That man and woman lived in bliss until they discovered right and wrong on their own? Like, discovered that inflicting pain on others was wrong? I like religion, spirituality, folklore and stuff like that, and I'm not an atheist, but I don't see why everything has to be taken as a literal act of a higher power. Even people who believe in spirit and believe everything comes from a higher power know that some knowledge can only be gained through physical experience.
Couldn't the story of the Garden of Eden be an embellishment on mundane human experience?
Thank you to the person who posted the question about the Garden of Eden a few minutes ago. That inspired my brain. :)
2007-12-16 16:13:12 · 9 answers · asked by rebekkah hot as the sun 7 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
If you study theology in a modern conservative Catholic university, they study Adam and Eve with the poetical books. They do that on purpose so that students will not be tempted to read the account as literal history.
Throughout the history of Christianity, theologians always interpreted Genesis symbolically. The earliest Christian commentaries on Genesis appear in the 2nd century, and already they rejected a literal reading. It has only been since the Bible was translated into English that people have started reading the book as history.
The story of Adam and Eve is very typical of the literature of the time. It is part metaphysical allegory, and part cosmological allegory.
2007-12-16 16:20:31 · answer #1 · answered by NONAME 7 · 4⤊ 0⤋
No, Almighty God does not bother with what "ifs", "embellishments", or creative fables or stories to amuse Himself, much less mankind. Almighty God says I can NOT lie.
Every word in The KJV Holy Bible/The Torah is the unvarnished truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
The Garden of Eden really existed, The Holy Bible & The Torah place The Garden of Eden to have been in Iraq, near what we know today to be Baghdad. The Garden of Eden like most other visual landmarks of the time were destroyed in The Great Flood that killed all of Adam and Eve's descendants but for Noah, his wife, his three sons (Shem, Ham, & Japheph) and their three wives.
All human beings on earth today came from Noah's three sons.
That too is the unvarnished truth.
Only mankind takes "creative license" or sugar-coats events when retelling events to make themselves appear more than what they really were or experienced.
Almighty God says, "I change not."
That in and of itself is a comfort for mankind.
Almighty God is not wishy-washy.
Almighty God does not embellish, recreate, make up, or soft pedal anything. Almighty God is in your face brutally honest about Himself and mankind's beginnings and history.
2007-12-16 16:45:38 · answer #2 · answered by faith 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Interestingly if you read the non-conical Secret Gospel of John we were meant to discover this so we could begin the process of escape from a false reality...or something like that. Even if it literally happened you can still learn valuable lessons by breaking the story down as a treatise on human nature as you have begun too. The depth of the stories and lessons in the Bible seem to be endless.
2007-12-17 04:03:25 · answer #3 · answered by Rational Humanist 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Yes, I think the Eden story works on multiple levels of interpretation - that's part of its beauty. I probably have several interpretations of it myself, and I think yours works just beautifully too.
I think that it is also the idea that we are somehow the descendants of a fallen race, that we have lost our inheritance. All people look back to some myth of a Golden Age, whether it be a literal Golden Age or a mere nostalgia for the past. It is a myth we all share.
Forget notions of sin and judgment – if they help you, fine. But the idea of the Fall isn’t about punishment. It’s about forgetting who we are. It’s about losing the potential of all that we could be.
We are not the apes who learned to walk upright. We are the gods who forgot how to fly.
Peace to you
2007-12-16 17:44:00 · answer #4 · answered by Orpheus Rising 5 · 3⤊ 0⤋
I love the phrase...Gods who forgot how to fly..:) The Garden of Eden is about the idea of initial perfection which HAS TO CHANGE if we are to grow. We HAVE TO be kicked out of 'paradise'...to learn who we really are and have a goal to return to when we've 'finished'. The apple of knowledge was not the root of all evil...it was the beginning of the journey we CHOOSE to embark on. It's a wonderful journey, is it not?
2007-12-17 02:18:30 · answer #5 · answered by Rev Debi Brady 5 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Bekka my name is peter lebuhn and I have studied christianity and many other beliefs in my life. I do believe in Creation. There stands a spruce tree in the middle east near Iran underneath there is no known source of water. "tree of life" could be. also there stand in asian countries some trees
some claim to be the actual tree of life.
2007-12-16 17:12:10 · answer #6 · answered by Peter L 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Many meanings to the story.
It's that 'place' where a man and a woman find themselves...who are so utterly in love that the relationship itself becomes god. It represents the state of grace that all new couples live in...that deep, deep, private intimate world that only they share.
2007-12-16 16:25:54 · answer #7 · answered by ? 6 · 8⤊ 0⤋
embellishment???....there's hardly any thing written about it in the Bible.....i dont believe it to be an embellishment
2007-12-16 16:25:29 · answer #8 · answered by standing when 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
"The tree of the knowledge of good and evil", yes, I have thought the same thing.
2007-12-16 17:36:22 · answer #9 · answered by Herodotus 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