Why didn't the snake feed Adam & Eve from both trees?

Kolibri · Feb 13, 2015

Gerald Kelleher said:
Try this -

Theologia Germanica - Christian Classics Ethereal Library

1) there was no 'apple'
2) there are no scriptures cited in the link to support any of it.

Moni_Gail · Feb 13, 2015

Kolibri said:
You may need to flesh out your statement about Adam and Even fulfilling their original purpose. Are you saying that their purpose was to leave the garden? I personally do not see that as possible. Their stated purpose was Ge 1:28. Leaving the Garden created a detour, it was not the purpose. Ge 3:15 was the solution to the detour. And the sacred secret about this prophesy was progressively revealed throughout history.

Satan gets very little attention in the Hebrew portion of the Bible. Most of which was in the first 2 chapters of Job. There is one instance at 1 Chronicles 21:1 and he is also mentioned in Zechariah 3:1,2. It is in these places where there is use of the definite article ha before sa-tan' to show it is a title-name. All 3 of these areas put Satan in an unfavorable light. And while the account in Job might be construed to be Satan working for God. Zechariah points to a completely different conclusion.

"And he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of Jehovah, and Satan was standing at his right hand to resist him. Then the angel of Jehovah said to Satan: 'May Jehovah rebuke you, O Satan, yes, may Jehovah, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you! Is not this one a burning log snatched out of the fire?'" - Zechariah 3:1,2

Moni_Gail said:
And the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden, to till the soil (which according to 2:5 was his purpose all along), whence he had been taken.

I didn't go further into it because I had mentioned it in an earlier post. I find that repetition can come across as condescending. Their purpose was to till the land.

Moni_Gail said:
Genesis 2:5 states: "Now no tree of the field was yet on the earth, neither did any herb of the field yet grow, because the Lord God had not brought rain upon the earth, and there was no man to work the soil." The stage has been set, and then creation begins. This implies that, according to the story, man's purpose is to till the land. Therefore, this is not punishment, but man finally fulfilling his purpose in creation. Note that the first thing they notice when they gain knowledge is their own nudity. They now have a sexual awareness. They are then taken from a childlike, edenic existence into the real world of adult responsibilities. It seems more a rite of passage, if you will - from childhood, to adolescence (knowledge and budding sexuality), into adulthood (labor and childbirth).

Side note, I specifically chose Genesis 2 because according to the documentary hypothesis this is the older creation myth. Genesis 2 is assumed to have been from around 950 BCE and Genesis 1 is estimated to be from around 400 BCE.

As to satan, no he does not get much attention in the Hebrew portion of the Bible. The idea of satan and the role he currently takes within Christianity evolved over time. This is why I cannot see any correlation between Christianity's current idea of satan and that of the intended audience and authors of Gensis as it pertains to creation.

Kolibri · Feb 13, 2015

Moni_Gail said:
Their purpose was to till the land.

yes I can agree with that. My concern was whether or not you were pointing to the eating of the forbidden fruit as being part of that purpose or not. There are denominations that teach that.

Thank you for the reclarification.

Kolibri · Feb 13, 2015

Moni_Gail said:
The idea of satan and the role he currently takes within Christianity evolved over time.

I can see how this can be seen from a philosophical point of view. My take is from a divine revelation point of view. Not much material was given out about Satan until Jesus, not because there was an evolution of myth taking place, but it just was not God's time to add more detail until then.

ChristineES · Feb 13, 2015

ideogenous_mover said:
Eh, not everyone sees it the same. Intelligence I see as our salvation, and properly directed, the last thing we should be guilty about.

I once burned myself (as a child) after my mother told me not to touch the stove.

It was my own fault. We all do see things differently.

rosends · Feb 13, 2015

Kolibri said:
You may need to flesh out your statement about Adam and Even fulfilling their original purpose. Are you saying that their purpose was to leave the garden? I personally do not see that as possible. Their stated purpose was Ge 1:28. Leaving the Garden created a detour, it was not the purpose. Ge 3:15 was the solution to the detour. And the sacred secret about this prophesy was progressively revealed throughout history.

Satan gets very little attention in the Hebrew portion of the Bible. Most of which was in the first 2 chapters of Job. There is one instance at 1 Chronicles 21:1 and he is also mentioned in Zechariah 3:1,2. It is in these places where there is use of the definite article ha before sa-tan' to show it is a title-name. All 3 of these areas put Satan in an unfavorable light. And while the account in Job might be construed to be Satan working for God. Zechariah points to a completely different conclusion.

"And he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of Jehovah, and Satan was standing at his right hand to resist him. Then the angel of Jehovah said to Satan: 'May Jehovah rebuke you, O Satan, yes, may Jehovah, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you! Is not this one a burning log snatched out of the fire?'" - Zechariah 3:1,2

The Zechariah quote doesn't put Ha Soton in a bad light, it simply provides a defense attorney to counter the claims of the prosecuting attorney with God acting as the defense attorney. The accusation against the high priest would have been about his allowing his sons to intermarry. (Ezra 10:18) God defends Joshua and touts his (Joshua's) merits as a righteous man, referencing a story of Joshua's being cast into fire and saved.

Gerald Kelleher · Feb 13, 2015

Kolibri said:
1) there was no 'apple'
2) there are no scriptures cited in the link to support any of it.

"It hath been said, that there is of nothing so much in hell as of self-will. The which is true, for there is nothing else there than self-will, and if there were no self-will, there would be no Devil and no hell. When it is said that Lucifer fell from Heaven, and turned away from God and the like, it meaneth nothing else than that he would have his own will, and would not be at one with the Eternal Will. So was it likewise withAdam in Paradise. And when we say Self-will, we mean, to will otherwise than as the One and Eternal Will of God willeth."

