Bobcat said-
No reason is given for why one would 'prefer NOT to render the Hebrew verb.' This is curious. (Edited to add: The MT version, in effect, has the woman seeing the fruit as having the ability to give her "wisdom," a word conceptually related to "knowledge." So why the NWT would want to take that out is a wonder. It fits in with the story line.
Interesting info, thanks for looking into it.
Of course, the Masoretic Text (MT, i.e. one of the two main versions of the Torah generally used as a source for translating from Hebrew) shows there's no need to speculate why Eve wanted to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil: the Hebrew account repeatedly says the forbidden fruit imparted 'wisdom', and various translations impart the idea in various rephrasings.
Hence "Knowledge of Good and Evil" implies a specific sub-set of all knowledge: it's moral knowledge, morality, that which is used to determine right from wrong. The 'fruit' of this moral knowledge is the wisdom to choose a proper course of action, the ability to make moral choices APART from relying on God's wisdom.
In contrast, Hesiod's Prometheus stole fire from Zeus to give it to mankind ('fire' was a commonly-recognized symbol in ancient Greece to indicate more general knowledge, i.e. that which allowed men to build houses, study planetary movements, etc, etc, i.e. the generic use that a search for knowledge still implies: studying science, literature, history, mathematics, etc).
It seems that the Yahwist simply took Prometheus' more-generalized concept of knowledge and limited it to morality, to come up with the magical wisdom-granting forbidden fruit. The later scriptures bear this out, eg pleas to God that mankind is so foolish that they cannot even determine their own steps without relying on God's wisdom and direction. Of course, that's hardly a controversial or contested interpretation: it's basically the same endpoint that most Christians get to, anyway, seeing the account as an example you cited of Adam and Eve rejecting God's authority and declaration of independence, saying they can decide for themselves: a WILLFUL act of rebellion against God.
I'm saying it's actually a bit more nuanced than that, pointing out that having willful intent requires forethought (whether malicious or not): instead, the first pair are portrayed in the account as having been created as sociopaths, being fundamentally unable to discern right from wrong, and unable to control their impulses, hence unable to experience "willful intent".
In fact, it's well-known that if you give a sociopath ONE rule to follow, they'll BREAK it (eg oppositional defiant disorder). Sociopaths are not bounded by rules, and are prone to rebel against ANY attempts to control them, whether it's in their best interests or not! They can act seemingly without awareness of such concerns as empathy for others, etc. That's just not the way their brains operate, as they seemingly lack functioning centers of inhibitory impulse control found in 'normals' (sociopathy can even be pharmacologically-recreated by administering drugs that suppress certain inhibitory centers of the brain: heck, alcohol is a classic example of that, where some people become 'mean drunks'!).
So from a modern perspective, the first human pair are depicted as having been created as "perfect", if we actually mean they were created as 'perfect sociopaths' (showing signs of oppositional defiant disorder).
From Wikipedia:
Psychopathy ( / s a? ' k ? p ? θ i / [1] ) is a personality or mental disorder [2] [3] [4] [5] characterized partly by antisocial behavior, a diminished capacity for remorse, and poor behavioral controls. [5] [2] As a diagnostic category in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), psychopathy is referred to as antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). [5] [6]
Eve was punished for unwittingly self-administering "the cure" for their condition, the medication they desparately needed to become free moral agents (it seems God wanted to play "Doctor" with them, too; that's typically the role ascribed to God in the OT, having with the power to heal, cause disease, etc).
Imagine that: a psychopathic God (clearly depicted in temper tantrums, ordering genocidal campaigns, dashing babies on rocks, etc) who created the first human pair "in his image" (as mini-psychopaths), and like most psychopaths, God wanted no one else to possess wisdom so they could act piously and call him on the carpet for his bad behavior?
(I'm guessing that God often forgets to take his anti-psychotic 'wisdom' meds, although perhaps that explains why he put the TOKGE in the MIDDLE of their home: perhaps God was going to perform some clinical trials on the test subjects he created for that purpose, trying to work out a few "bugs" in the medicine on Adam and Eve he made to serve as the guinea pigs, before self-administering? Perhaps God was working on the "perfect" drug delivery system, combining a good-tasting carrier vehicle with the wisdom-bestowing molecules, delivered at the proper dose?)
