God the Humanist? A sensible reading of Adam and Eve.

[Htom Sirveaux]

Humanism generally prefers independent, critical thinking, especially in matters of moral judgment. Morality is a matter of human good in this life, rather than attaining a blessed afterlife though mindless obedience to the will of a deity.

In the story of Adam and Eve, God tells Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of the knowledge of Good and Evil, for on that day they will die. And they obey. Then the serpent comes and tells Eve not to listen to God. And she obeys (note that she only starts seeing the fruit as good after the serpent has told her to. It wasn't an independent moral judgment.) Then Eve gives Adam the fruit to eat, and he obeys her. Adam and Eve's problem was not that they disobeyed God. Their problem was they couldn't stop obeying, regardless of who it was.

And they are punished for it. Among the punishments God commands is to scratch a difficult living with their hands from the soil. Their son Cain obeys. He's a farmer, and not only does he obey, but he sacrifices to God in thanksgiving. His brother, Abel, however, does not obey. He avoids God's curse by becoming a shepherd, and letting the animals deal with the stubborn ground. He also sacrifices to God. Whose sacrifice does God prefer? Clever, disobedient Abel's sacrifice, because he has taken the initiative to improve his own life. God even holds up Abel as a model for Cain, saying to Cain: "Why are you angry...if you do well, will you not be lifted up?" (This reading of Cain/Abel comes from Yoram Hazony's The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 108)

This suggests that if Adam and Eve had taken the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil of their own accord, God would have applauded their independent moral judgment and drive for human improvement.

Thoughts?

[Jackpine Radical]

1. Interesting.

K&R

[edhopper]

2. It's a fable

derived from other origin myths. So you can make of it what you want.

I'm still trying to figure out Onan.

[AtheistCrusader]

3. Dunno.

According to the book, god seems pretty pissed that they disobeyed.

Which is an interesting catch-22. If you have no general working knowledge of 'good and evil', how does one know not to disobey god? (Presumably evil) How does one know to be on guard against the deceptive nature of the serpent? (Presumably evil) How does one know that rejecting the snake could be 'good'?

it seems designed to fail.

If your interpretation/question is accurate, there's nothing within that specific exchange/story to indicate what you are suggesting.

[Htom Sirveaux]

4. The implication of what you say

could be that there were things about morality Adam and Eve should have understood merely by being human (a point Hazony also makes). Maybe they should have known morality comes from within, not from eating a fruit (they clearly understood something about morality already, from Eve's view of the apple after the serpent speaks:"When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom...&quot . A similar mistake to the first one I discussed, and perhaps another reason for God to be angry, on the "God the Humanist" reading.

Nothing within the particular story of A&E, sure, but when juxtaposed with Cain/Abel, which is the very next story, I think this meaning is justified.

[edhopper]

5. Like all abusive parents

Which God clearly is in the OT, the abused kids were always asking, "what did we do wrong?"
This tale is a irrational way to make sense of it.

[Kelvin Mace]

7. Yep,

"God" is giving them a choice between being told what is right and wrong, and knowing for themselves what is right and wrong.

[Htom Sirveaux]

8. Is there something wrong, then, with practicing Jewish people?

Stockholm syndrome? Battered person syndrome?

[Warren Stupidity]

10. There is something wrong with practicing all of these religions.

They are just so stories for an obsolete era.

[Htom Sirveaux]

12. The early greek philosophers lived at

roughly the same time as the Hebrew scriptures were being written/compiled. Toss them out too?

[Warren Stupidity]

16. The stuff that is bullshit and woo: sure.

The classic Greek philosophers were going after rational investigation of the human condition, not adherence to dogma and tradition, thus, famously, hemlock, for corrupting the youth of Athens with atheistic treason.

Were you making some other point?

[Htom Sirveaux]

19. So we can keep reading them despite the fact that

many of them not only believed in a creator, but credited their philosophy to the gods or other supernatural entities (like Socrates's famous daemon)?

The point I'm explaining (It belongs initially to the author I cited, but I also think it makes sense) is that we might check to see if the authors/compilers of the Bible were making similar philosophical points through their telling of these stories and their arrangements of them.

[okasha]

33. What he's trying to say is that cherry-picking is okay

unless the text is the Bible.

[AtheistCrusader]

11. From my point of view, the abrahamic tradition from stem to stern resembles the conditions

you just identified.

[Htom Sirveaux]

15. Does that mean you have trouble taking people within

that tradition seriously? It seems like a recipe for not listening, or else privileging those voices within that tradition which confirm that opinion.