Theologia Germanica

It is a little bit misleading but spirited people generally can work things out without instruction hence eden,heaven and so on during a journey through life.

All people understand these things at their own level or rather, like the Book Of Job, the central character is subject to some incident and then the curtain rises on real human nature, at least for people who can dispense with the surface narrative.

Kolibri · Feb 13, 2015

Gerald Kelleher said:
"It hath been said, that there is of nothing so much in hell as of self-will. The which is true, for there is nothing else there than self-will, and if there were no self-will, there would be no Devil and no hell. When it is said that Lucifer fell from Heaven, and turned away from God and the like, it meaneth nothing else than that he would have his own will, and would not be at one with the Eternal Will. So was it likewise withAdam in Paradise. And when we say Self-will, we mean, to will otherwise than as the One and Eternal Will of God willeth."

Theologia Germanica

It is a little bit misleading but spirited people generally can work things out without instruction hence eden,heaven and so on during a journey through life.

All people understand these things at their own level or rather, like the Book Of Job, the central character is subject to some incident and then the curtain rises on real human nature, at least for people who can dispense with the surface narrative.

Just because there is free will does not mean we were destined to have resisters and slanderers. But you are saying self-will, not free will. If you are merely saying independence, then I can concede your point.

And there is a value to constantly citing/quoting the scriptures directly. Inaccuracies, over time, can be cleared up. One in particular I was letting go of. But it seems it should be mentioned after all (as it came up twice now in the thread.) Lucifer is not a name for Satan. It literally means "shining one", and it was a sarcastic title used against the king of Babylon. (Isa 14:4,12) Later today I will need to go back and re-research due to @rosends ' post, as Zech 3 is not something I have looked at in depth recently. Can't say I will agree with him, but his objection does merit my research.

Gerald Kelleher · Feb 13, 2015

Kolibri said:
Just because there is free will does not mean we were destined to have resisters and slanderers. But you are saying self-will, not free will. If you are merely saying independence, then I can concede your point.

The point is that as long as you are not trying to make sense of the surface narrative with a snake,a tree and a hapless individual and treat the text on its own terms then things start to move as they are supposed to. The same with the fantastic ages of the 10 Patriarchs and the bridging period from Adam to Noah -

The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion - Joseph Campbell - Google Books

Wonderful break with Enoch with his lifespan of 365 years mirroring 365 days but you have to take these things as artist,poet,musician or any endeavor which involves tapping in with the creative spirit. You see we are not so far away from Adam,Eden or the wonderful author of Genesis.

Kolibri · Feb 13, 2015

Gerald Kelleher said:
The point is that as long as you are not trying to make sense of the surface narrative with a snake,a tree and a hapless individual and treat the text on its own terms then things start to move as they are supposed to. The same with the fantastic ages of the 10 Patriarchs and the bridging period from Adam to Noah -

The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion - Joseph Campbell - Google Books

Wonderful break with Enoch with his lifespan of 365 years mirroring 365 days but you have to take these things as artist,poet,musician or any endeavor which involves tapping in with the creative spirit. You see we are not so far away from Adam,Eden or the wonderful author of Genesis.

What is fantastic about the ages? Since man was so genetically close to perfection, would not these years be plausible? And did not even Methuselah die within a day according to how Jehovah counts time? (Ps 90:4; 2 Pe 3:8) If one tried to count the years as months, some of these men would have become fathers way before puberty. Look at how late we reach our prime and how early we die. Do not animals have a much longer time to spend in their adult years in comparison to their formulative ones? Are we not also made of flesh?

Gerald Kelleher · Feb 13, 2015

Kolibri said:
What is fantastic about the ages? Since man was so genetically close to perfection, would not these years be plausible? And did not even Methuselah die within a day according to how Jehovah counts time? (Ps 90:4; 2 Pe 3:8) If one tried to count the years as months, some of these men would have become fathers way before puberty. Look at how late we reach our prime and how early we die. Do not animals have a much longer time to spend in their adult years in comparison to their formulative ones? Are we not also made of flesh?

It takes the eye and heart of an artist to gain satisfaction from the canvas created by the Hebrew Poet so we journey back to Eden by our own individual way just as Job entered a whirlwind of his own misery to reach the calm center. Fall we will but rise we must and that is always a very human story and one Genesis contains.

It is why Christianity doesn't end on the cross but in the garden.

Gerald Kelleher · Feb 13, 2015

Kolibri said:
What is fantastic about the ages? Since man was so genetically close to perfection, would not these years be plausible?

I respect that you may need to consider Genesis in that way as everyone approaches the text as a mirror of where they are as individuals in relation to Christ, Eden or Adam .

The exaggerated ages of the Patriarchs is set against one particular lifespan and a break with the formula "Then he died" at that individual. It is of course an artistic invitation and it is such a lovely work. I never stopped being amazed that one day of the creation narrative overlaps one day in the genealogical chain but again this is just someone expressing a wonderful craftmanship that many people might miss.

For the unbeliever or those who set aside the surface narrative of Genesis as contrived, there is always the words of St Augustine to draw them back into looking at these narratives with a fresh approach -

"If anyone shall set the authority of Holy Writ against clear and
manifest reason, he who does this knows not what he has undertaken;
for he opposes to the truth not the meaning of the Bible, which is
beyond his comprehension, but rather his own interpretation, not what
is in the Bible, but what he has found in himself and imagines to be
there." St Augustine

Why didn't the snake feed Adam & Eve from both trees?

Kolibri

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Moni_Gail

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ChristineES

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