Garden of Eden - Who lied?

refiners fire

Consider, dear brethren, these scriptures:

First, Genesis,2 verse 16
..."And the Lord God commanded the man, saying,Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it:for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die"...

thats Gods position

Next,Genesis 3 verse 4,5
..."And the serpent said unto the woman, ye shall not surely die:
For God doth know that in the day ye eat therof, then your eyes shall be opened,and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil"...

Thats the devils position

Heres the wash up:Genesis 3 verse 22
..."And the Lord God said, Behold,the man is become as one of us,to know good and evil,and now,lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life,and eat,and live forever. Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden"...

My postulation:
God lied. The man did not die in the same day.
The serpent truthed, the humans became as Gods. Even God admitted this fact in verse 22. Indeed, the humans might not have "surely died" if they had the brains to run to the tree of life before God found out about their sin.

Any opinions?

Note also the term "gods", indicating plurality of Gods.
(all quotes-King James Bible)

Skeptic

Excellent work. I have had similar thoughts about Genesis as well, but you put them much clearer than I would have. And good point about the snake not lying, I never caught that before.

Genesis is full of interesting stuff, once you drop the JW filters.

Richard

LittleToe

Question...

Following your line of reason, how did "man" become more godlike through eating the fruit?

I really don't see how he acquired more power.
Further, the words were to the woman, who actually became subservient to a domineering husband. I don't see how the direct recipient of these words became godlike, either, let alone the race of man who became enslaved to death.

refiners fire

Well, Im only floating a passage of scripture for consideration.
But lets consider your response, little toe...
It was God Himself who said "they have become like us" (Gods).
So, if you believe in the Sacred scriptures I think you must conceed that Man must Certainly have become more Godlike, because God said they had.
From the perspective of one rejecting the scriptures as sacred,I might say that mankinds mind attained a facet that it did not have before. A KNOWLEDGE. An that knowledge is always a plus, not a minus.
One might use the very example of this forum as an example.
Persons come here and discover things they never knew. Those discoveries certainly take them out of the comfort zone of their nice safe little Witness beliefs, but would anyone of us now deny the knowledge we now have and return to warm, ignorance?
I think not.

With regards to Eve being dominated and thus her new found knowledge a curse rather than a blessing, I say that Eve only came to be dominated because that was a punishment inflicted upon her by the God.

LittleToe

Hi RF,

Before I go any further I want to just state that I thoroughly enjoy your posts. Any comments that I add to this thread are out of mere enjoyment in joining the discussion, rather than taking a dogmatic stance.

How about I throw in the balance thing.
Knowledge may have become a plus, but death and misery were a definite minus.
I take on board your comments on dubdom. It has caused me much heartache and strife in my own home, but I wouldn't really like to contemplate a return to ignorance.
Should we ponder the state of Adam and Eve's ignorance?

Was the pronouncement on Eve a punishment or a prophesy, do you think?

Just 2p

refiners fire

Little toe.
I am by no means dogmatic on this position. Its only a discussion point.Im merely reading scripture here.
Returning to my focus, can you show me wherein there is an evidence of the Serpent lying? I speak within a LITERAL, word by word reading of the text. No fundy interpretations and insertions of things not in the text allowed.
If he did not. By what rationale is he branded "The father of lies"?

Let the Bible be its own expositor!

chappy

All but the most fundie fundies understand the "days" of creation as not being literal 24 hour days, but an extended period of time. Seems reasonable that the day in which Adam would die would also be an extended period.

chappy

JanH

rf,

Yes, it is clear when you read Genesis 2, 3 that God lied to the humans, for reasons not disclosed, and that the snake told the truth. It is a common theme in ancient myths that gods hide something useful from humans (e.g. fire in a famous greek myth), and that somebody gives the game away and helps the humans. Of course, the gods always retaliate, and the god in this story does too.

It is important to note that the myth in Genesis is about sex. Fruit and nudity is mentioned, very common euphemisms for sexuality in the Hebrew Bible, leaving that obvious. Through sexuality, humans could become "like gods", that is, creating life. It had a downside, though, namely that with it followed shame of nudity (the innocence of childhood was lost). It also carried the curse of the vengeful creator-god, who punished the woman with labor pains and the man with hard labor in agriculture. He also had a revenge for the snake: its legs were removed, and it had to crawl on its belly and eat dust (or so the author thought).

Myths are always about the origin of something. This is a great myth in that respect, explaining the origin of sexuality, sexual shame, labor pains and hard work. The story does not imply or hint that humans were originally immortal, as xtians today will claim.

Of course, important myths are not left alone for long. Various commentators -- Jewish, Christian, others -- have used the Genesis myth for their own purposes. Later theism could not have a deceitful and vengeful deity in charge. Therefor, they argued the snake was really the liar. In time he was identified as the "anti-god" Satan.

It takes training to read texts without too much cultural baggage. It is amazing, when I look at this simple story now, that I did not see what it really said for so many years.

- Jan
--
The believer is happy. The doubter is wise.

refiners fire

Chappie.
You cant demonstrate that point from the passage. You have to pull some single scripture from elsewhere in the Bible and inflict it upon the passage so as to show that Adam, dying at 930 years old died within a thousand year "day". But that "thousand year day" passage (wherever it is located)Does not say a day is a thousand years. Rather, read in context, it is a generalization showing that Gods existance is timeless.
Certainly the sun, moon, day and night were in motion when God gave the instruction to Adam, Why would anyone assume anything other than an ordinary day in interpreting the passage?

Again, I ask- where did the serpent lie in the passage??

refiners fire

Jan.
clearly ( to me) the whole thing is some kind of myth about sexuality.
Though it is contradictory in some ways because God has already commanded them to become fruitful.
If not a sex myth..then why the necessity to cover their nakedness?
Perhaps they did the deed in a "non proscribed" position.

Garden of Eden - Who lied?

Share this