21:09: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
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No quibbles there at all, Barnabas62. First century rabbis were perfectly capable of working out that different genres are involved in making different truth claims. quote:
Job probably never existed, and if he did exist, the events recorded concerning him never took place. The whole narrative is intended as a moral lesson.
(from the Bereshith Rabbah, one of the earliest midrashim).
Posted by Sir Pellinore (ret'd) (# 12163) on
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Well, I think you can see both the Fall and Original Sin in the light that the first refers to a potential all humans fall short of any time but which we are all, hopefully, attempting to return to in the grace of the Resurrection and consequent redemption of the situation and the latter in terms of that dreadful ambiguity of human nature which can result in, at extremes, people turning into either Adolf Hitler or Francis of Assisi (there being many gradations in between).
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
What impresses me is that the creation stories in Genesis seem to have had virtually no influence on the development of Judaism, and there is no hint that the teachings of Jesus were influenced by it. Indeed, the incarnation questions 'original sin', unless it is claimed Jesus was necessarily infected by it. Immaculate conception and virgin birth do not convincingly solve the problem.
Yup yup
quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
Christianity can get on without the Genesis story, sometimes necessarily so. When Donovan told the creation stories to the Masai they were appalled. They knew that tilling the soil destroyed pasture. What made matters worse was that the first farmer killed the first cattleman and got away with it. They concluded it was a version of events got up by the government. Donovan says he never told those stories again, holding that the Massai had adequate creation myths of a more veterinary nature. It did not prevent his bringing many of his hearers to an adequate faith.
Brilliant story!
quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
As Evensong has indicated it might well involve setting aside part of a Pauline text.
I don't think we have to set aside parts of scripture.....I think we just have to be aware where some of our most traditional doctrines come from and the strengths and weaknesses inherent in them.
One Pauline text has been taken totally out of proportion. As you say, Jesus never worried about such things - quite the opposite if the incarnation has anything to say.
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
Seriously, stop reading Paul as an Augustinian, or worse, a reformation propagandist.
But that's precisely what everybody does!
And that is precisely the "accepted" contemporary interpretation.
I myself can only stop reading Paul that way if I separate everything into component bits (including dissecting the Genesis story). And that in itself is hard work.
![[Paranoid]](graemlins/paranoid.gif)
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
I realised when reading the Jewish Encyclopedia articles that I'm much more an Ezekiel 18 "personal responsibility" person, these days. I think I prefer the Orthodox "ancestral sin", rather than "original sin" view i.e. that it's better to look on Adam and Eve as typical representatives than starters of a kind of "plague on the earth".
Exactly! Amen.
And I can easily pick up your allusion to "plague on earth" because our understanding in western christianity has been so heavily reliant on Augustinian/reformers/Pauline interpretations.
It's that embedded.
Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on
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Quote
In contrast to his contemporary theologians, Augustine drew from his reading of these scriptures that sin was passed biologically from Adam to all his descendants through the sexual act itself, thus equating sexual desire with sin. But why should he have reached this interpretation when marital sexual relations in Jewish society at the time of Christ and Paul were considered honorable anAugustineSubmarine’s outlook on sex was distorted by ideas from the world outside the Bible. Because so much philosophy was based on dualism, in which the physical was categorized as evil but the spiritual as good, some philosophers idealized the celibate state. Sexual relations owere physical and therefore evil. Augustine’s association with Neoplatonic philosophers led him to introduce their outlook within the church. This had its effect in the development of doctrine. For example, Jesus was considered immaculately conceived—without sin in that His Father was God. But because o mother, Mary, had a human father, she suffered the effect of original sin. In order to present Jesus Christ as a perfect offspring without any inherited sin from either parent, the church had to find a way to label Mary as sinless. They did this by devising the doctrine of her immaculate conception, though this inevitably leads to further questions. Other babies were not so fortunate. Some eight centuries later the Catholic theologian Anselm extended the implications of Augustine’s concept of original sin and claimed that babies who died, did so as sinners; as sinners, they had no access to eternal life but condemned to damnation.
The original view of Original Sin
[ 09. June 2012, 04:55: Message edited by: footwasher ]
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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Augustine didn't have to look that far from the scriptures to make sex "bad". Paul idealised the single state too and implied marriage was a concession to those that "burn".
And all that whoo ha about fornication. He was pretty strong on that. (Admittedly mainly to the gentile Corinthian church that didn't know their Torah and didn't have the requisite moral groundwork for the reception of the gospel).
Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on
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Originally posted by Kwesi:
”What impresses me is that the creation stories in Genesis seem to have had virtually no influence on the development of Judaism, and there is no hint that the teachings of Jesus were influenced by it. Indeed, the incarnation questions 'original sin', unless it is claimed Jesus was necessarily infected by it. Immaculate conception and virgin birth do not convincingly solve the problem”.
