Atheist Bible Study 1: Genesis

[Drich]

Talking snake, yeah right.  I don't buy that it's allegorical or metaphorical or whatever figuratively preposterous apologetic theists wish to attribute to it, because it's either a complete work of fiction or to be taken literally.  I'm not delusional, so I will go with the former.

This is sort of a false dilemma. The thing with allegories is that they contain symbolisms pointing/referring to events and observations that may be true, and these allegories can be in the form of clear fictional or mythical stories. The question is whether these stories, at the time of writing or later compiling, were intended as allegorical or not. If yes, then literalist Christians are not understanding these scriptural passages right at all. If no, then we can say that allegorical interpretations of these passages happen to be post-hoc interpretations rather than originally intended.

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This has always struck me as - to put it mildly - a morally bankrupt story.  God punishes Adam and Eve for doing something they could not possibly have known was wrong.  Yes, he told them not to eat of the Tree Of Knowledge Of Good And Evil.  But until they gained that knowledge, they couldn't have known that disobeying God was an evil act.

Boru

My thought exactly.

Drich (I know, I know, it's effing Drich, lol) had this to say earlier:

You do not have to have knowledge of Good and evil to understand death. God said eat and this will kill you, he did and died for it. everything that he was.. was over all that was left was a primal husk of a almost defiable being.

To Drich, that's a satisfactory answer. But to me, it still doesn't address how committing an act out of a lack of knowledge of good and evil can warrant such a harsh consequence. Such a punishment doesn't seem to be just.

Of course, this is assuming a literal interpretation.

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Thank you! That's what I needed!

What do you think...? I'd say the entry there doesn't rule out my preferred version. The full entry includes things like "to know by seeing," "to be acquainted with," etc. Which would include not just ideas popping into A&E's heads but knowing through experience. 

And it reminds me of the line from Isaiah, quoted in Handel's Messiah: "[He was] a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." That might be relevant.......

That's not a bad way of looking at it. It's a reasonable interpretation at least.

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I will make my own brief commentary on this passage soon.

think of how much harsher the consequence could have been. dude died but live in one form or another for 930 more years. could have sent him to hell.

in truth the consequence was intended to bring fourth and populate heaven and earth with 'free range' being who wanted to be there.

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My simple thoughts on Genesis 3 (I'm going to do a bit of both literal and allegorical here):

In the last chapter, we found out how both man and woman came to be (sort of like an introduction to the story of humankind). Genesis 2 was basically a happy chapter, of youth and innocence and companionship and such, reflecting some of our heavenly fantasies and desires. Genesis 3 continues on from Genesis 2 but has a dark theme to it, whereby we are reminded of the suffering and cruelty of this world and how we are to be held accountable for the acts we commit.

the biggest take away here is to note there is no time line between the end of day 2 and the beginning of day 3. why is that important? because remember we established that day 2 was garden only narrative and it was created apart from Chapter 1 7 days of creation tat in chapter two adam with a soul was created day 3ish.. and placed in the garden and man made by God the Father on day 6 was simply man made in the image of God. Why is this important because day 6 man created by the father could just as well be 'evolved man.' who met up with adam and eve's children 6000 years ago upon the exodus.

In this passage, there's a reminder of such things as temptations, betrayal, blaming, deception, fear, pain, punishment, and exclusion. These are things that happen in the real world all the time, and they lead to negative and severe consequences.

we only consider these acts severe because we have nothing else to compare them too.. Imagine a world where white lies are the biggest sin... then to us white lies would be aki to rape and murder now! We only look at these things in such a light because of adam and eve/meaning we know how perfect things in the garden would have been, but outside I would suggest this was the norm as it was the reason they were cast out. meaning we only know they are bad because of the fruit.

We blame some of all this on the actions of our species, but others we attribute to the cruel impartiality of nature. The serpent, later to be seen as the devil himself by Jews and especially Christians, seems to represent the influential forces of nature that eventually led us to finally "open our eyes" and realize the harshness and evils observed in this world. At the start, you could say we were innocently "naked", we'd do things without realizing how bad they may be and without thinking of such things as the consequences of these actions, like the other animals. But as if to highlight the marked differences in cognitive capacities between humans and other animals, the passage seems to symbolically describe how we have awakened/evolved to become such cognitively advanced beings. Belaqua and Vulcan already made several of these points, so I won't restate them here.

Nevertheless, we should also look at this whole passage as an attempt to explain/justify more specific/literal things as the traditional patriarchical structure of marriage (whereby the man is deemed the head of the woman and their offspring), slavery and mandatory hard work, how we have traditionally viewed women as the ones with the tendency to cause troubles (very unfortunate but a reality of life), the killings of other animals, the human enmity towards snakes, the pains of pregnancy and giving birth, and the limits of our lifespans.

more or less agree.

Other thoughts (and questions to ponder):
I want to go back to the first verse in this chapter, where a distinction is made between the serpent and the other animals. I find this rather curious, because what did the ancients see that was so special about a serpent? Why was the serpent considered craftier than the other animals? I think it may have something to do with how we've often subconsciously viewed these creatures. To us, they seem so sinister and devilish that they may as well have been remnants/descendants of some evil entity in the distant past.

Another thing about the serpent in the passage is that it seems like it initially had legs or something, and then it was doomed later to be without limbs because of what it did. But it's not completely clear that this was the implied meaning of Genesis 3:14.

Snake=reptile no legs.. serpent=dragon serpent describes movement/how the animal moved. this 'dragon' spans all ancient cultures even 'science.' (think before you speak)

Christians also tend to point to a Messianic passage in this very chapter, specifically: Genesis 3:15. But, in this case, it really feels like this is indeed simply a post hoc interpretation after the Christian church was established, especially as you have to disconnect this specific verse from the surrounding verses to "see" some Messianic interpretation in it. I could be wrong, though. And perhaps the Jews also saw this as a Messianic verse, can't remember. Will have to google this later on.

the dead sea scrolls contain several copies of the book of genesis dating from 300 bce (300 years before christ) to 1 ce and mirror each other almost perfectly. which are consistent with our modern translations.

Genesis 3:21 I find interesting. It gives you one specific example of what happened as a result of what Adam and Eve did. Animals can now be slaughtered for the benefit of man and woman. Note that they previously covered themselves with fig leaves (and in an earlier passage, it was noted that all living beings were basically vegetarians), but now they get to be covered with the skins of lions and God helps them with that (even with the Fall happening). And we see later that God indeed grants permission to slaughter animals for food and clothing.

Well no.. it says everything in the garden was a veggie-tardian

Another thing that I find interesting: it seems like, literally speaking, man and woman had to continually eat from the tree of life in order to live forever. I guess this could be interpreted as immortality being intrinsically a property of the divine only, but that the divine can reward mortals with conditional mortality.

I do not see that as the case at all. they at from it once, then ate from the tree of knowledge DIED.. then had to eat from the tree of life to live again.

We also see, once again, reference to God as a plural being. Now there are many speculations on that one, and you can read all about that in your favorite scholarly article or book or whatever. I'm not going to dwell on this here.

Elohim=Father, YHWH=Jesus

From a very literal perspective:
Yes, that serpent sure talked.

why not eddie murphy made a 'dunkey' talk.

Yes, God is just a very super version of man who likes to walk in the cool of the day and doesn't seem to know everything that can be known.

or we are little mini version of God.. (kinda how the bible describes.) Just because God does not share doesn't mean he does not know...

Yes, it mentions cherubims and a revolving(?) flame sword. No, the fruit wasn't necessarily an apple or a pomegranate.

comes in other books of the ot.

All in all, another chapter that I enjoy reading. After all, this is where it all started to fall.