Biblical usage of Death

Faith & Science Conversation
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Since there is no such thing as ‘spiritual death’ we can rule that option out.

If you had a verse in mind, we could clarify things easier.

You are making an important point. Since there is no such thing as spiritual death, the Adam and Eve narrative changes drastically from the false dogmas, disinformation, lies, etc. that are commonly told.

Genesis 2:17 clearly states that Adam would die a physical death on that very day…

Genesis 2:17
“But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”

Since practically no one on the planet believes that verse, any kind of rational discussion on the subject is nearly impossible.

Amen. Until folks stop altering Genesis 2:17 to fit the false narrative, enlightenment will never occur.

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God told the truth.

And that is where you and just about everyone on the planet gets it wrong. God was speaking of a physical death. Adam and his Wife really did die physically that day.

By the way, where did you see the name ‘Eve’ prior to Genesis 3:20? Are you certain it was Eve who died? You may want to double check. :slightly_smiling_face:

Now we are getting somewhere. The phrase ‘surely die’ is a special phrase describing more than just physical death. One of the Biblical terms is ‘twice dead’ (i.e., ‘dying ye shall die’).

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LOL LOL LOL Ah yes you are the man with the hotline to Truth, knowing what the Bible means better than the apostles, or Paul, or Jesus, or God Himself. LOL what bull-malarkey! When someone says something like this that you know they are full of hot air.

To be sure not everyone on the planet agrees with what the Bible says and even a good portion who do also edit the Bible as they see fit. But while I don’t pretend that you have to believe something just because the Bible says so, I do prefer what it actually says in that book to how people like to change it.

No, God does NOT say they will physically die. No, the Bible does NOT say that they did die physically that day.

I am absolutely certain the Bible says that Eve is the one who sinned together with Adam and I am also absolutely certain Eve did not physically die any more than Adam did on the day they sinned. Ergo… not only is it a lie to claim that God said they would physically die on the day they ate the fruit, but to claim God meant this is to say God is a liar and claim the serpent is the one who told the truth.

It is true the Bible does not use the phrase “spiritual death” any more than it uses the word “Trinity.” But it would be completely wrong to say these teachings do not come from the Bible. They most certainly do, and the Bible speaks of both of these things indirectly.

Jesus speaks of a different kind of death in Luke 9:60, and he speaks of a spiritual birth in John 3, so even though the Bible does not use that phrase it is very natural to use this phrase for what the Bible is talking about and extremely convoluted to invent something different to explain these passages. The Bible frequently speaks of life being given to those who are already alive physically and it is abundantly clear that it is not speaking of more physical life or longevity but something else. Furthermore there is also Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 who is very clear in the contrast between a physical/natural body and a spiritual body. Again the phrase “spiritual life” with a natural opposite in the phrase “spiritual death” is the most natural way to understand all of this, rather than bending over backwards trying to make the Bible say the opposite, so making your god the father of lies… all I can say is yikes! I most certainly am not interested in such bending and twisting of the Bible in such a way.

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The above adds nothing of value to the conversation.

Agreed.

I am of the same opinion.

Except it does. You have been conditioned to not see what is plainly written. Therefore, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate why either the word ‘day’ must be altered to something non-literal or why the phrase ‘surely die’ must be altered to something non-literal.

No answer to the above I see.

Who said Eve died that day? Again, what are the names of the people who died that day? Go back and read Genesis again. Hint, Eve was not one of them. What was the name of the being that God created from the rib? Have you made the same false assumption as everyone else?

How is it a lie? The verse is clear that they would surely die on that day, and that is precisely what happened. Again, you are having issues believing it. Why? What is wrong with agreeing with the simple literal interpretation of the text?

Your opinion about spiritual death is wrong. Even Wikipedia states that ‘spiritual death’ (whatever that means) is simply a made-up dogma…

“The phrase spiritual death is not found in Protestant scriptures, and definitions of the concept thus vary among Protestant Christians.”

Spiritual death in Christianity - Wikipedia

Why would such a “simple solid easy to understand truth” have varying definitions and concepts? It is because it is false dogma.

