exactly what knowledge did adam and eve have when eve ate the forbidden fruit...cont?

Question

i don't mean the knowledge they had sinned.
what mean is , were they like newborn babies without any idea of the world they lived. did they learn to develop skills to help them survive in the harsh enviroment of earths desert and jungles.

why did stone-age man not have all the knowledge of making weapons and hunting already, instinctively in his brain.

how much of this information did adam and eve have?
some, none, all of it.

does this make sense to anyone. unless adam and eve are a metaphor.

i see solly didn't bother to read or answer the question again. nvm -.-

Answer 1

The whole episode is weird. It pretty much says that the 'knowledge of good and evil' will make A&E god-like.

In what way would this knowledge be associated with godhead? Why would it be a distinguishing feature?

Also: prior to their eating the fruit and gaining this knowledge, they're supposed to be sinless innocents. But there's nothing very nice about an adult without knowledge of good and evil. They'd be acutely psychopathic by today's standards - happy to kill without a qualm. How is this level of tabula rasa a good state that humanity has lost?

The only scenario that makes sense of it all is that proposed by John Allegro: that the fruit in question was the Amanita Muscaria hallucinogenic mushroom.

CD

Answer 2

I'm not sure... If they were too ignorant of sin and evil, then God couldn't have expected them to understand the consequences of disobeying, thereby making the subsequent curse, pain, and death, a little "overboard"...

But it surely can't mean - knowledge of what its like to experience sin, or evil, etc. That would imply that Adam & Eve gained a sense of something that God can never experience.

In the end, its a fairy tale, so don't read too much into it. You can find similar tales in other ancient Mesopotamian cultures.

EDIT - about the other issues you brought up... much of that is not so much "instinct" as behaviors that are taught and continually passed through generations. You're thinking more along the lines of ethology, which is pretty far from most Biblical or theological studies. If we had to take guesses - I'm sure God didn't just make them their first set of clothes, but also helped them learn how to farm, etc. By the way - farming was "invented" around the time the Adam & Eve story took place. That is in interesting fact for Christians and atheists alike.

Answer 3

It has to do with what defines "knowledge" in this particular phrase. God creatred Adam and Eve with average or normal knowledge and because of it, they can feel that the fruit is pleasant to the eyes and look good for them. The minconception about this passage is that many people do not realize the two terms for "knowledge of good and evel" and knowledge of whether there there is something to eat or not. The fact that Adam and Eve know that God forbits to eat the fruit is a knowlede already and hence, they are responsible for their action against the command of God. Moreover, the knowledge of good and evil and the knowlede of God's likes and dislike are different as they already have the knowledge to know that God command them not to eat. It seems to be a matter of scrutinizing the linguistic usage and the whole story about the Fall of Man in Genesis 3. There is no problem in understanding the passage if we also read other parts of the chapter. Thanks.

Answer 4

I think that its perfectly possible that Adam and Eve are a metaphor. But I think that the accepted idea is that before the apple incident Adam and Eve simply did what they were supposed to do according to God's will, they had no choice. It was not possible for them to sin because everything that they did they did only according to God's design.

After gaining knowledge they began to conceive of things that were outside of the will of God.

So, maybe when they suddenly realized that they were naked, they also realized that their nudity might, in some cases be offensive. Or perhaps they suddenly had a sense of themselves apart from God and the fact that they were naked in front of someone else, even God was humiliating, a sign of pride.

Maybe that knowledge of right and wrong, was also a longing to continue to learn, apart from only the will of God. In the garden of Eden they would never need to learn anything because there seemed to be nothing that they had responsibility for. All of their needs were met. But with knowledge comes the desire for more, and for wisdom. Maybe in the end they were thrown out of the Garden of Eden because in choosing the apple they showed that they could not grow without suffering the hardships of being responsible for their survival. Maybe that is actually how human beings learn.

But, answering your question, I think according general Christian thought that Adam and Eve were actually "child-like" in the beginning.

Answer 5

According to Genesis 3, the knowledge that the fruit would impart was a "knowledge of good and evil". It would appear that it was not a "scientific" knowledge, about how things works or how to make or use tools, etc. Rather it is a "religious" knowledge that deals with truths, not facts.

There are questions like, "Who am I", "What is the meaning of life?", "What should I do with my life?", etc. the "facts" can not answers. These are questions that deal with morality and the nature of good and evil.

Just as Adam and Eve did not have all the scientific knowledge of the universe at thdir creation, so they lacked moral and social knowledge at creation. They did not yet understand all the implications of good, evil and their own actions. What "child" does? (For that matter, what adult?)

IT was God intend that they spend time with him, learning about himself, the scientific nature of their world, and the spiritual/moral of their world. He did not intend for them to be making moral judgements about good and evil until they had had more time to grow, mature, and learn from him.

But when they ate of the fruit, they gained the ability to make moral decisions, but lacked the judgement and maturity to make them correctly. As a reasult, people have been making immature moral judgements ever since.

We lack the spiritual understanding of how everything works, the physical knowledge of the entire situation, and the spiritual wisdom to make correct decisions. So we do stupid and immoral things that screw up the entire world.

Had Adam and Eve waiting, matured, learned from God, etc., there would have come a time when it would have been right for them to eath the fruit. They would have been ready to properly handle moral decisions. But they did not.

Answer 6

When the bible speaks of partaking of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you are reading what is called a metaphor. Knowledge of good and evil is a metaphoric reference to judgment. When you judge something you attempt to determine if it is acceptable or not. In effect you are deciding if it is good or evil from your point of view.

Once we were just like the animals and recognized that everything in the garden that God had given us was good. At some point we started to judge some thing as being better than others are. This set up a situation where something’s were more appealing to us than others. We started wishing for these things and were no longer happy with some of the other things in the garden.

This is what is referred to as the fall of man, or separation from God. Some references actually call this the detour into insanity. This self-induced separation from the knowledge of the perfection of god’s gifts to us was never shared by the animals. They were too smart to fall for this silly idea and were not fooled by the ideas of good and evil. For this reason they exist along side of us still experiencing the perfection of the garden. While we have excluded ourselves with our ideas of judgment. This is a truly fascinating subject that has many interesting facets. Including how to reverse the process and return to the original state. If you feel the need to discuss it further send an email.

Love and blessings.
don

Answer 7

The Bible says the knowledge of Good and Evil. They figured out how to sin. God taught them later how to survive without all the extravagances of the garden they were about to be kicked out of.

Answer 8

No, they were adults at the start in heaven.
they ate forbidden fruit there, THEN God sent them on earth to do.
by the way, cause he was a prophet, he knew everything already.

Answer 9

They were in paradise not in a harsh enviroNment .
But as Hamlet says : Frailty , thy name is a woman .

Answer 10

They learned all the primitive pervert thoughts that you and i share with the world. same with the 'stone-age man.'

NaughtY