@cedars:
The trees are definitely described in the text as two distinct horticultural specimens!!
This is my understanding from reading Genesis 2:9 as well; there were two trees, not one.
@palmtree67:
Did
From the text, I think NO.
they eat from the Tree of Life?I agree. I'd also add that Adam and Eve knew nothing about the existence of the tree of life.
I don't believe in the idea of inherited sin.
Got it.
@tec:
I don't claim to understand everything in the account, but I do know that their death was a consequence of what they did.
As to this, I agree with you.
I think the tree of life is something you must continue to eat from in order to continue to live.
With this, I do not agree.
There is nothing in the account to state whether or not they had already eaten from the tree.
Maybe not, but the inference that neither Adam or Eve knew about the tree of life is there. For that matter, not even Satan knew about the tree of life.
@palmtree67:
As I said before.....I believe it is an allegory.
Earlier you opined that Adam and Eve did not eat from the tree of life, and now you are saying that the Genesis account about Adam and Eve "is an allegory"? Well, I cannot agree with this last opinion (about the account being an allegory), but you are certainly entitled to have and proffer as many opinions as you wish.
Isn't this all just [presupposing] that Adam and Eve had immortality, then lost it?
I didn't follow this, but I'll just say that Adam and Eve did not have immortality, that a mortal human being cannot be immortal (the notion makes no sense), but that they were "plugged in," so to speak, to God so that when God withdrew from the pair, the ability of the human body to replace cells was retarded such that they eventually died. Had they remained "plugged in" to God, they would have lived forever.
BTW, if one is immortal, then this means that one cannot die, ergo, Adam and Eve were mortal and could not have been immortal, hence they died.
I think we've already established it's an allegory.
No, you didn't.
Any thoughts on what it means?
If you don't know what you meant, then who else would know what you meant?
@cedars:
I'm sorry, but that reply was WAY too long. Also, I lost the heart to read all the way through it....
That's fine. I'll just skip what I would have said in reply to this last one.
@djeggnog wrote:
I don't want to post too much here from your article, but love is so much more than "an emotional attribute." I've just leave it there.
@Razziel wrote:
Well it depends on your definition of love.
What? No, it doesn't.
In my previous post, I didn't want to get off-topic, and I don't want to do that now, but I was talking about an aspect of love that compels you to grab that toddler that has somehow become separated from its mother and is now heading toward you standing at the curb and a very busy street with lots of vehicular traffic moving on it where you using your prerogative as an adult to intercede in this child's life by snatching it out of the proverbial fire before the ongoing traffic could do it harm, not because you knew the child or had received permission from its parents to do what you did, but because it was the right thing to do.
This is one aspect of love that isn't driven by an emotional, which is not unlike when I talk to religious people trying to free them from the religious bondage that has separated them from knowing God's love has made possible for them. I've leave it here.
@cedars wrote:
Evidently, the tree of life was the source of Adam and Eve’s everlasting life, and it was among the trees from which they were encouraged to "eat to satisfaction".
@djeggnog wrote:
I understand that you think this "tree of life" to have been the source of everlasting life, but this isn't "evident" to me, and this may be because I cannot wrap my mind around the idea of a tree having something that even God's son didn't have until he was granted to have life in himself, and this was after his baptism[.] This sounds to me like you think of the tree of life as a kind of "magic tree," a tree imbued with properties that could give to anyone that eats of its fruit everlasting life, except Adam didn't know about the tree of life. You and I know about the tree of life because you and I have a copy of the Bible, which contains the Genesis account, but even if Adam had a Bible, the Genesis account wasn't included in his copy.
@Razziel wrote:
So we agree the tree of life was symbolic.
No, we don't. Read what I wrote again. I didn't say the tree of life was symbolic at all, but I see you wish to push this idea, which is fine. I just want to be clear on this point: I don't believe the tree of life to have been symbolic, ok?
@cedars wrote:
On the other hand, the "tree of the knowledge of good and bad" was strictly off limits, but it was the properties of this tree in particular that confused me.
@djeggnog wrote:
What "properties"? I don't see a thing that could confuse you here. The Bible doesn't talk about properties.
@Razziel wrote:
You know what he's talking about.
Well, if I told @cedars that I didn't know what he was talking about -- and I did say that! -- then you must know something that I don't, and in that case, then it would be you that knows what @cedars was talking about, because, like I said, I did not.
When a noun is proceeded by adjectives, it's describing properties of the noun. For example, if I say "that douchebag djegnogg", I'm referring to someone who has surpassed the level of jerk or asshole, however has not yet reached fucker or motherfucker.
