Excellent question.
Adam and Eve
- Thread starter one_raven
- Start date
Excellent question.
No he's quite right...its Symbolic.
The mindset was totally different.
..now please dont ask why...me has a job and some Vino to drink.
cheers
er dont look at me! :bugeye:
Social control.
For more details, see below.
It meant "Don't defy our sky bully, or you'll find yourself divinely smacked. Likewise, don't defy our nobility, clergy, and royals. They are authorities with divine mandates, thus you will likewise get smacked."
It's essentially an attempt to coerce the population into following their ruling class blindly and obediently.
Shitty life and living.
Leo Volont
Registered Senior Member
Think in terms of Process.
God is Eternal. He must start with EVERYTHING, but He must end with PERFECTION. People mistake when they suppose that God should have created Perfection in the first moment, as this discounts ETERNITY. God as ETERNAL, has an ETERNITY to get things RIGHT.
This brings us to the Trees. Sorting out Good from Bad. It is all necessary to the Process toward Perfection.
God is Eternal. He must start with EVERYTHING, but He must end with PERFECTION. People mistake when they suppose that God should have created Perfection in the first moment, as this discounts ETERNITY. God as ETERNAL, has an ETERNITY to get things RIGHT.
This brings us to the Trees. Sorting out Good from Bad. It is all necessary to the Process toward Perfection.
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
Free of Knowledge Transliterated "Aze haDayat"
Was evidence that G*d initially put two cognitive beings on Earth, the snake was initially cognitive.
Thus it was the first test of evident free will.
Second; G*d told Adam "Don't eat from it", and Adam told Eve "Don't even touch it". It was that Adam added to the words of G*d that caused much of the problem.
Was evidence that G*d initially put two cognitive beings on Earth, the snake was initially cognitive.
Thus it was the first test of evident free will.
Second; G*d told Adam "Don't eat from it", and Adam told Eve "Don't even touch it". It was that Adam added to the words of G*d that caused much of the problem.
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M*W: Since I do not read, write or speak Hebrew, I do not come to argue with you but to comment on several aspects of the story of A&E and the Serpent:
Busenbark writes that "the Fall of Adam and Eve was charged, not to the devil, but to a serpent."
Busenbark goes on: "The serpent's identity with healing may be seen also in the incident in which Moses, although a reputed hater of images, idols and magic, nevertheless changed his staff into a brazen serpent. An image of the brazen serpent, called Nehushtan (II Kings 18:4 (was kept in the holy of holies and incense was burned before it until the temple was cleansed during the reign of King Hezekian which proves that serpents were particularly sacred to the Jews before the 7th century BC."
"Dragons, turtles, serpents, crocodiles, and salamanders have occupied a paradoxical position in symbology and symbols. Because many species of reptiles make their homes in both the water and in the earth, they were everywhere associated with the female principle and the dark forces of nature. They were, therefore, identified with evil, destruction, and death as well as magic, sorcery, and witchcraft."
This is just a short background on the symbolic serpent in ancient literature. I won't go into the serpent as a phallic symbol, otherwise I'd be here all day.
The serpent is also a symbol of "continuity, circularity, infinity, and immorality...".
The story of the Fall of A&E may have been given to the Jews by the Persians, and it could have had a Babylonian origin before that. Even the origin of the names of A&E are symbolic, but that is for another day.
Every culture has had a legend of a garden or paradise with a tree of life and a serpent. Genesis has two conflicting accounts merged into one.
Busenbark adds: "The worship of trees as symbols of male generative power was widespread among ancient nations; and it was in this senst that trees, tree trunks, posts, and pales became prominent in the worship by the Jews in Canaan, of gods of fertility."
So, the "tree of life," is a metaphor for a phallic symbol leading to sexual intercourse. It has also been represented by the god Ba'al, which simply means 'husband.'
According to Busenbark, "the Hebrew word GN, gan or garden appears to be closely related to the Greek word gune, meaning woman, and in some ancient languages it is used as a metaphor for woman."
"The name Eve gives a further clue to the origin of this myth. The word Eve (pronounced Hawwa in Hebrew), when aspirated, is the same as the Aramaic word Hawwe), denoting a serpent." (Sorry, but I cannot access the symbols for the Hebrew words. Maybe you can help with the corrections).
"The word nagash, written n-g-sh without vowels, also signifies a serpent in Hebrew and is pronounced almost exactly the same as the word n-c-sh, meaning sexual intercourse. The association of Hawwa, the woman, with Hawwe, the serpent (the cause of her 'fall') is, therefore, a play upon words, a practice which was very popular with Oriental myth makers."
