How to understand the Garden Story (Genesis 2-3)

[Cathy Little]

Richard, in your explanation of the number 666 in the garden, you wrote: "After succumbing to the temptation, God cursed the Serpent, Eve, and Adam." I used to believe that, but after reading a book titled "Guardian Angel" by Skip Moen, D. Phil. I have come to a different understanding. Quoting from his book (p.140) "While there are parts of God's punishment that are genuinely prescriptive (curses), these are not assigned to Adam and his 'ezer. God does not curse human beings. He describes what their world will be like now that they have partaken of the Tree. The typical theological language suggesting God "curses" human beings is mistaken. God's words to Adam and Eve are descriptive, not prescriptive. God describes the way the world will now be experienced." Picking up from p.148-149 - God initiates a prescriptive, judicial punishment (curse) upon the serpent and God also issues a prescriptive judgment upon the ground that is the direct consequence of Adam's sin, but God does not curse Adam and Havvah. Instead of a divine curse, God describes what their lives will be like and what they will experience as a result of their sin, which is "Toil" and "Sorrow". Sin did not originate with Adam and Eve, we know that the angel Lucifer sinned in his attempt to usurp God's sovereignty before that so separation from God already existed (Gen 1:4).

Also, I read in one of your blog posts (sorry, I can't point to the exact one) there was an accusation toward God about how He seemingly set Adam & Eve up to sin by giving the command not to eat of the tree of knowledge. If the Tree represents the "knowledge" of right and wrong, then yes, Adam's sin is a contradiction. Skip addresses this dilemma as well in his book on p.134: that Adam already knew the difference between right and wrong before he ate from the tree (having spent time with God face-to-face in the Garden being schooled, taught and instructed in all things). Therefore, whatever knowledge comes from the tree, it cannot be the difference between right and wrong. Before Adam and Havvah ate from the tree, obedience and direction in life (correct moral behavior) was determined by listening to God's instructions. But after Adam and Havvah ate from the tree, another element entered into the equation - self awareness of their own personal desire. Havvah does not break the commandment because she desires to become God. She is seduced into believing that she can be better equipped to fulfill her role and mission in serving God through her own moral reasoning, which is a form of self-serving idolatry.

Anyway, it's a really good book that shed some light for me as to what transaction really took place in the Garden in Eden.

[Richard Amiel McGough]

Richard, in your explanation of the number 666 in the garden, you wrote: "After succumbing to the temptation, God cursed the Serpent, Eve, and Adam." I used to believe that, but after reading a book titled "Guardian Angel" by Skip Moen, D. Phil. I have come to a different understanding. Quoting from his book (p.140) "While there are parts of God's punishment that are genuinely prescriptive (curses), these are not assigned to Adam and his 'ezer. God does not curse human beings. He describes what their world will be like now that they have partaken of the Tree. The typical theological language suggesting God "curses" human beings is mistaken. God's words to Adam and Eve are descriptive, not prescriptive. God describes the way the world will now be experienced." Picking up from p.148-149 - God initiates a prescriptive, judicial punishment (curse) upon the serpent and God also issues a prescriptive judgment upon the ground that is the direct consequence of Adam's sin, but God does not curse Adam and Havvah. Instead of a divine curse, God describes what their lives will be like and what they will experience as a result of their sin, which is "Toil" and "Sorrow". Sin did not originate with Adam and Eve, we know that the angel Lucifer sinned in his attempt to usurp God's sovereignty before that so separation from God already existed (Gen 1:4).

Hey there Cathy,

Welcome to our forum!

:welcome:

I started this new thread with your post because it was rather off topic in the The devil's number? (http://www.biblewheel.com/forum/showthread.php?3653-The-devil-s-number) thread. This way we can focus on the issues you raise. Forum threads constantly diverge from the initial topic, which is great, but it helps a lot to separate the digressions into their own threads.

I Googled the book titled "Guardian Angel" by Skip Moen and found his site http://skipmoen.com/. I started with his article called Top of the Pyramid (http://skipmoen.com/2012/12/10/top-of-the-pyramid) which discusses the meaning of "head" in the Bible. He begins with the classic quote with which I opened my article called The Inextricable Sexism of the Bible (http://www.biblewheel.com/blog/index.php/2012/10/18/the-inextricable-sexism-of-the-bible/):
But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. 1 Corinthians 11:3 ESV
He then quotes an article by Gilbert Bilezikian called I believe in male headship (http://www.cbeinternational.org/?q=content/i-believe-male-headship) which expands upon the meaning of "head" as "source, support" rather than "ruler." He explicitly states that Christ is never said to be head "over" the Church. Here is what he says:
This survey indicates that head, biblically defined, means exactly the opposite of what it means in the English language. Head is never given the meaning of authority, boss or leader. It describes the servant function of provider of life, growth and development. This function is not one of top-down oversight but of bottom-up support and nurture.
There is a lot of truth in the idea that the "head" can mean "source" (as in "fountainhead") but it also is used to mean "authority" and "ruler" and it's not clear that those two meanings are ever really separate when applied to Christ since he is clearly both the source and the authority over the church. That's why he's called "Lord."