[AtheistCrusader]

18. More like, for one reason or another, they don't fully grasp the moral proposition they have subscri

bed to. In some cases, they perhaps just didn't consider it when they crossed that bridge to faith, and now they are past that, and will continue to believe, without ever analyzing that decision again.

Seems like a fairly abusive relationship to me. The emotional tear down. You'll never be good enough without me. You must love me. You're a sinner. You cannot hope to rise to be my moral equal. You must subjugate yourself. Kneel. Beg. (pray) Etc.

Most religions fit the template I recognize as an emotional abuser in relationships.


Didn't come here to shit all over religion actually, just an honest observation.

[edhopper]

24. Most Jewish people I know

don't believe that the early Bible is anything but myth.
The understand these tales to be fables trying to convey some moral or other. And the Jews don't have the concept of original sin.
So it doesn't matter what Adam and Eve did. it's not like God really punished the first man. Trying to figure out what God wants from the story is a fools errand.
The Ultra Orthodox are mashugana.

[Kelvin Mace]

6. There is little sensible about the Adam & Eve story

Since God is always portrayed as a patriarch and we his "children", reduce the story to that context.

Dad: OK kids, you can have all the candy in the house, except what's in this jar marked "Jack Daniels Liquers"

Kids: What jar of candy?

Dad: The one on the coffee table in the middle of the game room, in the bright red jar with and the big neon sign saying "Dad's Candy - Do Not Touch - Poison". You know, behind the kittens and puppies...

Kids: Oh, that one!

Dad: Yeah, THAT one. Don't even think of touching them!

Kids: Why?

Dad: Because I said so, that's why.

Kids: Why?

Dad: Because this stuff will kill you, that's why.

Mom (Not seen, nor heard for some reason) in the original story: If you don't want the kids eating your bourbon-flavored candy why place it where they can see it, then call their attention to it, and lie to them about what eating it will do? They may get sick off it, but it is not going to kill them. Wouldn't it have been simpler just to keep the jar at your office and never mention it?

Dad: Indistinct grumbles.

Mom: I mean that is just like putting a jar of rattlesnakes in the den and tying candy bars to them. They are children, remember? Why do you expect them to have more sense than you? (Under breath: Not that you are displaying much sense, mind you.)

Kid #1 playing in game room ignoring candy jar. Next door neighbor's kid, whom Dad HATES and will kill on sight wanders into the house through the unlocked front door.

Neighbor's Kid: Oh WOW!!! Bourbon balls, you HAVE to try them.

Kid#1: Dad said not to, they're poison.

Neighbor's Kid: (Mockingly) Daddy said not to, they're poison. Really? Poison? So, your Dad keeps poison around just so he can eat it? If this stuff really was poison why would he leave it around where just anybody could find it. What is really going on is that this is cool adult candy and your Dad just doesn't want to share it with you.

God kid, are you always such a tool?

And Kid #1 did eat of the candy of the forbidden jar and verily did become well and truly hammered.

Neighbor's Kid: See, told ya so.

Kid#2 comes in and sees Kid#1 sitting on the floor giggling herself silly while watching an Adam Sandler movie.

Kid#2: You're in BIG trouble. And why are you laughing at that mentally challenged man on TV?

Kid#1: Eat one of these and he gets VERY funny.

Kid#2: That's poison!

Kid#1: Do I look dead?

Kid#2: Well, no.

Kid#1: Then eat one and shut up, ya fraidy cat.

Kid#2: I ain't no fraidy cat!

Kid#1: Then eat one.

And Kid#2 did eat one and verily did realize that Adam Sandler was a comic genius.

Hours later.

Dad: 38, 39, 40, 41..... Hey, I'm missing a dozen Bourbon balls!! And somebody's been into my Adam Sandler tapes and didn't rewind them!!!

Giggling from behind the couch

Kid#1: Adam Sandler is funny.

Kid#2: When he does that voice, I wet myself.

Dad: How do you know Adam Sandler is funny? Have you been eating my Bourbon balls?

Kids: Yep.

Dad: Out! OUT!!! Out of my house and never come back you disobedient little brats!!

The Adam and Eve story only makes any kind of sense if Satan were actually God, and God was the snake. The snake liberated Adam and Eve from a meaningless existence as the playthings of a manipulative and capricious being.

[AtheistCrusader]

13. Yep.

[bravenak]

27. I smiled, laughed and loved that dialogue.

So true.

[Louisiana1976]

31. ....

