My friend @apenitentialprayer (who you should be following if you're interested in Catholicism) asked me to expand on my belief that Genesis 3 is an etiological myth for puberty. The following understanding is emphatically not my own, but it comes from my rabbi and I'm not sure whether he published it so I don't have a citation.

Anyway, the basic argument is that we should read the phrase "knowledge of good and bad" (הדעת טוב ורע) ha-da'at tov v'ra (Genesis 2:17) in parallel with "[he] learns to reject the bad and choose good" (לדעתו מאוס ברע ובחור בטוב) l'dato ma'os bara u'vahol batov (Isaiah 7:15). In Isaiah, learning the difference between good and bad (more literally knowing the difference; da'at in Gen 2:17 has the same root as dato in Is 7:15 (dato is a conjugation of yada)) is a metaphor for maturing. If we read the phrase "knowledge of good and bad" in Genesis 2 in the same way, then we can reasonably infer that the consequence of eating the fruit of the Tree is maturation as such rather than the acquisition of forbidden knowledge.

So, what happens when we do that? Human beings in the Garden of Eden have two things in common with God: immortality and the image in which they are made. When they eat from the Tree they gain "knowledge of good and bad" which we've inferred means aging and (specifically) going through puberty. After puberty humans acquire a third divine characteristic: the ability to create life.

The curses that follow for the man and woman then describe the inevitable consequences that they will face by going from childhood and adulthood. The woman will carry babies and have pain in giving birth. She will desire (תשוקה) t'shukah (the verb is used for non-sexual desire in Gen 4:7 and for sexual desire in Song 7:11) her husband. The man will have to labor to bring for the food previously provided by his Parent (i.e. God). And of course both will die (which does happen to children, but is not an inevitable part of childhood the way it is for adulthood).

(Note that the interpretation that the Serpent is Satan comes from later Christian eisegesis is not actually a part of the myth as presented in Genesis 3.)

I never liked the idea that the Serpent is Satan, and I once took a class in college where the professor proposed that the Serpent was God, who wanted his children to have knowledge of good and evil, so that their choices would be more meaningful.

Just adding this because in combination with this interpretation, I like the idea that God-as-Serpent was encouraging his children to grow up.

Some Gnostic Christians took the view that the god of the Old Testament was a demiurge, an inferior being who created physical matter and life. It was a somewhat evil (or at least misguided) entity, and the Serpent was a higher entity who intruded into its creation to rescue it (an operation that was repeated with Jesus).

Hey um by the way the devil gave you free will, not God.

like it’s part of the Bible. In Genesis (the first creation story specifically) the devil (a title which here means “evil trickster demon” but recently has become synonymous with Lucifer or Satan) told Eve that she would not die if she ate the fruit (true) and that she would be like God (sorta true, humans gained self awareness, free will, the ability to create, etc.)

when she ate the fruit she gained the capacity to choose right from wrong because it was essentially the first time a human, not God, created evil.

without the devil we would not have free will.

thank him, not God.

.... If humans didn't have free will before the Fall, how were humans able to deliberately choose to eat the fruit that God told them not to eat? Because Adam and Eve disobeying God by eating the fruit sure sounds like they were capable of making free choices before they ate of the fruit.

So I'm choosing to engage with OP (and by extension @apenitentialprayer) on their basic Garden of Eden hermeneutic, which is very much one I don't agree with, but for the sake of argument...

Prior to eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Adam and Eve had free will in the sense of being able to make volitional choices, but not in the sense of understanding the moral weight of their choices. When God tells Adam and Eve not to eat from the Tree, he doesn't say not to do so because that would be disobeying him, but for a very practical reason: "for in the day you eat of it you will die" (2:17)

But the Serpent has a counter: "no, you will not die" (Gen 3:4). And he's right. Adam and Eve eat of the fruit of the Tree and do not die. And God feels threatened. "Now that humankind has become like any of us, knowing good and bad, what if one should stretch out a hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever!" (3:22).

Death is not the natural result of eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (and due to some Hebrew grammar shit it should definitely not simply be called the Tree of Knowledge), but a protective measure and punishment taken by God to a) protect God (or in the Hebrew "us") from being like him, being made in the likeness of God, having access to the same type of information as God, and immortal and b) to punish Adam and Eve for a volitional choice they had no concept of a reason to disobey other than a consequence that is very much not the actual immediate consequence of eating from the Tree.

