Death in Relation to the Creation and Fall

what was the purpose of the tree of life?

right, but, in the story. why was it in the garden?

right, but i'm asking for a little bit of thought applied to the text, not just what it says.yahweh planted the garden for the man. why did he give the man a tree that provided life?

i'm not sure you particularly gave me any answers from the commentators with regards to my question. but let me phrase it like this:

quote:

---

And the LORD God planted a garden eastward, in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

---

yahweh planted the garden after he made the man. he did not have a garden already, for his own use, and then think, "wouldn't it be great if i had a servant to water my plants while i'm away." he made the man first, and then built the garden, filling it with food for the man.there are three kinds of trees in the garden. one gives him food he doesn't otherwise have. another gives him knowledge he doesn't otherwise have. and third... does nothing at all, in yahweh's original design? so why did yahweh place it in the garden?

it may not make a whole lot of sense to put a forbidden tree in the center of the garden, but perhaps we can rationalize that: maybe yahweh was saving it for later, maybe it was a test, etc.but it makes zero sense to give them a magical tree that is clearly special in its gifts... of absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. the text isn't very clear on the idea of whether the benefits stuck around from the first bite, or whether the trees sustained them.i would make an argument that it's from the first bite, because the story is strongly allegorical and etiological in nature. but you could probably make an argument the other way.

armchair, at best. well, מוֹת תָּמוּת, mot tamut. the double verb is two different tenses: the first, mot, is an infinitive. it's functioning as a noun. the second, tamut (or tamot? it might be mispointed) is an imperfect (masculine, singular) verb, which we generally translate as future tense. so it's actually a complete phrase: "you will die a death" or something that effect. hebrew infinitives and infinitive constructs don't work very well in english. it seems to be kind of poetic emphasis. indeed. this concept would be utterly foreign to the torah, which does not treat the spiritual concerns as fundamentally different from the physical ones. the concept of a separate "soul" other than the thing that causes you breathe is simply not found at all in torah; only later texts in the bible. it is yahwehs own soul, his breath, that animates the dust (adamah) to create the man (ha'adam), and without each other either is meaningless. the "blessing" that the patriarchs are constantly fighting over is the tree of life -- more, physical, earthly life. and when yahweh takes the blessing away, he goes to kill his prophets and patriarchs. physical life was deeply spiritual to authors of the torah, particularly J, and you simply cannot divorce the two concepts. sounds about right, yes. i think it's meant to emphasize the certainty; that death is the pronouncement and the person making this claim is not screwing around. to make it mean something other than real, actual, physical death is to have missed the entire point of emphasizing it so strongly. that's more of a christian thing, though it could have roots in the late second temple fringe elements of judaism. i'm not terribly familiar with that, but they believed some things more in like with early christianity's gnostic tendencies. suffice to say, the hebrew concept of death evolved dramatically over the course of the biblical period. particularly after contact with the greeks, when the hebrew sheol (a literal family grave) took on concepts more suited to hades, an underworld for the shades of the dead. the christian gospels are certainly working from an entirely different concept of "the grave" than, say, genesis.

hi DA,i don't really know enough greek to be able to make an argument here, but: interlineal translations are often clunky and awkward, and not necessarily good ways to make arguments. i know the hebrew ones are especially bad, partly because the language reads RTL, and partly because, well, even literal translations have to fudge the grammar a little bit because english grammar is not hebrew grammar. and it's not greek grammar, either. but i'm mainly commenting because of this: i would strongly advise you against using a source like blueletterbible in this way.what you're looking at is not strong's concordance. a concordance is merely a listing of all places a root word appears in a text. even that's a little flawed, because it tends to list many things that should be one root as separate, and then sometimes combines homonyms.but what you're looking at is a bible dictionary. and those are notoriously suspect. BLB uses gesenius (not the updated brown driver briggs, which is generally considered the better source), and then layers on top of that their own "easy to understand" dictionary with a fundamentalist evangelical bent. there's no particular reason you should take their definitions (or anyone elses!) for particularly controversial, dogmatic concepts for granted. they are probably operating from some kind of bias.a better way would be actually use the concordance, and look at how a word is used in context in other places in the bible. does any other use support a purported definition? granted, the best way to do this is with knowledge of the grammar (words can mean very different things used differently) but if most other examples plainly mean one thing, and only one special case means the hotly debated dogmatic thing, it's a pretty solid indication of what the meaning actually is.Edited by arachnophilia, : words words words

