nicolaou:
Don't waste your time Jeffro. God's lies are the theme of this topic so obfuscation is the least we can expect from his followers.
Oh I know. But he’s the foil, not the audience.
Who told the first lie?
by nicolaou 299 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Jeffro
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TonusOH
Halcon: many folks do feel that need in their heart to show appreciation for their Creator. Not everyone is opposed.
That isn't the point I was making. The god described in the Bible is quite needy and demands recognition. This doesn't fit with a person of immense power who deigns to deal with the population of a vanishingly small portion of a universe he formed with his own hands. It's one of the reasons I cannot make sense of him.
Halcon: For the same folks I mentioned above, this isn't a problem.
Are you sure? Life in heaven is never described in the Bible, aside from angels going about their assignments and future residents making sure god receives his due glorification. An eternity of that is not something that a typical person -no matter how devout- seems able to stomach without some very notable changes to their personalities.
This is one of the issues I have with the whole setup. If we have to be changed this significantly in order to spend eternity with god, it would have been far more sensible to skip the part where things go wrong and incredible suffering results for a few thousand years. If humanity needed repairs, better to have gotten them done right at the start.
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Halcon
Tonus - If we have to be changed this significantly in order to spend eternity with god, it would have been far more sensible to skip the part where things go wrong and incredible suffering results for a few thousand years. If humanity needed repairs, better to have gotten them done right at the start.
Yes, from a human perspective it seems it would have been much better. The key is, being precisely that we are only human, will we accept that we couldn't decide the time and sequence of events, or not.
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TonusOH
My experiences will always be human, unless I am changed in some significant way. If this change is required for the universe to make sense, I still think we could have skipped all of the bad stuff along the way.
But, if there is an angle that explains that it was necessary, or that god felt that this was the best way forward... I have to wonder what it says about the nature of god. Some Christians will explain that suffering is necessary for us to better understand certain things. If this is the case, then we would have missed out unless Adam and Eve sinned. That would mean that their fall was a better outcome. I don't think this makes sense.
If their fall was the worse outcome, then there was a possible universe where there never was suffering. And if this was the case, I still think we would have been better off with that path. If you believe in eternal torment for those who are condemned by god, then their suffering could have been avoided as well.
So we could have had a universe where everyone was always happy and no one ever suffered. We ended up with one where suffering has been a constant state for thousands of years, and will be a constant state forever for a great many people. I think the former is the better option. If it isn't, then I would be very worried about the nature of the person who runs this universe, that he would see that second outcome as acceptable, especially since it required two people to do what he expressly asked them not to do.
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KalebOutWest
TonusOH:
So we could have had a universe where everyone was always happy and no one ever suffered.
According to The SBL Study Bible, Oxford's Catholic Study Bible, and the JPS Jewish Study Bible, the narrative of Genesis never promises immoratality or eternal life to humans even if they never partake of the fruit of the tree from which God forbids.
"Man seems to have been made mortal" states The SBL Study Bible in its commentary to Genesis chapter 3, pointing to the fact that after his "eyes are opened" that "he will be conscious of his mortality, another addition to his self-knowledge."
There are a set of ironic realities mentioned regarding this via a play on words: Adam renames Woman after his condemnation or curse. Why?
Adam's name in Hebrew is basically the name from which he was formed and where he is told he will return, which is a reminder that he is not immortal (adamah), being told that he was formed "from the dust of the ground."--2:7.
Adam renames his wife "Eve," which means (of all things) "Life." This is ironic as they have been cut off from the Tree of Life. (In Hebrew, the same root word is used for both by the way, as in the Hebrew expression "L-Chaim," meaning "To life!")
The Tree of Life is guarded by "cherubim" and a "flaming sword." It represents, originally, the Holy of Holies in the Hebrew Temple. According to The SBL Study Bible:
The eastern entrance, the cherubim, and the sacred trees suggest an analogy with the Jerusalem temple, which had similar architectural and iconographic features as well as a limitation on access into it.
When the Church Fathers interpreted this story by means of allegory, the narrative to suggest the Fall of Man, the Tree of Life changed from the Holy of Holies to the Cross of Christ. With the 'tearing of the veil in two' at the death of Jesus (Matthew 27:50-51), access to God by means of the Cross was made possible, making eternal life available and turning what would normally be a wooden instrument of death into a "Tree of Life."
While I think it would have been great that nobody would be suffering today, I don't think this mythical text describes the origins of reality. The religious groups that created this work (as their study Bibles prove) do not believe it is historical nor do they describe "God" in anthropomorphic terms as simple as this narrative or in the language of Watchtower theology. They understand the value of looking at this as it was written: myth.
We might learn good lessons from lore like this, even truths perhaps, but not facts.
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KalebOutWest
And before you ask:
"If it is myth, then what did Jesus die for?"
The word "myth" does not mean "false" in academia. It means "origin." It only means "false" among people who tend to use it that way in the vernacular. (Like when some people call all soda pop "Coke," even though all soda pop is not "Coke.")
"Mythology" is an ancient genre where writers who did not know exactly how to express facts or truths about the origin of something used tropes common to their culture to explain it. For example, Pandora's Box is a myth that explains the origins of the world's troubles and why human's still hold onto hope despite them all, employing metaphors as a means to explain this.
