In today’s column on forbidden fruit, Unca Cece sez:
So is that what we’re fighting? Happiness?
God could know Evil contingently, but Man, alas, only by experience.
–
John W. Kennedy
“Let us gaze, son of man, on the Acts in contention.”
– Charles Williams
Call it contented complacency. Do you really want to sit around naked in a garden picking fruit for your entire existence?
One of the interpretations of the story as allegory (assuming a prior naturalistic origin of H. sapiens) is that “before knowledge”, man lives not particularly conscious of his condition and of the external world beyond his immediate surroundings (so, nothing exists beyond Eden and who cares if you’re naked); right and wrong are understood merely in the sense of whether it feels immediately good or hurts. “After Knowledge”, Man becomes aware that things could be better, that there are things that could be fairer… and are not. Now the things that go wrong don’t merely hurt him but they make him feel miserable; as do things that merely don’t go as well as expected – and some that don’t even hurt, but that he feels are unfair or unrighteous, because now he “knows” (or can imnagine) how they would be right. And there’s the realization that those “better” things will require hardship to achieve, and at the same time that his efforts often make things even worse (represented by the very story of the act of tasting of the tree of knowledge). While before that awakening there may have been objective pain, now there is subjective insatisfaction and suffering, in the form of frustration, feelings of injustice, incomformity with how things turn out, fear of the future and of the consequences of your actions, dread of what comes after death. And he feels forced to do what he can to make the best of a bad situation.
As to why cast it so negative, it tended to be pretty widespread in old-time civilizations to feel that there had been earlier idyllic golden ages or ages of heroes and that the current world was one in a a fallen, degenerate condition. The authors of the myths, besides longing for a simpler time, probably looked around and observed that the tendency was for human decisionmaking to result in somebody getting badly hurt. So of course the protagonists choice is “bad” in that it costs everyone dearly…
…but it DOES start the plot…
Actually that doesn’t sound too bad right about now. Although I’d rather pick fruit in some sexy underwear. Well depending on who Adam is. (Do we get sexy underwear in heaven?)
But I really came here to say…I thought it was a pomogranite (which I have not spelled corretly but at the moment I’m not sure I can spell teh.) That’s what I’ve heard, I’ve never heard fig until now.
Knowledge + Eternal Life = God
When a person reaches too high, that person gets smacked down. Thus when Adam eats from both the tree of knowledge and the tree of life – smackdown.
Ain’t religion a peach.
Here’s the cite for the anti-competition clause: Genesis 3:22 KJV - And the LORD God said, Behold, the man - Bible Gateway Genesis 3:22 (KJV) “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:”
This confirms a long held suspicion of mine.
Adam & Eve spent all their time smoking top quality hashish. Then they got the munchies and just had to have an apple.
Apparenty it’s a fig. But don’t eat it.
Your quote (from your second post) disputes this. Adam had not yet eaten the fruit of eternal life. That is one reason why he got kicked out of Eden: Y/J/A doesn’t want more gods.
That’s my point.
Huh–why turn to Areopagitica when we have Paradise Lost? Here is the line from Areopagitica:
This looks like a poetic use of the apple (rind?) and not a definitive scholarly judgment.
It was well-known that Genesis did not specify the type of fruit, and Paradise Lost itself is careful not to identify the fruit through most of its thousands of lines. Satan, however, does refer to the fruit as an apple (in two spots), and he does it so as to mock:
Paradise Lost obviously gives us a lot of what we think we “know” about the fall, but Milton in this case does not insist that the fruit was an apple–though people may of course hear it that way given Satan’s lines. But why look for the source of this mythos in Areopgitica??
- One of the debates not mentioned is whether the fruit/apple was “magic” in itself–did it really immediately change something in Eve (give her knowledge), or was it the sin that changed her (and resulted in knowledge). It is an interesting question because if the fruit of this tree is “magic” then the fruit of the Tree of Life would also be “magic,” granting immortality. There’s a long history to this debate, but the “not magic in itself” argument currently seems to have the day.
In my own contemplations of the crime of eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, together with my own conclusions about where much human suffering stems as well as my speculation on why God or the author or the translator named it thus, I have decided that the crime of knowledge of good and evil is rooted in judgement. Allow me to explain this complex sentence. Knowing the difference between good and evil leads us to judge one another in ways that are at the root of much that pains human relationships. True love comes when we believe that all behavior is neither good nor evil - it just is. If you can imagine a world where we don’t sit in harsh and painful judgement of one another, you get an idea of my idea of Eden. We are closer to Godliness when we understand that there really is no good and no evil, or that all is both good and evil. Knowledge of good and evil creates a smoke screen that keeps us from loving each other as fully as we might.