And there are other problems with his attempt to reinterpret the Bible to fit the highly advanced modern moral view of women upon the Bible. It simply did not exist at the time it was written, and worse, the problem cannot be fixed by any amount of reinterpretation because it is inextricably integrated with the entire Bible as explained in my article. This seems indisputable because whether or not the curse was merely descriptive or prescriptive, the effect of the curse was that man would rule over woman:
KJV Genesis 3:16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
Note that God said "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow." He caused it. It was a curse by God upon all women. And the word "rule" (mashal) means to be "head" as we see in this verse:
KJV Exodus 18:25 And Moses chose able men out of all Israel, and made them heads over the people, rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.
And God gave a vision that shows that rulers of nations are called heads:
KJV Daniel 2:38 And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all. Thou art this head of gold.
No amount of sophistry can cleanse the Bible of its sexism. Paul used the Garden story as the reason women could neither teach nor have authority over men:
1 Timothy 2:11 Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. 12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. 13 For Adam was first formed, then Eve. 14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. 15 Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.
Note the connection with the curse of childbirth.

One of the big flaws of the article is that it doesn't reference any lexicons. And there is a rather obvious reason for that - they contradict the argument. For example:
Thayer's Greek Lexicon: Metaphorically, anything supreme, chief, prominent; of persons, master, lord: of a husband in relation to his wife, 1 Cor. 11:3; Eph. 5:23; of Christ, the lord of the husband, 1 Cor. 11:3 (cf. Buttmann, 124f (109)); of the church, Eph. 4:15; 5:23; Col. 2:19 (cf. Buttmann, sec. 143, 4 c.); Col. 1:18; Col. 2:10; so Judg. 11:11; 2 Sam. 22:44, and in Byzantine writings of things: the corner-stone
There's much more to say, but I don't have time right now, and this should be enough to get the conversation going.



Also, I read in one of your blog posts (sorry, I can't point to the exact one) there was an accusation toward God about how He seemingly set Adam & Eve up to sin by giving the command not to eat of the tree of knowledge. If the Tree represents the "knowledge" of right and wrong, then yes, Adam's sin is a contradiction. Skip addresses this dilemma as well in his book on p.134: that Adam already knew the difference between right and wrong before he ate from the tree (having spent time with God face-to-face in the Garden being schooled, taught and instructed in all things). Therefore, whatever knowledge comes from the tree, it cannot be the difference between right and wrong. Before Adam and Havvah ate from the tree, obedience and direction in life (correct moral behavior) was determined by listening to God's instructions. But after Adam and Havvah ate from the tree, another element entered into the equation - self awareness of their own personal desire. Havvah does not break the commandment because she desires to become God. She is seduced into believing that she can be better equipped to fulfill her role and mission in serving God through her own moral reasoning, which is a form of self-serving idolatry.

Anyway, it's a really good book that shed some light for me as to what transaction really took place in the Garden in Eden.
I'm really glad you let me know about Skip's work. It is very interesting, but I don't think it will actually succeed. I see no justification for the idea that Adam had been "schooled, taught and instructed in all things." If Adam had such knowledge of "all things" then why didn't he know he was naked? And besides, if he already had knowledge of "all things" then he would not have needed to eat from the tree, and he would have known what would happen when he did so if he had any intelligence at all he would have known that there was nothing to be gained and everything to be lost so it would have been simply insane for him to eat from it. And there are bigger problems. God never told Adam what would really happen when he ate. He never told him that rather than dying, he would be the father of all people who would suffer an eternity in hell. Think of that for a moment.

I believe your identification of "correct moral behavior" with "obedience" is a fundamental fallacy. Morality is doing what is right, not doing what you are told. The concepts have nothing to do with each other, unless you are saying that morality is OBEYING what is right, but that's just another way of saying that morality is DOING what is right. The word "obey" is not relevant.

It seems you think that human "moral reasoning" is somehow flawed. You called it "self-serving idolatry." But what other kind of "moral reasoning" is there? We can't use the Bible, because it says all sorts of things that we think are immoral. We must use our "human moral reasoning" to sort out the things taught in the Bible that we accept of reject as moral. So it is our moral reasoning that we use to figure out the morals taught in the Bible, and we see that it is not the Bible that is teaching us morals at all.

Thanks for the very interesting comments. There is much to discuss.

Great chatting!

Richard

[Beck]

Hi Cathy

There's alot to the story of Genesis, but I would comment only on what you said about Adam already having knowledge. I think one could only assume that Adam knew knowledge of good or evil from the story. What I take away from the story is that Adam knew not to eat of that tree for God commanded him not to.