Not strictly true.
The Sages taught that all have sinned and lost the glory of God, mistranslated as, ” All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”.
Quote
Why oh Adam has he (satan) not kept his promise but deprived you of the glory that was on you?
http://reluctant-messenger.com/eden_1.htm
The idea is not that Adam was wearing glorious clothing but that he was clothed, so to speak, in glory. It's based on a wordplay, which works only in the Hebrew. In Genesis 3:21 it says that God made for them "coats of skin" ( תוֹנ ְת ָכּ רוֹע / kotnot 'or). The Hebrew word for 'skin' sounds almost identical (in post-biblical Hebrew, entirely identical) with the word for 'light', so the rabbis postulated that before Adam and Eve were clothed with animal skin they had been clothed with light.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
Seriously, stop reading Paul as an Augustinian, or worse, a reformation propagandist.
But that's precisely what everybody does!
Well, not exactly everyone. There's Honest Ron, there's you, there's me. And probably about 300 million Orthodox Christians. Plus loads of those dismissively labelled "liberal or nominal". Plus Jimmy Dunn, N T Wright and others working on "New Perspectives on Paul" - many of which bust up the traditional prot understanding of the Gentile-Jewish divide.
Understandings on these issues are on the move. Throw into the mix the more daring reflections (given their audience) of some of the nonco thinkers in the "Emerging Church". The straitjacket is getting loosened. Not before time, maybe, but it's happening.
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
I realised when reading the Jewish Encyclopedia articles that I'm much more an Ezekiel 18 "personal responsibility" person, these days. I think I prefer the Orthodox "ancestral sin", rather than "original sin" view i.e. that it's better to look on Adam and Eve as typical representatives than starters of a kind of "plague on the earth".
Exactly! Amen.
And I can easily pick up your allusion to "plague on earth" because our understanding in western christianity has been so heavily reliant on Augustinian/reformers/Pauline interpretations.
It's that embedded.
That's true-ish. Certainly in much of the rhetoric in common use. But most evos I know don't really scapegoat Adam or Eve for all the crap in the world. They don't like the idea of scapegoating anyone. Too many connections with the nastiness done to Jesus.
With the more thoughtful I talk to at least, particularly those who aren't YECies, the real significance of the expulsion from Eden is that it maps to an understanding of human weakness today. A kind of back-reading, or existential, understanding of the Fall is more common than we might think.
[As a sidenote, most of the folks I know in this category get pretty upset with self-righteous and "lack of real love" tendencies re sexual ethics as well. The two issues cohere. Some traditional understandings of God's holiness have often been used as a cover for human unkindness.]
As one of my best friends observed, "God's holiness in the NT is something children are encouraged to crawl all over and 'publicans and sinners' seem more comfortable with than the conventionally religious. Go figure". He's been in nonco-evo world for almost as long as me.
Kindness always has a future. There's good scope for joining up the dots in rather different ways. Quite a lot of folks are genuinely uneasy about the usual rhetoric. Brian McLaren's books are increasingly read. There's a desire for a more generous orthodoxy.
[ 09. June 2012, 06:54: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on
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Barnabas62 wrote:
”Personally, I think there are a lot of red herrings in that particular fishing box. What's unarguable about the story is that the garden is no longer the right place for Adam and Eve to work out their destiny.
"You think you understand good and evil? Here's a different place to learn some more about that. Not safe here in the garden any more. You don't trust me in the same way you did. That's a bloody shame, but not much to be done about that right now.
Don't think you'll like it all that much out there. Well, not all of it! But before you go, here are some clothes I've made specially for you to wear. 'Garments of skin'. It can get bloody cold out there. Off you go".
B62 misinterpretations always available, whether asked for or not.
Mmmmm! This is tasty! I am going to use this. Thanks, Barnabas62!
It's an idea that's been knocking about in my head, but couldn't be expressed. Comports with Christ's words:
Matt 19:8 He said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.
Conditions in the Garden are very rigorous. What protects A & E is the fact that they posses God's glory, His ability to always act right.
Now they transfer to a zone with the noahide laws, where the requirements are lighter. But death is still the wages of sin:
4 Yet death reigned from Adam until Moses even over those who did not sin in the same way that Adam (who is a type of the coming one) transgressed.
The believers of that era needs God's glorification to survive.
Moses comes and raises the bar.
Deuteronomy 30:11 NET
“This commandment I am giving you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it too remote.
Actually, they need God's help even more.
Jesus raises it even higher:
Matthew 5:21-22 NET
“You have heard that it was said to an older generation, ‘Do not murder,’ and ‘whoever murders will be subjected to judgment.’ But I say to you that anyone who is angry with a brother will be subjected to judgment. And whoever insults a brother will be brought before the council, and whoever says ‘Fool’ will be sent to fiery hell.
