The Bible-Garden of Eden

[Eli]

Originally posted by Berzerker
And yet the Bible says the people alive then were descendents of the Ark survivors. Btw, the Israelites weren't advanced compared to many neighbors, they were a hill tribe surrounded by great civilisations. But your point is valid, when advanced peoples meet primitives there is a tendency to see them as more animal-like. But this is about the Garden and man's fall, not the fall of Israelites. The Bible accurately describes an ancient transition from animal to human...

Yes.
The creation story didnt have to originate among the Israelites. I'm doubtful of the ability of a tiny nomad tribe to create such a story. It makes more sense that it was created by those advanced civilizations and adopted by the Israelites who then attached to it their own history.

And I'm not sure I understand what you meant with the first sentence about the Ark.

I agree, the loincloth symbolism refers to sex (or procreation) but it has an implied message - the Bible's author(s) knew man's fall was his ascendency from nature and it happened long ago. There is a passage in the Bible where God says his spirit will reside in man for 120 years. But these years are not human years, they are God's years. And according to the Mesopotamians, God's year lasted 3,600 human years. Thats 432,000 years, within the range of the scientific evidence of our "enolution".

Well, you have to make some significant leaps to reach this conclusion. What is the exact passage you're talking about?

[The diplomat]

The loincloth cannot refer to sex because God specifically instructs Adam and Eve to "be fruitful and multiplify". In other words, God told Adam and Eve to have a lot of sex.

Remember, God is not against sex. He is only against sexual activity outside of the boundaries of marriage, but inside the boundaries of marriage, God actually encourages sex.

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by The diplomat
The loincloth cannot refer to sex because God specifically instructs Adam and Eve to "be fruitful and multiplify". In other words, God told Adam and Eve to have a lot of sex.

The directive to be fruitful and multiply is not given to Adam and Eve. It is given in the first chapter of Genesis, to the unnamed man and woman who are to populate the earth. Adam and Eve are created in the second (and contradictory) chapter of Genesis, in sexless isolation in Eden, who don't lay with one another until the third chapter, after their expulsion from Eden.

If God is pro-procreation, and if the fruit of the tree genuinely does confer knowledge of good and evil, then why would Adam feel shame if nakedness was not an aspect of evil?

Eli: Genesis 6:3: "He said: 'My spirit will not remain on people (sab') forever for they are flesh. Their lifespan is to be 120 years."
It seems to refer to the lifespan of individual humans rather than the species. That whole section is confusing though, with separate references to the daughters of men, the Sons of God and the Nephilim.

Berz: God himself fashioned loin cloths for them (3:21). He discovered that they ate from the tree when Adam realises his nakedness and hides in shame from God as he comes looking for Adam. Despite the little details, a more fundamental flaw in your argument appears to be the assumption that because some myth describes the arrival of humanity, it must necessarily understand evolution.

How can a biblical story span eons describing events ~300,000 years ago?

Oral tradition and then writing. Note that the events described are clearly not passed on with any great deal of accuracy until writing, since many of the more major details (like one couple inventing morality, like snakes talking, like the existence of Eden, God, the tree, etc) are allegorical or just plain bull**** just-so-stories. Given that, I would be surprised if there were no such story claiming to describe such events. The fact that they loosely correlate with fact is coincidence: of course humanity and morality had a point of inception.

How could the biblical authors even know about our departure from nature and implicitly, about evolution?

Is that the departure from nature where we are created out of clay by an omnipotent deity? I can think of much better ways to display an understanding of evolution that saying "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."

[Last Conformist]

It's a myth. Myths don't have to make sense (cf Libertarianism ).

[Eli]

Genesis 6:3: "He said: 'My spirit will not remain on people (sab') forever for they are flesh. Their lifespan is to be 120 years."
It seems to refer to the lifespan of individual humans rather than the species. That whole section is confusing though, with separate references to the daughters of men, the Sons of God and the Nephilim.

The English translation made sense of the sentence. Try reading 6:3 in Hebrew. I dont even understand two of the words.