[Htom Sirveaux]

34. Very creative and entertaining! nt

[libodem]

9. Dragons of Eden

Does a good job of sussing out the meaning of the many symbols in the myth. It wasn't ever supposed to be literal. All those parables are full of deeper meanings and it depends on who is interpreting it.

Usually it translates into doing the moral thing or somehow punishing women for being too sexy for their robe, too sexy for their sandals, too sexy for their head scarf, just to darn sexy for most biblical guys to handle. Cuz we got it going on.

[Warren Stupidity]

14. It wasn't ever supposed to be literal - well yes of course it was.

As were all the similar ancient creation myths. It is only from a modern perspective that the obvious bullshit is declared allegory.

[Htom Sirveaux]

17. Philo the Jewish philosopher (10 BCE-50 CE) is modern?

I think he would be surprised by that. As would Origen (185 CE-254 CE), the leading Christian exponent of allegorical reading.

[Warren Stupidity]

20. By the time of the last centuries of the ancient world skepticism was abundant.

Blame the Epicureans. However with the collapse of the classical philosophical schools, and the onset of the Medieval world, literalism was back in style. Origen's ideas were voted off the island in 553, as the darkness settled in. Note that literalism and allegory can co-exist. The story of Adam and Eve can be both literally true and can have a hidden meaning. God, after all, was teaching us humans something or other.

Here in this country there was a huge schism in the mainline protestant churches over literalism in the 1920s.

[Htom Sirveaux]

26. Origen wasn't condemned for his allegorical method.

He was condemned for theological propositions he was alleged to have held, not the method by which he obtained them. He was still highly influential nonetheless. He inspired Pseudo-Dionysis, another highly influential neo-platonist Christian philosopher in the medieval period, who also used allegorical readings.

Interpreting religious history through the lens of that 1920s conflict leads to misunderstandings like the one I pointed out above. As you said, literal and allegorical meanings can go together, so the question "literal or allegorical" wasn't even on the table, although Augustine did point out that understandings of the text that contradicted science should be discarded.

[libodem]

22. Hindsight is 20/20

[intaglio]

21. Are you a contortionist?

I think you must be to so twist the words of your preferred holy book.

Adam and Eve's problem was not that they disobeyed God. Their problem was they couldn't stop obeying, regardless of who it was

Except they did stop obeying one deceiver (God) who told them that eating that fruit would kill them on that day and Eve then takes the advice (NOT command) of another deceiver (the serpent) and then Eve persuaded (NOT commanded) Adam to eat.

Now let's examine the fruit eaten, the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This means that prior to eating that fruit A&E had absolutely no idea that there were things called good and evil so they were unprepared for any deception.

[Htom Sirveaux]

23. If A&E had no conception of morality

prior to eating, then this statement shouldn't be there:

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

If she had no conception of morality, why would she desire wisdom? And Adam eats only because she gave it to him. He doesn't even get any comments on what he thought of the fruit.

As for the "on that day, you will die" part, it's entirely possible that God changed his mind about killing them. That's a thing that happens in the Bible. It happens in the Book of Jonah, when God changes his mind about killing the Ninevites after they repent (despite him telling Jonah that he was going to destroy Ninevah). Another possibility is "on that day you will die" in that context refers to beginning a process that was going to result in death (in this case, the process of becoming farmers who create surpluses for cities that end up enslaving and killing them).

[muriel_volestrangler]

35. The writer doesn't say that God changed his mind

The writer straight-forwardly has God lying. The chapter starts with the serpent pointing out that God has lied to Adam and Eve (though the serpent's "ye shall be as gods" looks like marketing hype - they may have gained the knowledge of good and evil, but no powers to prevent God punishing them), Eve uses the evidence of her eyes, wants wisdom (I don't understand why you think you need a conception of morality to want wisdom; but since everyone, by the time they are capable of expressing a desire for wisdom also has a conception of morality, this seems a moot point - neither the writer nor we can really imagine that state), tries it, and finds out that God indeed was lying. God throws a wobbly, punishes everyone involved, and has a strange talk with entities like him (strange in view of the later claims in Exodus that there's no-one like him. He could have been lying about that too, of course).

No, I can't see anything in the story to make you think the author was saying "God would have liked it if Eve had eaten the fruit without prompting from the serpent". The message seems to be "God may lie to you sometimes, but you ought to accept that and shut up, or he'll punish you. Don't trust anyone who contradicts what God says." Which is a handy message for a priest who people think passes on God's messages. If anything they say turns out to be wrong, well, that was just God and his mysterious ways. If anyone says the priests are talking nonsense, then they're just like the serpent who kicked off all humanity's problems.

