Who says Perfect Humans were created, [evolved] to live forever? WT does*, genesis does not. do you?

by prologos 10 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • prologos
    prologos

    The only reference to living forever, (or indefinitely long) in the genesis 2&3 account, is in reference to the "Tree of Life"

    Gen 3:22 "--EAT and live to time indefinite--"

    This tree must have been hard to find because WT writers opined that eventually, in their faithful course, A&E would be led to that allowed tree to GAIN everlasting life's symbolic confirmation.

    Therefore as the ancients accidentally & correctly wrote, humans did not have inherent everlasting life, but it was gained through diet. these first humans were

    Perfect and/but Mortal.

    It makes evolutionary sense too, Good sex for good selection and death to make room for the better adapted new specimen & speci wo men. A&E did not die of Sin, it was the perfect, the natural way to go.

    A fab story has been spun from the misreading "perfection=everlasting life" idea, sacrifices, ransom, twirling swords to prevent immortality.

    lucrative and entertaining, but do not base your life on it.

    *bible really teach book, page 48, par.4 imitate faith book, page 10 par.6

    Perfection is living a good a full life, leave offspring, leave legacy, help advancement.

  • rmt1
  • Perry
    Perry

    The watchtower buys into the notion that environment is responsible for all our evils. They seem to reason that if we could could just get rid of all worldly influences except their own, then people could grow to perfection. Then, once perrrrfected, God would OWE you eternal life based on your perfect existence.

    In this way, JW's are a savior unto themselves.

  • designs
    designs

    In Jewish tradition, as recounted in the Haggadah, and Midrash among other Jewsih writings, Adam was literally thought to resemble the 'image of God and was bowed to by the angels. Adam was the connection between the two worlds of heaven and earth. The 'dust' was considered taken from the four corners of the earth and its primary elements also contrued the characteristics of God since god was to have 'made all'.

    Adam is said to have experienced Hades (Sheol) and the gates of heaven were he now sits. As each pious person passes Adam he reminds them that he sinned once but they sinned many times and their death and afterlife journey are from their life course not his.

    In the Jewish tradition Adam was forgiven because of his own penitence. Adam fasted for seven weeks, around the time Tishri, following this fast he offered a sacrifice of thanksgiving and was joined by the angels. He lit a fire, taught to him by the angels, and this signaled the end and he was forgiven. This is how a Jewish Sabbath ends. Psalms 92

    In the world to come the new sanctuary will be built on the place were Adam's body is buried as a sign that each person's sin is not permanent or inherited.

    'Paul' invented an intirely different interpretation of Genesis and his Messiah from Judaism's.

  • sspo
    sspo

    Nothing lives forever around us. It's a dream that men has come up with.

  • Apognophos
    Apognophos

    Yes, the account definitely indicates that Adam and Eve would need to eat the tree of life's fruit in order to live forever. I would really like to hear a Witness try to explain this one. The ancient Jews did not imagine that humans could live forever naturally, as everything around them aged and died just like they did. Only divine intervention could halt the aging process, e.g. a magical tree.

    My contention, personally, is that the story means to say that the fruit was something that needed to be eaten from continually to sustain their life, rather than a "one bite and you're immortal" kind of deal. This detail is not explained in the story, and ultimately it's unimportant. What we do know is that the cherubim and flaming sword were placed to "guard the way to the tree of life", not to ban Adam and Eve from the Garden as a whole (Gen. 3:24). This throws quite the monkey wrench into a theology that teaches that perfect man was immortal until his sin made him mortal.

    But we can also go further and say that the word "perfection" is not found in this account either. It's true that man was better off before the fall, but the absolute concept of perfection seems to have been invented by Christian thinkers millennia later to reconcile the notion of a perfect God and imperfect creation (and we can also plainly see from the Bible's early accounts of Yahweh that the concept of a perfect God was also a later invention! One thing led to another).

    All that the Eden story was intended to explain was:

    - Why childbirth is so difficult, painful, and in former times often deadly, for human females when it's quite easy for animals (now we know the answer is the strong evolutionary pressure to develop larger brains while retaining bipedalism, which requires narrow hips -- both very desirable traits for our species).

    - Why cultivating crops is so hard (it just is; the point of the story was that God seemed to have to account for why he made us to live by the "sweat of our brow" when he could have made life easier, the answer was that we did something wrong to deserve this life; well, our forefather and foremother did).

    - Why people wear clothes, unlike animals (because we gained the knowledge of good and evil and became ashamed... this part is still kind of ambiguous, at least to me).

    - Why men are in charge (God cursed the woman for her insolence by giving her a craving for the man, thus allowing herself to be dominated by him; this taken with the previous point implies that sexuality itself is a kind of evil knowledge, which in turn implies that the ancient writer thought that man ought to be higher in his mentality than the mere animals who underwent rutting and estrus).

    - Why snakes don't got legs (they fell off due to a curse).

    Any deeper meanings pertaining to absolute concepts like "perfection" and "immortality" are just eisegesis.

  • prologos
    prologos

    Apognophos: good additional queries into the details that led the scribes to build a whole deck of cards on the origins story.

    when it was pronounced that creation was "very good",- we might think "perfect"-, the first 2 humans had not yet had their first meal with the tree of life ingredient.

    Therefore, at that point, they were in a dying mode, like everyTHING else. Even obedience would have required to take or continue to take those meals from the tree of life.

    The human species did not need a longer than 50 years individual lifespan to populate this planet even with 25% of them killing each other in murder, or "GOD" killing all but 8 in the >8 mile high flood.

    Is the last supper, communion, the fictional antidote lso with the fictional & drowned tree of life?

  • Apognophos
    Apognophos

    On the subject of lifespan, it's interesting to note that we are very proud today of our advanced medical technology that can even raise the lifespan above 80 years... and yet the psalmist wrote that "our days may come to seventy years, or eighty" (Ps. 90:10). It seems that the main reason lifespans are listed as being lower in the past is the massive infant and child mortality -- as high as 66% in some places and times.

    Those that lived to adulthood, however, could have expected to live as long as we do. Reading recently about Alexander the Great, I came across such long-lived individuals as Antigonos the One-Eyed (lived to around 81), Antipater (around 78), Ptolemy I Soter (84), and Isocrates (98!). The first three of those people were generals who saw plenty of combat.

    It's definitely an interesting thought that Jesus was making reference to the tree of life when he said "Whoever eats this bread will live forever", that hadn't occurred to me!

  • prologos
    prologos

    It would have been proof of Jesus being the equivalent of Adam if he could have been allowed to live past a thousand years (or 122) before dying a sacrificial death but as a man in his prime.

    Of course, the well ingrained idea of sin causing death, and atonement are wrong, since the "becoming flawed by the original sin idea" is not supported by the snake in the Garden story.

    I wish it would be acceptable to think that we ARE perfect, just as A&E were when they were created (evolved) --as mortals.

    Just as perfect stars die to give us the elements they cooked and that we need: oxigen,carbon, iron,, traces and gold even.

  • Vidiot
    Vidiot

    I came to the conclusion that "perfection" would be overrated long before I started fading.

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