G’day, Bible Study Class

We’ve located the Garden of Eden. It is now underwater, unfortunately, at the head of the Persian Gulf, near Bahrain. It was into this gulf that the Tigris and Euphrates rivers spilled their waters in antiquity. Nearby, the Karun River, which bears a similar name to the Bible’s Gihon River, flows southeast through Iran towards the Gulf. We discovered all this by using Google Earth.

We have also located the Ark of the Covenant. It is in a secret chamber deep within the Temple Mount, underneath the present-day Dome of the Rock. It was hidden there by Jeremiah immediately before the Neo-Babylonian destruction of the Temple in 586 B.C. We are leaving it there since there may have been five more commandments than previously thought, and so we may have broken some of them.

Tonight’s homework is to have a wild evening sitting around reading the Dead Sea Scrolls while drinking wine. Be prepared to act them out. See you tomorrow.

Would you or anyone care if we explore a possible 'new paradigm' ( in another thread perhaps ? ). Not that it's necessarily a new paradigm mind you, in our discussions we did nevertheless uncover other concepts relative to the tree of life such as: good and bad, finitude, temporal-ness, self-awareness, humility, imperfection, et.al.

The following is an example of what's already out there which is all part of our concerns I think:

"In the past historians of religion and other students of myth (creation narrative) thought of them as forms of primitive or early-stage science or religion and analyzed them in a literal or logical sense. Today, however, they are seen as symbolic narratives which must be understood in terms of their own cultural context. Charles Long writes, "The beings referred to in the myth – gods, animals, plants – are forms of power grasped existentially. The myths should not be understood as attempts to work out a rational explanation of deity."[22]

I don't mind starting a new thread and propose a more healthier perspective (and how it squares with judgment), something along the lines of :

The tree of life: a proposed paradigm?

Knowledge of ethics? What they knew after they ate of the tree was that they were naked, and they felt shame. I wouldn't call that "ethics," but rather the knowledge of sexuality. Which is what I think the story is about: humans have very complex sexual instincts which wreak all sorts of havoc in our lives. I think God already know what A & E would do, knew that they wouldn't stay all perfect in the garden all their lives, because that isn't human nature. Human nature is all about screwing up. The majority doesn't seem to care of acknowledge their screw-ups, and there is a minority that recognizes when it screws up and seeks to remedy the situation.

God would have been so bored if A&E had stayed put, but as I wrote, he created a species that was bound and determined to try any- and everything.

The real story:

از کجا نمادهای فلور

With flora mystical and magical,
Eden’s botanical garden was blest,
So Eve, taking more than just the Apple,
Plucked off the loveliest of the best.

Thus it’s to Eve that we must give our thanks,
For Earth’s variety of fruits and plants,
For when she was out of Paradise thrown,
She stole all the flowers we’ve ever known.

Therewith, through sensuous beauty and grace,
Eve with Adam brought forth the human race,
But our world would never have come to be,
Had not God allowed them His mystery.

When they were banished from His bosom,
Eve saw more than just the Apple Blossom,
And took, on her way through Eden’s bowers,
Many wondrous plants and fruitful flowers.

Mighty God, upon seeing this great theft,
At first was angered, but soon smiled and wept,
For human nature was made in His name—
So He had no one but Himself to blame!

Yet still He made ready His thunderbolt,
As His Old Testament wrath cast its vote
To end this experiment gone so wrong—
But then He felt the joy of life’s new song.

Eve had all the plants that she could carry;
God in His wisdom grew uncontrary.
Out of Eden she waved the flowered wands,
The seeds spilling upon the barren lands.

God held the lightning bolt already lit,
No longer knowing what to do with it,
So He threw it into the heart of Hell,
Forming of it a place where all was well.

Thus the world from molten fire had birth,
As Hell faded and was turned into Earth.
This He gave to Adam and Eve, with love,
For them and theirs to make a Heaven of.

From His bolt grew the Hawthorn and Bluebell,
And He be damned, for Eve stole these as well!
So He laughed and pretended not to see,
Retreating into eternity.

‘So be it,’ He said, when time was young,
‘That such is the life My design has wrung,
For in their souls some part of Me has sprung—
So let them enjoy all the songs I’ve sung.