This was funny rejoinder, albeit profane, which seems to me to violate Rule 3 of the policy guidelines here, but funny nonetheless. However, I do not agree with you that "properties' is an adjective.
Now if I were referring to the "properties" of a eukaryotic cell, the basic components -- the membrane, the nucleus and the cytoplasm -- then these might be said to be its properties. This means that I could not be referring to the properties of a prokaryotic cell, since such cells don't have a nucleus and they are ten times smaller than eukaryotic cells. Also, in the eukaryotic cell, the DNA is stored in the nucleus, which is not the case in the prokaryotic cell.
My only point here is that in the English language, there are eight parts of speech -- nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, adverb, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections -- and an adjective describes a noun. With respect to the tree of the knowledge of good and bad, @cedars spoke of the properties of this tree, and "tree" is a noun, where a noun is a person, place or thing, but he didn't make reference to things about the tree of the knowledge of good and bad, like color, height, age or beauty, for things like these are adjectives. Instead, @cedars spoke about the attributes of this tree, which is a construct of some kind.
@cedars wrote:
[I]f Adam and Eve had already been created in God’s likeness, then how was it that by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and bad they became LIKE God and Christ?
@djeggnog wrote:
What's the nexus between Adam and Eve's having been created in God's likeness and the fact that they rebelled against God's rulership by opting for self-rule?
@Razziel wrote:
You avoided the question, and attributed God's response to sarcasm. I'm sure there must be another example of God being sarcastic (seriously there must be), but no, it doesn't count when the prophet sarcastically asked if a false god was using the privy.
Maybe there is, but I didn't provide an example, did I? I pointed out what God sarcastically remarked about Adam and Eve, saying that "they have become like one of us knowing good and bad." Save the example you used in your post for another time, but this isn't the time for examples.
@cedars wrote:
Technically speaking, nothing that the serpent told Eve was untruthful, because the fruit wasn’t itself deadly....
@djeggnog wrote:
The Bible doesn't talk about "deadly fruit," but Adam and Eve are dead, are they not? This was Lie #1.
@Razziel wrote:
Well, [interpretations] of 1,000 yrs and spiritual death aside, they didn't die anytime soon.
Who cares? I was disputing @cedars' idea that the serpent hadn't been "untruthful," hadn't lied, when the serpent did lie. I did interpret the text and I believe my interpretation of it to be correct. You are, of course, entitled to your own interpretation, but I'll keep mine.
@djeggnog wrote:
Adam and Eve were like the teenager that decides that now that he has finished high school and has a job, he can now emancipate himself and move away from home and get his own apartment, so that he no longer has to do any of the chores he hated doing, except he comes to the realization that apartment life means more than just paying the rent:
There's a car payment, an electric bill, a gas bill, monthly parking bill, the laundromat, the cleaners, ironing, food shopping, clothes shopping, restaurants and/or cooking at home with hardly anything left from the paycheck to afford lunch everyday at work or to buy gas for his car. Lacking the necessary skills to be able to cook, to wash and iron his clothes, to keep his kitchen and bathroom clean, and seeing how expensive it is to buy lunch and eat in restaurants everyday, put his clothes in the cleaners and buy gas, he came to realize that his "righteousness" didn't measure up to the "righteousness" he rejected and didn't want to learn when he was back home with his parents, where he didn't have to pay rent and carried hardly any of these burdens. Yes, Adam and Eve did become like God, but [they] didn't know God's righteousness. This was Lie #2.
@Razziel wrote:
Not the best analogy, seeing as most teenagers move out for some reason along these lines, but eventually have a successful life and don't suffer a death sentence....
This wasn't the point of the analogy, but I agree with you that this wasn't the best analogy that might have been put forward by me to make my point. How you would know this amazes me, but the analogy breaks down with respect to the death sentence imposed of Adam and Eve, and its only purpose was to demonstrate the point I was making, namely, that Adam and Eve didn't know God's righteousness just like this emancipated teenager didn't know the "righteousness" of his parents, that is to say, the skills required to be successful in life. Obedience is something that Adam and Eve needed to learn, even as Jesus had to learn this when he became a man, and so it cannot be said that they had come to know God's righteousness, an essential part of which is obedience.
@N.drew:
Perhaps it is allegory of the Human Race.
You are entitled to believe the Genesis account related to Adam and Eve is an allegory.
Is it one tree or not?
I say "not."
@djeggnog