The Biblical term for what is being described is ‘twice dead’. In other words, they are pre-condemned to the Lake of Fire, the second death.

  1. Physical Death
  2. Second Death

Where is this so called ‘spiritual death’ in the above list? Note that there is no ‘third death’ in the Bible.

That is a different topic.

So that is where we are at? You need to insult me as proof that you are correct?

And yet here I am showing you and everyone else, that is precisely what everyone does with Genesis 2:17. They twist and alter it. As far as I know, I am the only person on the planet that does not alter the text. This is a fact. You can laugh all you want, but emotions do not change it.

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The First Adam (hint) and his Wife Ishshah (hint)…

  • Died
  • Passed on
  • Were ‘No More’
  • Ceased to be
  • Expired
  • Gone on to meet their maker
  • Were bereft of life
  • Were resting in peace
  • Were pushing up daisies

In other words, they were not pining for the fjords.

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Here, I will add more info…

Genesis 2:23
“And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”

The Hebrew for ‘Woman’ in the above verse is ‘Ishshah’. Her name was not Eve. Thus, it was Ishshah that died on that day after partaking of the Forbidden Fruit. The First Adam died as well.

This next verse describes when they were resurrected (i.e., Resurrection of Damnation) and recreated with reproductive organs (i.e., original sin)…

Genesis 3:7*
*“And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.”

Their eyes were closed because they were dead.

The Second Adam therefore named this new creation Eve…

Genesis 3:20
“And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.”

Adam did not name his wife twice. There were two men and two women created in the Creation Account.

Note that Jesus is the Last Adam. Now you know why he is called that.

The First Adam was created on the Third Day. Did you folks not notice that important detail? :slightly_smiling_face:

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This is how it went down…

Genesis 2:4
“These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens”

The above is referring to the Third Day of Creation. Day means day. Were you told to change it to ‘back in the day’? Oopsie! They got you.

We know it is the Third Day because no life existed yet, not even plants…

Genesis 2:5 (New Living Translation)
“Neither wild plants nor grains were growing on the earth. For the LORD God had not yet sent rain to water the earth, and there were no people to cultivate the soil.”

There were no people. Perfect. We have an established time marker. So, what happened next on the Third Day?

Genesis 2:7*
*"And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."

Oopsies again! You mean to tell me there was another Adam created as the first form of life!??!?

Yep. :slightly_smiling_face:

Jesus rose on the Third Day, just like the First Adam. Ah, now it makes sense. :innocent:

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You are aware that the Hebrew word for wife here here is אִשְׁתּ֖וֹ
the exact same root as the rest of the Garden of Eden narrative that you give above.

They are one and the same.

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Yes. That is why we should let the context teach us the meaning.

A rule is established here…

Genesis 2:19*
*And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

Whenever God creates a new living being, Adam names it. Whatever Adam ‘calls’ the new being, that is its name.

  • The first creation was called Woman, thus that was her name.
  • The second creation was called Eve, thus that was her name.

To suggest that Eve was named two different things is in violation of the rule previously established. Moreover, people in the Bible are often named after the way they were born (e.g. Jacob the ‘heal grabber’.)

The two women were born or created in a very different manner from each other. Ishshah’s name reflects how she was cloned from a rib…

Genesis 2:23*
*“And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”

Eve’s name reflects how she was recreated with reproductive organs. Ishsha did not have reproductive organs. This is why Eve is called ‘The Mother of All Living’…

Genesis 3:20*
*“And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.”

Again, their names reflect the way they were created (like so many characters in the Bible) which were very different from one another.

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It does not. Your claim is an empty one, because you do not quote the Bible to show it says this anywhere in any of the text of the Bible.

I have not been “conditioned.” I was not raised Christian, nor did I have anyone tell me what the Bible says. I read the Bible for myself.

But I am not altering the text. I am not inserting the word “physical” in there. And YOU are the one who have to change the meaning of the word “day,” not me. God said they would die on that day and they did not die physically so if God is not a liar then they died a different kind of death, like the kind Jesus spoke of in Luke 9:60.

