Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Bill Ross" <wross AT farmerstel.com>]

<Noel>
1, The interpreting one day of gods being a thousand years cannot stand due
to chapter one of Genesis, 'and there was evening and there was morning the
first day...etc etc'  The first chapter clearly describes a day, created by
god, as being just that-one day.

<Bill>
That is circular.

<Noel>
2.  The idea that the serpent=Satan is again not supported anywhere in the
text, from a non-prejudicial reading of the text it is clear that the
serpent
did not even lie, and you can reach the conclusion, as Liz has, that God is
the Liar.

<Bill>
"You shall not die" from the fruit was true, but "you shall die" by being
denied the tree of Life is true and shows the serpent to be a liar "from the
beginning".

<Noel>
3.  Crucially Adam is not told how he will die, you can interpret the text
as meaning this:

Adam is told by God that if he eats from the tree he will die, a very
feasible interpretation of this is that the fruit is poisonous and will kill
him,

<Bill>
It was poisonous. And it did, indirectly, bring about his death.

<Noel>
Adam seeing Eve eating from the tree sees that she does not die, (Eve
is here playing the food taster role :-) ) hence he will not die, so why not
eat?

<Bill>
Now that is a fool's perspective! Hey, I stole a car and got away with it -
why not steal another?! There are no consequences!

<Noel>
You could even argue that what God said to Adam was not a prohibition but a
warning, and maybe Adam thought God was just plain mistaken when he said
that he would die.

<Bill>
The serpent's line, less eloquently stated.

<Noel>
4.  If sin was introduced into the world after Adam and Eve ate from the
tree and realized that they had sinned then how did they know they were
sinning by eating from the tree in the first place.  (Stretching it I know!)

<Bill>
It was a breech of faith. Conscience is a "second-seer", but Adam and Eve
always had the ability to make a moral choice. They just were not burdened
with the constant judging of their every action - just a single explicit
command.

<Noel>
5.  The tree of Life seems to me to be a separate tradition and only
inserted into the text alongside the tree of knowledge,  I cant remember the
exact argument for this but I did come to support that conclusion at some
point.

<Bill>
It seems, then, that there is no honorable reason to be mention it.

<Noel>
You can argue a lot of the details in some of the above arguments, but it
just shows that there are many different interpretations, however I believe
that it is wrong to interpret the text from any angle apart from the
information presented in the text,

<Bill>
Wrong? Do you believe in right and wrong? On what authority do you declare
it wrong?

<Noel>
...forget about Satan, and Christian doctrine, they have only made it one of
the most damaging of all the biblical passages.

<Bill>
It is absurd to conceive of this detailed description of the disobedience of
Adam and Eve, the malicious temptation and the disasterous results thereof
as an indictment of YHWH and a veneration of the serpent. Adam and Eve were
not afraid of YHWH because he was a liar, but because they were ashamed.
They were guilty. They had violated a righteous command. They died, and we
with them.

While you may, and apparently do, hate Christian doctrine, I don't think
this is the forum to decry it, shun it, or campaign against it.

Bill Ross