Hi everyone, if I may I would like to ask a question about possible progressive interpretations of the events during the beginning of Genesis?
I am confused as to why God was angry enough at Adam and Eve for eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge and gaining knowledge of good and evil to sentence them to lives of suffering? It seems really unfair to me on a surface level so I am curious as to what this means in the context of Christian history and struggle against the romans, for instance.
Don't forget, there are two different conflicting creation myths at the beginning of Genesis, and this one is the newer one. Its context is the establishment of the unified and written Jewish religion, which is long predated by the oral traditions that originally made up the Torah.
The best way to understand it imo is that the characterization of God has been changing for a long time. The God of the Israelites was revised a couple times by different authors, and ended up as a series of remnants of other amalgamated gods.
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=mdKst8zeh-U
Also, it's just a creation myth, no need to take it at face value.
I misread the title as "[Barbie Study]" and was abjectly terrified for a moment.
When Christianity was so new it was still just a guy named 'Christ' without the '-ianity', Genesis was already an ancient story that people had been interpreting and reinterpreting countless times over. Later, when the institution of the Catholic church grew out of the Roman state, it would be used as evidence of 'original sin' -- but I don't believe it was particularly central to anything Christ himself preached.
If you permit me a little reinterpretation of my own, of late I've been thinking about it more as an allegory for industrialization. In the same way people take 7 days and point out, "What is 7 days to God? Who's to say those 'days' don't encompass everything from the big bang to the evolution of mammals?", it's interesting to draw a parallel between 'garden' and 'ecology'. People found themselves in creation and although they didn't understand it, they lived with and within it. They were a part of it and it was a part of them.
Similar to elongating seven days, eating the fruit could be read as a very long process. An understanding of the physical world slowly being born out generation by generation. Being 'cast out' wouldn't be so much a curse, as the natural consequences that come with it. Now, we understand the garden, yet we live apart from it -- not as divine punishment, but simply because that's how we've used the knowledge gained.
In this interpretation, maybe 'Original Sin' is recognizing the consequences of industrialization, yet not acting to stop or even curb them. Hoping, instead, for some silver bullet to wipe the problem away for us.
I don't think it necessarily has to be interpreted as only a curse, even though that's the explicit wording of it.
It's kind of like becoming an adult. You learn stuff and grow and eventually there's no point in staying at your parent's house eating cheerios and playing with blocks.
Adam and Eve learned and became conscious without God wanting it really, but once it happened then there was no point in staying in Eden. Especially since it's a paradise with immortality that we probably would fuck up anyways.
If God wanted to he could've just burnt down the garden of Eden. Not sure why he didn't just do that.
But also old testament God is kind of a dick so this might be too generous of an interpretation.
