The First Questions In The Bible

why do you assume adam knew what he was eating? the text doesn't actually specify, it just says that eve gave it to him.

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i see this as a great biblical paradox.god, technically, lies to adam and eve. he indicates that the tree of knowledge will kill them. he might be implying that it's poisonous, he might be implying that he'll kill them himself. neither of these two things happen. maybe it's mercy, but god tells an untruth. the serpent, however, tells them the truth. he tells them that it won't kill them, rather it will open their eyes and they'll be like gods. which god himself confirms after the fact.so the question is: should we follow god without regard to reality? or should we ignore the things he says when he's putting us on? it's hard a question. and if god doesn't think it's good that this followers are more like him, what does that say about god? is the message "think for yourself" or "don't touch my stuff?"there's a similar story, later in genesis. abraham on mount moriah, about to sacrifice his only son. god promised to make him a nation, and this is his only child, from a barren wife. should he blindly follow? or should he say, "wait a minute, now, god." does the story before it, sarah and abimelech, factor into it? maybe he doesn't isaac is his. in this case, abraham blindly follows, and god stops him. does god stop him to reward him for making the right choice? or because he was about the make the wrong one? should we factor into that abraham was known to haggle with god for the life of his family (ie: lot does god want blind obedience, or a little kvetching?

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well, it's not really an issue of the hebrew here. most texts translate "surely die" pretty literally, and a lot of readers do not read it as such. i see no reason to jump to that conclusion.god wants to make it quite clear to adam that his actions will have direct consequences, and so he uses the "when you do this, you'll die. i mean it" kind of language. it literally says "in the day that..." but it's more of an idiom for one action causing another.the "eventual death" argument, while reflecting what actually happens in the text, doesn't really cut it here, in my humble opinion. it's about like god is saying, "you know, smoking will kill you." that's only 30-40 years down the line for some people, and doesn't carry a lot of weight. and we're talking 900 for adam. and it doesn't reflect the causality of the statement, that one action will have serious consequences, literally and immediately.i don't think the "spiritual death" argument cuts it either. it's about like obi-wan's famous "in a manner of speaking" line. god makes sure to emphasize death. adam clearly understands it to mean death when the serpent repeats the same line with a "not" in it. on top of that, on a close re-examination of the entire torah... there's not much in it that's spiritual at all. the closest you even get is someone mentioning "going to the grave" to be with their ancestors, and even that is probably the literal root of the modern idiomatic afterlife meaning. but god is, for the most part, a physical entity in these books.anyways, i think the only real reading of this verse is literal: god said they'd die, implied (idiomatic) or stated (literally), and he meant real, physical death. the only apologetic i can think of to avoid a lying god is about a forgiving one. ie: that god meant to kill adam and eve immediately, but commuted their sentance to simple denial of the tree of life and exile.

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cause he'll punish us if we don't?

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i wasn't referring to that, i was referring to the litany of punishments at the end of genesis 3. well, the question of the implication is a valid one.

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which then leads to their eventual deaths, of course. he also puts a number of other punishment on mankind (and on snakes, too). "our day" is irrelevent. the question i'm more interested in is "what did the authors mean when they wrote it?" from the meaning in THAT day, we can extrapolate IF and how a story has meaning and significance to us, today. i do not see any point in reading the story through anachronistic eyes, reinventing it as we go to suit our needs.perhaps this comes from a need to find some kind of truth in the text, some validity, some inspiration of the divine. whereas i actually couldn't care less -- i'd rather let the facts and the texts speak for themselves. if we don't like what they have to say, well, it's not a big deal. certainly not a big enough to try to apologize for it. the text tells us: eternal life.i don't mean to be condescending or anything, but the symbology in genesis isn't particularly complicated. it's not heavily ladden in complex metaphors, like ezekiel or revelation. it more or less says things flat out.

