I’ve misread “book of genesis” as “book of gender”.
It’s also not the Tree of Knowledge, it’s the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. And that presents a problem:
If Adam and Eve did not yet understand what is and is not a good thing to do, they could not possibly have understood that it was not good to disobey God. Eve did not know the serpent was evil. And yet he punishes Adam and Eve for doing what they did not realize was wrong of them to do.
“Eat the fucking fruit!”
This is excellent
Where’s the piped bot?
Dunno, I blocked it a while ago.
Why? Please add it back.
No no, I blocked it so I don’t see it. You’d still see it if it posted.
Side note, and God created the tree of the knowledge of Good and evil. God created everything. Therefore, God created evil.
Further, God does evil.
After the flood, there is a line that says “and God repented of the evil he had done”
And to me, that just basically means that evil is circumstantial. Not that there is a pure drop of evil in the universe, but rather that a thing that is meant to be a good thing can be an evil thing based on its interpretation.
To whit: it wasn’t evil that Adam and Eve were naked. God made them that way. And yet because they became aware of it and changed a innocent thing into an evil thing, that is what the evil was.
Which makes a lot more sense when you know these stories are adaptations of earlier myths. The polytheistic religions they came out of had no problem thinking the gods do evil things sometimes because they feel like it. As things transitioned to monotheism, and “God is good and merciful” was taken as a given, you end up having to jump through hoops to explain why this passage explicitly says God did evil. Even if the explanation is on some level convincing, it’s going to be more convoluted than “these stories evolved from earlier polytheistic religions”.
And yet he punishes Adam and Eve for doing what they did not realize was wrong of them to do.
You say this like punishing people who don’t understand the rules isn’t a fundamental part of christianity.
Adam and Eve was pre-Christianity though.
Go a step before that. Why’d God put the tree there in the first place?
God created sin, introduced it to humanity, and ensured evil would spread across the earth.
It always complete the picture to understand that the creation myth used in the Bible was not Jewish or Christian in origin. It was an appropriation of a pagan myth of the era. Like most Christianity, it is just a syncretism to make the cult palatable to the newly recruited. “Oh yes, that thing that you already believe in was totally our god”.
I think all major religious myths, like languages themselves, are derivative of previous myths on some level. Sure, there was a proto-mythology at some point, but it expanded, changed, etc. until it divided into multiple religions. And, of course, Judaism beget Christianity beget Islam, but all of them took other religious myths that were popular at the time and wove them into the tapestry.
I think they mean more like in say Europe where Christianity came in, took cultural events etc for other religions and claimed it as their own rather to make conversion easier.
This is colonial thinking. “Civilization just happens to be the natural evolution of what I am doing. Your ways are barbarian backwards savagery”. It is the same logic.
There’s nothing natural or linear in religious belief. Catholicism itself is fragmented into hundreds of sects, and so is every single religion ever to have existed. Adapted to the particular capricious vanities of the local clergy and the established local customs. Christians taking some Jewish elements was just a manipulation tactic. I’m also sure some Islam sects would behead you for suggesting that Islam is a derivative of Christianity. The theory of a proto religion is also wrong, we know for a fact that not all of modern religions started from the same proto-belief, but ancient religions are actually quite varied and distinct.
I didn’t make a claim even remotely like that. I was not talking about superiority in any way. I’m not a Muslim and what you’re saying I’m claiming would only make sense if I was a Muslim since that was the end of the “evolution” I was talking about.
Would you make the same claim about proto-languages, that modern languages are not derived from them?
Yes, any proto-whatever theory is colonialist in essence. It’s a very heated argument in anthropology, sociology and social psychology. The current consensus is that it is only valid for the indo-european migration, and a version exist for the proto-sino-tibetan migration. But, we understand that it can only be claimed to apply thus far, and with all sorts of modern ideological biases and caveats. Both language and religion are extremely complex social phenomena that have independently appeared all throughout history. And every time they have their very unique and distinct qualities. There’s no unified tree of languages that has enough evidence to be authoritative. And there’s no such linear derivation equivalent for religion. It is all just pop-sci feefees.
