I think I’ve seen variations on that in animated Bible stories and such, but no, that’s not in the text. The KJV says this:
From Chapter 2. Chapter 3 tells the serpent part this way:
Frank, you’re overthinking the story. It wasn’t made up 100 years ago by some fundamentalist preacher. It isn’t a christian story at all. It was written down several thousand years ago by people who weren’t Christians and weren’t even what we would consider Jews.
The god in the story is a god on the order of Zeus. He’s not omnipotent, he’s not omniscient. He’s just very powerful. He ordered them not to eat from his tree, they disobeyed, and he smacked them for it. It’s really just that simple. Like Thjalfi breaking the leg bone of Thor’s goat, when Thor ordered him not to, and he was required to become Thor’s servant as a consequence.
The serpent is just a serpent, he’s not Satan, in fact in the Old Testament Satan isn’t Satan the way modern theology depicts Satan. And Captain Amazing is right, many of the phrases that occur in the Bible are conventional idioms. So “Forty Days and Forty Nights” doesn’t mean 9600 hours passed, it means “a long time passed”. Adam is named Adam because his name means “dirt”.
If you want to find some Biblical Literalists to come in and declare that the story is literally true in every particular then you’re in the wrong place. We have plenty of theists here, but as far as I know, no Biblical Literalists. Even those who believe in original sin will declare the story a parable, not history.
Legends of the Jews (line 14)
Don’t forget the premise for the need for a savior (Jesus). The whole point of Christianity really…
Well, I can’t believe in a God who creates a perfect and incorruptible world, because that’s not the world we actually live in. So the question is how to reconcile a good Creator (in the sense of both “benelovent” and “competent”) with the flawed world we actually live in. And the Garden of Eden story tantalizes me because it seems to provide at least hints to the answer, if only I could interpret them correctly. It’s a story that I’ve never been able either to just dismiss or to completely figure out.
Marley…thanks for contributing.
Your quotes seem like they come from one of my Hebrew Bibles (I prefer them to Christian Bibles when discussing the Old Testament). Are they from a Hebrew Bible?
I didn’t say it was a Christian story…and I am not over thinking it. I am wondering about what lessons theists think it teaches.
I’ve discovered that almost nothing is ever “simple” from the Bible, Lemur. I am wondering about what lessons theists think it teaches. Not all theists are Christians.
The serpent speaks and tempts; it is hardly “just a serpent.” It is probably a metaphor for something…and that is another thing I am wondering about. What do theists who “believe” the god of the Bible is the GOD they “believe” exists…think the serpent symbolizes?
Okay, perhaps he and you both are right. So…let’s have a reference so that we can evaluate it and see if it actually stands up to scrutiny…or if it is just the thoughts of someone trying to rationalize a rather disturbing story.
Respectfully as possible, Lemur, I imagine if I am looking for someone to give me lessons in bull-fighting, I am in the wrong place also…but since I have given no indication whatsoever of wanting bull-fighting lessons or finding Biblical literalists to come in and declare anything…why are you bringing this up?
Please re-read what I have written and comment on that if you want. I have no interest in Biblical literalists. I am simply trying to find out what theists in this forum think about this story.
Good for them. Now…if it is a parable…and you are a theist…what lesson do you suppose it teaches?
They’re from the first online version of the King James Bible that I found via Google. It’s in English, and I can’t vouch for the quality or the translation. But I think it’s enough to say that the details Love Rhombus mentioned are not in the original story. The text doesn’t say the serpent pushed Eve into the tree, and he did not mislead her by saying ‘the lord said you cannot touch the tree.’ It’s Eve who says ‘we can’t touch the tree.’
Thank you for that citation, Sciurophobic. (If anyone else has trouble reading the piece from the link…just google “The Legends of the Jews” and you can read it.
Apparently there are myths and legends that have the conversation between the serpent and Eve being much, much more complex than that communicated in the Bible.
Interesting!
As most of you realize, I suspect the entire story is myth and legend…so no reason to suppose the fuller story is any less acceptable.
That doesn’t change the question I have for theists who accept the god of the Bible as the GOD they “believe” exists…so I hope that question gets more attention.
Rabbi Louis Ginzberg is an interesting man…who, it seems, had as many detractors among orthodox Jews as he had adherents among reformed or conservative Jews.
Certainly is an interesting story to contemplate, Thudlow…and I consider it often.
Like for you…jury is still out for me.
Hoping to get some new input here.
Interesting aside here, Marley.
One of the Hebrew Bibles I have in my library (The Twenty-Four Books of the Old Testament; Hebrew Publishing Co. New York City, NY; 1916) written in Hebrew (with an English translation) has the exact same wording as the KJV you cited. Word for word.
Haven’t run across that before in three decades of writing on these subjects. Never noticed that the KJV followed the text of Hebrew scripture exactly. Almost every passage seems to have variations of words in most of the Bibles I own…but this is exact. Probably something I just never noticed before.