Actually, the original NWT (1950s edition) has an even more cryptic footnote:
"To look upon." This rendering agrees with the LXX, Vg and Sy[riac]. Some prefer to render the Hebrew verb here, "to impart wisdom (intelligence; prudence)."
Interesting, as that gives more parity to the fruit's properties bestowed by consuming it, compared to the serpent's description as being 'arum' in Hebrew, translated in various scriptures as 'crafty', 'prudent', 'clever'. That gives more of a sense of Eve desiring to possess what God had given to the serpent who was a "beast of the field", which implies Adam and Eve were outwitted by a wise "beast of the field" until AFTER they ate of the the forbidden fruit.
My point is that showing desire for ANYTHING is NOT consistent with "perfect", since it implies LACKING something. THAT'S the continuty flaw, the fly in the ointment of the Christian interpretation of the account (needed to justify atonement for Adam's inherited sin).
By the way, note the parallel word-play use of the word 'desire' in the account: Eve's sin was 'desiring' the fruit that gave wisdom, so her punishment was for her 'desire' to be subsumed to that of her husband: that interpretation is the basis for Paul's later citation of account as the basis for wives to be in submission to their husbands.
It's interesting to note that foolish and naive Eve trusted (i.e. had faith, arguably NOT even blind faith, since serpents were known to possess wisdom and cleverness) and decided based on what the serpent told her. The serpent was actually the first-recorded version of a modern-day whistle-blower in the Bible, someone who revealed company secrets without being authorized to do after seeing evidence of unethical corrupt behavior and corporate malfeasance in the organization (although that's a fundamentally-goofy concept, since ALL morality is supposedly determined by God: to a Christian, genocide is moral, since a moral God does it). Foolish Eve foolishly trusted the whistle-blower instead of the corporate CEO: shame on her! More veiled "appeals to authority" which is no surprise, since the Torah is a book of LAWS, based on the ultimate appeal to Divine Authority.
But let's see: we've got a clever serpent and a wise God seeing who can cause a pair of fools to act foolishly: how is THAT possibly going to end well for the pair of fools?
And of course, the irony is JWs think of the New System as returning to Paradise conditions: after God 'writes His laws on everyone's hearts', those who live under God's rule will not be able to exercise their "freedom of choice" to sin, since it would be ruled out as a possibility! So all survivors will gain life everlasting, existing in a state of serving as PERFECT ROBOTS. Ohhh, THAT sounds fun, huh?
In Genesis 3:22, Jehovah is quoted as saying, "Here the man has become like one of us in knowing good and bad . . ." But there may be an amount of irony in the saying and/or the use of word-play, as the word for "knowing" is the same one used by the serpent in 3:5. The word has a wide range of meaning, not just information acquisition, but also for experience and relationally (as in, ' the man has attempted to set himself up as a rival to us ["like one of us"], by making himself into someone who determines what good and bad is. . .' ["by knowing good and bad"]).
Of course, Elohim is plural, and refers to the "Jehovah's Divine Counsel" in Heaven (a group He chairs). It's the same group that makes an appearance in the epilogue of the Book of Job (which Satan was apparently a member of, serving in the role of the accuser, analogous to the Court-appointed prosecutor, with God in the role of Judge).
I've previously run across the suggestion that God was disdainfully mocking them, and the suggestion is usually shot down by Christian commentators who claim that it would be out of character for God to mock those who sinned. Although not a particularly persuasive argument, in itself, I read it as God's admission of the fruit doing exactly what both he and the serpent said it would do: eating it imparted wisdom to mankind (although whether possessing wisdom was conceived of in the historical context as a binary 'yes/no' trait is questionable; the instant acquisition after eating (the phrase, "their eyes were opened") tends to suggest it WOULD be conceived of in that manner as having an immediate effect, perhaps analogous to the timeframe of geting drunk on wine). So his admission to me reads as his admission that neither the serpent or God were lying on that point, since it "did what it said on the tin".
