(October 18, 2018 at 7:23 am)Belaqua Wrote:(October 18, 2018 at 5:23 am)Grandizer Wrote: Ok, next passage:
The Fall
Probably the first philosophically interesting passage. Who would like to give this an analysis? Doesn't matter what type of analysis, anything is fine.
"...your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
I wonder about the nuances of the Hebrew word that's translated here as "knowing." The usual sense that people seem to have of it is that once they've eaten the fruit, A&E will know what is good and what is evil -- they will gain cognizance of these things. But in (literary) English "know" can also mean "experience." Like "In my long life I have known great hardship." Does anybody here know how to use a Hebrew concordance or something? I don't.
I assume that God doesn't know good and evil in the sense of living through it, but he does observe it in the world -- he does have to watch it. He knows that it's out there, which A&E hadn't known.
Anyway, I'm leaning toward an interpretation where the problem A&E get isn't added understanding or data about the world, but instead that they are forced to leave the naive but boring condition of the pre-Fall into a world of both bliss and suffering. This is sort of along the lines of Milton's version.
As such, I see the whole thing as an allegory of birth. We are perfectly happy in the womb, but it would be a boring and unchallenging existence if we never left. By extension, the story is about leaving home, breaking out, all the cases where we give up a stable state for something we have to go through if we want to be more human. If the Old Testament is a symbolic representation of the trials and failings of life on earth, it starts with getting kicked out of the womb.
(As you've noticed, I don't much care about the original authors' intent. Or I could get all Freudian, and say that they subconsciously meant my interpretation, although they didn't know it.)
An important aspect that some Christians read into it and others don't: the felix culpa. Milton and all the Romantics thought that the Fall was, in the long run, a good thing. Without it, we would have stayed in the pretty-OK Eden and never made it to the totally-wonderful Heaven. I can't recall when the felix culpa idea got going. Dante, for one, doesn't mention it.
https://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lex...3045&t=ESV
יָדַע yâdaʻ, yaw-dah'; a primitive root; to know (properly, to ascertain by seeing); used in a great variety of senses, figuratively, literally, euphemistically and inferentially (including observation, care, recognition; and causatively, instruction, designation, punishment, etc.):—acknowledge, acquaintance(-ted with), advise, answer, appoint, assuredly, be aware, (un-) awares, can(-not), certainly, comprehend, consider,