God is grossly unfair to punish Adam and Eve for this, but his choice to keep them from immortality still makes sense in terms of a desire to protect his unique status.

I always go back to the fact that god told Adam not to eat the fruit. THEN he created Eve, after realizing he screwed up.

Nothing ever says he told her.

Unless Adam's rib transferred the knowledge to her.

When the Serpent asks Eve about what she is and is not permitted to eat, she knows the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is forbidden:

The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.”’ (Genesis 3:2-3)

y'know i've been thinking, what if the fruit of the tree of knowledge was symbolic for puberty?

so, when adam and eve eat the fruit, they become aware of the fact that they are naked, and seek to cover themselves up, now knowing nudity to be a sinful thing.

young children dont look at nudity in the same way developed children and adults do, they see a body as a body, pure and untainted. however, when they go through puberty, they come into their own, becoming aware of sexuality and lust. a child going through puberty might seek to cover themselves up, now seeing what was once simply a body in a whole new light. (ofc others may choose to put themselves on display, which is an equally valid expression of sexuality)

children are thought to be pure, free of sin. whether this is true or not, is none of my concern. i find this angle, to view a child as the most sacred thing, absolutely fascinating.

children are messy, smelly, and down-right rude at times. they are demanding, relying on you to sacrifice friends, hobbies, to keep them alive and happy. and yet, after all this, we view them as sacred in a way not much else is.

i feel, that to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge is to grow up.

to learn all that is good and evil, is to come into your own.

adults are always chasing a feeling of childhood wonder, to belong once again to a time that never was.

i am not an adult, not yet, but i am no toddler either. i stand at the gate of the garden of eden, god's fury lapping at my back, between the purity of childhood, and the sinful knowledge of adult hood.

i look back, at my peers, all those scared children. i know that in due time they will join me.

no-one can live their life like that forever.

i am not asking them to come, for it is not my place. to join me is to abandon everything one's ever known in exchange for a future one cannot even know they want.

so i leave them as they prance, blissfully ignorant of the times to come, through the garden of eden.

That’s roughly how my Old Testament/Hebrew Bible professor in undergrad understood the story. Gaining knowledge of good and evil is also used as a metaphor for maturing in Isaiah 7:15-16.

Super basic and shallow theological question but I'm working in this Catholic school and they're playing this cartoon about Adam and Eve, a story we all know.

Anyway. How the fuck is it fair to punish Adam and Eve for disobeying God when they literally have no concept of evil. They don't understand deception-- that anything would lie for the sake of hurting them. The snake/devil/whatever acted upon them with willful evil intent, and they genuinely lack the ability to recognize that as a motivation. What the fuck.

Well, the basic answer, I think, is that even if Adam and Eve didn't know the snake was trying to hurt them, they did know that God told them not to eat of the fruit (Genesis 2:16-17). Adam and Eve could have trusted in God's wisdom and followed what He said, or they could have opted to disregard God in favor of the possibility of appropriating His wisdom on their own terms (Genesis 3:4-6). And they chose the latter. It was in the act of this disobedience that they learned the nature of evil; they felt shame. In that initial rift in the relationship between human being and God, the human beings realized their vulnerability, and they hid from Him. Fulton Sheen once said that "since the days of Adam, man has been hiding from God and saying, 'God is hard to find,'" and that's kind of the tragedy of the whole thing. The tragedy of the Fall is that we tried to seize God's power for ourselves and failed, when God would have gladly given all of Himself to us freely. We tried to get the benefit of God without valuing our relationship with God. And so began humanity's alienation from Him.

So if I understand OP’s critique (and the similar critiques others have made), they’re reading “knowledge of good and evil” very literally. Obedience to God is, in your standard Christian framework, good; disobedience, evil. So, if Adam and Eve lacked knowledge of good and evil they couldn’t have known that obedience was good or even expected of them; they might have even lacked a concept of obedience and disobedience since obedience is a virtue.

Now, my reading of the text is that the expulsion from the Garden was less of a punishment than a consequence. The Genesis 3 myth posits that gods are gods by dint of two characteristics: their knowledge of good and evil* and their immortality. In the Garden Adam and Eve were immortal, but lacked knowledge. Once obtained, if they remained immortal they would have become like god, immortal and knowing good and evil. God doesn’t want humans to be like him, and so expelled them from Eden to deny them immortality.