God's mercy is also reflected by the fact he 'covered their nakedness' by providing them with animal skins, more protective than their crude makeshift fig leaves (where to be "covered" is often symbolic of being give a set of laws or rules, and 'naked' implies having no laws or seeing vulnerabilities in the law, eg Noah's son saw his nakedness, and told his brothers: the sin was whistle-blowing and rumor-mongering, rather than helping cover Noah's indiscretions. Such traditional interpretations indicate that by hiding their crimes, JWs are actually following in a long-standing and God-ordained practice of keeping skeletons in the closet!)
Interesting thought is that the serpent said that "the DAY you'd eat of it, your eyes will be opened"; they ate, and their eyes WERE opened on the same day. God also said, "the DAY you eat from it, you shall surely die". In BOTH cases, the Hebrew word is "b?·yo·wm".
Christian apologetists come up with all kinds of excuses (quoting "1000 yrs is a day to Jehovah", or A&E experienced a spiritual death, etc.) but it's interesting that the serpent's use of the Hebrew word for "day" is supposed to have a different meaning when it's used by God! Fact is, Adam and Eve DID have their eyes opened immediately, but they didn't die that same day.
So although the serpent didn't tell the WHOLE story (he forgot to mention that although the fruit wasn't toxic or poisonous, God would be the proximal cause of their death as punishment!), God wasn't exactly Honest Abe (well, he LIED about the 'same day' claim, and forgot to mention that He'd be directly responsiible for their death)!
It's a clever story, and 99% of the readers miss the details since they're locked into a particular theological interpretation which is biased, or where vital details are intentionally ELIMINATED (and I'm so tempted to say "WRONG"). Overall though, I see the story as serving as an 'origins' myth of not only the first ancestral pair, but also explaining why humans experience death. You can pick a lengthy complicated scientific explanation (getting into cellular apoptosis, accumulated DNA damage, the macroscopic benefit given to the species which eliminates the contributions of older members of the species, etc) or you can say, "It's Adam and Eve's fault!".
More importantly, it's often overlooked that the Torah is a historographical work which blends civil/criminal codes into the tale of a people, explaining where they came from. The Adam and Eve account is the opening story in a book of 'dry' legal codes and geneology which is used to reinforce the importance of playing CLOSE attention to even seemingly-minor details and semantics, since overlooking minor details in words spoken by serpents and God can have dire consequences for all.
EDIT:
I found this on:
http://www.adamandevefanclub.eu/gen3-6.htm
25.1 … The term ‘wise’ is translated from the Hebrew term sakal (Strong 07919) meaning: to be (causatively, make or act) circumspect and hence, intelligent; consider, expert, instruct, prosper, (deal) prudent(-ly), (give) skill(-ful), have good success, teach, (have, make to) understand(-ing), wisdom, (be, behave self, consider, make) wise(- ly), guide wittingly. Take your pick 1,2
25.1.1 … This crucial verse fragment, “and that the tree was to be desired to make (one) wise”, is missing from both the Septuagint and the Vulgate. The Hebrews who translate this verse fragment alter it to read, “and beautiful to contemplate.” The deliberate Septuagint error is translated in the Vulgate as “and delightful to behold.” This is a very serious corruption of the original story. Why the Septuagint translators choose to introduce this deception is not known. 1
I suspect the NWT is trying to resurrect the original cover-up attempted by the Hebrew translators of the Septuagint, the group known for introducing similar corruptions into Greek translations of the Torah. I'd suspect this group's error-laden work from 2nd Cent BCE would be very well-known to Jesus, and possibly serve as the basis for his frequent diatribes against "those lying scribes" who attempted to mislead readers of the Torah, in this case the Greek-speaking Hellenized Jews (eg Paul). Jesus obviously wasn't concerned about confusion created amongst Gentiles, since his target audience for his message was Jewish.
Captian Obvious said-
Whew! Thanks for clearing up that you don't actually believe what you said.
You might enjoy Free Will by Sam Harris. He makes some really interesting statements about the myth of free will.
I just wanted to point out philosophers use the term 'free will' very differently than it's used within a Christian theological context, such as the story of Adam and Eve.
Adamah
