"....you will be like gods, knowing good and evil."

by Lilycurly 42 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  elatwra

  
  I see what you are saying.That would make my post irrelevant. So as a myth-seperated form the rest of the account of the bible re: satan etc etc let me ask you this:

  A higher being aka God creates two life forms and places them in a gorgeous setting. There are two trees one of life () and one of the knowledge of good and evil. There is no instruction regarding the tree of life but of the tree of knowledge they must abstain. So the higher being comes back every night and hangs out with the lifeforms. They do not seem to need anythihg, the food is free and the weather conditions are great. All they have to do is walk around naked and reenact the blue lagoon movie.Are they happy?( they seem to be having more fun than I m having right now but that could be just me) Does the higher creator being have the right to pose rules on them? Could they be life forms in training? Could the tree of knowledge be there for future use once they know and understand more of what is around them?Don't know.Then a different lifeform, one with more and older knowledge gets them to break the one rule and gets them in hot water with the higher lifeform. The higheer being kicks them out of their idelic setting to prevent them from eating the fruit of life. Promises some sort of future salvation that they do not see.Still they live 900 years, long enough to watch their own children kill each other. Could death be actually a merciful solution to their situation?Don't know, not enough info. If its just a myth then its terribly incomplete and other than the fear of snakes, fear of fruit, and human desire for what they cannot attain i m not sure i get it.

  As far as the connection with the myth of Prometheus: . Prometheus creates men and then feeling sorry of how helpless they were steals fire from the gods to protect them, therefore incurring the wrath of the gods. Prometheus is both the creator and the provider of the forbiden goods.And he is the one judged, not the humans rescued several years later by hercules. The humans do not suffer any consequences. Cool myth but not exactly parallel to the genesis myth.
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  daystar

  Lily

  But is he in opposition? When you read that passage with nothing else in mind, as if it were a new story. You can't help but feel that the Serpent doesn't look like a mean or deceiving character, but more like one who is trying to help the humans out. And God actually looks like he is pissed that the Serpent told them the truth and ruined his little game of submission....

  Trying to help humans out by opposing what Yahweh says, was he not? The Serpent of Genesis certainly does appear to be in opposition to what Yahweh has to say there. I mean, he certainly isn't agreeing with Him, is he?
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  elatwra

  How is giving them the knowledge and the ability to do evil helping them?
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  Bonnie_Clyde

  Adam did die on the day he ate of the fruit. "One day with Jehovah is as 1,000 years." He was 930 years old when he died. That's the way it was explained to me.
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  Auchmull

  No, he didn't. God lied about dying. Adam and Eve didn't die as a result of eating the fruit. God banished them so they wouldn't be able to eat from the tree of life and live forever. They died hundreds of years later.

  They lost eternal life on the day they ate the fruit -- the dying just took awhile.
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  dvw

  by even placing the tree in the garden jeho introduced the whole concept of evil in the first place. how could the other "gods" even know good from bad in the first place? jeho is supposedly perfect and the creator of all things. how could the angels have an inkling of evil.......unless jeho already had given them some experience with it?

  but it is a myth just like the tower of bable. jeho didnt want man to build the tower because; " if they make the tower, there wont be anything they cant accomplish! we better F up their language."

  its all complete crap.
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  Shazard

  Which part didn't you understood? Death in Christianity is a bit different understood than in secular world. Death from God's point of view is to be separated from God and all what God wants for you. So God didn't lie, man was cast out of Eden so actually he died - was seperated from God in the very day of wrongdoing.
  Knowing good and evil by experience actually means to become evil. That's what happened and evil can't be in presence of God. You don't have to know evil by experience to survive in God's presence, so it was not necessary actually for man. But what snake sayed is that actually God is lying and hiding something from man. That God does not want for man something good, and man believed snake rather then God even when man had experience of God's grace in Eden and didn't have any base to believe in snake. Lying in it's pure form - to change good and evil! This is what happenning today globally - good becomes evil and evil becomes good.
  And by separation from God comes corruption which end's in ordinary fleshy death.
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  Narkissos

  Between the opposite dualistic versions (orthodox: Yahweh is good and the serpent is bad, vs gnostic: Yahweh is bad and the serpent is good), I would suggest the Genesis narrative, as many so-called "Yahwistic" texts, offers a less metaphysically absolute and more subtle and ironical picture. Yahweh is neither 100 % benevolent nor 100 % mean, he is a potentially helpful and harmful power one has to deal with. He can be pissed off, calmed down, disobeyed, resisted, even fooled. In the Genesis story man gains something (knowledge) and loses something (immortality). The game goes on.

  The true subject of the story is neither "God" nor the "devil," it's mankind and its reality (which includes imagination).
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  daystar

  elatwra

  How is giving them the knowledge and the ability to do evil helping them?

  That is not what the story is about. The story is about whether or not mankind should be able to judge for themselves the nature of good and the nature of evil (what things are "good" and what things are "bad") rather than being told by some supposed superior, external, entity.
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  Legolas

  It was not only 'ONE' tree (like god said) that they were not aloud to eat ...It was 'TWO'!