I could be recalling my Bible wrongly, but the apple supposedly gave Adam and Eve knowledge of good and evil. How could Eve know it was wrong to disobey God before eating the apple? How could God have any expectations of people who didn’t even know that they were naked? Why was the tree in the Garden of Eden in the first place?
I think that God MEANT them to eat the apple. Look how much fun he’s had since.
Remember the Ophitics: they believed the “God” of the Eden story was a (possibly mortal) religious figure of the “believe-me-or-be-damned” variety, and the true God of the story was the character cast as serpent (Ophos=serpent), who of course bid Eve go ahead and take a chomp on the fruit. “God”, in the story, if you’ll recall, evicted the couple out of fear that, now possessing the knowledge of good and evil, they might also eat of the fruit of eternal life (also in the garden) and, if they did that, they would be like “God” and “God” would lose “God’s” vaunted superiority. (the actual verse refers to God as “us” and “we” in this aside-to-Self. The plural seems to be an artifact of the language, akin to the royal “we” of the British monarchy).
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If the story actually happened, then none of us would be here if she didn’t eat the apple.
What’s the deal with god “testing” us? If he knows everything that will ever happen, then he knows the outcome of the “test” before you “take” it. He knew the outcome before people ever existed. So. If god “tests” a person knowing full-well in advance that the person will “fail” the “test” and be damned to hell, even before he “allows” that person to exist, then what does that say about the character of god? Is he, as Mark Twain said, “a malign thug”?
Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?
I hadn’t heard of the Ophitics before, although they seem to have had the same problems with the traditional version of the story that I have. I have heard of some other heretics who thought that the Creator (the Christian God) was the “Bad God” (Rex Mundi) and there was a second “Good God”.
What happened to the Ophitics? Were they wiped out for their ideas?
The Ophitics were a subset of Gnostics, although I’ve heard rumors that the Ophitic belief system had persisted as a “thread” within Judaism before Gnosticism (which I think of as a Christian phenomenon).
The Gnostics did not survive the drive against heresy of the early Christian era.
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Not altogether true, I’m gnostic. As for the evil god you may be referring to Samael, the “blind god” who is discussed in the Nag Hamadi documents (Dead Sea Scrolls). I’m going from memory here, don’t shoot me if I’m wrong.
I believe that gnosticism speaks to many of the problems people have with the old testament. A god who spends so much time telling his own creations how great he is seems to have some self-esteem problems. (In the gnostic documents he is portrayed as a paranoid lunatic.)
It’s been a while since I read the source material but it’s available on the net.
Gnostics were persecuted very vigorously since they threatened other versions of Christianity. Just call me a heretic.
I think that in general Frolix8 is correct.
If you do want more info check out http://www.gnosis.org/ .
If I was discussing Lucy Lawless but I wrote Lucy Topless, would that be a Freudian typo?
I asked a similar question over in GQ, and recieved several thoughtful answers. You might want to check it out: Fall of Man
Johnny L.A.:
It’s along that same train of thought that predestination was prognosticated (two big words in one sentence look at me go.)
For arguements sake let’s assume there is a god and that the Bible is accurate. This god is either A) not omniscient or 2) is a cosmic “malign thug” as Marky Mark Twain has pointed out.
I’m glad she ate the apple. Someone around here has got a sig “Ignorance is bliss knowledge is better” or something close to that. I appreciate knowing what I’m deficient in so that I might have the opportunity to correct it.
P.S. There was another woman before Eve. She and Adam didn’t get along because she would not submit to his authority (Adam was a prick too apparently.) I heard this somewhere and looked it up. Sure enough, right there in Genesis it refers to Adam’s mate. Later chronologically it speaks of the creation of Eve. Who was the other woman? Anyway, what the religious authority would like to perpetrate is that because Eve was made of a subset of Adam that she should be submissive/subservient to him. What a crock. What kills me about all of this is that some women go for it.
Snap into a slim jim!!!
Cecil did a column on Lilith, Adam’s other woman. But, I’m too lazy to look it up.
Dammit, “Fall of Man” IS the same discussion!
Just didn’t catch it when I searched the previous columns. It’s at:
http://www.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/005257.html
I used the search engine in the Archives and the only reference Cecil ever made to Lilith is here in his column on how people came to believe that cats can steal the breaths of babies: www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_081.html
(And no, cats can’t steal anyone’s breath. However, they may curl up on a baby’s mouth, attracted by the warmth and rhytmic breathing and accidentally suffocate the child.)
>< DARWIN >
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What apple?
I didn’t see anything about an apple in the Bible.
T’was no apple - twas a pomegranate.
Or a fig.
Or somethen’.
Also, the bible never said the serpent was the devil. That’s a MUCH later interpretation.
Hell is Other People.