It arose in one of the various Gnostic heresies, and definitely fits what he’s preaching.
It doesn’t even fit with the language of the text! He has to invent resurrections and sexless beings and more that just aren’t in the Hebrew.
Quite so – that’s the polemical function for which the writer took the Egyptian creation story but changed details; it’s also a point of the ‘royal chrinicle’ literary genre.
Well, we know – to go a bit Aristotelian – the initial cause, God commanding things into existence. We just aren’t told the instrumental cause, the means and manner of how those commands worked themselves out.
Base12 seems to have a twist on the version that I’m familiar with: i.e. we are either descendants of Hagar’s womb or Sarah’s womb, and I missed the “tell-tale” signs of each. Can one’s maternal ancestral line be determined by a Mitochondrial DNA test? Should be possible, no?
As a non-professional 'genetic genealogist", it’s been my understanding that there are four kinds of DNA:
Autosomal [atDNA] - inherited by male and female children from both parents;
Mitochondrial [mtDNA] - inherited by male and female children from only the biological mother;
X-DNA [i.e. 23rd chromosome “sex” gene], inherited by male and female children only from the biological mother;
X-DNA or Y-DNA [i.e. 23rd chromosome “sex” gene], inherited by female or male children only
from the biological father. (X-DNA contributed by the father makes the child a “female” and Y-DNA contributed by the father makes the child a “male”.)
The whole poit of this was to show that there is no need to try and rationalise or legitiise the Eden story. The bible has a certain level of scientific knowledge which matches the understanidng of the periods in which it was written. We do not have to buy into that knowledge and dismiss what has been learned since to use the texts and the theologica information of the bible.
All this talk about natural death and sin are just red herrings and unnecesary to understand what the bible is trying to teach.
It desn’t matter whether you can breed striped sheep from dirty watrer or not. All that matters is that Jacob was able to breed striped sheep. God could easily have shown him the genetic way of doing it, but the audiance would not have understood it even if it was correctly explained. The knowledge just wasn’t available.
The creation story is based on knowledge of the day. We do not need to ignore what has since been discovered to understand that God created the Heavens and the earth.
Jesus died for our sins. we do not have to know where sin came from, only that it exists. And we do not have to "blame "Adam. That was the whole point of the narative. Adam tried to disclaim responsibilty for his actions and by claiming that our sin comes from Adam is to do exactly the same thing!. Our sins are of our own doing. Stop blaimng Adam , or God, or the Devil, or some evolutionary defect. You sin because you choose to.
Except sin and death are what the Fall story are about – it’s behind Paul’s statement that the wages of sin is death. So it’s worth asking what is meant by “death”, and that involves examining the text. Ignore death and you throw out the theological information – it isn’t talking about science, theirs or ours, so you can’t use that to toss it.
If there is no fall, then the discussion about death becomes irelevant.What excludes us fron Eden is our knowledge of good and evil, our sentience, not the means of getting it.
No one told Adam he was naked, and clearly God did not think it important or He would have given Adam clothes beforehand.
Eden is idyllic. No worries, no cares, no work. To the Jews that was a forlorn dream. They needed a reason for the world to be what it is. Surely God would not hav made things so hard? So dangerous? so painful? Being thrown out of Eden seemed the only answer.
The Eden story is an attempt to explain away the harshness of this world. But it is just idealism. The word is, ad always has been. And it was deliberate from the start. You can’t lbe free t live if you are not free to die. SUch is life. You want freedom? You take the bad as well.
I really cannot see why everyone is so keen to get back into Eden? You will lose more than you gain.
Sin is disobedience. That desn’t change. What changed was the abiltiy to uderstand what is right and wrong. To know what is sinful and still do it. All Adam supposedly knoew was not to eat. He had no idea why. Like a child who doens’t believe you when you say that fire will hurt. If it disobeys it gets burnt! But that is all. Adam got burnt! (If he existed in the garden at all).
Adam’s real sin was to claim that it was not his fault!. And that is what people do when claiming Original sin, or fallen makind, or anything that makes us unable to do good. That is rubbish!. Anyone can choose not to sin. And most don’t even call it sin., but they know right from wrong
“I will write my laws on their hearts” said God. We know what is wrong, but wrong can seem very desirable.
“I can resist anything except temptation!”
LOL! I’d never have guessed. www.ancestry.com charges just for analyzing autosomal DNA, but doesn’t analyze Y-DNA or Mitochondrial DNA. www.familytreeDNA charges for analyzing Y-DNA, more for analyzing Mitochondrial DNA, and even more for anyalyzing autosomal DNA.
This is worse than the teaching of original sin – that what excludes us is what we are.