It's not coincidence that sanctuary is in the form of land, flowing with milk and honey. Adam's children are going home!
When they are in Christ, they're ”home”! Glorified and given rest!
Quote
Following the era of Moshiach comes the third and ultimate phase of existence—the “world to come.” The world to come is a world of eternal life and infinite perfection. It is a world devoid of every vestige of evil—of anything that sets apart creation from its Creator. It is a world in which the all-pervading truth of G-d is manifest, and every creature perceives its oneness with the divine.
The “mitzvah”—Torah as divine command and as link between G-d and man—has relevance only in the first two stages of creation: in our present era, where it comes to impose the divine will upon a resisting world, and in the era of Moshiach, where it generates a harmonious world, subservient and connected to G-d. In the world to come, however, the mitzvah will be nullified. This is not to say that we will cease to put on tefillin or begin working on Shabbat, G-d forbid—a world that is one with G-d will obviously be in complete conformity with G-d’s will. But the very notion of a “commandment” or a “connection” will be superfluous. Our minds do not “command” our bodies to do their bidding, nor are our bodies “connected” to our minds by virtue of the fact that they do their bidding. Body and mind constitute a single entity; the will of the mind is the will of the body, which the body naturally and spontaneously actualizes.
The laws of the Torah are the will of G-d, and are as eternal and immutable as their conceiver. In the world to come, they will constitute the natural law of a physical reality that spontaneously realizes the divine reality. But they will cease to be mitzvot. The divine commands will not be repealed or amended—they will be nullified, as the light of a candle is LIGHT
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[ 09. June 2012, 08:43: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
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No copyright, footwasher. It was just "throwaway" really, to make a debating point. For most congos I'd edit out the two "bloody"s.
Don't think the Garden was about "rigorous environment" though. It's where God was. Heaven for those who believe and trust in Him, not so much for those who don't. The Orthodox (well some of them), see Heaven and Hell as essentially, the same place, where God reigns eternally. Pretty uncomfortable if you don't want Him to reign. The images of light as warmth and fire that burns are joined in human understanding, as we sit around our campfires, telling one another stories of the God we know in part.
[ 09. June 2012, 08:58: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on
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Okay, then it's back to the drawing board on that.
BTW, seeing this is the thread with the posts that exemplify who you are, it's a good place and time to tell you it's a great privilege to be a shipmate on your ship! As I'm sure it is to be a member of your congo!
Thank you for your work for the Lord on this site, and thanks for fixing ALL the stuff on the above post!
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
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It ain't MY Ship. Actually, it's Simon's by ownership, participation is a privilege. Actually, it does often seem like a very great privilege.
Not my congo either. I'm just one of many. But there's only one of me. Some folks are quite glad about that! [I'm not exactly squeezable into a mold - some folks find that uncomfortable].
But you're very kind, thanks. I appreciated it.
[ 09. June 2012, 09:31: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on
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Evensong Originally posted by Kwesi: As Evensong has indicated it might well involve setting aside part of a Pauline text.
Evensong: I don't think we have to set aside parts of scripture.....I think we just have to be aware where some of our most traditional doctrines come from and the strengths and weaknesses inherent in them.
One Pauline text has been taken totally out of proportion. As you say, Jesus never worried about such things - quite the opposite if the incarnation has anything to say.
Honest Ron Bacardi: Seriously, stop reading Paul as an Augustinian, or worse, a reformation propagandist.
Evensong: But that's precisely what everybody does! And that is precisely the "accepted" contemporary interpretation.
Thank you for that, Evensong, you have expressed what I was trying to get at much more clearly than I was able ![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
It's not a case of needing to set aside important passages of scripture, but the problem of removing a defective default position that has become so deeply embedded in the Christian psyche.
Posted by Sir Pellinore (ret'd) (# 12163) on
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I think you'll find, Barnabas62, that, although the Orthodox do accept Augustine as a Western Church Father, some, indeed probably most, see him as being just one voice in a much wider and all encompassing Church Tradition and therefore not the only voice to be listened to. Some Orthodox, often educated in Germany, did take Augustine seriously, but they would be seen as very much on the fringe.
There have always been English religious scholars who saw the Fathers as representing a much wider vision of Christianity than just Augustine. Patristic study got a big boost during and after the Oxford Movement. The presence of so many Orthodox in Britain has, I think, revived this interest.
St Paul, at one stage, had been turned into a sort of Punch and Judy "homophobe" to be verbally beaten to death by those with their own contemporary politically correct agenda to push. I think they did him a grave disservice here because he was a far, far more complex figure. He had his own personal demons to confront, ones we cannot fully understand from his extant writings. The facts that he is a saint and a major one at that from the Early Church and that his writings were accepted by the Church into the New Testament Canon should make us hesitate to belabour him with our often incorrect and partial current knowledge of him. From a strictly orthodox Christian viewpoint, critiquing some of his writing could be seen as tantamount to heresy. To the question "Why can't I do this if I want to?" an appropriate answer might be "Well, if you do this outside Church Tradition without the grace this imparts you do so at your own peril and should be willing to suffer the consequences of your actions."
