Last comment was in response to Alex's about the odds of letters in alphabet....
How did Adam and Eve survive when kicked out of the Garden of Eden?
by I believe in overlapping 40 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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peacefulpete
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rickroll
What did Noah do with all the dino shit? How many angles can stand on the head of a pin? Why did god kill of the Dinos? More questions for you.
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Vidiot
Arizophale gave Adam his sword.
Duh.
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LeeT
So Adam and Eve get booted from the Garden.
Gen 2:5 (NWT)
No bush of the field was yet on the earth and no vegetation of the field had begun sprouting, because Jehovah God had not made it rain on the earth and there was no man to cultivate the ground.
Great, so crop plants need rain according to the Bible and as Jehovah with his infinite wisdom and perfect morality hadn't decided that just about everything needed to be killed by drowning in a deluge, it hadn't rained yet. We'd have to wait for Noah and the flood for that.
So what did people do for food before the flood? Hunter-gathering presumably. Apparently not. Oddly enough we read in Gen 4:2 (NWT) that
Cain became a cultivator of the ground.
Maybe that explains why Jehovah was displeased with his sacrifice. As it hadn't rained yet, he could cultivate nothing but weeds which were displeasing to Jehovah. A poor choice of profession if you are reliant on this stuff called rain which had never happened before and wouldn't happen for a thousand plus years into the future.It's almost as if the early chapters of Genesis were written by fallible men.
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StephaneLaliberte
Alex, we exist because of air. Air does not exists because of us.
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peacefulpete
Arizophale gave Adam his sword.
I brought up the odd bit where God invented swords to the CO when preaching. He was not amused. That is the plain reading of the story. Angels were issued swords before any human had even thought of hurting each other. Clearly this is mythology with the author feeling it was quite logical for angels to have swords. Its called an anachronism.
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Pete Zahut
No bush of the field was yet on the earth and no vegetation of the field had begun sprouting, because Jehovah God had not made it rain on the earth and there was no man to cultivate the ground.
As far as I'm concerned the jury is still out, when it comes to whether the creation account is literal.
However for the sake of this discussion, the quotation above demonstrates the problem with using scriptures out of context. We did this a lot when we were JW's and we ended up believing all sorts of nonsense because of it.
Yes...Verse 5 says there was no rain and no vegetation for some time before man was created. But if you continue in Verse 6 it shows that by the time man was created, the entire surface of the earth was watered. Since Verse 5 says that there was no plant life because there was no rain, Verse 6 seems to indicate that this was solved once the earth sprang forth water therefore making it possible for plants to grow once he caused the ground to be watered.
Verse 8 goes on to talk about God planting the Garden of Eden. Just because God chose a specific spot to plant a garden for the first humans, doesn't mean the rest of the earth wasn't vegetated and had wheat, corn and all the other edible plants and fruits we have today, growing wild for Adam and Eve once they were put out of the garden.
5. Now no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth, nor had any plant of the field sprouted; for the LORD God had not yet sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground.
6 But springswelled up from the earth and watered the whole surfaceof the ground.
7. Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.
The original post posed a question that was supposed to prove that Adam and Eve couldn't have survived once they were put out of the garden because there wouldn't have been time for them to raise crops before they starved. This is easily disproven and any JW worth his salt could have answered this question.
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peacefulpete
Verse 6 seems to indicate that this was solved once the earth sprang forth water therefore making it possible for plants to grow once he caused the ground to be watered.
The verse says a vapor or dew watered the ground. A few translators have used words like "stream" but Jewish translators have been consistent with mist or vapor. The no rain until the flood was the WT teaching (first rain=first rainbow) I do think at some point in the 70-80's they back peddled saying something like it is not necessarily so. It is what the text says but it was scientifically impossible so they sorta softened their position.Interestingly, the flood story/stories (2 regional versions interwoven) was kinda clumsily inserted in the text interrupting the narration. I suspect the chapt 2 v5 and 6 reference to it not having yet rained and the mist from the ground was slipped into the narrative as a deliberate setup for the flood story. The rain was being stored up for the flood, but then plants need water. The passage is awkwardly structured. Without the mention of rain and water it reads much better and simpler as :
5Now no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth, nor had any plant of the field sprouted; for there was no man to cultivate the ground. 7Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.…
A bit speculative but it is consistent with the way the Genesis was a pastiche of stories from J and E and touched up by a compiler, redactor. Leolaia did some great work on this site about the narrative without the flood interruption.:
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waton
The bible writers had a very narrow, limited vision of the world, of course it did not rain in the Sahara or the Saudi desert, but monsoons happened elsewhere, that they did not know about and HS did not let them in on.
This whole topic proves one thing:
The bible has nothing to do with the reality of creation, instead, perhaps the universe made itself, or is even uncreated, eternal, more awesome still. Leaving "God" above it all, to tend to more important matters.
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Tomas Moro
segundo buena pregunta.
Sgún la Biblia, el libro Perspicacia y la Wt. Dicen que:
1). Set nació después de la muerte de Abel.
2).- Set nació cuando Adán tenía 130 años.
3).- Abel murió como de 100 años... es decir.... Adán tenia algo así como 30 años cuando pecó.
4).- Eso significa que ya habían psado 30 años como mínimo desde su creación.
5).- Dios le dijo a Adán que parte de su castigo era que comería pan con trabajo.
Es decir, ya había cosechado y hasta cocido pan....
Logicamente, con salud y perfección y guía divina durante 30 años, ya sabia todo lo necesario. Y tenía a Eva como ayudante y animales en sujeción...