‘Life was much too easy in Paradise,
And lacked therefore of any real meaning,
For without the lows there can be no highs—
All that remains is a dull flat feeling!

‘There’s no Devil to blame for their great zest—
This mix of good and bad makes them best!
The human nature that makes them survive,
Also lets them feel very much alive.

‘That same beastful soul that makes them glad
Does also make them seem a little bad.
If only I could strip the wrong from right,
But I cannot have the day without the night!’

So, for example, if you are a parent and you know that the child doesn't understand how dangerous the road is, would you say it is immoral to warn them to not go there? — Serving Zion

A warning is good, but you forget that what god warned about was exactly want he put Satan in Eden himself, which had the ability do deceive the whole world.

That takes quite the prick of a god, especially when his warning was followed by his murdering A & R by neglect and his hiding away what would have kept A & E alive. The tree of life.

You seem to think that those murders by god to be justified. Do you?

How do you suppose your question fits with the doctrine in John 14:10?

"Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me? The words I say to you, I do not speak on My own; but the Father dwelling in Me does His works." — Serving Zion

So you like that a man does not take responsibility for his own words.

No wonder you are promoting a god who wishes you to use a scapegoat.

I think that you do not want to step up to your own responsibilities as well.

You have swallowed a lie and don’t care how evil you make Jesus to keep your feel good get out of hell free card.

It is a lie, first and foremost because, like it or not, having another innocent person suffer or die for the wrongs you have done, --- so that you might escape responsibility for having done them, --- is immoral. To abdicate your personal responsibility for your actions or use a scapegoat is immoral.

You also have to ignore what Jesus, as a Jewish Rabbi, would have taught his people.

Ezekiel 18:20 The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.

Deuteronomy 24:16 (ESV) "Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin.

Psa 49;7 None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him:

There is no way that you would teach your children to use a scapegoat to escape their just punishments and here you are doing just that.

Jesus is just a smidge less immoral than his demiurge genocidal father, and here you are trying to put him as low in moral fibre as Yahweh. Satan applauds you though as you are doing her work.

Regards
DL

You have ejected the founding facts from the story in order to express that view. The world was paradise in absence of sin (Genesis 1:31), and it becomes the opposite through it (Genesis 6:5-7). — Serving Zion

So you think that man's higherst form is to be too stupid to even know we was naked and having his moral sense as bling, as scriptures state was the state of A & E.

Would you deny your children the tree of all knowledge and an education?

Would you think they were their best when as bright as bricks?

Regards
DL

Until you bring your views to align with the facts, — Serving Zion

There are no real facts in a book of fiction.

Only fools read myths like it was history.

Regards
DL

How does it happen that you don't see it? 1 Corinthians 13 is a popular definition of love, including: — Serving Zion

Sure but your god is not an example of love, according to your own definition.

Regards
DL

I don't live that way though, and the world wasn't like that to begin with — Serving Zion

Are you that foolish as to believe that there were real talking serpents and donkeys?

If you are that big of a literalist fool then best to ignore me as I think you are a waste of good air if you are that mentally dysfunctional

I use this on occasion as the writer asks a good question on who is a good Christian and who is a poor one. You live in poverty while i live in wealth.

Regards
DL
.

I wouldn't call that "ethics," — uncanni

Then you are not good at analogical thinking.

Gen 3; 22 And the LORD God said: 'Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil;

If you know of good and evil, that would mean you have attained moral thinking and know of the ethical actions that should be taken. Right?

If you would not say they learned ethics, what do you think is meant by their knowing and learning of good and evil?

Regards
DL

Gen 3; 22 And the LORD God said: 'Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil;

If you know of good and evil, that would mean you have attained moral thinking and know of the ethical actions that should be taken. Right? — Gnostic Christian Bishop

What I meant was the A&E's immediate reaction. The snake promises one thing, but after she passes it to Adam and they ate: "Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they perceived that they were naked; and they sewed together fig leaves and made themselves loincloths" (JPS Jewish Study Bible Gen 3:7).

Then they hide from God. That's where it starts getting ethical, in my reading. When they lie to God about hiding from him is when it gets ethical.

