Yes. The Talmud is a collection of thoughts, meditations, observations, etc. on the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, created slowly and unmethodically over the course of centuries, and contains the opinions of thousands of rabbis. There isn’t anything in Genesis-through-Deuteronomy that isn’t covered. I do not happen to have a copy myself, but have checked out copies of portions of the Talmud from the public library and used them in my studies, and, consequently, don’t have anything offhand on other worldwide changes. Check out the Wikipedia article for more information on the Talmud.
The Hebrew text is mot Ta-mot. The base “mot” means “die.” Ancient Hebrew repeats a word for emphasis, this is literally “you die, you will die.” The KJV takes this as “you will surely die.” Fox, trying to capture the original flavor, says “you will die, yes, die.” The interpretation of this is generally that “you will understand that you are mortal.” As Prof P has noted (in the prior thread, anyhow), ancient Hebrew is a very terse language. I’m not sure if it’s possible to say “begin to die.”
The Talmud is the collection of rabbinic thought, from around 100 BCE to around 200 BC (or AD if you prefer). I have a few volumes, my synagogue library has several full sets. The problem with looking up something in the Talmud is that it’s not organized as biblical commentary, but as commentary on the laws (both moral and ritual) in the Torah (first five books of the bible.) It’s therefore not easy to find a comment on a specific verse – the various discussions could be scattered among many different books of the Talmud. Remember that, for traditional Jews for the last 2000+ years, the bible (among other things) defines a law code that formed the basis for Jewish society. Thus, the Talmud can be thought of as “case law.” Long, complex, and not well organized.
So it’s probably been a nightmare to look something up in it for most of the last 2000 years, but with an electronic edition and full-text searches, it should be much easier. Do you think that such technology will have much of an impact on Talmudic scholars?
I wonder if Jesus was echoing that sort of thing in the passage where someone says to Him “I will follow you, but first let me go and bury my father.” Jesus responds “Let the dead bury the dead”, which is usually interpreted “Let the spiritually dead bury the physically dead”. (Plus I believe burying your parent was a prerequisite to inheriting, and Jesus is disavowing putting physical security before following Him.)
Thus Yahweh is telling Adam and Eve “if you eat that fruit, you will die spiritually”. The emphasis is to show how much more important spiritual death (i.e. loss of direct contact with God and therefore a right relationship with the rest of the world) is than physical death, although physical death follows.
Not for a while, though - Adam died IIRC at 960 years old, second oldest in the Bible. Methuselah was 969.
Regards,
Shodan
Is it possible to roughly determine where he died in the Bible, timewise? For instance, was he still alive during the time of Noah, or did he die long before that?
Tony Sinclair:
In what sense, like mass dinosaur and mammoth extinctions? No. It pretty much elaborates on what’s said in the Bible. It does include some new stories that are not mentioned in the Bible outright (though there’s usually some vague textual allusion that the Rabbis pin the story on), but I’m nit sure what kind of “worldwide changes” you’d be referring to as such.
Professor Pepperwinkle:
You’re selling the Talmud a bit short - the Talmud covers everything from Genesis through Chronicles (or Daniel-Ezra-Nehemiah, however you like to arrange the latter part of your Bible), although admittedly the bulk of it is based on the first five books, because it’s mainly about laws, and that’s where the laws are to be found. The Midrash, which collects statements from the same set of Rabbis but is about the “story” parts of the Torah, is organized more along the lines of Biblical books/chapters.
Tony Sinclair:
Not as much as you’d think. There are any number of cross-references and indices that have been written over the years (mainly the past two hundred, though, not the 1800 prior to that). Since the advent of the CD-ROM, there have been numerous searchable Judaic book databases available to scholars, and they’re certainly helpful, but it’s not all that difficult to do Talmudic research using only the material that can be found in any decent-sized Orthodox synagogue. (I don’t know how well-stocked a Conservative or other temple’s bookshelves are.)
To answer Czarcasm:
Genesis 5th Chapter
Adam was 130 when he fathered Seth, and died at age 930
Seth was 105 when he fathered Enosh, died at 912: Adam was 235 when Enosh was born
Enosh was 90 when he fathered Kenan, died at 905: Adam was 325 when Kenan was born
Kenan was 70 when he fathered Mehalalel, died at 910: Adam was 395 when Mehalalel was born
Mehalalel was 65 when he fathered Jared, died at 895: Adam was 460 when Jared was born
Jared was 162 when he fathered Enoch, died at 962: Adam was 622 when Enoch was born
Enoch was 65 when he fathered Methuselah, taken by God at 365: Adam was 687 when Methuselah was born
Methuselah was 187 when he fathered Lamech, died at 969: Adam was 874 when Lamech was born
Lamech was 182 when he fathered NOAH, died at 77: Adam was dead before Noah was born
The flood occurred when Noah was 600 years old.
The idea that 2:7 says “you shall surely begin to die” has been pretty much addressed and debunked (thanks!) but I was asked for a cite, so here is an example from the book Jesus the Messiah in the Hebrew Bible by Eugen Pentiuc (Paulist Press, 2006), page 28:
And yet Methuselah still died before his father did!