[lord of the mark]

'Finally, the Rabbis reread the early stories of Genesis through the lens of repentance, detecting instances unnoticed before. Midrash served to modify an outdated theology. For example, the ancient Aramaic translation of the Torah by Onqelos gave Genesis 6:3 a significant twist. Whereas the original Hebrew text seemed to express divine exasperation at human inconstancy, limiting the life span of humankind to but 120 years, Onqelos rendered it to mean that God would allow but another 120 years for teshuvah before God would unleash a universal flood: "And God said that this evil generation shall not endure before me forever; for they are flesh and their deeds are evil. I will grant them an extension of 120 years, [to see] if they repent (James T. Kugel, The Bible As It Was, p. 113)." '

[SpencerH]

I wrote a paper whose thesis was that god tossed em out of eden after eating fruit from the tree of knowledge in order to prevent em from eating from the tree of life and becoming gods themselves i.e. to prevent competition.

[Immortal Wombat]

Was it a long paper, or just "See Genesis 3:22"?

3:22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know 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

[Eli]

IW's quote above reminds me that I learned more bible quotes from playing SMAC than in 10 years of bible lessons in school.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
Was it a long paper, or just "See Genesis 3:22"?

I guess you didnt notice the difference. Perhaps it's too subtle, mine includes 'the why'.

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by SpencerH
I wrote a paper whose thesis was that god tossed em out of eden after eating fruit from the tree of knowledge in order to prevent em from eating from the tree of life and becoming gods themselves i.e. to prevent competition.

a pretty common idea..

at least now

JM

[DRoseDARs]

Ah, but why eat of the Tree of Life when, given time, you can grow one yourself and eat of it instead...

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Jon Miller


a pretty common idea..

at least now

JM

I started it

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by SpencerH
I guess you didnt notice the difference. Perhaps it's too subtle, mine includes 'the why'.

That's the "become one of us" bit, no?

[lord of the mark]

'Topics in this digest: Berei**** 5764
The story of Adam and Eve eating of the tree of knowledge is a troubling story. The tree is officially called “eitz hada’at tov v’ra,” the tree of the knowledge of good and bad. So if prior to eating from this tree Adam didn’t know good from bad, how could he possibly be punished for eating from it? We all know that in secular law there is what is called the “insanity defense,” an excuse which Jay Handel unsuccessfully tried to invoke in his recent murder trial in Campbell River.

But the insanity defense is older than that. It is also a principle in halacha, in Jewish law. People who were considered mentally incompetent were not held responsible for their actions, and were not permitted to enter into contracts. It has come to be accepted logic that someone who does not know good from evil needs treatment, not punishment.

So if Adam didn’t know good from evil, couldn’t he have invoked the “insanity” defense? Couldn’t he have said, “well, God, until I ate from that tree I didn’t know that eating from it would be doing anything wrong. I didn’t know the difference between good and bad. Now that I do know the difference because I ate from the tree, OK, now I’m warned!”

Rabbi Yosef Horowitz, the Alter of Novardok, gives an explanation in his Mussar book “Madreigat HaAdam,” the Levels of Man.

Even if Adam didn’t know good from evil, he still should not have done what he did. Adam was the first man, created directly by the hand of God. Obviously someone at a very high spiritual level. God’s child. Someone God spoke to. Even if Adam didn’t know good from evil, it doesn’t say he didn’t know truth from falsehood. If God had told him not to do something, how could he possibly do something that was contrary to God’s will? Children obey their parents even before they understand the difference between good and evil.

Rabbi Horowitz suggests that when God told Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and bad, it wasn’t a commandment. Rather, it was advice. God was telling Adam, “that tree in the middle of the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and bad—listen to me, don’t eat from it. Boy, if you eat from it, you’ll be sorry. If you eat from that tree, you’ll die.”

Adam, being created b’tzelem Elokim, in God’s image, had free will. He could choose whether to follow this advice or not. So why did Adam choose not to follow God’s “aitzah tova,” Her good advice?

What the tree of knowledge unleashed was physical appetites. When first created, Adam was like an angel—he didn’t have physical needs and desires at all. He knew such things existed, but only in an abstract, intellectual sort of way. The effect of eating from the tree of knowledge was to implant physical desires into the person. After eating from the tree, Adam would no longer be like an angel with no physical desires: he would become a person with all of the accompanying appetites for food, drink, sex, comfort, and so on.