So much theological writing and biblical criticism seems to be written without grace from a very narrow understanding of Christian Church History and genuine Tradition. I think that methodology has resulted in the crucial misunderstanding that so many people are trying to unravel here.
Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
quote:
Originally posted by W Hyatt:
Care to try to help me understand? Have you encountered any interpretations that seem to you to fit well with the text?
If you want to take it beyond literalism, plumb the narrative's massive depths and get beyond St Paul's shoddy exegesis in Romans then I recommend What Rough Beast?.
I don't agree with it all, but it forms the premise of the arguments I have espoused here.
That definitely helps me understand - thank you.
quote:
Basically, God is a git here.
He does not want humankind to be like him or the other gods.
He does not want them to be like God(s) knowing good and evil and he does not want them to be immortal.
Why then, does he place the trees there in the first place?
I agree, the story presents God in a very unfavorable way, which raises specific questions such as yours and more general ones like "Is that the way God really is?" and "Why would the author[s] cast God in such a negative role?" But I think a more fundamental question would be "Does the reader have to assume that the text presents an accurate picture of the nature of God?"
Now you might think that since I believe that the text is part of the opening of a revelation from God, then I must also believe that the text does present an accurate picture, but my actual conclusion is the opposite. In fact, I would say that the idea of Divine revelation presenting us with a complete, accurate, and unambiguous description of God would be ludicrous. Even the idea of a description that should be taken literally doesn't make any sense to me.
If God has given us the text to teach us what we should know in order to best respond to him, then I would assume that any level of understanding of God that I can derive from the text is inaccurate and even flawed. I would assume that the text would be designed to reach us in our very first stages of understanding and then gradually lead us through successive stages, one after another, with no end to how far it can take us. Each stage would be necessary for us to gain what we need to advance to the next level, but advancing to the next level would require leaving the previous stage behind. This is the way we learn anything complex.
We start with learning ideas that very general and simple. You could even say that in the beginning, our ideas are so limited as to be flawed and even wrong. But as we add details and both broaden the scope and increase the depth of our understanding, our original ideas are eventually discarded in favor of more and more accurate ones, and the more complex the subject, the more this is true.
Consider what it has taken for scientists to get to their current understanding of how the physical universe works. Each stage along the way was limited enough and flawed enough that today we can say they were wrong. Yet each stage was an improvement over the previous stage and was necessary to get to the next. I'm sure that physicists today would say that their current understanding is limited and flawed, but until they get to the next stages, they can't say specifically how it is limited and flawed. And every physics student must go through a similar process to catch up to where current science is. How much more true must that be about trying to understand an infinite God, both for the human race as a whole and for us as individuals?
It seems to me that the kind of question you raise about why God would place the trees in the middle of the garden can be taken as a clue that there is much more going on than first meets the eye. The fact that there are such obvious issues raised by a simple reading of the text makes perfect sense to me if God designed it as an introduction for us to absorb while we are in our first child-like states of development, an introduction that continually leads us to ask more questions and dig deeper. Imagine how satisfying and inspiring it can be when we finally get to the point where we can say "Oh, now I can see why God put them there!"
I know that some people might dismiss the creation story in Genesis as nothing more than a "just so" story, but it seems to me that the best "just so" stories have strong superficial appeal to the very young, and yet also contain morality lessons for older children. Nobody would have expected children to continue to believe them into adulthood, but they would have hoped the children would like them, ask questions, learn from them, and, in adulthood, realize the value of passing them on. It doesn't seem to me to be much of a stretch to think that God could have given us a Divinely complex "just so" story based on similar hopes.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
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Sir Pellinore (ret'd)
"Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it"?
In some ways, I think the hardest thing to do when considering the diverse voices and understandings is to resist the temptation to harmonise, to make a simpler sense of events than is consistent with what was, and is, really going on. All of the voices are telling us something about their personal convictions and the passions behind why "this matters to us".
To reduce any of them to a stereotype is fundamentally disrespectful. To assert some commonality is one thing, to believe that they are all saying the same is another matter entirely. When considering the Divine, the metaphor which I've found helpful is that of blindfolded folks describing an elephant on the basis of which part of its anatomy they are near enough to touch.
Disrespect for the voices of those who have passed away can breed disrespect for those about us, and vice-versa. It's harder to just listen - and reflect. We may get passionate about the damage we see that has been done to truth, or people, or both, by the dominance of one view or another, but that brings with it the temptation to export blame. Not safe, that one.