Methuselah famously died the year of the flood (according to the chronology in Genesis) and Adam was several generations older, and died at a slightly younger age, so he missed out on the deluge.
My apologies. I was giving a brief precis, and didn’t want to over-elaborate. You are, of course, correct. I was trying to emphasize that there is nothing in the Torah that hasn’t been thoroughly discussed in the Talmud.
Shodan:
930, and fourth oldest. Second place is Jared at 962 (see? Subway sandwiches are healthy!) and third place is Noah at 950.
Czarcasm:
Of course, all you need is Genesis Chaper 5 and basic math skills. Adam died 126 years before Noah was born.
Thank you. I suppose I could have figured it out…but I have trouble counting my toes before I’ve had my seventh cup of coffee.
In his book The Botany of Desire, Michael Bollan discusses an idea I’d never considered. Pagans used mind-altering plant drugs in their religious rituals to achieve spiritual insight. The storytellers of Genesis wanted to pull people away from paganism so used the story of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to discourage them from using other means to experience “god”. Believing you will die if you eat forbidden plants is a considerable deterrent.
I’ve given this (and the subsequent discussion in this thread) some thought and I feel that this is a bit of a stretch. ‘Day’ is defined right in Genesis 1 as the period of light as opposed to the period of darkness known as ‘night’. That 1000 years seem like a day to God is because he’s eternal, but that does say anything about what a day is, it says something about how God experiences time and how big he is as opposed to how puny humans are. I liked the comparison with how parents sometimes treat chocolate-covered children and I think this is another instance of God treating humankind as children.
Then again, I’m interested in the point made about how the knowledge A+E gain also confronts them with their mortality. I think God’s threat that they will die the same day if the eat from the tree of knowledge has to be understood in the light of 1) were Adam and ‘the woman’ mortal before eating from the tree? 2) were they aware of their mortality? What did they understand when God told them ‘but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die’. Was he telling them ‘you will become mortal’?
There’s no injunction against eating from the Tree of Life, and at the end of Genesis 3 Adam and Eve get kicked out of Eden because they might start eating from the Tree of Life and live forever. Perhaps they were freely doing so (eating and living forever) before the serpent messed things up, and in that case the real disaster in humankind being expelled from the Garden of Eden is not in painful childbirth or having to toil in the sweat of our faces, but the fact that we now no longer have access to immortality. The real punishment is not in Gen. 3:16-19 but in Gen. 3:22-24.
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I don’t know how well-stocked a Conservative or other temple’s bookshelves are.)
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Varies by synagogue size and library. My synagogue (around 1000 families) has an extensive library with several versions of the talmud.
ADMINSTRATIVE COMMENTS: Reminder, as we get long toed evening on Friday night, cmkeller and any other traditional Jews will be unavailable until the end of sabbath on Saturday after sunset. cm: שבת שלום I’m going to be traveling the next couple of weeks, so not sure how much I’ll be able to participate in next discussions (won’t have any resources with me except my very fallibobble memory.)
Shabbat Shalom to you too, Dex (and to all of my other fellow Jewish Dopers).
Great, now I will always and forever hear it in my head as “you will die, oh yes, you will die” /Wayne’s World.
I would guess that tree of Knowledge is the most famous story in the Old Testament. It portrays a Father who flies into a rage when His rule isn’t obeyed, a rule that the offspring was suppose to obey mostly because He said so - its justification couldn’t have been obvious at the time. Heck, from Adam/Eve’s perspective it must have seemed arbitrary. Afterwards, Father proves to be a decent provider -he assembles a wardrobe- albeit more quietly. Father is scary but is ultimately on our side: that appears to be a recurring Biblical theme. Then He sends them on their way. The kids get more than they bargained for.
Methinks even those with kindly parents have some intuition for a story like this. It touches on universals of human experience that stretch from some 800 BC to the present day, and I would guess across all human societies. I suppose in dramatic terms it would fall into the “Start of the journey” category. But I suspect shared parental experiences and the fact that it gives an explanation -any explanation- for the puzzle of life’s hardships, explains its memetic persistence. Most humans I think can intuitively tie flouting parental authority with Bad Things Happening. This is just an extension.
I always thought verse 16, “…in pain you shall bring forth children…” was interesting. Having eaten from the tree of knowledge, humans would become smarter and thus have a larger-sized brain. Bigger brain means more pain in childbirth. Go figure.
The chapter closes with not the destruction of the Garden of Eden, but with cherubim guarding the way to the (still existing) tree of life. Noteworthy is that they are guarding the way with a flaming sword–an image that will be repeated many times through the rest of the Bible, notably again in chapter 22 where Abraham is called upon to sacrifice Isaac. The fire and the knife are emblems of sacrifice, leading to the hint that it is only by sacrifice that we can find our way back to the tree of life.
I got to thinking about how God clothes them in skins before the casting out, and started wondering about whose skins. Who were the first animals who got to take one for the team?
Would these have been the first animals who experienced death?