Did Jehovah tell the first lie?

nicolaou

DID GOD LIE TO ADAM? The watchtower, and in fairness all other Christian groups, claim that Satan told the first lie when he told Eve, "You positively will not die". But was it a lie? If not, does that automatically make God a liar? This is what Genesis says (NWT of course); 15 And Jehovah God proceeded to take the man and settle him in the garden of E´den to cultivate it and to take care of it. 16 And Jehovah God also laid this command upon the man: “From every tree of the garden you may eat to satisfaction. 17 But as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die.” (Genesis 2:15-17) Now let's put aside any silly notions about the Biblical use of the word 'day'. God told Adam he would die "in the day you eat from it". It doesn't take a lifetime or a thousand years to eat a piece of fruit. At this point it would be useful to compare the words of Satan with those of God.
Satan said;	God said;
YOU positively will not die.	(Genesis 3:16-19) 16 To the woman he said: "I shall greatly increase the pain of your pregnancy; in birth pangs you will bring forth children, and your craving will be for your husband, and he will dominate you." 17 And to Adam he said: "Because you listened to your wife’s voice and took to eating from the tree concerning which I gave you this command, ‘You must not eat from it,’ cursed is the ground on your account. In pain you will eat its produce all the days of your life. 18 And thorns and thistles it will grow for you, and you must eat the vegetation of the field. 19 In the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you will return." (A punishment indeed but god did not kill them on the day they ate from the tree..)
in the very day of YOUR eating from it YOUR eyes are bound to be opened	(Genesis 3:7) 7 Then the eyes of both of them became opened. . .
YOU are bound to be like God, KNOWING good and bad.	(Genesis 3:22) 22 And Jehovah God went on to say: "Here the man has become like one of us in knowing good and bad,

RunningMan

Not only did God tell the first lie, but he also invented the sword. After banishing Adam and Eve, he posted a flaming sword at the gate.

God told Adam he would die the day he ate of the fruit. The serpent said no he wouldnt. The serpent said he would become like god, knowing good and bad. It's then confirmed that because man became like god, knowing good and bad that he must be punished. How was he punished? By being driven out of the garden, not by losing his life that day.

So who lied?

Goldminer

This is how I always understood it:

2Peter 3:8 says"...one day is with Jehovah as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day".So when God told Adam he would die on that day,possibly he meant within a thousand years and not within that 24 hour period.Also Adam would have been as good as dead in a spiritual sense in God's eyes.Genesis 5:5 says Adam lived for 930 years so he died within that 1000 year "day".

Goldminer

TopHat

Adam started to die from the moment, day he ate the fruit...as you all must know...as we age we are dying. Plus it could be taken this way. Meaning when he died he would not be brought back to life as though he were sleeping in death.

Narkissos

One thing that is often missed in the narrative, but is pretty clear from an Ancient Near Eastern perspective, is that "the garden in/of Eden" is, first of all, the "garden of the gods" (cf. Ezekiel 28:13; 31:8f), where the gods themselves come and go (Genesis 3:8). The man is created and brought there to serve as the gods' gardener (cf. Genesis 2:15). He is not there for himself but to serve the gods (a common motive for man's creation in Mesopotamian stories). The tree of knowledge and the tree of life are god-food -- forbidden to the gardener. The serpent, with the assistance of the woman, helps man to secure divine knowledge but the gods prevent him from reaching immortality.

Back to the question: yes I think Yhwh lies to keep the servant in his place. Had the tree of knowledge really been deadly why the hurry to prevent man from reaching to the tree of life? Death comes, not from eating the fruit of knowledge, but from being banned from the divine garden.

Now of course, the essential part of the story is the conclusion, which states the tragic condition of man in a sapiential way: we both know and die.

Carmel

George Townsend one time "Reverend Townsend" of the Curch of England wrote the following after leaving the church in his tome "Heart of the Gospel".