However, prior to feeling ashamed and hiding from God, I'm fascinated by their first recognition of their private parts and the need to cover them. That part isn't ethical to me, and this is my midrash, my commentary: It's the birth of the problem of sexuality in patriarchal Judaism. The natural is seen as unnatural to A&E, so they invent clothing to cover up their private parts. I would call this a form of implicit guilt about/terror of sexual desire. This is an on-going issue shoring up the patriarchal and frequently repressive version of things all the way through the Tanakh and the rabbinic writings up until the 20th century.

Regards back atchya s

What an amazing poem; who wrote it?

That takes quite the prick of a god, especially when his warning was followed by his murdering A & R by neglect and his hiding away what would have kept A & E alive. The tree of life. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

I think you are trying to read Genesis like a contemporary whodunit novel. The way I read it: A&E are banished from the garden and forced to go out and experience all the joys and pains of human life. It's kind of condensed down to farming and childbearing, but God gives them the entire gamut of human experience in the expectation that they will learn how to do it right.

God never planned to keep them like a Barbie and Ken in the garden: they wouldn't have been human if they hadn't responded to God's command with the NO of the two-year-old who is acquiring both the physical coordination and the mental calculations to make her/his own decision: "NO: I'ma do things my way. I must be fully human and make my own mistakes--not a doll, an automaton."

I believe that God had to let go completely when humans were created: God understood that it was creating a species incapable of being controlled or limited by instinct. God's still waiting for us to get it right, and repair the world, tikkun olam...

If you would not say they learned ethics, what do you think is meant by their knowing and learning of good and evil? — Gnostic Christian Bishop

If you think humanity ‘learned ethics’ at this point, then you haven’t been paying attention. We haven’t even ‘learned ethics’ now.

‘Knowing good and evil’ (there is no reference to learning here, which is experience-based) refers to a knowledge or awareness of self in participation with the world, and thus a perception of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ as it pertains to the self (ie. subjective and naive judgement). Their first sense of awareness was to recognise their vulnerability as an entity distinct from the world - their nakedness - and to fear it. From the POV of an entity interacting with the world, vulnerability is a ‘bad’ thing, because it exposes one to interaction from the everything that could be harmful to this entity. So the first action A&E take in interacting with the world is to yank leaves off a tree and hide their nakedness.

Knowing ‘good’ and ‘evil’ is different from ‘learning ethics’. A&E may have gained an initial awareness, but they were a long way from understanding what ‘good’ or ‘evil’ pertain to in any objective sense of the universe. That would take a wealth of experience gained over time (something A&E had within reach).

"Knowing ‘good’ and ‘evil’ is different from ‘learning ethics’. A&E may have gained an initial awareness, but they were a long way from understanding what ‘good’ or ‘evil’ pertain to in any objective sense of the universe. That would take a wealth of experience gained over time "

That's nice! It makes me think of the differences between lower life-forms and higher degrees of consciousness. Meaning lower life-forms work mostly from instinct. Where higher life-forms (self-aware Beings) are born with more of a blank slate. Like the brain of a computer where data is entered/received to make the software work.

What an amazing poem; who wrote it? — uncanni

I wrote it. It's the intro portion of a much longer poem, 'Flora Symbolica', about the lore and legends of the flowers and plants. I'll have to figure where to put the rest of it out—perhaps I'll put it in my 'Omar Khayyam' thread. It's one of my favorite long poems that sustains one subject.

Wow!!!!!!!!

‘Life was much too easy in Paradise,
And lacked therefore of any real meaning,
For without the lows there can be no highs—
All that remains is a dull flat feeling!

Just like Barbie and Ken. We can't know ecstasy and joy and love without knowing depression, fear and frustration. Amen.

Do you know about kanneh bosm in the Old Testament? Cannabis!! Humans' very best friend in the flora kingdom.

Do you know about kanneh bosm in the Old Testament? Cannabis!! Humans' very best friend in the flora kingdom. — uncanni

No, I didn't know. No wonder Sodom and Gomorrah turned to stone!

Oh, Olongapo, fleshpot of fertile flora,
Pinatubo reseals your box pandora.
Fiery ash freezes your beauty in time,
A poem in stone, like Sodom and Gomorrah.