Nobody physically died that day. And both Adam and Eve were the ones who sinned according to both Genesis and Paul in 2 Corinthians 11 and 1 Timothy 2. Just because the name isn’t given in every sentence doesn’t mean a thing. When no other name is given, the writer intends for us to understand the name given is the name of the woman in the story.

I have made the same correct assumption as Paul according to the conventions of all written stories.

The word “physical” is not in the text.

No. I believe what it says and not your alteration of the text. God said they would die on that day and the serpent said they would not die. They did not die physically on that day.

What is wrong is that the Bible does not say God said they would die physically and Bible says Adam and the woman (only given the name Eve) lived to bear three sons AFTER they had sinned

Your opinion about spiritual death is wrong.

I already said the phrase isn’t in the Bible just as the doctrine of the Trinity isn’t in the Bible, and yet the doctrine of the Trinity is the definition of Christianity distinguishing it from other religions like Islam. How can it vary in Protestantism if it isn’t a teaching in Protestantism. Of course it is. The Bible, Christianity, and Protestantism teaches the doctrine of the Trinity, spiritual birth, spiritual life, and spiritual death. The fact that these phrases aren’t in the Bible is irrelevant.

By that standard all of religion is wrong. That is the reasoning of an atheist.

Doesn’t work to explain Luke 9:60. These people are not in a lake of fire. They are moving around on the earth able to bury the dead.

Nope. Same topic. Spiritual life is in the resurrected spiritual body. Without resurrection there is only spiritual death even if the person is physically alive, because the spiritual body and the physical body are not the same.

Such a belief is a sign of delusion.

Nope. Doesn’t work.

Genesis 3:17 says the woman is Adam’s wife and it uses the same Hebrew word as earlier for woman הָאִשָּׁ֣ה as it does earlier in 3:2. There is no justification for making this a different wife than the one Adam names Eve in 3:20. At no time in the story is a different woman brought into it. Neither is there any justification for saying the first wife died physically.

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I have to ask, seeing as you are the only one on the planet who knows these things; due to eating of the tree, who was Genesis 3:16 directed to…

To the woman he said,

“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.

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Do you believe that Scripture interprets Scripture? Do you believe in testing the Spirits? I do.

So, according to everyone here so far, we must take away and add unto the Word of God to make it reflect ‘The Narrative’. Let us try that and see what happens.

Here is Genesis 2:17 from the King James Bible…

Genesis 2:17
“But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”

Now, we will take away and add to the verse to make it say what ‘The Narrative’ wants it to say…

Genesis 2:17
“But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt [begin the aging process and slowly die over the course of many years].”

There. Now, let us try out the ‘new and improved’ translation on other verses in the Bible to see if they agree. I have taken away ‘surely die’ from Scripture and added [begin the aging process and slowly die over the course of many years]…

Genesis 20:7
“Now therefore restore the man his wife; for he is a prophet, and he shall pray for thee, and thou shalt live: and if thou restore her not, know thou that thou shalt [begin the aging process and slowly die over the course of many years], thou, and all that are thine.”

Does that make better sense? Nope, it completely contradicts the rest of Scripture. Let us try another…

1 Samuel 14:39
“For, as the LORD liveth, which saveth Israel, though it be in Jonathan my son, he shall [begin the aging process and slowly die over the course of many years]. But there was not a man among all the people that answered him.”

Does that make better sense? Nope, it completely contradicts the rest of Scripture. Let us try another…

1 Samuel 22:16
“And the king said, Thou shalt [begin the aging process and slowly die over the course of many years], Ahimelech, thou, and all thy father’s house.”

Does that make better sense? Nope, it completely contradicts the rest of Scripture. Let us try another…

2 Samuel 12:5
“And David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, As the LORD liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall [begin the aging process and slowly die over the course of many years]”

Does that make better sense? Nope, it completely contradicts the rest of Scripture. Let us try another…

2 Kings 1:4
“Now therefore thus saith the LORD, Thou shalt not come down from that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt [begin the aging process and slowly die over the course of many years]. And Elijah departed.”

