That the whole thing is so badly written that you can choose whatever lesson you want to take from it, as can everybody else -- and then you can enjoy the ensuing religious wars.
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The mystery of the Bible
- Thread starter paradox
- Start date
Though to state the obvious, "spiritual death" is not a concept found in the Tanakh at all ─ so it has to be a later add-on, someone's rationalization of their favorite hypothesis or as the case may be.
Even the context is wrong. The Garden story, contrary to Christian assertions, is NOT about the fall of Man. Nowhere in the text does it mention, or even hint at, sin, original sin, the Fall of Man, death entering the world, spiritual death, the need for a redeemer, the heritability of sin ─ which is expressly denied in Ezekiel 18, passim but not least in Ezekiel 18:20
The soul that sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.
(though if I remember correctly, some of God's curses continue for three generations).
And in the Garden story, God does NOT kick Adam and Eve out of Eden because they've sinned or even just behaved wrongly. God states [his] only reasons clearly:
Genesis 3:22 Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever”─ 23 therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden
And that's all. The Christian version appears to have first been formed as a midrash reading in Alexandria late in the second century BCE and is mentioned once by Paul. Not until Augustine of Hippo gets a crush on the idea around 400 CE does it grow to have wide currency.
Jeremiah Ames
Well-Known Member
For me, I agree with P1.
P2, the serpent is not the devil. I cannot tell you what the serpent is, but it’s not a bad thing.
P3 is not correct. Without truth, no one can know God and be “saved” from themselves.
P4. The literal is true ONLY to the extent that the inner (spiritual) meaning is known.
P5. Opposite. Sorry.
Just my opinion and understanding of the Bible.
Jeremiah Ames
Well-Known Member
You are, to an extent, quite correct.
firedragon
Veteran Member
"The soul that sins shall die" says the Bible.
It's a spiritual death like you said, but is not about knowing some truth or not. It's about sin.
The bible also says that if you repent you shall live. Not that if you don't hear the truth you shall live.
Cheers.
paradox
(㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ)
How would you then explain "if you eat from tree you will certainly die", why didn't they die?
taking care that your explanation must be explicitly written in the story because...
...you take the bible way to literary and limit you self only to what is explicitly written.
See my post #14 reply to PureX
Basically if you care only about exoteric meaning then anyone can know the truth.
How can you be so sure without knowing or telling what is truth?
Yes, spiritual death is about sin or caused by sin, but in the context of the story there was also hidden knowledge - of good and evil.
I see the rest of the bible as hidden knowledge - of what's truth.
Which is exoteric meaning.
Which is esoteric - forbidden knowledge or fruit.
To be unlocked in same way as garden of Eden.
This means it written good because it succeeded in hiding things from a bunch of praying eyes.
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
Gods? In Judaism it's just god.
It's more of an error because the Serpent was just the serpent for many centuries until Christians decided it was not only Satan who was the Serpent but also that Satan is a great enemy of god.
Well, it's not history, obviously. And this is an early model of God, whose naivety is at the center of the story. So either [he] was mistaken or [he] was bluffing.
Yes, it's altogether contrary to my approach to ancient documents to impose my own wishes on them. So before there can be spiritual death as part of the authors' intention there must first be an historical basis for the claim that 'spiritual death' was part of early Hebrew culture. And I'm not aware of any such basis, either inside the story or outside it.
I repeat what I said ─ the story makes no mention of sin, original sin, a Fall of Man, death entering the world, spiritual death, the need for a redeemer. The story equally makes no mention of the rules of chess, the recipe for chicken soup, Eden's sewerage system, Fermat's Last Theorem, or the season's fashions in fur coats. If you're allowed to put anything you like into the story regardless of what it says, the items in the two lists are each as valid any other.
I use the "correspondence" definition of truth ─ that truth is a property of statements and that a statement is true to the extend that it corresponds with / accurately reflects objective reality.
What definition do you use?
paradox
(㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ)
You can't be serious about that - this makes God character not God at all.
I might agree with your definition, however the bible needs to be interpreted such that it reveals reality, which is however impossible with your method of interpretation.
PureX
Veteran Member
That's an absurdly biased and unrealistic assessment. They were nomadic sheepherders. There was no Judaism or Christianity at the time. Not even a hint of global religious influence. No idea of exoteric or esoteric anything. For them, God was everywhere they went, all the time, and inexplicable. That was it. And they believed it was their responsibility to always be mindful of this. And that's what the stories they created were for. To keep them mindful of their position relative to this "living" God.