My question to you, Cheski, since you implied there was evidence, are you saying that you believe in the literal translation of A&E or a metaphorical one? With all the translations, comparisons and symbols that appear in several languages and cultures, I still believe it has a metaphorical foundation.
Reference:
Busenbark, Ernest.: Symbols, Sex, and the Stars , The Book Tree, San Diego, CA, 2003.
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M*W: Gosh, I hope I didn't bore you all with this post. I have tons of info on A&E, and I think it's an interesting metaphor. I was hoping Cheski would comment on the Hebrew words. Does anybody else have any comments on A&E. I was so happy to return to the CR Forum. I always had hope that this would turn out to be a great forum. I look forward to all of your comments pro or con.
M*W: Gosh, I hope I didn't bore you all with this post. I have tons of info on A&E, and I think it's an interesting metaphor. I was hoping Cheski would comment on the Hebrew words. Does anybody else have any comments on A&E. I was so happy to return to the CR Forum. I always had hope that this would turn out to be a great forum. I look forward to all of your comments pro or con.
alaska1976
Registered Member
Actually that field of science that loves getting their hands deep into the earth have produced what are thought to be the oldest (possible)monotheistic earth goddess icons as of yet found called venus figurines.
Google venus figurines for more information.
Other figurines were found but these are the most prolific to be found in such a wide spread geographical area stretching from Africa to Europe.
I may have imagined this, but wasn't the intention that they couldn't eat the fruit until it was ready?
Perhaps, interesting idea. We wouldn't know though since it isn't written that way, but who knows the intent God would have had if we didn't eat the fruit?
Perhaps He would come and say, hey you have shown me that you can obey me, now the fruit is ready to eat!
When you read the story of Adam and Eve, try to look at it as being both symbolic and literal.
Scripture is written that way to contain compound meanings on different levels.
The reference to the two trees was symbolism, an analogy.
The tree of life is a person. That's God. The one and only source of eternal life.
It said He came down and "walked with Adam in the cool of the evening".
So is the tree of knowledge. That was the serpent, the Devil.
Not a snake, a man. It wasn't literal fruit in either case.
Fruit can mean many things..."by their fruit you shall know them".
Teachings can be referred to as fruit then, and this man told Eve something contrary to what God had told her.
He led her away in her thinking first, and then he seduced her and fathered Cain.
Later that day Adam "knew" her also, and that union produced Abel.
In taking her back after she was seduced by another man, Adam expressed a Christ-like character sacrificing his own immortality to do so.
Just like Christ came and died to save His own bride.
Lets look at it from a literal viewpoint for a minute and put ourselves in their shoes.
Imagine the two little boys growing up outside of Eden.
When they asked their parents why they had to leave it never to return...
What would a loving parent tell a little child?
"Your mother had an affair with a beast possessed by the enemy of God"?... "and it was the father of little Cain"?...No, I don't think so.
Without actually lying, they would hide the truth in some metaphor to their little children who wouldn't understand for many years anyway.
"Mommy ate the fruit from a tree that God had said not to"...
That is what a loving parent would do.
And there you go.
Much later, when the boys came of age and went to offer their own first sacrifice...
Abel understood what the metaphor had been hiding.
The "death of an innocent animal" was Abel's way of symbolizing his revelation of the Messiah coming as the sacrifice for sin.
His revelation was prophetic and that displayed the attributes of a son of god he was growing up to be.
That is what God accepted, not a burnt offering.
The sacrifice he offered was symbolic of his revelation.
The "fruits of the field" Cain offered, symbolized he still had no idea of what really happened in the garden.
They had hid it from him, trying to raise him up right alongside Abel even though he was fathered by the enemy.
Abel saw by revelation it was animal blood that had polluted the pure blood of God, and Cain was the fruit of that union.
Explaining this to Cain didn't go to well for Abel though...
Cain couldn't receive revelation from God like his brother Abel.
Cain wasn't a "child" of the same God that Abel was...
He wasn't born of Adam who was of God.
He received his inspiration from the god that was his father, who was the Devil.
His solution? Murder the righteous one.
The religious leaders of Jesus day seemed to have this same problem.
Didn't Jesus say they were of their father the Devil?
He wasn't being symbolic in this case.
They murdered the righteous one.
The religious leaders today seem to have the same problem.
That would explain a lot of their confusion.
You can expect the pattern to repeat.
Follow the trail of the serpent on down to this day...
That "beast" that was in the beginning is the same beast that manifests itself through mankind in the end.
There's the real mark of the beast.