If you want a positive message from it, I suppose it could be "take responsibility for your actions", or at least "don't tell on each other" - Adam immediately tries to blame Eve, and she blames the serpent.

[intaglio]

36. All you are doing is digging the hole even deeper

You use a quote explaining how Eve saw the tree. This shows either that the creation of Eve was more complete than that that of Adam or that the OT contains a contradictory collection of primitive folk tales. Next you say God changed his mind. This means that God either has no prophetic power at all even in respect of His own mind or that He is a vacillating primitive conception of a deity or that he lied. This is not revealed truth nor is it holy wisdom and it is certainly not Humanist.

In any event it does not change the basic premise of my post; that in the story the only command given was by God so that there was disobedience to God and so the punishment meted out was for disobedience to God - not following contradictory orders.

[edhopper]

25. When do you think current story of Adam and Eve

solidified, and how different is it from the original myths it derived from.

Cause it sure as shit ain't real, and it sure as shit ain't God trying to tell us something (and failing badly)

[Htom Sirveaux]

28. I think the Hebrew scriptures were compiled/written

while the Jewish people were in Babylon and thereafter, as an argument for keeping together as a culture rather than assimilating with the empire that had taken their independence.

The original creation myth that A&E is responding to is also Babylonian, the Enuma Elish, in which creation is the result of the violent destruction of the chief goddess Tiamat by Marduk.

[edhopper]

29. I thought

They were written down later. Are there any existing from BCE?

[Htom Sirveaux]

30. Here's the best site I could find on that:

The oldest witnesses to the LXX include 2nd century BC fragments of Leviticus and Deuteronomy (Rahlfs nos. 801, 819, and 957), and 1st century BC fragments of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and the Minor Prophets (Rahlfs nos. 802, 803, 805, 848, 942, and 943). Relatively complete manuscripts of the LXX include the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus of the 4th century AD/CE and the Codex Alexandrinus of the 5th century. These are indeed the oldest surviving nearly-complete manuscripts of the Old Testament in any language; the oldest extant complete Hebrew texts date much later, from around 1000.

http://www.bibliahebraica.com/the_texts/septuagint.htm

[edhopper]

32. Thanks

It would be interesting to see a side by side comparison between later Bibles and something from 5th or 6th Century BCE.
The changes probably reflect the differences in moral codes.

[Jim__]

37. Steinbeck has a similar interpretation of the story of Cain and Abel.

His novel, East of Eden, is, at least partially, concerned with the story of Cain and Abel. It takes their story:

Adam made love to his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, “With the help of the Lord I have brought forth[c] a man.” 2 Later she gave birth to his brother Abel.

Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. 3 In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. 4 And Abel also brought an offering—fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, 5 but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.

6 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? 7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”

And looks at the verse: you must rule over it and different translations of that verse, specifically the words you must. According to the novel, those words are a translation of the Hebrew word timshel which in the novel translates as thou mayest, and is seen as acknowledging that man has the freedom and capacity to triumph.

From East of Eden:

"Now, there are many millions who in their sects and churches who feel the order, 'Do thou,' and throw their weight into obedience. And there are millions more who feel predestination in 'Thou shalt.' Nothing they may do can interfere with what will be. But 'Thou mayest'! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win... And I feel I am a man. And I feel that a man is a very important thing - maybe more important than a star. This is not theology. I have no bent towards the gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed - because 'Thou mayest.'"...

..."It was your two-word translation, Lee - 'Thou mayest.' It took me by the throat and shook me. And when the dizziness was over, a path was open, new and bright. And when my life which is ending seems to be going on to an ending wonderful. And my music has a last melody like a bird song in the night.

Lee was peering at him through the darkness.

"'Thou mayest rule over sin," Lee said. That's it. I do not believe all men are destroyed. I can name you a dozen who were not, and they are the ones the world lives by. It is true of the spirit as it is true of the battles - only the winners are remembered. Surely most men are destroyed, but there are others who like pillars of fire guide frightened men through the darkness. 'Thou mayest, Thou mayest!' What glory! It is true that we are weak and sick and quarrelsome, but if that is all we ever were, we would, millenniums ago, have disappeared from the face of the earth. A few remnants of fossilized jawbone, some broken teeth in strats of limestone, would be the only mark man would have left of his existence in the world. But the choice, Lee, the choice of winning! I had never understood it or accepted it before. 'Thou mayest rule over sin.'"

[AtheistCrusader]

38. A (possibly NSFW) interpretation.

http://oglaf.com/bitterfruit/