Thanks for that thoughtful post. The comments from bible gateway I will not take as certain nor from any bible hosting site. I would for example doubt that they could make consistent sense of the term 'Glory`. People learn to use terms like this without knowing what they mean, and so such terms can take on new meanings or even opposite meanings from their beginnings. This is a problem when trying to interpret scripture, because if one imposes modern meanings upon ancient undefined terms one gets into an alphabet soup very quickly. I like to point this out. It matters where we get definitions for: 'holy', 'sacrifice', 'worship', 'glory'. We shouldn't get these from questionable sources if we are serious, but we aren't serious.
The phrase in Proverbs 25:2 is related to a law (Leviticus 5:1) where anyone publicly charged to testify must tell the truth. In scripture a commonly used charge (in poetry and stories) is "Give glory to God" to which the witness must reply with absolute honesty, but any public charge to testify would probably be equivalent. When a person is in the ancient courts mentioned in scripture and is charged "Give glory to God" it means they must tell the truth. This is a little bit like our modern system in the USA where we require witnesses to swear to "Tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," however its no different from saying "Be honest."
So it is to the glory of God to conceal a matter? This is very bad translating, not purely the fault of the translator but due to the untranslatable nature of the text. First of all the term 'God' does not exist at the time that this is written. Unfortunately bible gateway seems unaware of that fact. I would charge them to "Give glory to God" if I thought that they were able to.
Back to your first question about spiritual death and the supposed mystery of the bible. We read a poor translation and impose our own ideas upon it. This is widespread, common and generally undetected most of the time. You can see that bible gateway itself seems clueless sometimes. What an upside down situation.
Does the fact that I am telling you this make me a king? No, it doesn't; but that is what the text as translated would claim. I have uncovered a mystery! I am a king! Yay for me! Where is my white donkey?
wellwisher
Well-Known Member
The best way to answer this, is that the tree of knowledge of good and evil is analogous to the modern idea of relative morality, where good and evil are relative to the observer.
What Satan was selling was not truth but partial truth and relative morality, Each person can think they know the truth, so they can become like a little god in their own mind. This illusion can cause some to depart from common sense which then leads to all type of problems, including death.
You need to remember this was Satan's favorite tree, with the Serpent there, to tempt Eve and Adam with a type of relative morality that comes back to bite them. It sounded good but ends poorly. Satan and his tree were not reliable, since both are half good and half evil. The tree of life has no evil to balance good, it only promotes life.
For example, a notion that is common to many treacherous people is that the ends justifies means. This is a good example of half truth and relative morality. A person who thinks this way may do evil, in the name of their own definition of good, and call the entire behavior, good. This attitude causes suffering for others and may even lead to war. If you have enough power this allows you to play god.
Satan employed his half truth and the ends justifies the means to fool Eve and Adam. Satan would go on to become the Lord of the Earth, to take care of the tainted humans; ends. It worked out for Satan but at the expense of Adam and Eve; means. The tree of life would have been just good for God and Adam and Eve.
As an example in the news, when the Democrat FBI raided Trump's Florida Home, this was an example of the ends justifies the means. This had never been done to any president before even though what was justified as the excuse was done by other presidents.
The same group had been after Trump since 2016, running scam after scam to get him out go their way. Trump was moving things in a different direction. Their base will applaud this pattern of behavior as good. But it is a relative good, only good for that team. It is not based on justice that applies to all; Hillary and Obama were never raided. Others will retaliate to even the score. This is a good example of the tree of knowledge of relative goods and evil and acting as little gods.
The key thing to know about this raid, is a President has the power to declassify any information. I am sure Trump knew the criminals would go after him, so he had his lawyers do the paperwork.The Democrat knew this also but in their own twisted morality, they acted as god above the law; anything goes. They now will delay showing their hand based on the illusion there is an ongoing investigation. They cannot be transparent of they will be caught.
This is all about the optics, since they fear Trump running again, winning and them having to face justice for their many crimes and applications of dual justice. Their base believes in relative morally, and will applaud this aggressive and deceptive behavior as good. They will even defend it as a means to get rid of their own anger, which their own leadership induced during the original Russian Collusion Scam that divided the country.
