And what was the result of eating the fruit? It wasn't just original sin. The result was knowledge. Knowing as much as god knew . . . ? So what was the problem with knowledge anyway? That we might become god's equals? Now that would be hard for god to take, would it not? Especially since he could not at first locate Adam in the garden . . . was not the god of the old testament all-knowing? Wouldn't he have easily located Adam? Strange. Strange Fruit . . .
The original sin
by onacruse 71 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Madame Quixote
Craig asked:Why, instead, did they feel the need to cover their private parts? What did their sexual organs have to do with the "original sin" of eating something?"
If, as I suggested before, the original sin related to early human recognition of over-use or exploitation of the environment, the symbolism is clear. The private parts represent human reproduction. Over-population in certain areas (coupled with other natural environmental demands) would create suffering in the world of early mankind, and the shame of poverty, starvation and inability by man to provide for his clan. This would have been and always has been a great shame to all men, (regardless of the natural causes of the famines or pestilences).
If there were more powerful nearby tribes who dominated the needed resources and would not share, the shame would have been even greater and the evolution of tribalism and religious ideas about who was or was not blessed by god or gods would also have begun to evolve and would be reinforced by the facts and forces of nature and tribal exclusivity.
Through it all, of course, some woman would get blamed for it all, since it was she (and her daughters) who kept bringing all the new, hungry little, nearly hairless apes into the world.
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Madame Quixote
Along the lines of what you said, Bernadette, why not evolve the idea of making sacrifices of the littlest and most irritating of the apes to the gods to appease them and make it rain, or to bring the downfall of competitors, (using up all the wood and plants and animals)? I guess someone starving and posessing a newly evolving and limited sense of empathy or sympathy might reason that the gods ought to be somehow appeased, no? And why wouldn't it have been a screaming neanderthal baby or such?
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bernadette
And why wouldn't it have been a screaming neanderthal baby or such?
facinating isn't it. The neanderthals have all disappeared - No wonder mankind is so wracked with guilt, pathos and the need of/to rescue. What I would give to go back in time and see for myself
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PrimateDave
I have to agree with Leolaia. The meaning behind the original language version sounds to me like a joke, a bit of narrative humor, a pun. In my limited (bilingual) experience, I know that humor is one of the hardest things to translate. Yet another reason why even modern professional translations fail to convey the intended meaning, and why our cultural baggage gets in the way, too.
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JamesThomas
Onacruse:
Would you then agree that the Devil's 'original lie' was actually a supernatural revelation to Adam and Eve of what they really were?
Perhaps in a way, but I have not really thought much about it. What was it the Serpent supposedly said? Wasn't it something like :"You will not die, but rather be like gods"? This is not language I would use to describe our true united nature. The serpents words sound more like a grandiose ego trip to me. It's more like the "me" dissolves into the endlessness of conscious-awareness. It's not as if we become anything; it's kind of like a death. Yet, it is seen we are everything, yet no particular thing. We are nothing, just as equally as everything. So, I guess what I'm saying is I don't know what the serpent was referring to. I find we gain more mileage by investigating into what is real right now.
MQ:
when that stuff was written, a couple thousand years ago, human kind was actively engaged in a dualistic lifestyle, constantly fighting the elements and beasts of the fields; and a couple million years ago when we realized we had skin instead of a bunch of fur, we were even more dualistically inclined.
Nowadays, at least in westernized cultures, we can sit back on our verandas and pontificate on the false sense of duality, but then it was real - both to the writers and to the oral historians who probably originated one of the first Adam & Eve stories that eventually got written.
No matter the time or place, phenominal life-styles and situations, our non-dual nature remains pure and untouched. It could have been realized by some and passed down via myth and legend. But, I can not say for sure what the Bible is talking about. I may just be seeing in the Eden story what I want to see. That said, I agree that today we have a the opportunity and time to do some deep inner investigation into our be-ing without fear of being eaten by a lions, tigers, or bears. Oh no.
j
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onacruse
I find all your observations fascinating! In fact, for me, for a period of time, the Bible had become a dead book, worth no more, and no less, than any of the other of millions of books, and thousands of "sacred" textx," that have been produced and handed down over the millenia. However, it is the "historical" and "anthropological" perspective of the Bible that makes it, to me, much more relevant, and worth reading. (I emphasize me only so as to not come across as speaking for others).
Along these lines, I think the following is pertinent:
Tillich would tell us that man equals fallen man. But in Genesis the mannishness of man is to be found not in his fallenness, but in the circle in which he was created; it is to be found in his being in the image of God and in relationship to the God who is there. The infinite, triune God himself can look over all that he has created and say, "This is perfect, man is good--body and soul, male and female. The entire man is good. The unity of the individual man is good." Thus we find here a complete rejection of the common notion that the Fall was sexual in nature, that taking the fruit was actually a reference to the first sexual act...
As we come to the end of the account of creation, we stand in the place of wonder. Creation is past. And yet that does not mean that God ceases to be able to work into the world that he has made. God is not a prisoner of his own universe. By divine fiat God can change the universe that he has created just as by divine fiat he brought it into existence in the first place. There was, for example, a fiat changing the universe after the Fall of man. And that God can work by fiat into the universe he has made is an important thing for twentieth-century men to comprehend.
Genesis in space and time, Francis A. Schaeffer
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agapa37
Im sorry but this topic really is reaching. It makes no sense at all.
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Q. Bert
Original sin: Innate depravity (=corruption, i.e. moral deterioration) common to all human beings in consequence of the fall (=Adam's sin and its results). — the Concise Oxford Dictionary, 1964 edition.
Interesting that the fall is defined in the Bible as Adam's sin, though the Original Serpent and the woman (later named Eve) had sinned first, as noted by how the punishments were meted out in the latter half of Genesis 3.
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onacruse
agapa:
Im sorry but this topic really is reaching. It makes no sense at all.
Please feel free to elaborate! Or does your represent the totality of your insights on this?