Wait… you’re saying that languages aren’t actually derived from older languages and anyone who thinks so is colonialist?
Because I would look into where the ‘ist’ suffix in ‘colonialist’ comes from. Believe it or not, it didn’t pop into existence along with the rest of the English language.
I’m sorry you don’t like it that Judaism was derived in great part by Babylonian mythos which, themselves, likely were derived from a previous mythos, but I’m not sure what that has to do with colonialism or any idea of superiority and I’m sorry you don’t like the simple fact that we can point to specific stories which eventually made their way into Judaism and then on to Christianity and Islam.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilgamesh_flood_myth
As for why that is linear? Because that’s how time works. The Babylonians came first, then the Jews, then the Christians, then the Muslims. And each one derived their religion from the previous one.
True. He even admits it in Isaiah:
Isaiah 45:7 - I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.
Can’t have light without dark. Can’t have good without evil. Otherwise you just have boring stagnation. God likes chaos and excitement, not boring safety.
Why can’t you have light without dark? If you sped up all the molecules in the universe to the point that they were all radiating heat, you would have light without dark.
You win this round, science.
Plus, admitting that God cannot create light without dark or good without evil means admitting God is not omnipotent.
Radiation is vibration which is subject to destructive interference which means there will always be some dark spots, relatively speaking.
Unless God just had a single source with absolutely no barriers or observers. I can see why that God would get bored and invent some drama 😆
How would you know it’s light if there was no dark to contrast it ? Light only exist because dark surrounds it, and dark only exists because light surrounds it. One cannot exists without the other.
If I show you a black circle on a white paper you would point at the black and say “this is the thing that is drawn on the paper”. If I were to show you a white circle on a black paper, you would point at the white instead with the same statement. If I showed you an all white paper and told you there is a white circle on it, you would tell me I’m an idiot and that there is nothing there. Contrast is why something exists.
That’s not how photons work.
I understand you want to counter this statement with physics, and we could have a rich debate about what we know of the universe and how light and it’s absence exists in it. But I think you misunderstood what we are talking about.
This statement is about philosophy, light and dark are metaphorical here. We could just as well say “up cannot exists without down”, or “day cannot exists without night”. The next step to this philosophical thinking is to realise that since one cannot exists without the other, therefore they are the same thing.
Only if that heat radiation would be evenly distributed - otherwise you would have a gradient which still results in duality of light/dark
There are also places that are relatively empty, which would result in a more typical darkness
Also, speeding everything in existence up to the point of luminance is kind of tricky, what with natural law and all
Pretty sure almost all the matter we can interact with does produce blackbody radiation
Christians: God is Lawful Good.
God: Actually more like Chaotic Neutral.*Chaotic evil
God likes Nascar? For the crashes.
Calamity or disaster is a better translation. Looking at God as a judge, it’s His right to render a verdict and enact punishment.
Pretty good article on this verse and what it’s actually saying. https://www.str.org/w/does-isaiah-45-7-teach-that-god-created-evil-
A judge might have a “right” to punish people for things they didn’t know were wrong, but this is a judge who created those people without giving them the capacity to know right from wrong in the first place and then punishing them for doing the wrong thing anyway.
And of course a Christian apologetics website is going to give the kindest possible interpretation to that passage.
I’d also note that it’s part of the Jewish half of the Bible, so maybe finding out what Christians think about what it means is the wrong way to go about convincing people of your point. Maybe consult a Rabbi’s interpretation instead.
He mostly punishes Eve. The first few pages are sexist as fuck
Consider that it is the knowledge itself that cast us down.
It doesn’t matter. They were being punished for something they didn’t know not to do.
Ignorance of the law is no excuse or whatever 🙄
Adam was told not to, but only afterwards did he know. These early part of Genesis are interesting in the way the world supposedly unfurled.
Yes, I realize he knew he did something wrong after he did the wrong thing. The point was he didn’t know it was wrong before and when he did it. Which makes the god of Genesis supremely fucked up.
Also God kinda lied to them or at least deceived them by saying they’ll die if they eat the fruit from memory.
He was saying they would grow old and die rather than living forever.
but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.