We can't know ecstasy and joy and love without knowing depression, fear and frustration. Amen. — uncanni

Similar, and like Keats' notion:

Truth & Beauty

Life’s hardships can be softened by beauty;
Its weaknesses can be strengthened by truth.
As roses blossom like realizations,
Beauty itself blooms from the well of truth.

When a deep truth is known so intensely
That all of its clothing falls away,
Then one has learned the beauty of truth, for
The reality of meaning is beauty.

Life, although anguishing, must be lived fully;
But if we’re alive enough to feel beauty,
Then we’re exposed to its opposite twin
Yes, Beauty’s other side is Melancholy.

When sadness brooded over the morrow,
I visited the deep well of sorrow.
There enshrined, inseparate, Beauty said,
It’s from me that sadness you borrow.

Art and poetry enrich human experience,
But they’re no substitutes for the living of it.
Like the figures on Keats’ urn, should we live life less?
No!—Because what is deathless is also lifeless!

Soft breezes blow, caressing me and you
As we kiss the roses and drink their dew.
Reason and passion soon merge into one,
As truth and beauty make their rendezvous.

The natural is seen as unnatural to A&E, so they invent clothing to cover up their private parts. I would call this a form of implicit guilt about/terror of sexual desire. — uncanni

I see.

Do you go about naked in front of others now that you have matured?

Do you dress because it is expected of because of your shame?

The story of A & E is a coming of age and knowledge/wisdom yarn.

It has nothing to do with sex. There is no tree of sex. Just of the knowledge of good or evil sex.

Regards
DL

I think you are trying to read Genesis like a contemporary whodunit novel. The way I read it: A&E are banished from the garden and forced to go out and experience all the joys and pains of human life. It's kind of condensed down to farming and childbearing, but God gives them the entire gamut of human experience in the expectation that they will learn how to do it right.

God never planned to keep them like a Barbie and Ken in the garden: they wouldn't have been human if they hadn't responded to God's command with the NO of the two-year-old who is acquiring both the physical coordination and the mental calculations to make her/his own decision: "NO: I'ma do things my way. I must be fully human and make my own mistakes--not a doll, an automaton."

I believe that God had to let go completely when humans were created: God understood that it was creating a species incapable of being controlled or limited by instinct. God's still waiting for us to get it right, and repair the world, tikkun olam... — uncanni

You seem to think we have a free will. Your bible says differently as it says god controls, by his hardening of hearts, who will believe and who won't.

I am not reading in a who done it way.

If you cannot recognize that god murdered A & E by neglect by insuring they would not eat of the tree of life, then you are not reading the story right.

Like the J W who murder their children by denying them a life saving blood transfusion, god denied A & E their transfusion from the tree of life.

If you lock up the pantry and let your children starve, then you would be analogically murdering your children.

Regards
DL

The snake promises one thing ... — uncanni

God confirms the truth of what the snake promises with regard to knowledge:

And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. — Genesis 3:22

The snake, however, is devious, duplicitous. Snakes move in one direction in order to go in a different direction. What he says regarding death is true in one way and false in other. Adam and Eve did not die when they ate of the tree of knowledge, but because they ate and became like the gods they were barred from eating of the tree of life and so as a consequence of eating of the tree of knowledge they must die in order not to become immortal gods.

Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they perceived that they were naked; and they sewed together fig leaves and made themselves loincloths — uncanni

This is a complicated issue. To be naked means several different things. To be naked is to be exposed and vulnerable. The term translated as loincloths is used elsewhere to mean protective garments worn in battle. The term is often translated as 'girdle', which preserves the sense of girding, as in, girding for battle. With knowledge of good and evil comes knowledge of being vulnerable, of the possibility of having evil done to you, of being harmed. There is something inept and comic in fashioning girdles of fig leaves.

Then they hide from God. That's where it starts getting ethical, in my reading. When they lie to God about hiding from him is when it gets ethical. — uncanni

Although the term 'ethics' is anachronistic, the problem of the ability to do and suffer both good and evil is from the start ethical.