Along with your idea that “Sin is disobedience,” this serves the abuse of religion for power and control to the max, saying to be happy we must give up our sentience and simply obey.
No.
Eden is walking with God as a part of our daily lives.
Well… yes… but I think you mean we gained it and I think the opposite. A real understanding of good and evil comes from God. When we grasp it for ourselves… the authority to dictate the difference ourselves then we lose it. I am not saying we are incapable, but only that it takes time and a great deal of experience… walking with God.
And what do we see happening in the story? Do we see an increase in the ability of Adam, Eve, and their children to tell right from wrong. No, quite the opposite. We go from blaming others for our mistakes and problems rather quickly to murder and evil continually. This growth and extension of evil to consume all goodness is part of the nature of evil.
Now that we agree on. But why is that the real sin? And what has this to do with disobedience?
Nothing.
This blaming others is a rejection of the essence of life itself which is to learn, grow, and become more. You can only do that by accepting responsibility for your mistakes and learning from them.
So it is not about obedience but about life and responsibility.
That’s contrary to the text – it explicitly says that there was work!
The Lord’s Prayer presumes we will sin. So does the apostle John. It’s all over the Psalms as well as the prophets, particularly Isaiah.
This is not the same as being able to not sin. I John spells out the difference: apart from God our habit is to sin, but with God our habit is to not sin. That doesn’t mean we will ever be able to say we don’t sin; he spells that out, too.
Interesting. Y-DNA involves just the one chromosome; for mitochondrial DNA the mitochondria have to be isolated first; autosomal DNA is 99.9% the same in everyone so analyzing it is like sifting a haystack to find a handful of toothpicks. That seems like a progression in difficulty.
I sort of agree. What they got was the experience of wrong, due to disobedience, without any understanding.
And loyalty. We’re supposed to be God’s family, and family members should remain loyal. Sin as disobedience really isn’t what matters, then; what matters is re-orienting on God.
The whole Torah reinforces that. A lot of things that require purification and/or sacrifice are, if you stop to think about it, things that can’t be avoided but are things that can draw us away from God. Purification then, isn’t about washing away guilt, it’s about showing loyalty.
The problem is that the devil, evil, and abusers of religion love and demand this too, and it serves them well. Should Adam and Eve have followed the direction of God? Of course. But they followed the direction of the serpent quite well. That is why I do not agree that loyalty and obedience is the important factor… it is too easy to obey and show loyalty to the wrong people. If you say… well God is the one who made them. Then I would ask, what if the creator were the evil one like the Gnostics believed? Should we be loyal to the Demiurge just because it created the world.
From the story it is clear that we need to be careful who we listen to and follow. And the reason is because some will lead us in the way of life and others in the way death. So… it is really about life. And that is the real understanding of good and evil and not the illusion of it chosen by Adam and Eve.
I walk with God now, and am not in Eden. I walk as a son, Adam walked as a puppy.
Of course. Eden is a myth. An impossible fantasy like Shangrilah or Paradise. They cannot exist.
Oh give it a rest! This has nothing to do with power or control!
Absolutely not!. To be happy we need the peace of God that passeth all understanding. Something I have experienced , but for too short periods of time. The world sort of intrudes again.
I wish you would get this notion of power and control out of your system.
On that we can agree.
Show me where! Eden is supposede to be paradise. You do not work in paradise.
Of course we will sin, but not because we must, but because it is virtually impossible not to. The level of perfection is too high, and it only takes a minute blemish to become unclean. It is theoretically possible not to sin… But maybe only for the young and/or inocent.
At the end of the day it is ot our place to condemn, nor to claim “sinner!”. We keep our own house in order and leave the rest to God alone.
Well… I agree that Eden as some have imagined it (without death and pain) never existed.
…in this Eden which never existed… right?
Is that like the country in which communism worked so well… which never actually existed?
The reality is that much of religion in history has had a great deal to do with power and control. Refusing to acknowledge this and not making a distinction from what religion can be about, only leads to the conclusion that ALL religion is about power and control.
Besides which the text tells us about the (apparently) first task the man was given: to name the animals, which didn’t just mean making up a set of sounds for each one; in the ancient near east naming something meant understanding it fully.
Maybe.
That’s not the point; the point is that the Garden was a place where heaven and earth overlapped or intersected, where God would come and spend time with His creatures and also where other heavenly beings could visit – that’s where the so-called serpent came in; the word can be translated as “Shining One”, i.e. what we would call a bright angel (which explains why Even wasn’t startled by a talking snake; it was a heavenly being she already knew).
I am sorry, but you are taking the whole thing too literally and trying to rationalise it into some sort of reality. I really do not think that was ever the intention.