Sounds like a lie to me but I don’t know the original Hebrew so maybe it depends on your translation. To be fair it would be on the mild side of morally objectionable stuff God does in the bible.
Found this online:
The Hebrew phrase in English is more literally:
“Tree knowledge good evil eat day eat die (dying) die”
The Hebrew is, literally, die-die (muwth-muwth) with two different verb tenses (dying and die), which can be translated as “surely die” or “dying you shall die.” This indicates the beginning of dying, an ingressive sense, which finally culminates with death.
You should check out the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. He points out the importance of the name of the tree and has really interesting anthropological theories regarding the origin of the Adam and Eve story.
The Gnostic interpretation always made more sense to me. The serpent being a form of Christ.
It’s been depicted as various things in old art and literature. Apple is very common. But you also find figs, grapes, pomegranates, and occasionally pears. Probably some others I missed.
nice try, Tim Cook.
its like a banana except you have suck out the fruit from one end
My money’s on it being a pomegranate originally. Apples wouldn’t have existed in the fertile crescent over 2000 years ago. Pomegranates are also messy and look bloody when eating them, fitting the “carnal knowledge” side of the story. I’ve heard other people suggest they could have been dates, but pomegranates seem like a way better fit for the story.
I read somewhere it should have been a fig.
Adam and Eve never once complained about how freaking annoying it is to eat a pomegranate because 90% of it is dried bark and every tiny seed has its own inedible seed so I doubt that’s what it was.
I don’t know why but I want to say persimmon. They’re worth getting tossed out of paradise for atnleast
Imagine them getting an underripe one and just getting that nasty dry mouth feeling AND getting booted from paradise to top it off.
There’s evidence of apple cultivation in the middle east from around 5000 years ago as far as I know.
I’ve heard that before apples, pomegranates were the assumed go-to.
Well I’d guess fig since the covered their naughty bits with fig leaves after
Imo it’s much more likely to have never been an actual piece of fruit. The story is probably an allegoric warning for some taboo subject and now we can only speculate on what was originally meant.
My theory: Adam and Eve were convinced by Adam’s one eyed snake to fornicate, but then their dad found out and kicked them out.
Only a few know the truth, it was a tomato. I know because the way that it is.
That’s why people throw tomatoes when they want someone to get off the stage.
🍆 🍑
I like the “magic mushroom” theory.
I won’t say I believe it. But I like it.
I think apple used to be a generic term for fruits.
It is especially apparent for exotic fruits, for example here is a list of fruits from the Caribbean, none of then are related to the European apple:
- golden apple
- wax apple/rose apple
- pineapple
- sugar apple
- custard apple
My German professor even mentioned the archaic apfelsine for the citrus orange.
Apfelsine is not archaic. Very widely used today, at least here in the south.
Also, it literally means “Chinese apple” lol
Apelsin in Sweden
Potato (Pomme de Terre, Erdapfel)
In a slavic language (either Croatian or Czech, I forgot), it’s krompir, literally ground/soil pear.
It can, but I’m not sure if that explains why it’s often represented as an apple in the west.
Here’s what Wikipedia has to say:
In Western Europe, the fruit was often depicted as an apple. This was possibly because of a misunderstanding of – or a pun on – two unrelated words mālum, a native Latin noun which means ‘evil’ (from the adjective malus), and mâlum, another Latin noun, borrowed from Greek μῆλον, which means ‘apple’. In the Vulgate, Genesis 2:17 describes the tree as “de ligno autem scientiae boni et mali”: “but of the tree [literally ‘wood’] of knowledge of good and evil” (mali here is the genitive of malum). There is nothing in the Bible indicating that the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge was an apple.[10]
It was probably butt. Buttfruit. Eating ass was the forbidden fruit.
So the fruit was a dingleberry?
It’s common knowledge Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. I’m not sure why because it doesn’t say that anywhere in the Bible.
Well, I do. It was the easiest way to suppress women’s power in the church and in general.
I think there was a non-canonical gospel that said so. And yes, the early church seemed to be relatively liberal with women’s rights. A lot of that got clawed back with later additions and choices of what books to include in the biblical canon.
The gospel of Mary Magdalene for instance.