Does that make better sense? Nope, it completely contradicts the rest of Scripture. Let us try another…

Ezekiel 33:8
“When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt [begin the aging process and slowly die over the course of many years]; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand.”

Does that make better sense? Nope, it completely contradicts the rest of Scripture. I can do this over and over again. The pattern is consistent.

See, here is the thing. The phrase ‘surely die’ is always used with regards to a person or persons who, not only disobeyed God, but are most likely destined for the Second Death. In other words, it is reserved for the wicked. At bare minimum, it implies an immediate punishment and physical death.

A more concise analysis and explanation can be found here…

Ministry Magazine | Dying You Shall Die: The meaning of Genesis 2:17

You folks may want to read this part…

Finally, to interpret Genesis 2:17 as announcing natural consequences instead of a juridical penalty ignores the overwhelming biblical evidence of how authors used the phrase in question throughout the Old Testament. As such, the natural consequences interpretation seems to establish human arbiters as higher authorities than the text to determine its truthfulness and relevance. Scripture no longer interprets Scripture.

I submit that everyone here so far is guilty of the bolded above.

There are even more problems with the way you folks interpret Genesis. One glaring example is the question of why Adam was alone, even though he was in a world supposedly filled with animals. And what does God do to solve the problem of Adam being alone while surrounded by animals? God creates animals. Does that make sense? Of course not.

Moreover, Genesis 1 teaches that Man was made after the animals, not before. Oops! They did it to you again.

Why does God tell Adam and Eve to have sex and make babies while eating from the Tree of Life? Talk about blasphemy. That is not how Heaven works. You should know this.

How do you folks account for all the glaring contradictions in your interpretations? :slightly_smiling_face:

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I will interpret what I believe is happening with the above verse (and other verses in Genesis 3) and leave it up to you to decide.

What we are looking at here is the process of God recreating everyone involved with the Forbidden Zygote fiasco. Yes, the Forbidden Fruit was symbolic of a Female Egg Cell fertilized by Satan. When the First Adam and Ishshah partook, they incarnated into the corrupt bodies we have now. In fact, we all partook of the Golden Cup (filled with sperm and ovum) the Harlot holds in Revelation. That is how we got here. It is literal. The Golden Cup is not ‘false teachings of the Papacy’ or whatever nonsense they tell the simpletons out there.

Basically, the two trees were there for the couple to decide what type of body they would like to be born into. Think Hagar vs. Sarah. Bondage vs. Free. Each Tree is a ‘one shot deal’. It was a test. A fair test honestly. Free will and all that.

Anyhow…

The Serpent is the first to be recreated into a new body…

Genesis 3:14*
*“And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:”

The so called ‘Snake’ everyone refers to is what we call sperm. Said sperm is in the loins of all men to this very day. When Jesus said ‘ye are of your father the Devil’, he meant it literally. This Seed would eventually become Cain and everyone else on the planet.

Thus, whenever Adam plants a Seed in the fertile soil of Eve’s womb, thorns and thistles are sure to sprout up. It is euphemism (meat of the Word).

The original couple were created to ‘till the ground’. In other words, they were to create life from the dust of the ground as God did. That is why they did not need reproductive organs as the Beasts have. They failed the test.

Eve was given the Womb and Conception. Adam was given Testicles and the Seed of the Serpent. That is what is ultimately being described in the symbolism. God obeyed their choice and clothed them with the corrupt ‘skin and flesh’ we have now…

Job 10:11*
*“Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, and hast fenced me with bones and sinews.”

God did not ‘kill an animal’. That is more fake dogma.

Now that the couple have reproductive organs, they can no longer have access to the Tree of Life. The two can never mix. There is no sex in Heaven. We are all ‘born unto sin’ because we have Beast DNA and have to procreate the way they do.

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Got it. I’ve decided to leave.

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  • I first heard of the Serpent Seed Doctrine in another forum, but outside of the Babylonian Talmud and the Protoevangelium of James, I’ve never met anyone who “preached” it. Seems to me, on casual reading of your last post, that’s kind of what you’re preaching, isn;t it?

@marta

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Thank you for showing us all how you have edited the text. Like I said before, I like the text as it is written. So the first is correct and I reject your revision in the second of these.