The narrative of the Garden of Eden is not about Jesus Christ or this sacrifice however. That is a completely different religion, namely Christianity. The Church Fathers admit that their interpretation of the narrative is based upon seeing new meaning into the story, such as they did with Jonah and the resurrection of Jesus, with Jonah being a type of Jesus, and Jonah's coming out from the whale as a typification of Christ's resurrection (based upon something Jesus himself briefly taught).
The original Garden of Eden origin story is about the Fall of Man, but not about original sin. It is about disobeying the Mosaic Law, notably the Jews being disobedient to God, and likely their losing access to the Temple and the Promised Land at the Exile to Babylon. The question is: Why do we sin like this? Because we have been like this since the beginning. It is part of our nature. Like God tells Cain, you need to fight this beast or it will get the better of you.The choice is yours.--Genesis 4:7.
In Watchtower theology, the story is historical fact: it happened as written. No questions asked. And Jesus died to counter Adam's death. It is not a Jewish story. It is a Christian story. End of line.
In nomimal Christian theology, Jesus died as part of his life: God came in the Person of Jesus to experience everything you and I experience from birth to life to death, even unjust rejection--the worst even. God allowed this to happen to him so that we could experience life "in his image" to the fullest. God was partaking of our life by undergoing a death life ours.
The allegorical/mythical understanding of the Genesis story is not required where there is not an exact ransom as demanded by Watchtower standards. For the Watchtower, where there is not a God that lays down His life so that you and I can be "partakers of the Divine Nature" (2 Peter 1:4), the idea becomes cartoonish with literal talking snakes and demanding deities and a Governing Body that sets all kind of weird dates confusing people with perfection and confusion about myths from an old book that don't tell you much about the real world you are living in.
The Jew in me is not necessarily claiming you should or should not believe in one Christian standard or another. I am just reporting on these things.
And thus the meaning of "myth."
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MeanMrMustard
I'm sticking with my theory that God lied to Adam and Eve because that's all he do to keep them in line. They had no way of successfully operating morally, even in a paradise garden.
Telling Adam not to eat the fruit of the tree because it was "wrong" would be like trying to convince your dog not to drink from the antifreeze spill in your garage - you just can't do it. All you can hope to do is swat him away when he gets too close.
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KalebOutWest
MeanMrMustard
I'm sticking with my theory that God lied to Adam and Eve because that's all he do to keep them in line...Telling Adam not to eat the fruit of the tree because it was "wrong" would be like trying to convince your dog not to drink from the antifreeze spill in your garage - you just can't do it.
This is an example of "The Mandela Effect," the belief in an occurrence of an event which never actually took place. None of the above happened in the story. Even the punishment phase of the story is famous for showing this did not take place, but people constantly say this is what happened.
It's like people quoting Darth Vader from The Empire Strikes Back: "Luke, I am your father!" That never happened. The line was: "No, I am your father!" That is "The Mandela Effect."
Genesis 2:16 and 17 says that God only told "the man" this instruction. According to this narrative, neither the woman nor the serpent had even been created yet. (See Genesis 2:18-22.) So it is not possible for either the woman or the serpent to have overheard the instruction from God. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that it was a genuine lie. According to the narrative, the woman and the serpent were not around to hear it. Only Adam was. But in the story there is no indication that Adam ever told either one of them.
Oddly, in the punishment phase, Adam gets the death penalty for the following:
"Because you listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree..."--Genesis 3:17.
Adam gets punished because he obeyed Eve instead of obeying God. According to the narrative, this was not the way God had intended.
As The SBL commentators point out:
The woman is the focus of the story, while the man is her passive companion: [the text reads] her husband, who was with her [and not the other way around]. The woman's command over the man will be reversed in v. 16, the curse of (and justification for) male authority [in this narrative]...Woman gets cursed with male authority, which reverses her previous command over the man.
If you are saying that Adam was created without literal knowledge of "good and evil" and that God's command was therefore like expecting a dog to know the difference between sweet poison and sweet juice, then you are also saying that the other aspects of the text are literal too.
How did the woman learn the command not to eat of the fruit? The text does not say that Adam told her, does it?
How does the serpent know the command? Why does it speak and the other animals do not? If Adam taught the command to Eve, and that is how she learned it, then does that mean according to the same logic that the serpent learned it the same way--from Adam?
And then if you are to be believed, why did you remember this narrative incorrectly in the first place? How can we trust someone who can't even remember the narrative correctly to start with?
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Jeffro
KalebOutWest:
This is an example of "The Mandela Effect,"
Not really. The Mandela Effect refers to details that are widely misremembered, not simply a widespread incorrect belief that a mythical story is historical. (MMM didn’t say that God told them it was wrong, but only that it would be pointless to do so if they didn’t understand that anyway, so that wasn’t an example of the Mandela Effect in the scope of the narrative either. It’s just speculation about details that are not provided.)
Of course the rest of the point still holds aside from the semantics though.
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MeanMrMustard
And then if you are to be believed, why did you remember this narrative incorrectly in the first place? How can we trust someone who can't even remember the narrative correctly to start with?
Perhaps you are unaware of the new texts, unearthed recently, that I've dutifully copied into this thread on page 6, tens of thousands of years old, not made up by me at all, that help expand our knowledge of some of those most critical first days.
Also, note my first statement on page 6. I am approaching this from literalist/ JW perspective. You know, cause that's why we are here. Of course I think there are other less literal ways of interpreting that story. Orrrrrr, there is always the perspective that it has nothing at all to do with reality - a perpective that I favor. But hey, I'm not saying you can't find any meaning in it at all, especially after getting incredibly stoned on a Friday evening.