How did Adam and Eve know good from evil?

the first thing to understand is that the tree did not magically give them any sort of knowledge...it was simply a tree....it didnt impart anything to them.The tree represented Gods rulership...his right as the sovereign to make the laws and decide what is good and bad for mankind.By obeying that law, they were obeying God and thus were completely dependent upon him for the knowledge of good and bad....if God said something was bad, they knew it would be bad and if God said something was good they knew it would be good. While they were under Gods rule, they viewed their nakedness as good because that was Gods view.But by eating from the tree they were no longer under the sovreignty of God...they now came under their own sovreignty. They now chose for themsevles what was to be good and what was to be bad.The immediate thing that changed was that they no longer viewed their nakedness as something good. They took a different view and decided it was bad, so they covered up.This is why mankind learns by trial and error. We dont really know what is going to be good or bad until we experience the good or bad consequences of our actions.

are you kidding??? Have you seen the state of the world lately?Open a history book and look at the legacy of the past... and we are still making the same mistakes today.there is inequality, exploitation of animals, humans and the environment, poverty, starvation, war, crime and murder...there is no end to human misery due to independence from God. which is exactly what happened. they lived for a length of time under Gods direction without any troubles, then they went and did something stupid and things were never the same for anyone ever again. Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

well Rhains view is 1. the bible is a falsehood and therefore i doubt he believes the account about the tree even happened.2ndly, Rhain says "Adam and Eve didn't know good from evil and thus, they did not sin when they ate from the tree of knowledge. No, they were not stupid. They were simply incapable of understanding what they were doing."Yet if you look at the account, we learn that Eve DID know the consequences of eating, so she wasnt stupid, she understood the reason why she should not eat from the tree Then we have nwr who says "The Adam and Eve story is simply a fable"Yet if that were true, why are they spoken of as historical people by Jesus Christ? And why is the perfect life of Jesus compared to the perfect life of Adam? If Adam wasnt a real person, then to compare a real man to him would not make sense. It only makes sense if Adam was a real person.

Mans view is not Gods view and the bible is testimony to that fact. Inequality is a man-made phenomenon. How about healthcare? shouldnt everyone have access to it? Yet in America, the land of the free where human rights are 'apparently' upheld, many people are fighting the idea that the poor should have health insurance. Is that because of God? No, you know its not.

i dont know where you get that idea from...God asked them why they had covered themselves and he also asked them 'who told you that you were naked?'God did not view their nakedness as sin, he created them in that condition and when he did, he said it was very good.So your idea that their nakedness was sinful is just wrong and completely out of harmony with what is actually written. then you are making the same mistake that she made. You are taking the word of the devil over the word of God the creator.The apostle Paul explained that Eve had been 'thoroughly decieved' by the serpent...IOW, what he told her was false, a lie. Yes they became like God, but in what sense?it was only in the sense that, like God, they now began to decide for themselves what was good and bad. Her understanding of what is good and evil came down to what Gods view of good and evil was. This is when her dependence on God should have directed her to seek the answer from the one who made the decision as to what was good and what was bad. But rather then seek direction from her father, she went ahead on her own and made a really bad decision...one that led to her death.Eating from the tree was of no benefit to her therefore independence from God was of no benefit to her.

Show me where the text says that Gods view was that their nakedness...the nakedness he made them in and called good, was a sin. or they began to decide for themselves what was good and bad and they viewed their nakedness as something bad show me the text that says God viewed their nakedness as a sin. why not give them clothes in the first place?Seriously, your arguments are off the wall.

but who was ashamed??? God or Adam and Eve? i wont answer it because its based on the 'assumption' that A&E had no idea what they were doing. The account plainly tells us that they did know the consequences of eating from the tree. They knew what would happen. Ok, lets reason on it. The only God they knew was the one who made the rules. If they were to become like him, then they would also have to make the rules.So this new found knowledge was their formulation of rules. It was what they considered good and bad. Previously God told them what was good and bad according to the standards that he had set, but now the change comes when they become 'like' him in that they now make the rules.This is independence from Gods way of thinking...that is all it is. You are assuming that nakedness is bad. God made them naked and did not view it as bad and this is why they did not initially view it as bad. They viewed their bodies in the way God viewed them...perfect and innocent because they were dependent on God for the knowledge of good and bad. They knew it would be bad to eat from the tree, but they new it was perfectly innocent to be naked. Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

because up to that point, they had accepted Gods knowledge of right and wrong. God was the law maker, he was the one who decided what is good and bad and they were completely dependent on him. They were not independent prior therefore they did not think for themselves or decide for themselves....they relied completely on God for information.God had told them eating the from the tree would be bad and they accepted that and refrained from eating. You can see that from when the snake says to Eve "is it really so that God said you must not eat from it"

like Rrhain, you are now starting from an assumption that is not found in the account. You are stating there was no death before the fall.That is true for adam and eve, but they were not alone in the garden. They lived with animals. Nowhere is any animal given a command to refrain from the tree, to obey God or anything else.Animals die, not because they are sinners but because they are animals and not made in Gods image. Perhaps God planned it that way so Adam and eve would have something to compare life and death.And im not speculating on the animals here....animals die. We know that is a fact. They always must have died because no animal in the bible is given any laws. They do not come under the moral laws of God and therefore they cannot sin. We are told that the consequences of sin is death...that consequence only applies to humans...for animals, death always was.