"Devotees of literalism may proclaim the defects they have
found in the Bible, and warn us that it has for us today no
value as history or as philosophy or even perhaps --
throughout great lengths of it -- as religion. Yet the
spiritual mind will in humility seek instruction from those
inspired seers of old, will wonder at their strong faith, at
the glory of their vision, at the depth and height of that
understanding of the ways and the wisdom of God which by sheer
spiritual power they attained. If we can divine their secret,
if we can interpret our modern knowledge in terms of the
Bible, what hidden wisdom may not be revealed to us, what
victory and dominion may not be within our reach!
To read the Bible as a single work, using one part to
supplement or to illumine the meaning of another, is to
perceive that it sets forth creation as a continuous process
of evolution which works up through the material realm to the
spiritual and which moves forward without break or cessation
or any stated end.
All that is hereafter to appear is in the beginning present
to the thought of the Eternal Creator, and in that sense
creation is carried through immediately to its completion by
the fiat of the word of God. But all that is, and is to come,
is not made manifest in this actual realm at once. At first,
it is hidden. 'Hidden that it may be revealed', as the Lord
Christ said. It is involved in the first act of creation; for
with God there is no incompleteness: it is mysteriously folded
away, as a tree with its branches, leaves and

fruit is folded within the seed from which it is to spring.
At the foundation of the world all that the future contains
already exists before God on the timeless plane of eternity.
His full purpose in every detail is at the beginning defined,
through however.many degrees of slow development God may will
it to unfold its length on this lower level of time wherein
man dwells.
Evolution is -- in the Bible -- a mode of creation chosen by
God, and it is not shown as ever reaching a final end. It was
in movement through all the period when the Bible was being
written and when the narrative of the Bible was being enacted:
it is in movement now. The grand denouement of the Bible, the
Descent of the City of Peace, does not bring it to a close;
but opens a new and more glorious chapter of civilisation
before mankind. By slow degrees God moulds simple matter into
complex forms, and by slow degrees he grants to man the
privilege of self knowledge and the power which flows from it.
The spiritual evolution of man is the main topic and interest
of the Bible. But the narrative does not open with this topic,
nor yet with man himself. It tells of the antecedents of man,
and of the preparation that was made for him before he
appeared upon the earth in person. It tells of the material
world and of the lower kingdoms, animal, vegetable, mineral,
of the sun and the moon and the stars
, of Original Chaos and Old Night out of which Kosmos was
formed. It tells how the natural world was brought into being
step by step, stage after stage, by successive commands of the
Creator and through a regular and ordered process."

(George Townshend, The Heart of the Gospel, p. 15)

Carmel

defd

nic. Jehovah does not tell lies. Did adam and eve die? Yes.The day they ate of that fruit the dying process began. You are missing the whole point of that account. Satan the devil wants us to disobey Jehovah. He even tried to get Jesus to disobey Jehovah. Jesus knows Satan well. Jesus called him the FATHER of the lie and a liar. That is good enough for me.

D.

jwfacts

Very interesting reasoning.
I have been wanting to ask a similar question. Why is there a tree of life if they were not already dieing?
There were two trees, but they are only told not to eat of the tree of knowledge. So they could eat from the tree of life. Maybe they died only because God kicked them out of Eden to prevent them from eating the tree of life, a tree necessary to eat from in order to stay immortal. In that case they would have been wise to eat from the tree of life before eating from the tree of knowledge. On the other hand maybe they had been eating from the tree of life, but it was necessary to continue eating from it for eternity in order not to die.
In addition, in a way Satan did tell the truth. Most religions do say that on death people go to heaven in a twinkling of an eye, that the soul does continue on forever. In that sense people do not die. If Adam and Ever get a resurrection as Russell believed, than they did not truly die as they do get to live forever anyway.

rebel8

he posted a flaming sword at the gate.

That made me realize something: How would Adam and Eve have recognized what a sword is when they saw it? It would have been a meaningless symbol to them since they did not know what a sword was, right?

Did Jehovah tell the first lie?

nicolaou

RunningMan

undercover

Goldminer

TopHat

Narkissos

Carmel

defd

jwfacts

rebel8

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