I don’t think so. An eternal God would not see things in narrative terms, since to him, in the absence of time, there is no before or after, no sequence of events.
What? Is that true?
True - at least as far as we know. But I wasn’t thinking in terms of our lives being staged, like a play.
I was thinking more in terms of the old (very old) analogy in which god is likened to a weaver. Each person’s life is like a thread; and while we experience these threads as a sequence of events, god sees each thread in its entirety. He also sees the tapestry as a whole, and nothing is random: each thread has a purpose, and each thread is placed with exquisite care.
I have no idea if that’s actually true, mind you - but that’s what the theory says.
Yes the “original sin” story is a plot hole.
It was at attempt at providing the answer to why people sin, “Pastor posturing”,
It sounds good so most people just swallow it.
Of course, if God didn’t want them to eath from the Tree ? Why not just move it off to Antarctica or Pitcairn Island or something ?
Well, I don’t know how to argue either way about such poetic conceptions. It’s a nice stab at putting some imagery to the idea of timelessness at any rate.
In the context of the Genesis story though, we can see a sort of model of development presented. There’s the raw materials of the world. There are the seas, the plants, the animals. Then Man comes along and is put above all of it. There is one more step though- whatever it is the Tree of Knowledge is really supposed to represent- cmkeller could probably give you the best answer to that. Man gains something but also falls out of his state of grace into a life filled with suffering, much of his own making but plenty of it imposed by God, fairly or not, for reasons that make sense or not.
Anyway, Man is stuck at that level, in time, in the flow of events, subject to the consequences of actions which eventually will be self-destructive, doomed to die. The step beyond all this is represented by the Tree of Life. I take it to be the step into eternity, a place God wants reserved for himself (or themselves), but again, I’d double check my musings against cmkeller’s analysis.
Anyway, if we’re to accept that this story depicts God’s intervention in events, well 1. it doesn’t make sense, the narrative jumps around and the motives don’t add up and 2. the justification for that is kind of buried in there in that Man is stuck in time while God is not. Since God doesn’t operate on a narrative level, his actions can’t make sense to our understanding and so plot holes don’t really matter, they’re to be expected or even investigated as a window into understanding the deeper meanings of the story. Looking for narrative consistency would be an error, the common everyday error inherent in fallen human existence since the start.
Anyway, I’m not saying the thing is true, but I can appreciate that it presents so much more to chew on than, say, an episode of 2 Broke Girls.
I’ve always thought this to be a central idea of most faiths, if not all of them.
In most contexts this sort of thing would be a plot hole. Aside from the patriarchalist implications, however, I’d always assumed that the point of this episode in Genesis is to define sin arbitrarily as disobedience to or turning away from God. The elements of the crime, as a criminal law attorney might put it today, are wholly immaterial here.
Later refinements, so to speak, like the Ten Commandments or the dietary laws, were simply further extrapolations from that basic principle.
This is all just my layman’s interpretation so take it FWIW.