Although both our (I’m Jewish and @apenitentialprayer​ is Christian) there’s a sense that God ultimately desires our return to Eden, there’s no indication in the myth itself that a return to Eden is something God desires; in the myth God is willing to allow humans immortality or knowledge of good and evil, but emphatically not both.

*There’s a case to be made that “knowledge of good and evil” is a euphemism for puberty, in which case the characteristic is the ability to create new life rather than knowledge.

Is there a biblical basis for the idea that God is outside of time?

@farminforlife

What’s the biblical basis for God having created time, space, and matter? Creatio ex nihilo is on fairly tenuous grounds biblically speaking. The Genesis 1 creation myth definitely presupposes the existence of the waters of the void (and thus of the void itself) prior to creation although I’m not sure that’s the case with the John 1 creation myth or some of the minor ones in Job and the Psalms. But even in those I’d argue that it’s less that they advocate creatio ex nihilo than that they don’t actively advocate against it.

I’m also not entirely convinced that creatio ex nihilo places God outside creation. If I build a house I can enter it, board up the doors and windows, and be unable to leave (at least without destroying the house).

if I could ask God anything and get the real, genuine answer, I'd ask him why He commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. He knew He was going to stop him. He knew that He'd never truly ask him to do it. He knew that if he went through with it then His promise would be frustrated.

The thing is... the story has led parents to think it's okay to sacrifice their children, metaphorically and sometimes literally, for a false sense of moral superiority. How many LGBT+ children have been sacrificed in the supposed name of Christianity? How many autistic children? How many orphaned children? How many abused children?

Maybe it was the right lesson for Abraham, especially about how it paralleled Christ's atonement. But it's not a story that has translated well into modern times.

do you want the Jewish answer? It was to challenge him to think critically about commandments from g-d (and translating to religion as an institution, rulings from religious leaders and scripture), and it's a challenge he failed. He was supposed to, theoretically, fight g-d and say "no, by no means am I going to do this. I don't care that you created everything, that is my child and my world, and I'm not going to do it just because you said so."

Instead, Abraham royally screws up, traumatises his son, and in doing so, loses his son, loses g-d's will and favor, and in the Tanakh we never really hear from Abraham again after this point, because he failed.

It's a story about someone blindly following in faith, and losing the most important things to them because they never stopped to think "Wait, did I hear this right? And if I did hear this right, am I so sure that this is something I want to follow?"

Isaac was Abraham's only son at the time, and the child he had fought so hard to have. Him following an order blindly without thinking of the consequences is not supposed to be a good thing (It just kind of benefits the feudal society that eventually embraced Christianity, which is why the understanding was changed in Christian worldviews.)

While that’s a Jewish answer, I’d caution on calling it the Jewish answer. Jews have wrestled with this story (called the Akedah or “Binding”) for over two thousand years (in some synagogues it’s a daily reading). And yes, one conclusion that some Jews have come to is that Abraham failed the test. The Koren Sacks siddur calls it “the supreme trial of faith in which Abraham demonstrated his love of God above all other loves” and that interpretation (and variations on it) are also very much Jewish responses to the Akedah.

So the story of Sodom (Genesis 19) should be read parallel to the story of a certain Levite (Judges 19). Both feature roughly the same events, but I especially want to compare Genesis 19:6-8

with Judges 19:23-24

In both passages the host implores the townspeople not to perform a wicked act, but in Judges it’s made abundantly clear why the act is wicked: “this man is [his] guest.” Hospitality was taken seriously in the Ancient Near East, hence both hosts are willing to sacrifice their daughters (and in the Judges story the Levite’s concubine) to the mob to keep harm from their guests. Now, it’s entirely possible that the fact that the men of Sodom and the Benjamine town wanted to rape a man added to the depravity, but the fundamental issue is protection of guests.

Compare also Ezekiel 16:49-50′s explanation of why Sodom was destroyed:

If you want to add a New Testament perspective, the Epistle of Jude is probably your best biblical basis for the sin of Sodom being homosexual sex rather than violating hospitality

Were humans originally not intended to eat the meat of the animals around them?

In the garden of Eden when God is showing Adam and Eve everything he has given them, there is a section where he discusses that all of the trees and plants (except for the tree of knowledge obviously) were given to them for nourishment.

