Where in Genesis does it say He is “all knowing, or loving”?
Um, so what?
I’m not denying that the Tree of Life is not a common theme in myth. I’m saying that Yggdrasil is not that kind of tree, any more than the laurel that Daphne got turned into was.
You were saying they had nothing in common.
I was saying that they might have the same roots (hehe)
But depictions of some sort of mythical ‘magic’ tree are already on Assyrian and other mesopotamian seals and decorations, well before the Persians.
Well, to be fair to him, early Christians in general and Christian missionaries in particular were pretty adept at co-opting the religious symbolism of others in similar fashion, either in a bid to absorb them wholesale at the price of a weird disconnected ritual here and there, or to demonstrate that “see ? You’ve really been worshipping our god all along. Might as well do it properly”. Which itself might be a continuation of the Roman custom of mix 'n matching pantheons and identifying their own gods in other people’s pantheons. **Theophane **is just the modern incarnation of an ancient tradition 
If you calibrate the tolerance of your symbolism detector high enough, you can fit anything into anything. No fooling, I’ve read arguments by which Baldr=Jesus, despite there honestly being very little material to connect them at all without having to squint very hard.
So if the human evolutionary path had been, say, amphibian instead of arboreal, our myths would speak of “lily-pad of life” and the “moss of the knowledge of good and evil.”
We’re lucky that didn’t happen. Because, you know, the amphibian hue creates certain kinds of difficulties.
Yeah… but I’ve seen so many examples of people using dogmatism to bully others that I rarely feel pure amusement when the tactics are ostensibly a part of debate.
Since I said that I would calmly address what he said (after reflexively giving a purely dismissive response) I will now.
I find the “plenty of room” bit reminiscent of people trying to deny contradictions. I’ve seen dozens of examples of people using the slightest bit of “wiggle” room to deny what, taken straightforwardly, is a clear example of internal or historical contradiction. And when they could not do that, they simply made stuff up, or used rhetorical tactics that are merely attempts to change the subject.
Second, it strikes me as patently offensive to try to evaluate people as “sympathetic” to Satan just because they can read carefully and distance themselves from what was later “read into” an old narrative.
Of course, it’s much more unnerving when I am the recipient, instead of a third party observer.
I would have bet my mother’s kidneys that you made this up. I’ll be damned. :smack:
Learned something new today. Thanks.
That’s a good point. I remember sitting down with a friend one day and trying to make a grand unified theory of animal symbolism in Christianity.
Lambs are both Jesus and his followers (which makes him the shepherd), Jesus is also fish. Doves are God, but not Jesus. Goats and snakes are Satan, but Jesus is also sort of the scapegoat, too. But bronze snakes are also God, sort of. It’s really all over the place, and great fun if you don’t take it at all seriously. Also Jesus is a lion (at least when he’s in a wardrobe).
So how does the Easter Bunny fit in?
The Easter Bunny or Easter Hare, to be more exact, is a symbol for Freya.
Another Freya symbol is the egg.
You know who else lays eggs?
Exactly! Platypusses!
And as the world is more egg shaped than an exact sphere, I dont know what other evidence you need.
The PsamistPsalm 81 on Rc version ,82 in KJV says I said you are gods nd son’s of the most high. Jesus backs this up in John 10 when accused of Blasphemy.
Genesis doesn’t say that ,but Christians are taught and believe that about God! So then he couldn’t be all knowing,or loving.John says God is love bur acording to Paul’s discription he isn’t. He is self seeking and that is one of Pauls’s discription of Love.
I believe he won them in a bet with a Georgian fiddler.
Genesis doesn’t say that ,but Christians are taught and believe that about God!
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As a Jew, I have no need of that hypothesis. 
Don’t Jews believe that God is loving and all-knowing?
I’m pretty sure Job is full of reminders that God knows everything, at least. And he at least loved the Jews and some others. But not poor Esau. 
He points out that He knows more than Job, but I’m not sure I recall Him claiming to know everything; I could be convinced by a cite to the contrary.
So there goes the “all-loving” part before I even got a chance to post back. 
Never mind the tree; why create the serpent?
I have two questions:
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Before eating the fruit Adam and Eve didn’t know that it was wrong to disobey God. Why did he punish them? It is like punishing a toddler who broke a glass.
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God did not want them to eat from the Tree of Life, because that would make them immortal. But they were already immortal. Death is a punishment for desobedience.
I don’t know about all loving, but I was curious about the all knowing part, and I found a webpage that gives a pretty good rundown of quotes:
Samples:
What I didn’t see were examples of first person God saying “I know everything,” which leaves open the possibility that these are just empty platitudes. Several of the examples are very specific, such as predicting people’s deaths, which, if they thought he was omniscient at the time of writing, would have gone without saying. I see that as a minor inconsistency. Others seem like generic praise, like “Our God, he sure does know a lot of things.”
It makes me wonder if the concept of an omniscient god grew out of authors trying to out-praise each other.