Speaking personally, the recovery of understanding and respect for the diverse voices to be found in scripture, tradition and early church history has been very liberating, even when it has been confusing.
I don't believe God is a git. Nor does Evensong. But that doesn't mean that we must close our minds to the possibility that diverse experiences of the "gittiness" of the dominant (whether fathers or heads of pecking orders) might have influenced the minds of those creating and fostering the ancient accounts. If you've had to live under dominance and put up with it, you rationalise about it. "He's stern - but he's fair. He cares, really." Seeing the fairness and the caring often has more to do with hoping than being truthful about the experiences.
Such thoughts can be released by reflecting on the evidence that the authors of scripture, and the folks they picture, had diverse understanding about God. The journey from "God is Jahweh" to "God is Love" has been tortuous in the extreme and the various stories and writings tell us something about that. Hopefully, they help all of us to come to terms with our own urges to dominate and flaunt our egos, to the detriment of ourselves and others. And help us to be more loving, more charitable, in the way we live.
Saying "this is what I see here" and offering it on an open hand is a useful development in such "comings to terms".
And I still think the snake is a git!
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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Posted by Sir Pellinore (ret'd) (# 12163) on
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Barnabas62, I think those of us who were raised as Western Christians, like you and I were, were brought up with a very limited view of what "Christianity" was. I shudder to remember the incredible narrowness of 1960s Irish-Australian Roman Catholicism.
Historic Christian Tradition is very broad and deep and the Orthodox believe it is still developing.
I've found the Almighty baffling but never "a git". My feeling is that we can all, with grace, grow and develop into what we are meant to be. Our true humanity if you will. The Greeks use the word "theosis" which most of us find as baffling as it is illuminating.
It's not so much intellectual concepts I'm writing of but something deeper and not so easily expressible in words: an extremely practical way within fairly broad but Traditional confines.
Put it this way, I'm no longer questing the Questing Beast.
I wish everyone well in their endeavours to find "the Truth" in as much as each is capable of being graced to receive. It is not a solitary quest and I think we can and do help each other along the road. SOF has done enormous things for me and I am and will remain immensely grateful for the spiritual camaraderie; non-soppy love and example I have had from so many, including yourself.
Recently I found I had to make a jump of my own. I found the old certitudes which, God knows why, certain clerics were still trying to force feed me like a Strasbourg goose, were things I could no longer take. I think that happens to all of us. The old certitudes die and you have to jump. Where you go from there is a matter of trust and grace.
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
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W Hyatt wrote: quote:
I know that some people might dismiss the creation story in Genesis as nothing more than a "just so" story, but it seems to me that the best "just so" stories have strong superficial appeal to the very young, and yet also contain morality lessons for older children. Nobody would have expected children to continue to believe them into adulthood, but they would have hoped the children would like them, ask questions, learn from them, and, in adulthood, realize the value of passing them on. It doesn't seem to me to be much of a stretch to think that God could have given us a Divinely complex "just so" story based on similar hopes.
I know that I said that this narrative was a creation story, but I would not want to suggest that means it is solely a "just so" story. It evidently is more than just that, and I would not want anyone to feel any further exploration was unwarranted. My point was really to point towards the fact that it is a particular literary genre. I'm trying to be helpful - any text can be over-analysed, and I think a useful check is to constantly refer what your explorations are coming up with back on that fact. You wouldn't criticise a telephone directory for poor plot development any more than you would criticise your car owner's manual for not having your friend's phone number in it. Even so, some biblical exegesis persistently does exactly this . Let the reader understand.
I understand the point about God coming over as a bit weird. Perhaps it's just me but it always seems to me that some criticisms raised on this matter (not actually on this thread, but in plenty of places elsewhere) seem to be almost deist in conception. "Why does God occasionally reach out of heaven and do that?"
But the Jews were not deists but theists. Somehow, they had to work out why "shit happens", why God's blue-eyed boys were sent into captivity, and so on. Somehow God was involved, but how? Some of these passages seem to be involved with all that. God is not a tame god, but it is a tougher call to explain how a God so intimately involved with his creation might be involved in these things than it is for a pagan idol or a remote, quasi-deist god.
So I think an examination of passages where that sort of thing is going on could be very interesting, especially to look at how the understanding has developed and become more nuanced, as indeed revelation proceeded.
Having said that, I've had a look at the book Evensong linked to (thanks for that Evensong), and I have a problem with the first example which is the one cited here. It relies on another authors interpretation of the text, as amplified by himself in order to draw attention to the specific points he wants to make. That is not obvious until you study the footnotes at the end of the book. I'm afraid I have to say it doesn't seem to bear much relation to either what the MT or the LXX text says. Which for most of Genesis is pretty much identical. You can only make the snake a truth-teller by changing the meaning of the text, though I am sure it is done with innocent intent. I don't want to criticise the whole book because I haven't read beyond that. Maybe the other examples are fine, and anyway as I said, I think it's an interesting thing to do. But yes, the snake is definitely a git!