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the punishments are all tied to it. for instance, adam must farm because food is no longer provided for him. whether or not it's a "punishment" per se, the net effect of it certainly is a bad one, imposed by god.and either way, god could have moved the tree, not man. so i say, it's a punishment. sure it does.why do people die? physical death, almost certainly. there is no biblical basis for "spiritual death."

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i'm sorry, you misunderstood. i wasn't actually asking, actually, it wasn't even rhetorical. i was trying to say that this is (one of) the reason(s) the story was written. yes and no -- they weren't going to die if they had access to the tree of life. it might even require continuous access; hard to tell from the text. it is only the tree that would keep them alive (that's what it's for), and banishment from the garden prevents them from eating from that tree: condemning them to death. actually, that sounds like a translation issue. the hebrew word used for "alot" can sometimes be rendered "more." i'll check that when i get home. my computer at work can't render the vowels properly in the onlin hebrew bibles, making them a pain to read. not neccessarily. "knowledge" is also a biblical euphemism for sex. no sex, no life-cycle.

דעת (dat) is the noun form of ידע (yada). the "root" is dalet-(vav)-ayin. another reason why concordances are often misleading and do not substitute for understanding the grammar. no, "sex" would replace "knowledge." so, "sex for good and bad purposes." clearly, it can be used both ways. "be fruitful and multiply" vs raping outsiders. no, the mistake there is that "men" (in both "men of the city" and "men that cam to you last night") does not actually specify a gender, because in hebrew grammar a group of men and women takes the masculine gender. or if you don't know the contents of a group, they're male by default. we actually used to do this in english. also, the nouns used are ones that mean something more like "person" and not "man" in the male sense. it's not about homosexuality, it's about inhospitality.however, it is also most certainly is about sex, at least one some level. lot offers them his two daughter, and even goes to the extent to lie about them being virgins. why do that if it wasn't sex they wanted? why would he beg them not to be so wicked, if they just wanted a meet and greet? why would they threaten lot, saying that they would do worse to him than they wanted to do to the visitors? sodom is destroyed because of its treatment of visitors, yes. part of that mistreatment is apparently raping them. it's really, really odd that you would read "i have two virgin daughters" as an invitation to sex, but not a well known euphemism. and the phrasing IS appropriate, it just uses a different tense because it's what they intend to do. it says: on the contrary, the english "pun" comes directly from hebrew, via literal translations, especially the KJV. gen 2 is sort of subjective, because it obviously has another meaning as well, but gen 19 is very much about sex. the second half of the chapter is about incest. now, reading every instance of "know" as meanign sex would be wrong, but in some cases it's rather clear cut.

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look, you're preaching to the choir. how often do i make that same point here? but this is not some interpretation i've made up, and i don't even particularly agree with it. it does, however, exist. what the heck else does it mean? in what way can simply saying "hello" be interpretted as malice or inhospitality? look, it's the same word that used when "adam knew his wife" and when "cain knew his wife" and when every other person in the torah bumps uglies with someone. is the grammar messing you up?it's not that this is what it means all the time -- it's that it's a euphemism. and a common one, at that. it's like "slept" in english. it can mean sleeping, or it can mean boffing, and depends on the context and possibly winks and nudges. in english, we say "slept with" and it almost always means doing the horizontal mambo. in hebrew, you say "...yada et-(person)" and it almost always means someone got some play. the only difference is that it's phrased in a future tense! that's like "i slept with her last night" means we got it on, but "i'm going to sleep with her tonight" just means i plan on taking a nap in her vicinity. that's just ridiculous! you're really grasping at straws here, rrhain. i'm really disappointed you would even try to distort what i said to mean that. the fact that both stories are about doing the nasty doesn't make every last sentance specifically about the old in-out-in-out. no other reading adequately expresses something worthy of being considered inhospitable. in fact, an entire town showing up to greet vistors, introduce themselves, and welcome them to town is the very definition of hospitality. it clearly must mean something else.