Could they not have asked God for claification?They had direct communicatin with him, he used to come into the garden to be with them and they were used to that. When he came after they had eaten they went into hiding because they heard him coming...so he was quite familiar to them.Their sin was exactly the fact that they went ahead independently of God and decided something for themselves. They were not designed to do that. They were designed to be completely reliant upon their creator.But this was what their sin was...it was independence which is rebellion. Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

you seem to think that they would only have ever known about good and bad if they were independent from GodYet, we are told that the heavens house myriads of faithful angels who have never acted independently of God and have never disobeyed. Does this mean that the angels in heaven are completely devoid of knowledge of good and bad?These angels know of good and bad because thoey listen to Gd...they view bad as what he says is bad. They know of Gods morals and standards, hence they know good from bad.If a parent tells a child not to touch the pot on the stove because they will get burned, the child does not first have to be burned to understand what the parent means. yes they have, but as a christian i listen first and foremost to jesus and the apostles and John told us that the serpent is the devil.
Revelation 12:7-9 "...So down the great dragon was hurled, the original serpent, the one called Devil and Satan who is misleading the entire inhabited earth" Jesus also informed us that the devil was the serpent in eden when he said
John 8:44 "YOU are from YOUR father the Devil, and YOU wish to do the desires of YOUR father. That one was a manslayer when he began, and he did not stand fast in the truth" well like i said, many do not believe the tree had special properties that imparted anything to them. The tree merely represented Gods rulership. When they acted out of harmony with Gods law, they became alienated from him, cut off from their source of knowledge and thus they had begun to make decisions without Gods approval.the knowledge of God was no longer a part of their understanding because they had alienated themselves from God who was the source of their knowledge. Now they were relying on themselves and they had to make up their own laws and standards...the first one of which was to cover their nakedness.

the bible is not exclusively for the jews, it is Gods book and he gives his word to anyone who is willing to listen. My jewish teacher was able to provide some insights into some of the genesis account, but her ideas were not the same as Jesus ideas. Jesus was a jew as were his diciples...if learning the OT from them is bigotry, then so be it. A translator will sometimes use a word that more clearly defines the subject. In the case of the NWT committee, they used 'original serpent' because the Devil used the snake in Eden to fool eve.Now if you want to ask if other translators believe this passage is also a reference to Satan the devil, i have posted the cross references from the NASB from biblegateway. As you can see, they also attribute this 'ancient serpent' reference to Satan the devil. Its strange you mention the jews earlier and then make this comment. My jewish teacher actually agreed with the idea that the tree did not have any special properties in it which imparted some magical knowledge.I guess it depends on who you ask, yes?

no comment from you on the revelation verse and the accusation that the NWT is wrong?

they didnt?So where are they?

Hey hotjer, yes that would be correct. that is not actually the theory you have described, its one of the critisicms of the theory. The problem is that not everyone reads the genesis account in the same way and they understand it differently as you can see from this thread.As i've stated, my understanding of the account is that, to have knowlege of good and bad means to decide for oneself what is good and bad. If the knowledge of good and bad is as you say ...that they recieved the knowledge of God because they became like God, then why do we have so many different standards of good and bad in the world today?I look at the bible as a window to past which explains the world we have today. Those events started the human race down a particular path... a path that is quite prevalent in our world. Even people within the same community can hold to different standards of living... we do not all have the same knowledge.The other question to ask, is If Adam and eve became magically endowed with Gods knowledge, why are children born as clear slates? They have no knowledge. They have to learn everything from their parents. So if it were true that Adam and eve became magically endowed with knowledge, then we should all have it. They passed on death to us, so why would they not have passed on knowledge to us? i completely understand your line of thought on this. We all have our opinions and thats perfectly fine. We should question where our opinions stem from though and test our opinions but never trust that they are 100% accurate. We need to keep our minds a little open to other possibilities. yes i can understand what you are saying and i agree with you. We shouldnt do good just because God says we should.... and he doesnt want us to work that way either.God encourages us to make morality a part of ourselves, to act because we love, not because we have to. This is why he does not force anyone to obey his commands. He gave Adam and Eve a choice and he gives all mankind a choice too. If he wanted us like robots, he could have made us like robots but he didnt. He made us with free will, that is the freedom to choose.Of course there are consequences to our actions and those consequences are inescapable. Adam and Eve did not escape the consequences of their actions and nor can we. With freedom comes responsibility.But i can tell you one thing right now...there is more freedom under Gods laws then there is under mans laws.