[ 10. June 2012, 14:54: Message edited by: Honest Ron Bacardi ]
Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
W Hyatt wrote: quote:
I know that some people might dismiss the creation story in Genesis as nothing more than a "just so" story, ...
I know that I said that this narrative was a creation story, but I would not want to suggest that means it is solely a "just so" story.
Sorry - I wasn't thinking of you when I wrote that.
Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on
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Read a few pages online and the gist I got was the Creation story author felt/ thought God was a git and was okay with it.
I'm getting the book and full reading Will probably confirm the first impression. Kinda follows on from Evensong's adoption of Schliermacherian hermeneutics, the get into the author's skin type epistemological method.
Unfortunately, apart from Kant's view that everyone introduces artifacts into a view, how DOES one get into the author's skin? As previously noted in the pomo thread, we ARE separated by time, geography and culture. There's no correction available as there is for altitude or temperature.
Besides, was the author really aware of his message, the basis of author intent hermeneutics or was he clueless like Caiaphas when he rationalized that Jesus death was expedient? Or were Abraham, Sarah and Hagar aware they were playing out the basis, the framework, of Election?
Really, the methodology you need here is Elliott's New Criticism, more than Schliermacher!
Oops! Just made something that is already hard even harder! Sorry, Evensong!
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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"ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS—EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE."
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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" IF YOU DO, YOU WILL FIND YOURSELF IN A EUROZONE CRISIS OF YOUR OWN MAKING: FREE WILL COMES WITH A COST "
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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But actually the free will argument related to Gen 3 doesn't bother me much.
The other extension of this issue is, of course, the idea the many strands of Christianity advocate divinization as the ultimate goal of life (theosis - God became man so man could become God).
More mangling of scripture.
If God didn't want us to become like God early on in the story of salvation, why would God like it to happen now?
(and yeah - I've heard the arguments. We were banned before but offered it now. Still doesn't make sense.)
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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Ohhhh yes it does. But only to simpletons like me.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
But actually the free will argument related to Gen 3 doesn't bother me much.
The other extension of this issue is, of course, the idea the many strands of Christianity advocate divinization as the ultimate goal of life (theosis - God became man so man could become God).
More mangling of scripture.
If God didn't want us to become like God early on in the story of salvation, why would God like it to happen now?
(and yeah - I've heard the arguments. We were banned before but offered it now. Still doesn't make sense.)
I'm intrigued by that. I suppose it would be better pursued in a different thread.
Given you've raised it, Evensong, would you consider starting a new thread, here or maybe in Keryg?
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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I'm not in the right space to start it now Barnabas. Got too much on my plate atm and serious, prolonged, intense discussion is a bit beyond me.....
I didn't even manage responding to some ppl's excellent posts on this topic...
![[Frown]](frown.gif)
Sorry bout that.
[ 13. June 2012, 13:48: Message edited by: Evensong ]
Posted by Mockingale (# 16599) on
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I'm not sure how the serpent could be interpreted as Satan, because as late as the Book of Job, Satan is in the employ of God as essentially a prosecutor, and not yet the all-evil anti-God that he is in popular Christian understanding.
If Satan had not rebelled against God in the time of Job, how could he have rebelled against God in Eden? God doesn't say "Good job, Satan, you revealed Adam and Eve's lack of faith"; He curses the snake.
Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Mockingale:
I'm not sure how the serpent could be interpreted as Satan, because as late as the Book of Job, Satan is in the employ of God as essentially a prosecutor, and not yet the all-evil anti-God that he is in popular Christian understanding.
If Satan had not rebelled against God in the time of Job, how could he have rebelled against God in Eden? God doesn't say "Good job, Satan, you revealed Adam and Eve's lack of faith"; He curses the snake.
I think arguing that the serpent was meant to be Satan is really bending over backwards to accomadate a particular ideological bias about scripture.
Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
If God didn't want us to become like God early on in the story of salvation, why would God like it to happen now?
Wouldn't that depend on whether we wanted to become like God out of pride in ourselves or out of humbleness?
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
I'm not in the right space to start it now Barnabas. Got too much on my plate atm and serious, prolonged, intense discussion is a bit beyond me.....
I didn't even manage responding to some ppl's excellent posts on this topic...
Sorry bout that.
Thanks Evensong, I know that place all too well. ATB with what's on your plate.
I'll save the idea for a better day.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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Satan, the Devil (slanderer, accuser, across-thrower), the adversary of Job, is the same lying, murderous entity as the serpent of Eden. Also the Prince (Isaiah 14) and King (Ezekiel 28) of Tyre. And the God of this World and the Prince of the Powers of the Air.
