ultimate fate of adam and eve

Great Debates
1

what the hell happened to them? keep in mind that jewish theology of the time genesis was written down had a very different philosophy of the afterlife than we do now (if they had one at all). what do christians make of their ultimate fate?

they committed the ultimate sin, one which was so great that it has been piled onto all their descendents. they didn’t confess their sins. now i have heard the opinion that all people who died before Jesus came and fixed everything waited in limbo, and the righteous were sent into heaven. but a & e don’t seem so righteous. has there been any speculation on this point? Jewish philosophy would be appreciated also, but isn’t as germane (funny, iddn’t it?)

jb

2

What I was taught in a Baptist-run school is that A and E, and every other person deemed rightetous before Christ’s birth/death, were placed in Paradise (as Jesus said to the thief on the cross “Today thou shalt be with Me in Paradise”) after they died. Then along came Christ and washed their sins away. During the three days that Christ was “dead,” he scooped up all of the people in Paradise, took them to heaven, kicked down the wall seperating Paradise from Hell, after “warring with Satan” (making both places into one large hell.) So, Paradise no longer exisits, and now, when you kick the bucket, your soul is zoomed immediately to its place of eternal dwelling.

That’s what they told me, anyway. I always thought it sounded a little cracked, but that’s just my opinion.

3

Yeah, I’ve heard stuff like that too. Seemed like the only loophole they could find to let moses into heaven.

but adfam and eve never seemed repentant, and they never seemed to do anything denoting righteousness. what’s up with that?

4

The whole thing is just a parable anyway. The ate the fruit and already recieved their punishment, being cast out of the garden, death itself, etc., and after which I don’t think they did any wrongeousness per se. If they hadn’t repented, I’m sure we’d have seen further wild adventures in sin from these two, but the author leaves this up to their kids.

5

I know I know. I’m more interested in hearing what those who don’t regard it as a parable have to say.

I like the way your post makes it sound like a tv show. “Adam and Eve: their Wild Adventures in Sin”. And btw, thank you for editing my egregious typo in your quote!

jb

p.s.- wrongeousness

6

I hear that they were on a raft; & got wrecked.
I heard this in a short order restaurant. :smiley:

7

But according Jesus “no one is good”; everyone has sinned. So this category of “righteous” would be composed of… who, exactly?

8

well, Abraham and Moses and Joshua and Jacob and Ruth and Job and Melchizidek and Elija and Ezekiel and…

I admit that I am not using the actual definition of righteous. I was using it as kind of a synonym for those who have accepted God and/or been sorry for their sins. A&E committed the most atrocious act in human history, causing the downfall of mankind into the quagmire of suffering and death. In fact, you could say that A&E are responsible for the death of us all.

And there’s nothing in the book that talks of them trying to make any reparations, or seeking forgiveness. Seems to me that this question would have come up at least once before in the last 6000 or so years.

9

“A&E committed the most atrocious act in human history, causing the downfall of mankind into the quagmire of suffering and death.”

Adam and Eve didn’t cause the downfall of mankind, they caused the birth of it, or at least mankind as we know it. As before eating the fruit of knowledge of good and evil they were mechanical, souless forms, afterward, they achieved consciousness, the ‘fountain’ of humanity. But you are correct in that humanity was punished for the transgression, so Adam and Eve became both creators and destroyers of humankind. This is not a run-of-the-mill sin, and I not only accept it, but endorse it, and try to live it. I would much rather live and think in this world, then live in the souless paradise of Eden, with its implicit servitude and insentience.

In Genesis, god said “behold, for man has become like one of us(?)”, which, among other things (namely 1)that man being created in god’s image, 2)the existence of the serpent in paradise 3)the willingness of Adam and Eve to disobey god), leads me to suspect that Adam and Eve’s sin was endorsed by god as well. But that leads to another story altogether…

10

Yeah, but they still show reruns of “Law and Order” so it’s okay with me.

11

ppppppllllllbtbtbtbbbbtttttt!!