If you say God meant physical death then you have to change it in this way you suggest. That is why most everyone ELSE on the planet understands God to be referring to spiritual death not physical death when He says they will die on the day they eat of the fruit.

I submit that you are not special except in your willingness to alter the text of scripture to fit what you want it to say – even though it should be obvious to you that doing this doesn’t work with the rest of the Bible.

There is no such thing in the Bible.

And you are mixing up two creation stories. Adam and Eve are not mentioned in first story. The point and teaching of the first story is entirely different. The first story is about how all these things sun, moon, stars, animals and man are not gods but creations of God. It is not even coherent as an account of how God made everything because that is not the intent of the chapter 1 story. Chapter 2 tells the story of creation in a completely different order, but this is not important because it is about something completely different, the origin of evil and sin. Neither of these stories are a creation for dummies book explaining how God created all things. That is not what either of them are about and nowhere in the Bible does it suggest we now know how God created all things – quite the opposite, it is made plain we understand nothing about how God created things.

Thus a more proper question is why don’t Adam and Eve eat of the tree of life before it is forbidden to them? It is because neither of these are magical fruits but symbols representing something else. The tree of life is mentioned many times in the Bible and it is pretty clear that it represents a relationship with God. The true source of eternal life is quite clearly a relationship with God and NOT eating some magical fruit like in Chinese mythology.

LOL So this is your justification for altering the text and inserting things which are not there?

…very poor justification.

People can feel alone even in a crowded room let alone among a bunch of animals. My personal experience is that animals don’t come close. Pets are like having a baby which never grows up. It seems some people are like that and wish their children didn’t have to grow up. Not me. Growing up is the whole point of children so they can do so much more than just making you have to feed them and clean up after them.

By not accepting the glaring contradictions in your alterations of the Bible.

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The Hebrew there does not mean “twice dead”, it means “you shall most certainly die”.

Very good points.

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He’s correct – it does not say “physically die”, it just says “dying you shall die”. God doesn’t bother to define it.

Granted, the only definition of death they would have known was physical, unless they were aware that animals were also living souls, but the text doesn’t explicitly say “physical”. So when they didn’t immediately drop dead I suspect they would have been perplexed.

Given that neither of the two literary genres to which the first Genesis Creation account conforms expects the details to be taken literally, it is actually those arguing for a literal meaning who have to demonstrate their point. This is also the case since for the first few days there was no way to measure time – which is why a number of ancient commentators called those “divine days” – and even for days four and five there was no human to mark time.

If you want to be that picky, no one in that narrative had a name, only a label.

This is one of the most extreme examples of making stuff up that isn’t in the text that I’ve ever seen!
It doesn’t say they died.
It doesn’t mention resurrection.
It doesn’t link sex to sin.
Eyes being closed doesn’t mean they were dead. The concept is actually shown for us in Psalm 119 where the Psalmist asks God to open his eyes so he cane see “wondrous things out of Your law”: it means seeing spiritual truth and not just natural truth. Jesus and Paul use the idea the same way.

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You’re playing games with something you don’t understand. First you want to make the word אִשָּׁ֔ה be a name, then you don’t want it to be a name. To be consistent, you should translate the above verse as:

“And Adam called Ishshah’s name Eve”.

So by the reasoning you’re using, this is a change of name.

Quite so.

Or to translate consistently:

“To Ishsha He said, 'I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children”.

Pretty amazing for a being with no reproductive organs to have children!

I didn’t know that zygotes grew on trees.

This teaching first arose in an ancient heresy and it is only propagated by heresy. It requires changing the meanings of words, arbitrarily calling some things symbolic and others literal, and depends on an infantile fascination with sex.

Arbitrarily, when you say so.

No one when the Garden stories were written would have had any idea of what you are claiming – not the writer, and not the audiences. You’re making up stuff they would have (quite properly) laughed at and twisting the text to get a warped meaning that cannot be justified on the basis of the Hebrew.

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Thanks everyone for your input. This is just an FYI that I will be unsubscribing from this thread and will no longer be monitoring it or responding to it.