But there again, I am a simpleton, known for parsimony.
Posted by Moo (# 107) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Mockingale:
I'm not sure how the serpent could be interpreted as Satan, because as late as the Book of Job, Satan is in the employ of God as essentially a prosecutor, and not yet the all-evil anti-God that he is in popular Christian understanding.
AIUI, the book of Job is older than most other OT books.
Moo
Posted by The Machine Elf (# 1622) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Calindreams:
How much currency in modern biblical studies does the idea that the story was written as a way to criticize/suppress goddess worship?
Googling the nearby snake goddesses of Egypt, Renenutet was responsible for fertility and Wadjet was sometimes a midwife. Losing their blessing would mean you have to toil tilling the earth and suffer pains giving birth. (though the main goddess of pregnancy was a hippo, not a serpent)
There are plenty of winged serpents in mythology - Wadjet was sometimes depicted as a fiery winged serpent carrying the eye of Ra, later fiery dragons and Quetzalcoatl - it seems to be part of our collective imagery.
If the serpent had wings and shone like the sun before being condemned to crawl on its belly, it fits with the later association of Satan with the serpent and being cast out of heaven as a fallen angel.
I don't really believe this, it's just an odd coincidence that occurred to me when I saw a carving of Wadjet on an archaeology program. I recall hearing a theory that there's some propaganda in Genesis where Elohim is a better god than the gods of sun, moon and animals that were worshipped by nearby tribes; that may extend to the serpent, but if so it is probably buried so far as to be lost.
Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
quote:
Originally posted by Mockingale:
I'm not sure how the serpent could be interpreted as Satan, because as late as the Book of Job, Satan is in the employ of God as essentially a prosecutor, and not yet the all-evil anti-God that he is in popular Christian understanding.
AIUI, the book of Job is older than most other OT books.
Moo
But it's describing events that are supposed to have taken place after the Fall.
So, the chronology goes: The writer of Job described a situation in which Satan was acting an agent of God, to tempt Job into despair.
Some time later, the writer of Genesis described a pre-Job event in which a snake tempted Adam and Eve, and got condemend by God as a result.
If you accept that the snake was Satan, you're still forced to conclude that, some time between the Fall and the the events of Job, Satan was granted a pretty impressive upgrade by God.
Either that, or admit that either a) the Genesis writer and the Job writer had radically different ideas about who exactly Satan was, or b) the snake in Genesis was not meant to be Satan at all.
Posted by ken (# 2460) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
AIUI, the book of Job is older than most other OT books.
The setting of the story may be early but the text itself doesn;t seem to be. The language it is written in is not particualry early. Or so we are told by people who speak and read Hebrew, unlike me.
Apparently it is full of unusual and possibly foreign words, but the general poetic style is similar to Proverbs and many of the Psalms, and perhaps to Lamentations and parts of Jeremiah, and does not closely resemble supposedly early examples of Hebrew or related languages.
Not that I really know. That's just what the commentators say.
Posted by Moo (# 107) on
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The story I've heard is that the first and last chapters are the oldest Hebrew we have. Everything in between appears to be a rewrite.
Moo
Posted by Sir Pellinore (ret'd) (# 12163) on
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I still take the snake as a metaphor for the evil that whispers to us, seemingly from outside, but which also connects with certain of our baser desires, such as the one to know as much as the Almighty. Falling from a state of spiritual innocence to the knowledge of both good and evil introduces us to the ambiguity and amorality of the real world outside the realm of this former paradise. From then it's a hard struggle back. In Christianity humanity is unable to do it alone.
Posted by Mockingale (# 16599) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
The story I've heard is that the first and last chapters are the oldest Hebrew we have. Everything in between appears to be a rewrite.
Moo
Even if you accept that theory, that the Bible is a mishmash of Near Eastern folktales with a monotheistic twist that was compiled into its current form 2500 years ago or so, it is clear that even the later editors carried on the theme of Satan as an angel of God whose task it was to test the faith of man, as opposed to an adversary of God, rebellious and fallen, even thousands of years after Adam and Eve.
Satan as a devil and embodiment of evil is a later concept.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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Oh, an enlightened, liberal rationalization, that's where I've been going wrong ...
Posted by Mockingale (# 16599) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Oh, an enlightened, liberal rationalization, that's where I've been going wrong ...
What, you mean common sense?
Posted by Sir Pellinore (ret'd) (# 12163) on
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The origins of this story probably predate the original written form (if that is still extant). It may be possible to isolate certain elements, such as Paradise being a garden, as coming from Persia or elsewhere. However, it is obvious that the theme was being worked on over the centuries. Perhaps its true origins lie in the collective unconscious, or somewhere deeper, where such myths may be taken to be inspired?