It's always been here. Cain was of his father the "wicked one".
He was given a mark, and his children still have it to this day.
Jesus said "you must be born again" of the Holy Spirit, not of the flesh.
The flesh of all mankind is contaminated with an unholy spirit we are born with.
This is just a short explanation of how and why.
The story of Adam and Eve is both literal and symbolic.
It is both historical and prophetic, reflecting the cyclic nature of time.
A day is as a thousand years, and when a week is over is starts back at the first day again.
There is so much in this one story there is no place to stop, so I just will.
Have a nice day.
Scripture is written that way to contain compound meanings on different levels.
The reference to the two trees was symbolism, an analogy.
The tree of life is a person. That's God. The one and only source of eternal life.
It said He came down and "walked with Adam in the cool of the evening".
So is the tree of knowledge. That was the serpent, the Devil.
Not a snake, a man. It wasn't literal fruit in either case.
Fruit can mean many things..."by their fruit you shall know them".
Teachings can be referred to as fruit then, and this man told Eve something contrary to what God had told her.
He led her away in her thinking first, and then he seduced her and fathered Cain.
Later that day Adam "knew" her also, and that union produced Abel.
In taking her back after she was seduced by another man, Adam expressed a Christ-like character sacrificing his own immortality to do so.
Just like Christ came and died to save His own bride.
Lets look at it from a literal viewpoint for a minute and put ourselves in their shoes.
Imagine the two little boys growing up outside of Eden.
When they asked their parents why they had to leave it never to return...
What would a loving parent tell a little child?
"Your mother had an affair with a beast possessed by the enemy of God"?... "and it was the father of little Cain"?...No, I don't think so.
Without actually lying, they would hide the truth in some metaphor to their little children who wouldn't understand for many years anyway.
"Mommy ate the fruit from a tree that God had said not to"...
That is what a loving parent would do.
And there you go.
Much later, when the boys came of age and went to offer their own first sacrifice...
Abel understood what the metaphor had been hiding.
The "death of an innocent animal" was Abel's way of symbolizing his revelation of the Messiah coming as the sacrifice for sin.
His revelation was prophetic and that displayed the attributes of a son of god he was growing up to be.
That is what God accepted, not a burnt offering.
The sacrifice he offered was symbolic of his revelation.
The "fruits of the field" Cain offered, symbolized he still had no idea of what really happened in the garden.
They had hid it from him, trying to raise him up right alongside Abel even though he was fathered by the enemy.
Abel saw by revelation it was animal blood that had polluted the pure blood of God, and Cain was the fruit of that union.
Explaining this to Cain didn't go to well for Abel though...
Cain couldn't receive revelation from God like his brother Abel.
Cain wasn't a "child" of the same God that Abel was...
He wasn't born of Adam who was of God.
He received his inspiration from the god that was his father, who was the Devil.
His solution? Murder the righteous one.
The religious leaders of Jesus day seemed to have this same problem.
Didn't Jesus say they were of their father the Devil?
He wasn't being symbolic in this case.
They murdered the righteous one.
The religious leaders today seem to have the same problem.
That would explain a lot of their confusion.
You can expect the pattern to repeat.
Follow the trail of the serpent on down to this day...
That "beast" that was in the beginning is the same beast that manifests itself through mankind in the end.
There's the real mark of the beast.
It's always been here. Cain was of his father the "wicked one".
He was given a mark, and his children still have it to this day.
Jesus said "you must be born again" of the Holy Spirit, not of the flesh.
The flesh of all mankind is contaminated with an unholy spirit we are born with.
This is just a short explanation of how and why.
The story of Adam and Eve is both literal and symbolic.
It is both historical and prophetic, reflecting the cyclic nature of time.
A day is as a thousand years, and when a week is over is starts back at the first day again.
There is so much in this one story there is no place to stop, so I just will.
Have a nice day.
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Now for something completely different...
Ever heard this one? The Adam and Eve story can also symbolically speak to the emergence of human consciousness.
From within an edenic state of unity and mere being and the mentality that today we call "unconsciousness," it was the serpent of wisdom who set the stage for the evolution of modern "consciousness." The initial manifestation of consciousness was duality, that basic human tendency to perceive and to conceive “what is” in terms of opposites and thus to discriminate, to know: for example, male/female (or no fig leaf/fig leaf ), masculine/feminine, good/evil, right/wrong, us/them, conscious/unconscious, etc. Once consciousness emerged, however, there was no going back, so Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden and blissful unconsciousness and away, of course, from the immediate presence of God.
