Genesis question?

Question

Hi everybody I just started reading the Bible everday from start to finish, and just have a question. Why did God place the Tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden? Did Satan request this? I mean, why couldn't He have just left out that tree? When you read more, more questions come up!

And also, was the serpent in Genesis the snake it is today? Because God cursed it and said to walk on its belly, was the snake a different appearance? Thanks everyone! Gob Bless you all.

Answer 1

Duh, Its a fairy tale!!!

Answer 2

Well it is so nice to hear someone has a real question instead of arguing and complaining! That is why I mostly stay away from this site.

Ok 1. The tree was in the middle becasuse thats where it could be seen. They had to have a choice of good and evil. The tree was placed in the middle to provide that choice.
If the tree had been left out there would be no choice to make. It would be like God forcing them to do good. Also notice back in Gen 2:17 that God warned them to NOT eat of the tree of knowlege. They were told they would die if they did. So they were warned of the consequences and it's unfair to put the blame on God. In chapter 3 Notice how Eve knew that she wasn't to eat of THAT pariticular tree but she LET herself be decieved by the Serpent. vs 1-6
#2. The serpent: We don't necessarily know that the serpent was a snake. Lizards are serpents too. If I were to cut off a lizards legs, that doesn't mean that all of it's offspring will be born without legs.
In Gen 3:14 God says to the serpent "all the days of YOUR life.
So there is no clear cut answer that I can see as to if it was something that happened to this serpent one time of if it would continue on for generations to come.

Answer 3

You have been given a good lesson how intellect can close a mind. One of the posters has created the illusion that intellect is the total answer to everthing. Little realizing he has restricted his thinking very considerably. Evidence continues to come forth, in this time, which establishes an intelligence long before his reference suggests. I have, just today had an article sent to me revealing the chinese were mining for gold (with a smelter) inTasmania. It ceased to operate over 500 years ago. The reason being the impact of a large body hit in the ocean and incinerated many of their ships (over 50 of them). The accompanying tsunami put the rest of the ships high up on the cliffs.. remnants can still be found there.. Now, where does one determine where intelligence began and what does this do to our educational process now? Reliance, totally on present day intellect, is a fools pathway.

As far as the tree....man was given free will to choose and select. Yet he ignored the warning and took of the fruit. When you read further, you will find there was a civilization not far from Eden. The banished son went there to find a wife. This may throw you a bit of a curve but one must remember, This is the history of the Jewish race.. its beginning. The snake is believed to be used symbolically... I can offer no proof one way or the other.

Answer 4

The 'second creation' is a myth in the classical sense and when we academically speak of a 'myth' we do not mean that it is untrue, just that it is not historical. Like all Mesopotamian Creation stories it attempts to answer the fundamental questions of human existence, such as the origins of life, the human condition etc. The role of the tree of knowledge is vastly complicated and would require a more extensive discussion that we can have here. But in its more simplified form it is the protagonist that drives the natural curiosity of the woman and the man, thus answering the question, "why do we so often end up in trouble when we fail to resist the urge?" It is not the purpose of the text to be taken literally, a talking serpent? Mmm? Rather this plays the mythological role of the human psyche, which is represented in many ancient myths as a serpent. How often have we heard and heeded the serpent of our naturally curious minds? The biblical redactors have done well to preserve such a masterpiece of literature. Shalom

Answer 5

God chose that one tree from all the other fruit trees in the garden. Adam and Eve had all the other trees to chose from to eat just don't eat from that tree.
It was a simple test of choice, obedience to his/her creator. Loyalty came into the picture too.
Satan did not request it, the Angel who became Satan later was still in good standing with the creator.
The Angel who was given responsibility to see to it Adam and Eve live there lives in harmony with their creator wanted that glory for himself so guess what...Like a ventriloquist he talked to Eve through a serpent and this was unusual to Eve. He told the first lie to Eve and slandered the creator. The serpent was the same just that one serpent was cursed. snakes today are the same.
One thing...there was another tree and this was in the middle of the garden, it was the tree of LIFE and when our creator drove out Adam and Eve from the garden and posted an Angel with the flaming sword at the entrance of the garden so the pair could not come back into the garden and eat from it and live forever.

Answer 6

Good for you...the bible is a wellspring of knowledge and life.

God was testing the faith of Adam and Eve, even then. That is why He put the trees in the garden. He knew what they would choose, but He still gave them a choice. Obey God or don't. They chose not to. It's symbolic of all of us and our life, we have two choices. We can either choose God and obey Him or listen to satan and his lies. Because Adam and Eve chose to listen to satan instead of God, they had to pay the price of sin and that was death. We have the same choice to make today. If we choose God, we'll still physically die, but our soul will live on with Him in heaven. If we choose satan and the ways of the world, we'll still physically die, but also we will die spiritually and we will be sentenced to hell. So today God is saying, choose the Son, Jesus Christ and you will have life, choose satan and you will receive death. God has power to destroy both body and soul as He created both.