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just out of curiousity, can you find me a single source that says the "know" in genesis 19 means anything other sexual intercourse?i think you'll be able to find a multitude of sources that say it's not about homosexuality, or that it's about inhospitality -- but even those don't deny the inhabitants of sodom mean to rape the visitors.

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free will vs. determinism is an age old debate.one of the ideas, relating to genesis, is that man actually was not created with free will, or at least not, not meaningful free will, but that it is the tree of knowledge that grants them that.i'm not sure how much water that holds. but there's also not much to say that the god of the torah even is prescient to begin with. certainly, in genesis 2, god creates by trial and error. would a prescient god do that?

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god creates man. man needs a place to live, so god makes a garden.man is alone. "not good" says god, so god makes him some animals. "still not good enough" says god, so god makes woman.that's trial and error.

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"seems?" nay, it is. i know not "seems."i don't see how it's a contextual misrepresentation, taken in the context of genesis 2, or genesis 2-4, or the J document, or even the torah really. there are varying ideas of god -- this is only one of them. the god of the genesis 1 is prescient, and thus does everything in reverse order ahead of when it's needed. i don't mean to sound crass here, but the idea of "contradicting a larger portion of the scriptures" is simply a myth. the bible is library of texts, many of which were written specifically to find fault with other texts already in the library. there are many different ideas of god and judaism contained between its two covers. and anyone who pretends that there is one consistent ideology either hasn't read the text critically enough, or is trying to decieve. or both. on a strictly logical level, the reason we have so much redundancy (2 creation acounts, 2 sets of 10 commandments, 4 gospels, kings AND chronicles, etc) is because of the differences between the texts. if they simply said the same thing, there'd only be one of each. but the problem is just that, and you will have to put aside your religion for a second to see this: some depictions of god are NOT infinitely powerful or wise. the one J certainly is not. the one in E is only slightly better. but it takes some willingness to look at the texts with fresh, unbiased eyes, and not try to read our religious beliefs into them.in J, we see a god who gravely regrets ever making mankind. that's a very human emotion, for someone so abstractly different than us. and quite odd for a god who is perfect in every way, omnipotent and omniscient, to admit that things have gotten out of his control.now, the god of isaiah and jeremiah might disagree. there, god himself takes credit for creating everything, and controlling everything: the blessing of the promised land, and the curse of exile. it's all god, and nothing ever left his control and watchful eye for a second. it's important to recognize that these are two different ideas, and they are both very valid and present in the text. and they both speak truths about the nature of god. without one depcition, the bible only gives us half the picture. no, this argument does not fly. they are both written consecutively (specifically, using the vav-consecutive), and the rationality of the second story depends entirely on its order. plants must be created after man, because man needs to tend them. animals must be created after man, because the logic is that man is alone. womam must then be created after animals, because animals weren't good enough. if we rearrange the story to suit genesis 1, it makes as much sense as reading a "choose your own adventure" book from front to back. and non-linear stories are a relatively new invention. sure, if you simply re-write the story so it says what you want it to. but the way it's been for the last 2600 years or so has been in a logical order, where each action depends entirely on the action before, and each action is then judged "good" or "bad." that's trial and error. but you see, that statement is imbibed with anachronism. what we know of the universe today is very different from what the ancient jews knew of the universe. even the description given in genesis 1 (which is much newer) is far, far more simplistic than what we know today. the same level of cognitive dissonance rarely happens when we read of marduk forming man from clay. marduk is a god, surely he could get it right the first time! makes about as much sense ---- what you're doing is changing something around because of what you personally believe. there's issues with having the text of the bible dictate belief, but there is a much greater issue with belief dictating the text of the bible. at the very least, it should go in the other direction. read it like it's any other book, not like you know what it's really supposed to say.