(We repeat this psychological process today. Infants are born aware but not yet conscious. Consciousness in this view results from a process of biological maturation, age-appropriate social interaction and learning, and the development of language that naturally incorporates “how to think” as a conscious human being and including the creation of a subjective mind space.)
Symbolically typical of stories and myths that arose with the dawn of consciousness, i.e., from predominantly patriarchal cultures, is that all things associated with the male were deemed desirable and most worthy (consciousness itself, the masculine, light, the heavens, etc.), and all things associated with the female were deemed less desirable and less worthy (unconsciousness, the feminine, darkness, nature, etc.) Yet given the Genesis story and Eve’s role, why over time was consciousness symbolically linked to the masculine/male, you ask? Because the serpent (a mythologically dual-natured and bisexual creature) was also associated with competing religions that included worship of an earth mother Goddess, and the Hebrew God, of course, is the opposite and the father who resides in heaven; so while it was to Eve and from unconsciousness that the serpent appeared (an archetypal psychopomp), in patriarchal cultures what is masculine was most worthy, and consciousness instead came to be associated with Adam. Yes, Eve had done enough, thank you very much, so it was deemed wisest, so to speak, that from then on, men as rabbis and later as priests would intercede with God on behalf of humankind and also assume all major roles of authority.
(In myth and Jungian psychology, this switch from one to the other in a pair of opposites is called an enantiodromia. From an evolutionary perspective, this change and expansion of mentality enhanced early modern humans’ adaptation to a more complex world.)
Ever heard this one? The Adam and Eve story can also symbolically speak to the emergence of human consciousness.
From within an edenic state of unity and mere being and the mentality that today we call "unconsciousness," it was the serpent of wisdom who set the stage for the evolution of modern "consciousness." The initial manifestation of consciousness was duality, that basic human tendency to perceive and to conceive “what is” in terms of opposites and thus to discriminate, to know: for example, male/female (or no fig leaf/fig leaf
), masculine/feminine, good/evil, right/wrong, us/them, conscious/unconscious, etc. Once consciousness emerged, however, there was no going back, so Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden and blissful unconsciousness and away, of course, from the immediate presence of God. (We repeat this psychological process today. Infants are born aware but not yet conscious. Consciousness in this view results from a process of biological maturation, age-appropriate social interaction and learning, and the development of language that naturally incorporates “how to think” as a conscious human being and including the creation of a subjective mind space.)
Symbolically typical of stories and myths that arose with the dawn of consciousness, i.e., from predominantly patriarchal cultures, is that all things associated with the male were deemed desirable and most worthy (consciousness itself, the masculine, light, the heavens, etc.), and all things associated with the female were deemed less desirable and less worthy (unconsciousness, the feminine, darkness, nature, etc.) Yet given the Genesis story and Eve’s role, why over time was consciousness symbolically linked to the masculine/male, you ask? Because the serpent (a mythologically dual-natured and bisexual creature) was also associated with competing religions that included worship of an earth mother Goddess, and the Hebrew God, of course, is the opposite and the father who resides in heaven; so while it was to Eve and from unconsciousness that the serpent appeared (an archetypal psychopomp), in patriarchal cultures what is masculine was most worthy, and consciousness instead came to be associated with Adam. Yes, Eve had done enough, thank you very much, so it was deemed wisest, so to speak, that from then on, men as rabbis and later as priests would intercede with God on behalf of humankind and also assume all major roles of authority.
(In myth and Jungian psychology, this switch from one to the other in a pair of opposites is called an enantiodromia. From an evolutionary perspective, this change and expansion of mentality enhanced early modern humans’ adaptation to a more complex world.)
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geographer
Registered Member
well i have a very different idea about all this story. it is actually a methaphor not a fact ofcourse to make us understand different aspects of human life
Secular reason for Adam and Eve
The secular reason for the Adam and Eve story, and for the bible, is to control Kings.
But the story itself means this: If you po god, you and your family will suffer. No good 'father' rationalle would give Adam and Eve just one chance. Any good 'father' would give you a small test first, so that you will know what consequences are. Any good 'father' would punish you in a manner that fit the crime. Any good 'father' wouldn't send his only begotten son to be tortured and put to death for any reason, but I digress... Any good 'father' commands respect, not demands it. A good 'father' would not forever punish their other siblings or other children for the mistake of another. But we are talking about a god, right? A loving, forgiving god does not exist, and could never exist. A good, smart god, would find a peaceful, loving way to show how to be peacefull and loving. I used to belive that I was born in sin, that suffering was a good lesson for me, that I should believe without question, that the guy at the front of the church had some sort of direct alliance with god and wasn't just a power-hungry egomaniac, then I turned 11.