So why give up the life of an angel to become a true human? Because Adam figured that if he could have all of those physical desires, and conquer them, he would be at an even higher spiritual level than he already was. That if he could be tested in this way, and remain true to God, if he could control those desires, he would advance spiritually. There is a teaching in the Talmud that a tzadik gamur, a completely righteous person, cannot stand in the place of a ba’al teshuva, a person who has sinned and repented.

The logic is simple. If you grew up in a completely observant home and never tasted treif, you have no idea what you are missing. You have no particular appetite for things you’ve never had, so it’s no big deal to keep kosher. On the other hand, if you know just how tasty a pepperoni pizza is—or freshly fried abalone, or shrimp scampi, or a Philly cheese steak—and you still give it up to keep kosher, that shows a very serious commitment to God. It takes someone at a higher spiritual level.

So Adam decided to challenge himself in this way. He said, thanks God, for the good advice, but if I’m to grow spiritually, I need to do this. Any parents of college age kids can probably relate to this: we try to give them advice on how to do things to make life easier for themselves, but they have to do it their own way anyway.

According to this view, Adam didn’t sin at all. Rather, he simply chose not to follow God’s advice, because he thought he would be up to the challenge and he would grow as a result. Unfortunately, Adam’s descendants, Mankind, was NOT up to the challenge—in a few generations, by the days of Noah, people were being ruled by their appetites and God found it so repugnant He decided to start over.

I would suggest that this decision of Adam’s—the decision to take a chance, to take a risk, in order to improve himself—is what makes Adam Man. If you look at the stories our tradition tells around angels you will find that angels have no desire for improvement. In Hollywood language, angels have no “character arc.” They are what they are. You don’t see Rafael or Micha’el striving to be Metatron. The angels all have their assigned role, and they all seem content with whatever it may be.

While being given free will may be what made Adam “God-like,” having this urge for self-improvement is what made Adam “Man-like.” We each have a desire for improvement. Rare is the person who is completely satisfied with the status quo. Some of us long for spiritual improvement, like Adam did—longing for a closer relationship with our Creator. Others may simply desire a better physical lot in life—more money which translates into more “fun,” and more “goodies.” But all of us are looking for something. We all have some realm in which we hope to see improvement.

Adam chose to take the test. He chose to eat from the tree in his quest for spiritual improvement. In a way, each of us is given that test of Adam’s. When we reach the age of puberty—roughly Bar Mitzvah age—we have an experience not unlike what Adam went through. Physical desires are aroused in a new way. Not just the obvious budding of sexuality, but even our tastes in food and drink change. Whether we ask for it or not, God has us eat from the tree of knowledge of good and bad. Children are seen as “angel-like” in their purity and innocence. We give that up to become adults.

Our tradition does not say “bad idea! No!” and deny it. We do not have a tradition of monks who strive to go back to a state similar to Adam before he ate from the Tree. We do not say “deny sex, deny physical comfort, be an angel.” Not at all. To the contrary we are told that Adam was right in a way: those physical desires—what we would call the yetzer hara, the evil inclination—can be used as a vehicle for spiritual advancement. The difference between us and Adam is that we have a tool that Adam didn’t: we have the Torah. The guidance of the Torah tells us to take those negative inclinations—the potentially harmful tendencies we have—and direct them toward holiness. Don’t deny the desire for sex and intimacy by trying to imitate an angel by being celibate, but rather express that desire in the context of love and marriage, thereby elevating that physical desire into something holy. And thereby becoming greater, holier, than we would have been without that desire in the first place.

We learn from Adam that to be human is to be on a quest, to seek improvement. We must remember to seek the right things, as it says in Proverbs chapter 2: Indeed, if you cry after knowledge, and lift up your voice for understanding; If you seek her like silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures; Then shall you understand yirat Hashem, fear of the Lord, and find the da’at Elokim, knowledge of God.

It is a great mitzvah to serve God with great joy, always...R. Nachman of Breslov

Rabbi Barry Leff
Beth Tikvah Congregation
9711 Geal Road
Richmond, BC V7E 1R4'