At that fateful moment, Adam and Eve are standing together at the tree, and although only the woman and the serpent speak, Adam was present, and it seems he accepted the fruit that his wife handed him. He was fully complicitous, and indeed, Yahweh holds him responsible. Yahweh reproaches Adam. Adam says: Well, Eve handed to me. She gave it to me. Eve explains, the serpent tricked me. Yahweh vents his fury on all three, and he does so in ascending order: first the serpent for his trickery and then the woman, and finally the man. The doctrine of original sin, which is the idea that humans after Adam are born into a state of sin, by definition. The actions of Adam and Eve bring death to the human race, they don’t bring a state of utter and unredeemed sinfulness. In fact, humans have moral choice in each and every age. Adam and Eve after eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and bad, they also lose their harmonious relationship with nature. There had been a peaceful relationship between creatures and humans to that point. Humans are banished now from the Garden. It used to yield its fruits to them without any labor, but now humans have to toil for food and the earth yields its fruits only stintingly. The humans will learn that the concomitant of their freedom is responsibility. Their first act of defiance is punished harshly. So they learn, that the moral choices and actions of humans have consequences that have to be borne by the perpetrator. Evil is a product of human behavior, not a principal inherent in the cosmos; man’s disobedience is the cause of the human predicament. So knowledge or wisdom or perhaps moral freedom, seems to come at a very high price.
The disobedience happens in a rather backhanded way. It’s interesting, Yahweh tells Adam before the creation of Eve that he’s not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and bad, lest you die. Eve doesn’t hear this command directly, she hasn’t been created. Then we meet the cunning serpent, and although many will identify the serpent as Satan, an enticer, a tempter, some sort of evil creature, the serpent doesn’t seem to be so. The serpent in Eden is simply a talking animal.
Adam and Eve after eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and bad are like Yahweh; they have become wise in that they have learned they have moral choice. They have free will, they can defy Yahweh and Yahweh’s plans for them in a way that animals and natural phenomena cannot. But now that means there is a serious danger here, Yahweh says, “Now that the man has become like one of us, knowing good and bad, what if he should stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and life forever!” So the acceptance of mortality as an inescapable part of the human condition, the quest for immortality, Yahweh could not afford to allow them access to the tree of life, and Yahweh maintains the upper hand in this, the fact that they eventually must die. Yahweh has to punt the ball, he has to modify his plans by barring access to the tree of life, humans are going to be a force to be reckoned with. Because of the length of these reasoning’s, read more at;
http://thatlifeyahwehhas.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2011-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2012-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=12
Thanks for any insights.
this story is too human to be divine isnt it
Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness’.
isnt human from divine memory?
if this story explains why humans degenerate, it utterly failed to achieve its objective.
its just too simplistic and doesnt make any sense at all.
The actual happenings are passed down, in some unknown language.
It would be condescending, as it get further and further in time, from the actual event.
Then it is translated.
Then it is written.
Then the written form is translated.
It is passed down again condescendingly in Hebrew, Aramic, Greek
Then translated into English.
What is the fruit of the tree of knowledge? It is at best a metaphor, but we take it at its literal meaning. That is the greatest folly.
Adam, Garden of Eden, serpent, tree of life, what all these actually mean. We still don't know, but they are certainly not what they mean in the English language.
yes written by unknown ancient men then in the era, 2000 plus years ago.
the post looks good..address some problems that the churches lie about..
why adam bear the brunt of it was he was the head of the family..the serpent was revealed to be satan..not some cartoonish random talking animal..
humans are created with freewill just like the angels were..there is no evidence to show humans didnt know that prior to the fruit event.
since adam was to take charge of eve.he surely had passed on the message of dont eat or die...eve might not have heard it from God directly but if shes a good submissive wife as she was supposed to be..there will be no such sin..she was vain..reached out for the fruit, tasted it..and passed to adam..