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. — Genesis 3:6

What is seen as good for food raises several questions, as does what is pleasing to the eye. What is good for food may be bad in other ways, and acting on what is pleasing to the eye may not be the proper measure of an act. Acting on the desire for wisdom has both good and bad consequences. Desiring wisdom is problematic because without possessing wisdom one cannot know if it is something that should be desired or whether acting on that desire is something one should do. Ultimately it is a question of whether it is better to seek wisdom or remain obedient. Solomon answers the question by claiming that wisdom begins with fear of the Lord, that is, obedience. But when Solomon asks God for wisdom (1 Kings) he does not mean simply to obey. Wisdom here does not mean simply obedience, since God has not given him specific instructions as to what he should do. There is no question that Eve desired wisdom. Perhaps it would have been wise to curtail her desire, but she did not. Although the pursuit of wisdom was forbidden in Eden, once they gained knowledge Eden was no longer a suitable place for them. What was a prohibition became a responsibility. But God thwarted the attempt to build a tower to the heavens:

The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” — Genesis 11:6-7

The problem here may have been knowledge, the ability to produce, without the wisdom of how to control the knowledge of what they were capable of. God chose to limit their capabilities. But the story repeats itself. The desire to know remains even when the capacity to know is thwarted. As a side note, we should hear in the idea of a universal language as proposed by the early modern philosophers an attempt to overcome God's attempt to thwart knowledge.

The natural is seen as unnatural to A&E, so they invent clothing to cover up their private parts. — uncanni

The making of girdles was unnatural, but necessary, hence their ineptitude. Talk of what is natural, however, is misguided. The fundamental division here is not between natural and unnatural but whether the ways of man are in accord with or against the will of God.

I would call this a form of implicit guilt about/terror of sexual desire. — uncanni

You are trying to stitch together the whole from the part. Sexual knowledge is only a part of the larger problem of knowledge.

If you think humanity ‘learned ethics’ at this point, then you haven’t been paying attention. We haven’t even ‘learned ethics’ now — Possibility

Yet our secular law has surpassed the morality of the old ways and only poor thinkers will not see that.

Regards
DL

Meaning lower life-forms work mostly from instinct. Where higher life-forms (self-aware Beings) are born with more of a blank slate — 3017amen

Experiments with babies show they know good and evil and how to choose from the two options.

They do not have a road map but to say they have a blank slate would be wrong. They have their instincts which is not blank at all.

Regards
DL

When a deep truth is known so intensely
That all of its clothing falls away,
Then one has learned the beauty of truth, for
The reality of meaning is beauty. — PoeticUniverse

Yes, and this is a blinding and pure moment, fleeting like a dream. Understanding that one is living a moment of truth is a marvellous experience--whether the truth is painful or ecstatic--because to recognize a felt truth is liberating. Liberating from ambiguity, from repression, from the unconscious. Those moments breathe me: I don't breathe them, and it's one of those full, complete breaths that opens one up completely.

I have a painting by Felix Nussbaum right across from my desk; this is it. One of the most breathtakingly beautiful paintings I've ever seen.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%27Self-portrait%27_by_Felix_Nussbaum.jpg

I see. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

I don't think you do.

If you cannot recognize that god murdered A & E by neglect by insuring they would not eat of the tree of life, then you are not reading the story right. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Now that's almost fascist in its authoritarianism. You are beginning to scare me.

I don't think you do. — uncanni

I think I do given that you did not refute anything I put or answer the simple question.

Thanks for your opinion though. I will give it the attention it deserves.

Regards
DL

Now that's almost fascist in its authoritarianism. You are beginning to scare me. — uncanni

Likely because you misuse words and might be afraid of concepts.

Christianity is an example of fascism. Not anything I put.

Regards
DL

The term translated as loincloths is used elsewhere to mean protective garments worn in battle. — Fooloso4

I don't think you'd use fig leaves in battle.

Although the term 'ethics' is anachronistic — Fooloso4

I'd say that the Torah is the start of ethics.

We can't know ecstasy and joy and love without knowing depression, fear and frustration. Amen. — uncanni

And:

If we were angels, life would be so just;
Instead, we try, we push, we climb, we lust,
We dance, we dream, we feel, and love with zest;
Yes, all this, thanks to the beast within us!