This is a good working example of the microcosm of treachery, since after the fall. It is all based on relative morality that gives one person or side an advantage, but never justice for all. This is defined as good; for them, even if it involves evil.
As I said, [he]'s the early naive model of deity. Look at [his] motive for expelling Adam and Eve from the Garden ─ to stop them from rivaling him in power, as I quoted to you. Even in [his] next form [he]'s only one member of the Canaanite pantheon and as you probably know in archaeology (as distinct from the Tanakh) [he] earlier had a consort Asherah, a consort being usual among [his] fellow Canaanite deities.
Only after the Babylonian Captivity does [he] become the only God.
I define reality ─ aka objective reality, or nature ─ as the world external to the self. It's where all real things are found.
How do you define reality?
paradox
(㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ)
I can't disagree with you, this all correct in exoteric sense.
But did you not read how only high priest was allowed to enter the temple chamber?
This is an example of esoteric, a portion which the public was not allowed to see or know.
I linked to NABRE translation which is translation of the RCC, for this reason I consider it authoritative compared to other translations.
New American Bible Revised Edition - Wikipedia
Sadly I don't have my bible near me right now to find text references and to further verify translation,
but I'll check when I get home, I'm 300 km away from home right now.
You might find this surprising but I define it same as you.
Therefore, God exists in reality, we just have to find it such that the bible isn't misinterpreted, everything must fit together,
and for this literal interpretation can't help.
Then if God exists in reality, you can show [him] to me.
No one has been able to do that, not even a holiday snap.
There isn't even a definition of God appropriate to a being with objective existence, such that if we found a real suspect we could determine whether it was God or not.
Let alone a clear definition of "godness", the quality a real God would have and a superscientist who could create universes, raise the dead, travel in time and so on, would lack.
I think that means God exists only as an idea / concept / thing imagined in an individual brain. I can be persuaded by satisfactory evidence, but honestly, I've never found any.
And the bible is simply a collection ─ albeit in cultural and historical terms a remarkable collection ─ of ancient documents which we should approach just as we approach any ancient documents ─ what, when, where, who, why? How does it fit with what we know from other sources? Who would have benefited if its claims were correct? And so on.
Colt
Well-Known Member
Adam and Eve had immortality status. They did eventually die becuse they could no longer partake of the leaves from the "tree of life". Their deliberate sin altered them dramatically. However, they did repent but the fallen "crafty beast" did not.
The earth was already fallen and populated when Adam and Eve arrived. The beast was already evil, already working against Gods will for the pair which he had knowledge of.
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firedragon
Veteran Member
Nothing like that in the text Paradox. That's your personal imposition. And, you have to take the verses I gave you as context as well.
Anyway, thanks for engaging. Cheers.
QuestioningMind
Well-Known Member
That's what makes the bible such a magical book. Every time you find a contradiction all you have to do is find some 'hidden meaning' that enables you to claim that it says something completely different.
WonderingWorrier
Active Member
Have you heard of the golden apple?
I see it is also mentioned in the Bible
"A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver". Proverbs
I have noticed apple is in the same place as gold.
Group1 - Group2 - Group3
Brass - Silver - Gold
Pomegranate - Fig - Apple
Cattle - Goat - Sheep.
Hence there is a golden apple.
And there are Brass Pomegranates:
And a chapiter of brass was upon it; and the height of one chapiter was five cubits, with network and pomegranates upon the chapiters round about, all of brass. The second pillar also and the pomegranates were like unto these. 2 Kings.
Have you ever heard of Silver Figs?
Have you heard Adam and Eve wore fig leaves?
paradox
(㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ)
How?, I don't see this mentioned anywhere.
except that what ever meaning you come out with must fit perfectly with the rest of the bible, otherwise it's false.
Ezekiel 18:20
Obviously there is hidden meaning here since we all sin but do not die.
Is this death different from death in garden of Eden?
Spiritual death means to be separated from God, so how would you connect 2 cases of deaths to single meaning? (one if garden of Eden and other mentioned in Ezekiel)
What is not mentioned in the text?
knowledge of good and evil is mentioned, knowing truth is mentioned, death is mentioned, everything I claimed so far is mentioned but left to interpretation.
Fruit or apple, does this change anything? #3