don't worry faith, i have faith in you.but i asked you to make a rational judgment earlier in this thread, and you never replied.

i essentially replied to this comment the first time you made it, in Message 35:

quote:

---

Faith writes:

​

I gave you what the commentators say, I don't know otherwise. If you have a theory why don't you give it?

​

i'm not sure you particularly gave me any answers from the commentators with regards to my question. but let me phrase it like this:

​

quote:

---

And the LORD God planted a garden eastward, in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

---

​

yahweh planted the garden after he made the man. he did not have a garden already, for his own use, and then think, "wouldn't it be great if i had a servant to water my plants while i'm away." he made the man first, and then built the garden, filling it with food for the man.

​

there are three kinds of trees in the garden. one gives him food he doesn't otherwise have. another gives him knowledge he doesn't otherwise have. and third... does nothing at all, in yahweh's original design? so why did yahweh place it in the garden?

---

you didn't reply; nor did you detail what any of the various commentators said. if you can't give me your own opinion, would you care to at least provide theirs? because i believe most of the jewish sources are on my side, here.that is, if man had been created immortal, there would be no reason for the tree of life to exist in the garden. since it does, and eating from it would make them immortal, they were not created immortal.

we can, however, contextually read the OT and see if the NT interpretation fits the context.we can also see if the NT interpretation fits the modern dogmatic claims.

well, no, you won't. you're going with this new-fangled sect of jesus worshipers, and not the prior standing traditional theology of judaism.

then how can you hope to understand it?

the scholarly approach has made belief difficult. i'm not sure if it's made it impossible just yet. he also said,

quote:

---

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:

---

how can you be given, if you don't ask? how can you find if you don't seek? if it is god's word, it should stand up to scrutiny. i don't think this is particularly a hard demand. any belief that has that belief as a prerequisite is just question-begging. it's an echo-chamber: start with belief, affirm the belief, and only listen things that function to affirm the belief. why? because even you understand that any book you approach this way will enter that echo-chamber; that doing so will affirm the truth of anything?what's interesting is that even the bible advocates testing the bible. the torah advises you to approach any prophet with an attitude of skepticism, especially those that claim to speak for yahweh:

quote:

---

But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die. And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the LORD hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him (Deuteronomy 18:20-22)

---

the god of the bible is commanding you to question those who speak in his name, and words that are claimed to be his. and he's demanding an objective test. why do you think that if this was literally meant to be applied to joshua first, jesus's namesake, and then to every other prophet that was to follow, that it should not also apply to jesus, or the people who reported what jesus said?Edited by arachnophilia, : grammars

i wasn't being entirely serious in my post. but i think the overall point is still valid. it's hard to argue for going with tradition when you're very specifically rejecting older traditions. in fact, jesus's mode of criticism of the religious establishment is entirely in line with the old testament mode of the prophets, and even several of the biblical authors. christians tend to say stuff like that, yeah, but honestly, the whole thing got significantly clearer the moment i started reading jewish thought. as lewis black quipped: it's not your book.

"on the day that" or "in the day of" is a hebrew idiom that means "when". it's more immediate than the same day.but the spiritual notion is totally unfounded in genesis, which doesn't seem to regard spiritual concerns as distinct from physical ones.there are really only two possibilities: either yahweh lied (implying the tree was poison, as the woman understood it), or yahweh decided not to kill them for some reason, perhaps mercy. it is, in fact, the psalm. jesus was just speaking in aramaic, not hebrew. kerubim is plural.