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you're still preaching to the choir. look, i was never arguing that this is the best interpretation, or even neccessarily right. your argument was that the life-cycle was already in place -- this is not precisely so. adam and eve do not have kids BEFORE eating from the tree of knowledge. it is only after they eat that they reproduce, and one of the punishments god hands out is a reproductive one. in fact, they are not even aware of the fact they are naked until they eat from the tree -- what makes you think they knew how to use the genitals they weren't particularly aware of in the first place?the sexual reading of genesis 3 is closely tied the qabalistic philosophy, where god creates man by sexual means. god is then upset, because the knowledge mankind stole was how to (pro)create.

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5. that we may know them. i.e. vent our lust upon them (Rashi, ibn Ezra, Rashbam). Nachmanides' opinion is that their purpose was to keep strangers away, being anxious to retain all the wealth of the place to themselves. Although they were wicked in many other waysm their doom was their punishment for this selfishness and their refusal to help the poor.

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(footnotes in my chumash)

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i wish i had orlinsky's notes on the translation of the nJPS so we could see why he chose "be intimate" over the literal "know." sadly, iyov hasn't updated that part of his blog recently (he stops at gen 18), and i can't find the particular book anywhere.but there are references all throughout the talmud and even other biblical texts that their sin was greed, inhospitality, and refusal to help the poor. the talmud says that they executed people who gave bread to the homeless. their intention is clearly to keep people out, and keep themselves from being looted again, and this part of your point is right. but it doesn't seem to be just suspicion. remember, these are not people god has targetted for being careful. these are people god has planned in advanced to destroy because they were wicked.from the fact that the abraham/isaac lying to abimelech story appears in the bible three times, we can perhaps gather that some mild interrogation of outsiders was actually somewhat customary. these were not large city-states, and if someone rolled into town, as king, you probably wanted to know who they were and why they were there. whether or not you'd just been looted four chapters previously. abraham (isaac) expects it. like i said before, introductions hardly qualify as a sin worthy of destroying a town. nor does a little rudeness. clearly, they are in the habit of mistreating outsiders in greivous ways. yeah? let's look at version 2.0 of this story.

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As they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of the city, certain base fellows, beset the house round about, beating at the door; and they spoke to the master of the house, the old man, saying: 'Bring forth the man that came into thy house, that we may know him.'

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(Judges 19:22)

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that's the same wording in the hebrew, too, though the ending is slightly different because it's "him" instead of "them." and for that matter, it's used in the same sentance. you'll note, btw, that the person this levite is staying with quite rightly asks him where he's going, and that sort of thing -- he's the one being hospitable (at least for the first half), yet he's committing the same "crime" your version of the sodomites are.

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And he lifted up his eyes, and saw the wayfaring man in the broad place of the city; and the old man said: 'Whither goest thou? and whence comest thou?'

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(Judges 19:17)

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anyway, the host does the same thing lot does -- offers the mob his virgin daughter, with a twist. he also offers the guest's concubine.

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But the men would not hearken to him; so the man laid hold on his concubine, and brought her forth unto them; and they knew her, and abused her all the night until the morning; and when the day began to spring, they let her go.

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(Judges 19:25)

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they rape the concubine. note the use of the word "knew." so what did the mob want?so yes, it is used that way. no, actually, i don't. they are all some form of the verb — followed by a noun refering to a person, generally with the specific direct object signifier, and absent any preposition of dependent clause qualifier like . it doesn't matter if it's (and will know him) or (and will know them) or (and knew her) or - (and knew eve) or —- (not known a man). it's all actually the same usage grammatically, and i'm just changing around the tense and what noun i'm using. it's the same thing, just conjugated differently depending on what you want the sentence to say. it's funny, because i went through that entire last post without ever once using the word "sex." yet, you seem to have understood me. that your strawmen of my argument are ridiculous is not something that is under my control. no, not fun. humiliation. think about that one a little more. think "abu ghraib" not "freddy mercury." no, they are angry that lot means to protect the visitors they plan the humiliate.

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