12

I suppose a better term would be “primary” rather than “ultimate”. Their sin was hardly the last.

13

Or, perhaps, original?

14

So, someone is accusing me of a crime that someone else committed before I was born and blaming my crimes on someone who either never existed or most certainly died before I was born.

C’mon DA I need more than that if I’m gonna nail this SOB.

15

How do you know they didn’t? Not everyone believes in confessing to a priest, if that’s what you’re driving at. They would have confessed directly to God. Not every religion believes in going straight to heaven or hell, either. The religion I grew up with believes that all souls are in a sleeping state until the final judgement. So I guess it would depend on what their relationship was with God, and no one else can really speculate on that. The Bible doesn’t really say a lot on how they spent the rest of their long lives, so perhaps they repented everyday until they died.

16

and perhaps they had a pet monkey names Cho-cho who they trained to sing “Swanee River”. What the hell’s your point? I beleive I stated clearly enough in the OP that I was talking about what the bible says. And the bible never says that they repented. If they had, that’s a pretty major development that some bigwig left out of the novelization.

17

You are just born into a world that is inherently distrustful of God, without particularly good reason. As a result, you probably do not trust God either.

And it is rather silly to say that people who trust God are souless automatons, lastgasp, IMHO.

If anyone cares what the RCC says, their desciption of Original Sin can be found there.

18

<<A&E committed the most atrocious act in human history, causing the downfall of mankind into the quagmire of suffering and death. In fact, you could say that A&E are responsible for the death of us all. >>

Well, that’s mainstream Catholic and some Protestant theology, and that’s certainly classic Christian theology… but that ain’t Jewish theology.

The Bible describes what happened to Adam and Eve: they lived to ripe old age, had children, and died. The Bible text was written (depends on your point of view) between 1250 BC and 1000 BC, although the stories may have floated around as oral tradition way before that.

Any later “theories” or “theologies” or stories about what happened to Adam and Eve would have evolved around 100 BC or later, based on the political and religious views of the times.

I personally thought Adam got a job as a security guard at K-Mart and Eve was a stay-at-home mom.

19

I’m still confused when I hear Jews say that. I know you guys have the book of Genesis in your canon. I know you have Adam and Even being cast out of the Garden and the other sundry mythic punishments for eating of the tree of knowledge, which included death for Adam, Eve, and their descendants.

So what am I missing here? I take the tale as a parable, but certaintly a parable that sticks around for many thousands of years has some meaning. Do Jews just ignore this part of the Bible entirely?

20

jmullaney - “And it is rather silly to say that people who trust God are souless automatons, lastgasp, IMHO.”

Thanks for putting words in my mouth, but really, it’s ok.

First of all, I was specifically talking about Adam and Eve (not “people”) before eating the fruit, and Eden (not Earth), secondly, I don’t believe I used the word trust at all.

If you reread that post, you’ll see, via interpreting the Eden myth as the apprehension of consciousness (as Jung and others have), that I’m trying to ‘promote’ the sin of Adam and Eve. So by eating the fruit, they achieved consciousness, the ‘prize’ of humanity, that which separates us from animals. Now it’s implicit, to me at least, that Adam and Eve lived as slaves in Eden, and humankind truly began after the expulsion (if you challenge that, I can go into lots more detail at some later point).

The desire to endorse the sin of Adam and Eve comes from the point I was making that I’d rather be a sentient being in this world, then a mindless slave in paradise (Eden).

And it all hinges on whether you think consciousness is a good or a bad gift. If it’s a bad gift, and it certainly has helped fuel the worst episodes in our history, then you would be correct to interpret that god has punished us for the sin of Adam and Eve. But, if you think, as I, that the faculty to think and reason and feel is worth the trouble, then maybe you should side with Adam and Eve.

End Note: Why is the fruit symbolic of consciouness? Think about it; we need consciousness to understand what is good, yet obviously good and evil are inextricably bound, so evil comes along for the ride too, hence the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Any distinction between the two requires the ability to reason, an undisputable facet of consciousness.