At least one Greek Orthodox Elder is reliably reported as saying it was a myth to explain the human condition and our struggle towards wholeness.
Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on
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Barnabas62 wrote:
Quote
For that's not the only way of looking at it. I think the Orthodox see Adam in the garden as an immortal "child", different to the angels in the way in which he communes with and learns from God. That throws the story into a different kind of relief. As does reflection on the difference between men and angels, fallen or not.
Adam is the son of God, His child. God grows Man the way we grow a plant, training it, pruning it.
No one likes to buy a fully grown plant. No one has a fully grown man as a son! That's the whole point of childbirth: the nurturing, the bonding, the mentoring, the leading by example...
That's Genesis to Revelations.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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No Mockingale, common sense isn't a modern prerogative.
Posted by Mr Tambourine Man (# 15361) on
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I can't help much with the OP, but I find this quote from Hobbes (the four-legged one) to be thought-provoking when considering the devil.
[ 16. June 2012, 18:00: Message edited by: Mr Tambourine Man ]
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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Beautiful. I have frequently defended the Devil in that when we blame him for our acts of vileness, he will be able to shake his head on Judgement day and say, 'That was you guys, alllll by yourselves.' and be absolutely, legalistically right. He was just a catalyst for reactions that would have happened anyway, he just accelerated them. It has to be got out of the way. Disbelief. Distrust. We were set up. To get the suffering done.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Beautiful. I have frequently defended the Devil in that when we blame him for our acts of vileness, he will be able to shake his head on Judgement day and say, 'That was you guys, alllll by yourselves.' and be absolutely, legalistically right. He was just a catalyst for reactions that would have happened anyway, he just accelerated them. It has to be got out of the way. Disbelief. Distrust. We were set up. To get the suffering done.
I attended a bible study with a Rabbi yesterday.
We discussed the serpent.
She reckons we were indeed set up - by God. So we could come of age. Rebel.
God knew.
And the snake?
She pointed out something I never thought of before.
She said the snake knew what would happen. The snake knew they would learn good and evil and become like God(s).
So obviously the snake had already partaken of the fruit.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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Aye, of course God set us up, to get the inevitable fall out of the way. There is no creation without suffering for all concerned as the creation will always fall. Lucifer was a greatest possible creatable being.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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There was no fall dude. They became more like God.
Why God was peeved at that is the question. Especially if God set it up in the first place.
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to ask the Rabbi why.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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Fer a pomo you ain't engaging with the text. You're denying it. We became LESS like God. The only way we became like Him is in deciding what is right and what is wrong, what works, what doesn't. We refused to believe Him. We became our own moral authorities. Autonomous. We fell from trust.
God was peeved, angry, because congratulations weren't in order: 'Well done, you've just flushed yourselves down the toilet - although I did let the psycho-snake in to the garden admittedly, because it's better that we get the nastiness out of the way sooner rather than later - and I'm going to have to get you all back and it's all going to hurt beyond all our worst imaginings.'.
Seems perfectly natural to me.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Fer a pomo you ain't engaging with the text. You're denying it. We became LESS like God.
HA! I would suggest YOU are ignoring the text.
But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’
Then the Lord God said, ‘See, the man has become like one of us , knowing good and evil
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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Hmmmmmmmm. OK. The serpent and God agree. On A&E knowing of good and evil. This is me being open believe it or not. Soooooo, prior to disobeying God, A&E did not know good and evil. So what did they know ? No contrast ? Just good ?
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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Yeah. Sounds like it.
Tho did they even know Good? If you don't know Evil, can you know Good? Or would you just take it for granted?
Hence: consciousness.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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Now yer goin' all Also Sprach Zarathustra, monkey and monolith on me. They were fully hypercognitive, just like we are, before the fall: they had a theory of mind, they weren't mere animals. I agree that the fall was inevitable with higher consciousness, but it would have been longer and messier without the catalysis of Satan and God's somewhat binary, black and white, unmodern reaction.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Now yer goin' all Also Sprach Zarathustra, monkey and monolith on me. They were fully hypercognitive, just like we are, before the fall: they had a theory of mind, they weren't mere animals.
Meh. Yeah. Praps. Impossible to know either way. Not really something the text is interested in. I was pontificating emptily really. Not something I'm that interested in either.
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
I agree that the fall was inevitable with higher consciousness, but it would have been longer and messier without the catalysis of Satan and God's somewhat binary, black and white, unmodern reaction.
Taken longer to become like God?
[ 24. June 2012, 13:55: Message edited by: Evensong ]
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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Yeah, to know good and evil. In my narrative to become the arbiters of good an evil. To put reality to the test. To doubt, disbelieve, distrust, disobey God in Adam's case and to be deceived in Eve's. Without a lying murderer beguiling them it would have been messier.
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