Why were Adam and Eve cast out of Eden?

No, If that were the case it would say “…lest he continue to put forth his hand…” or …lest he again put forth his hand…"

The interpretation anyone who read this story for the first time and had never heard of the Christian interpretationwould be that they had not yet eaten from the tree of life.

68 posts were merged into an existing topic: How to Argue from Scripture

I have no idea if @gbrooks9’s interpretation is supported.

However, the methodological critique is valid and speaks precisely to the argument:

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Don’t think so. Is there a translation that doesn’t say the same thing the quoted ones do? I don’t think anyone, especially @Faizal_Ali, is picking between translations here.

Find a translation that can be interpreted that way. Or do all translations require Hebrew scholars to gloss them from the Hebrew text? They seem quite consistent, which would suggest to me that all translations are bad.

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And, to be clear, I did not mean to suggest otherwise.

That said, I continue to await a scholarly translation that would contradict or weaken the interpretation that arises from a close, unbiased reading of the standard and common English translations.

Do we know who it was meant to be read by?

No. I am trying to figure out the reading that would be best based on the text itself. An example would be how we understand the bare plot details of the The Iliad or the The Odyssey. This would not depend no how we “privilege” such texts.

OK, I suppose the proscription against eating the fruit could be read as a threat rather than a warning. “Eat that fruit and I’ll kill you” rather than “Eat that fruit and it will kill you.”

However, Eve’s conversation with the serpent makes more sense if she understood the latter meaning.

In any event, whether he lied or or changed his mind, he did not speak the truth. And at the very least he lied by omission when he did not tell A&E that they would gain knowledge of good and evil if they ate the fruit. It was the serpent who told them, and he spoke the truth.

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Yes! This is what I had discovered earlier: Actually they weren’t “frozen” in their sinful state. God had already given them forgiveness and grace. But the reality of that had to be fulfilled in Jesus’ death and resurrection. Otherwise they would have been living forever in a state of forgiveness, but in a world that had the effects of sin. God loves the world also and wanted to redeem it as a whole. Plus God wanted to reveal Himself further through the Holy Spirit.

All of this meant that the tree of life has to wait until God redeems the world and makes a new heavens and earth.

What do you think the naming of the tree was FOR? Of course, He did tell them - it was the name of the tree. But that doesn’t not mean that knowing evil is good. If we could rid the world of evil, I’m sure we’d all do so. Then we wouldn’t KNOW it anymore.

You seem to be equivocating on the word “know”. Does knowing evil make you evil? But God knows evil (he said so in the verses we’re arguing about), and he isn’t evil. One could argue that in order to know good one must also know evil, or there’s nothing to compare good to.

Please quote where Genesis 2-3 says any of this. TIA.

Again, please quote where this is stated or implied. If they didn’t know what good and evil was until they ate from the tree, what good would it do telling them “That’s the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil”? It’d be like saying “That’s the Tree of Orkleborkle and Geegaw.”

I could live with that.

This gets into Euthyphro’s Dilemma again.

Because God is good from eternity, as long as there is nothing else outside of Him, only God exists. Only good exists. God would know that for Him to create beings that could have a loving relationship with Him, they could also choose evil.

He could choose not to create those relational beings. Or He could choose to create them and tell them they have a choice to know only Him who is good, or to know both good and evil. Because God who is good already exists, they do not have to know evil to know good.

Once the relational beings God created chose to know evil, God could have separated them from Himself to remain just and good. Or He could have decided to have the relationship He created them for because He was unwilling not to love - it was His nature. To do that, only an eternally good, as well as a being like He created, could repair the separation that otherwise would be necessary. Hence Jesus.

None of that bears the slightest relevance to what I said. Do you agree that God knows good and evil, and that by eating from the tree of knowledge Adam and Eve became like God in that respect?

Yes it was relevant.

But as to your question. Yes, they became gods unto themselves, in their own way “knowing” what is good and what is evil.

That also made them evil as only God is good and can be the only standard of good, not themselves.

You’re making up a story that isn’t there.

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To answer your question, here’s an analogy:
If I drew my child a heart, what does that mean and how does the child know?

So could I. That’s why it’s worth believing in Jesus no matter whether it costs me everything or not.

Well, I don’t think she made it up herself.

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This entire discourse leads me to think that either you accept a literal reading and struggle with these sorts of issues or that you embrace the idea that the bible’s interpretation strategy and doctrine has to be nearly or as important as the words itself (i.e. it is not a straightforward read).

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But apparently not completely - Adam and Eve didn’t become all-knowing (at least, there’s no indication of that in the story) - they simply gained some measure of knowledge. It wouldn’t be discordant with that for the Tree of Life to grant a partial effect as well.

It may be worth noting that the Tree of Life in Revelation (a book saturated with references to the OT, so it could very well reflect the Genesis Tree of Life was thought of in the first century AD) is said to bear fruit continuously, on a monthly basis, and it is said that its leaves are for “the healing of the nations”. Now, that certainly isn’t inconsistent with a “eat it once, permanently gain eternal life” function, but to me it suggests that it is meant to be eaten on a continual basis.

All of this quibbling over how the Tree of Life worked is probably missing the point, however, since (as @deuteroKJ mentioned) themes throughout the Pentateuch and the rest of Scripture make it plausible that the tree symbolized access to God’s presence and thus to the source of all life himself.

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The book of Revelation was written many centuries after Genesis, so is not pertinent to what I am discussing.

The author of Revelation was a reader of Genesis in a culture nearly 2000 years closer to that of the author of Genesis (and far more directly related to it) than ours. I’d say it is at least as pertinent as anything we come up with just reading the English translation with a host of background assumptions which may be alien to author of Genesis.

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I agree.

But not nearly as pertinent as a reading that avoids all such assumptions.

Is your view that one cannot know anything, unless one has exhausted every other possibility under the sun?