I just remembered where I read that story. It was in my much-thumbed copy of this excellent book. I’d recommend it to anyone.
It may be of some interest to y’all to know that the serpent was a mythic symbol of the Egyptian Goddess Wadjet, who was (among other things) the Goddess of wisdom.
If we interpolate the Eden story using this, it seems as if this entity may be one of the sources for the serpent. Typically, the serpent is seen as male because Christianity treats the serpent as Satan. However, as I read it, the serpent is not given a gender, such is merely assumed to be male.
Does this make any sense to anyone else here?
It certainly makes sense that that is one possible explanation for the myth that leads to the story contained in Genesis.
I doubt any of us will ever know definitively (or even close to definitively) what the components of the story were in their entirety…or who first told the story in the form presented in Genesis…or who first put the words onto paper (or papyrus).
My purpose here is to get some sense of what some theists think the story means…what the lesson supposedly is. I have pointed out contradictions to the story teaching us anything positive about the god…and in fact, the story seems to lead me to where it seems to portray the god as rather untrustworthy.
Just looking to get some theistic sensibilities on this particular question—before moving on to another troubling Genesis story.
Says who? AFAICT, the Bible doesn’t say either way; only that “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: Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden”.
Note, too, that this is the same guy who then pops back in a little later in Genesis:
4: And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
5: And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
6: And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
7: Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.
I don’t see the big guy spelling out how large an advantage he’d retain if he didn’t keep stopping people from getting closer; it’s only that he’s trying to stop that sort of thing in advance.
When someone says that, as a result of eating something, their “eyes were opened” to insights on the nature of good and evil, but then became really self-conscious and paranoid, I think “psychedelic drugs”.
My crackpot theory is that the story is based on a young couple who ran away from their village to frolic (not to mention cavort) in a secluded meadow. But driven by hunger they ate some mushrooms they found growing. Mushrooms can be poisonous and animals instinctively know not to eat certain things–and this can be portrayed as God commanding you–but humans intellect can override such programming. And so the story may be a metaphor for “original sin” being the point in evolution when instinct gave way to free will.
Satan is directly related to the ‘sons of God’ in Job 1. Satan is one of God’s son, along with the arch-angels so God will respect Satan’s ‘godhood’ as Satan has the knowledge of good and evil. These sons of God however are not born of woman, not born of the Father’s creation, as Jesus is, and they act mostly like the Greek gods, and have very little respect for man and woman. What the tree represented is godhood for man, which unless it is in total Love will sin (miss the mark) and eventually lead to death. The fall of man allows Jesus, which is God’s plan, God living in man as man, and conforming all of us to the likeness of the Father. It is the fall that allowed the Father, through Jesus to live inside man without disrespecting the godhood of the sons of God.
But there is no doubt that the story shows Adam and Eve acting differently after eating of the fruit (after gaining some of knowledge)…and feeling a kind of
“guilt” or “shame” that they apparently did not feel before. And it showed the god as being able to deduce that they had eaten of the fruit because of the feelings they displayed.
There seems little doubt that the story indicates that the couple did not understand rightness or wrongness before eating the fruit…so it seems very unreasonable to assume they knew there was anything wrong with disobeying the god.
They were unnecessarily subjected to almost unbearable temptation to do so.
And they were severely punished for doing so.
What lesson…other than “the god is untrustworthy” can possibly be derived from that story?
From which version of the Bible did you obtain this information? Because I can’t seem to find it in the KJV.
I agree, it was a total set-up. So God creates humans in “his” image, then sets up the perfect sting, based on human nature (the “forbidden fruit”) and busts them. Riiiight. :dubious:
My take on the signifigance of the apple episode is thus:
God created everything and said (more than once) that it was “all good” (to paraphrase:D)
The “Father of all Lies” (aka the snake/Satan) convinces Eve that if she eats of the fordidden tree, she will be “like God, knowing the difference between good and evil.” This was the first lie…that there WAS anything other than good. That evil even existed. Trick question. And yes, Lucifer was an Angel. Still is, according to the story, and will eventually be reconcilled with God (since it’s all good/God and illusion that anything other than God/good can exist)
From the moment they eat onward, Adam and Eve develop a sense of good vs evil, right vs wrong, something they had lacked before. They suddenly realize they are naked and feel ashamed of this perfectly good, normal state, and so make clothes for themselves. They hide from God as “he” walks through the garden later…“Who told you you were naked?” God asks them when they explain their shyness and new duds.
I do not take this as God kicking them out of the garden so much as them no longer being capable of inhabitating that “all good” world any longer, given their new awareness (delusion?) of evil. No longer could they “eat freely of any tree”, but instead had to toil by the sweat of their brow to bring forth food and bear children in pain/fear. They had to be aware of their own mortality.
But then, that is just my take on it as one raised as a Christian, also exposed to Christian Science and other more “new agey” takes on reality, and as a fan of fairy tales in general. 
How do you square that with the aforementioned quote, though? Again, “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: Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden”.