The writers of the bible don't want anyone asking too many questions, knowing too much, just you asking the question goes against most religions, although they don't say that very much anymore. They answer without really answering by blustering on forever about nonsense, leaving you with more questions and a reluctance to ask, lest you have to sit there for eternity, so that you will, at last, just agree, or better yet they will just end with "you have to have faith" which is also a non-answer which promotes guilt and fear. Religion is trying to evolve to try to stay relevant, but it will and must fail, for humans are hard-wired to seek truthful answers about ourselves and the world around us.
By the way, although childbirth is, of course, worth the pain (I took drugs, doesn't mean I love my kid any less), the pain of labor, is not a gift. But women always get the shaft when it comes to religion, do we not? It is surprising that any woman would belive a story where Eve is the one to blame for mortality, the only way Jesus could be born is by a virgin who was the immaculate conception (so non-virgins and mothers are unclean and unworthy, please!). Lot's wife, just another stupid woman, now a pillar of salt, who defied god. Delilah, the list goes on. The writers of the Bible probably knew that if anyone would be pulling the wool off off anyone's eyes, it's most likely going to be a woman
The secular reason for the Adam and Eve story, and for the bible, is to control Kings.
But the story itself means this: If you po god, you and your family will suffer. No good 'father' rationalle would give Adam and Eve just one chance. Any good 'father' would give you a small test first, so that you will know what consequences are. Any good 'father' would punish you in a manner that fit the crime. Any good 'father' wouldn't send his only begotten son to be tortured and put to death for any reason, but I digress... Any good 'father' commands respect, not demands it. A good 'father' would not forever punish their other siblings or other children for the mistake of another. But we are talking about a god, right? A loving, forgiving god does not exist, and could never exist. A good, smart god, would find a peaceful, loving way to show how to be peacefull and loving. I used to belive that I was born in sin, that suffering was a good lesson for me, that I should believe without question, that the guy at the front of the church had some sort of direct alliance with god and wasn't just a power-hungry egomaniac, then I turned 11.
The writers of the bible don't want anyone asking too many questions, knowing too much, just you asking the question goes against most religions, although they don't say that very much anymore. They answer without really answering by blustering on forever about nonsense, leaving you with more questions and a reluctance to ask, lest you have to sit there for eternity, so that you will, at last, just agree, or better yet they will just end with "you have to have faith" which is also a non-answer which promotes guilt and fear. Religion is trying to evolve to try to stay relevant, but it will and must fail, for humans are hard-wired to seek truthful answers about ourselves and the world around us.
By the way, although childbirth is, of course, worth the pain (I took drugs, doesn't mean I love my kid any less), the pain of labor, is not a gift. But women always get the shaft when it comes to religion, do we not? It is surprising that any woman would belive a story where Eve is the one to blame for mortality, the only way Jesus could be born is by a virgin who was the immaculate conception (so non-virgins and mothers are unclean and unworthy, please!). Lot's wife, just another stupid woman, now a pillar of salt, who defied god. Delilah, the list goes on. The writers of the Bible probably knew that if anyone would be pulling the wool off off anyone's eyes, it's most likely going to be a woman
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How does Adam and Eve control Kings?
Maybe I should expand this a little. If you are a King and you have no one to answer to, you are filthy rich and anything you do is okay. You most likely will end up a cruel, spoiled, immature brat. That said, there would be many MORE queen's and many defiant men's heads rolling, we would all be slaves and there would be no way for another to make money, unless you were in control of the King. Hence religion is born. King's couldn't marry or make rules without the okay from a bishop or cardinal, they kept control establishing power through bloodlines. Very shortsighted for the Bible to not have anticipated America, wouldn't you say, oh that's right, we are infidels and need to be killed. Next subject: Holy Wars. By the way, Kings were invented by churches to control the populace.
Maybe I should expand this a little. If you are a King and you have no one to answer to, you are filthy rich and anything you do is okay. You most likely will end up a cruel, spoiled, immature brat. That said, there would be many MORE queen's and many defiant men's heads rolling, we would all be slaves and there would be no way for another to make money, unless you were in control of the King. Hence religion is born. King's couldn't marry or make rules without the okay from a bishop or cardinal, they kept control establishing power through bloodlines. Very shortsighted for the Bible to not have anticipated America, wouldn't you say, oh that's right, we are infidels and need to be killed. Next subject: Holy Wars. By the way, Kings were invented by churches to control the populace.
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Scaramouche
Registered Member
Related material: http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=98643