The serpent was not the same animal we know as a snake today. , before the Fall it wasn't, anyway. As a result of their sin, God cursed the physical animal (the serpent) and put it on it's belly to eat dirt all the days of it's life (this is probably the snake we know today). He then turned His anger toward satan whose spirit was in the serpent and cursed him too. Chapter 3:15 talks about this. "Seed" is referring to believers and unbelievers. In other words, God's children who are believers in Christ and the satan's children who are believers in satan. Satan could only bruise Jesus (cause Him to suffer), while Christ will bruise satan's head (destroy him).

I hope that helps...definitely ask lots of questions..that is how we all grow in faith. I'd be more concerned if someone didn't have questions. God Bless you.

Answer 7

I believe that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was there so that Adam and Eve had a choice to obey God or choose not to.

There are snakes that if examined show that in the past once had legs. Hoped this helped.

Answer 8

I'm not sure bout the serpant, but I believe God placed the tree there because He wanted to see that Adam and Eve, having a free will, trusted and obeyed Him, because they believed and had faith in Him....without the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, how would we know that Adam and Eve were really unconditionally devoted to and believed in God.......just as we have things in our lives that we have a choice to compromise or sacrifice.

Answer 9

In response to your first answerer, when he indicates that Genesis was written by ignorant, bronze age fisherman and alike, it reveals his utter ignorance of Scripture. Genesis, along with the rest of the Pentateuch was penned by Moses, one who was highly intelligent and well schooled in Egypt, under the direction of God. As you will see in the following piece, the Bible is very accurate when it comes to astronomical bodies:

"It is not commonly known that many of the Bible’s statements about astronomy went against the generally accepted teachings of the time. Undoubtedly, many of these verses would have seemed counterintuitive, and may have been difficult to believe when they were first written.

Modern science, however, has confirmed what the Bible has taught. As in all things, the Bible is absolutely correct when it teaches about the universe.
The earth is round

Consider Isaiah 40:22 which mentions the “circle of the earth.” This description is certainly fitting—particularly when the earth is viewed from space; the earth always appears as a circle, since it is round.

Curiously, many astronomy textbooks credit Pythagoras (c. 570–500 B.C.) with being the first person to assert that the earth is round. However, Isaiah is generally acknowledged to have been written in the 700s B.C.

The secular astronomers before the time of Pythagoras must have thought the Bible was wrong about its teaching of a round earth, yet the Bible was exactly right.
The earth floats in space

A very interesting verse to consider is Job 26:7 which states that God “hangs the earth on nothing.” This verse expresses (in a poetic way) the fact that the earth is unsupported by any other object—something quite unnatural for ancient writers to imagine.

Indeed, the earth does float in space. We now have pictures of the earth taken from space that show it floating in the cosmic void.
Universe expansion

The Bible indicates in several places that the universe has been “stretched out” or expanded. For example, Isaiah 40:22 teaches that God “stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.” This would suggest that the universe has actually increased in size since its creation. God has stretched it out. He has expanded it (and is perhaps still expanding it).

This verse, too, must have seemed very strange when it was first written.

In fact, secular scientists once believed that the universe was eternal and unchanging. The idea of an expanding universe would have been considered nonsense to most scientists of the past. It must have been tempting for Christians to reject what the Bible teaches about the expansion of the universe. Perhaps some Christians tried to “reinterpret” Isaiah 40:22, and read it in an unnatural way so that they wouldn’t have to believe in an expanding universe.

When the world believes one thing, and the Bible teaches another, it is always tempting to think that God got the details wrong, but God is never wrong. Today, most astronomers acknowledge that the universe is indeed expanding.
The number of stars

Genesis 22:17 teaches that God would multiply Abraham’s descendants “as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is on the sea shore.” Genesis 32:12 makes it clear that this represents a number which is uncountable by humans: “the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude.”

These are excellent analogies. Clearly the sand of the sea and the stars in the universe cannot be counted exactly by humans, though of course, they can be roughly estimated.

It was not always believed that the stars were so numerous. The astronomer Claudius Ptolemy (A.D. 150) cataloged 1,022 stars in his work The Almagest.

The total number of stars that can be distinctly seen (from both hemispheres under ideal, dark sky conditions) with the unaided eye is around 10,000.

Powerful telescopes today allow us to estimate that our single galaxy alone contains over 100 billion stars. And astronomers believe that there are more galaxies in the visible universe than there are stars in our own galaxy. Modern science certainly confirms Genesis 22:17.

Today, the reliability of the Bible is increasingly attacked. Can we really trust it in our modern age of technology and science?

As we have seen, science is not an enemy of the Bible. On the contrary, modern science has already confirmed much of what the Bible teaches about astronomy. Many of the biblical teachings are now accepted in science textbooks.

As AiG President Ken Ham has written so often (and which is the theme of the year for AiG in 2006), Christians need to take back those fields of science, like astronomy, which have been hijacked by evolutionists in order to promote their secular worldview.

Answer 10

The tree was placed there to allow freedom of choice, but it severely limited Satan's access to people. As long as they paid attention to what God said and stayed away from the tree, Satan couldn't cause them any trouble.

Answer 11

Satan was not Satan until after the rebellion..before that he was lucifer

He placed the tree there because he wanted to...his ways and understnading are higher than ours...we are never going to understand everything about the nature of God..
Personally I think he put it there to see if they were going to mess up after giving them an entire world to run..