Animals were not mentioned here. However, after the flood, he mentions that the animals also were available for their nourishment.

As a first time Bible reader (and a vegetarian) I am curious about these two sections and looking for an explanation if there is one. Why is it that before the flood the animals were not given as food, and after they were? Thanks in advance everyone, I’m just looking to better understand what I am reading.

Nineteenth century Catholic commentator George Leo Haydock wrote:

Gregory of Nyssa, writing in the late fourth century, wrote:

Giovanni Menochio, a sixteenth century Jesuit, wrote:

In all three cases, there is an understanding that in their original state, human beings were meant to be vegetarians; that the allowance for meat was a concession, the result of a weakened human condition and a weakened vitality within Creation itself. There are some, like myself, who see vegetarianism as what is known as an “eschatological sign” - a way of living on this earth in a way that is not mandatory for all believers, but who nonetheless see it as a way of more closely resembling what we will be like in heaven. There are others who wouldn’t grant it such an exalted status. There are other opinions, though. For example, the Rabbi David Kimhi (or RaDaK, as he is sometimes called), was an eleventh century Jewish scholar who instead suggested:

Hezekiah ben Manoah, from the thirteenth century, uses similar reasoning:

The eighteenth century Chaim ibn Attar agrees with his coreligionists above in that he also believed that meat-eating was a reward for Noah’s faithful stewardship, whereas the nineteenth century commentator known as the Malbim actually mixed both reasonings:

So among both Jewish and Christian scholars, there is a wide variety of opinions on the matter; meat-eating can be something we’re just putting up with because of the sinful state of the world, or it can be a reward for maintaining the world. I personally think that the first option is more likely, but Christians are free to believe either.

No but someone please explain to me- with my limited knowledge of Christianity- if the first two humans were Adam and Eve, and they had two sons, (one who murdered the other) where did the rest of humanity come from???? Even if they had more children there would be severe incest involved... Or if God made a wife for whichever brother didn't die, how did their children continue??? Something isn't adding up.

Genesis 5:4

It’s one of two major incest bottlenecks in the Genesis narrative, the other occurs after the Deluge.

I just remembered something vaguely disturbing.

Remember when God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah? Before he did, a few men of God visited Lot and the men of Sodom wanted to have sex with them. Right?

INSTEAD, Lot offered his young, virgin daughters to them.

And yet, the only thing I was really taught about that passage was the men wanting to have sex with the men and how gross it was. There was never a narrative defending the daughters. There was never a discussion about rape and disrespect for women.

And that’s MESSED UP. Holy crap. We never talk about the girls who were nearly raped and beaten at their father’s whim. What the hell.

Judges 19 is a parallel story that’s even worse. In that one, the man does give the woman (his concubine in that story rather than his daughter) to the mob. Phyllis Trible refers to as a “text of terror.” (I haven’t read the book, but I’ve had it recommended on good authority)

Question

How is God addressed (either by Himself or another character) in any of Genesis chapters 1-12? Does He ever address Himself by name or is given a title by another character up to that point? I do not mean where the narrator (Moses?) refers to God, but where a speaking character addresses God. 

This question is wholeheartedly open to Jewish scholars or those from other Abrahamic faiths. What I’m trying to understand is how people addressed God before the time of Abraham. There is Genesis 4:26 that is translated as “men began to call on the name of the LORD”, which maybe means that people understood the LORD as a specific deity with a specific name? I’m trying to understand more.

Thanks for the help!

God mostly gets called “Elohim” (God) or “Yhwh” (translated as LORD in all caps) in the Torah.

God is first referred to in dialogue by the serpent in Gen 3:1, who uses Elohim, the woman in Gen 3:3 also uses Elohim. The first time a character uses the term Yhwh for God is Gen 4:1 when Eve says she bore Cain with “the help of Yhwh.”

In Judaism, Yhwh, יהוה, is the Ineffable Name. Its original pronunciation is lost as Jews substitute “Adonai” (my lord) for it when reading scripture or praying.

Okay question recently I got fucked up over hearing multiple people refer to Adams and eve's first sin. Right because I heard it from multiple people that the first sin was both of theirs.

And like i was taught it was eves sin. She committed the first sin and is the reason we all sin now. Adam only sinned because she already had and he trusted her. It wasn't even really his sin but hers.

And like is that not what everyone was taught?

 Hoo, this is a complex one.

Genesis 3:6 is very explicit regarding Eve’s choice to eat the apple, “The woman saw that the tree was good for eating and a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable as a source of wisdom,“ but all it tells us about Adam’s choice is, “She also gave some to her husband, and he ate.”

The Tanakh/Old Testament doesn’t really address the question of the sin in Eden again. While the Fall is important in Judaism, it doesn’t have nearly as much cosmic significance as it does in Christianity. (We’ll forgo the rabbit hole of rabbinic commentary on Genesis for now, but a cursory glance suggests that a number of medieval commenters took the view that the sin was Eve’s responsibility)

For Christians, the Fall took on cosmic significance thanks to Paul. And for Paul, the significant sin in Eden is clearly Adam’s. Adam becomes an archetype, just as his sin condemned humanity, so shall Jesus (whom Paul calls the “last Adam”) redeem humanity: “As all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ” (I Cor 15:22).

In Romans (which is placed in the New Testament prior to I Corinthians but was almost certainly written after it) Paul again pins the first sin on Adam:

Paul isn’t concerned with Eve as a transgressor at all, her name doesn’t appear in any of the undisputed epistles.

However, the writer of I Timothy (who wrote in Paul’s name but was almost certainly not Paul) places the culpability for the first sin squarely on Eve: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.” (2:13-14)

Apologies if I’m starting discussion where you desire none, and I recognize I am a comparative layperson and you are not a Christian, but I’d like to give some input here.

(Literary Analysis) The theory of “The Fruit as loss of sexual innocence/youth” is sort of a peeve of mine, and it does not seem to me at all apparent in the text that the fruit symbolizes any such thing. I’m fairly certain a majority of scholars would say that Adam was created an adult (I would be very interested to read any scholars who disagree). Leaving that aside for a moment, the idea that Adam and Eve knew nothing of sex, or were not sexually mature, and had to eat the apple conflicts with the blessing near the end of Genesis 1 (be fruitful and multiply). One could argue that they were written by different authors, but evidently at the time they were compiled they were not thought of as contradictory. The only explanation I can think of for how they are not contradictory is either Adam and Eve knew of sex without the fruit or there was some weird mystical Adam Kadmon type stuff going on.

From what I know of near east sexual euphemisms, they are often pretty blunt and very weird (see: song of Solomon, or whatever you want to call it).

(Bad Hebrew) To go on a bit further, and to answer the original ask, and please forgive me for my shoddy knowledge of hebrew, but often the word for “knowledge” or “wisdom” in hebrew is mixed in meaning with “skill” and “experience” (perhaps this is an over generalization, but it happens enough to be notable). I should mention the term is also well known as a sexual euphemism (perhaps where the “Fruit as Sex” theory came from). Thus, I don’t think it would be inaccurate to translate it as “The Fruit of the Experience of good and evil” or “The Fruit of Skill in Good and Evil” to reflect the active view of knowledge in hebrew. Again, I am no hebrew scholar, so this is conjecture and liberal use of interlinear and concordances.

(Christian Theology) It is clear that Adam and Eve knew the command of God not to eat of the fruit. They knew it was against the will of God to eat it. They still had, at that time, the capacity for sin, because that capacity is rooted in the ability to disobey God. So you could say they knew what evil was, or rather what was evil, but had not experienced it, and thus did not “Know” it.

(cont. Christian Theology) Animals cannot sin because they have no free will. They follow the laws of nature, and the laws of their nature. They are not Conscious, and thus cannot choose but rather follow impulses. This, and not their lack of knowledge, is why animals cannot be held responsible for sin.

Sorry again if you did not want a discussion

I like a lot of your analysis, but I want to issue a note of caution re

The Redactor of the Torah allowed a lot of very blatant contradictions to slip into the text. I can provide a list if desired, but that list would be extremely long. The Redactor does not seem to have been concerned with the idea that the text he was producing would have contradictions. Rather, his desire seems to have been to create an anthology of  literature, folklore, mythology, and law. The anthology contains contradictions because he deliberately preserved them.

The Torah is not properly seen as a single text, even if that’s the way it ultimately came to be regarded. Elements of one story, particularly if the stories are from different writers, should be used to interpret elements of another story only with extreme caution.

Is the interpretation of Genesis 3:15 as a prophecy an evangelical thing or has it been the historically normative interpretation for Christianity?