.
†. Gen 3:5b . . who know good from evil.
The serpent finally convinced Eve that the tree was not just a path to
enlightenment, as if there are many such paths; but rather "the path".
†. Gen 3:6a . . When the woman saw that the tree was good for
eating
By watching what birds and animals eat, people can often tell what's safe for
human consumption. That's not always true of course, but it's a pretty good
rule of thumb. So the woman could safely assume the tree wasn't poisonous
if there wasn't a growing pile of dead critters at the base of the tree.
†. Gen 3:6b . . and a delight to the eyes,
Most fruits and vegetables are very appealing-- just look at bananas and
pears and apples and oranges and watermelon and cantaloupe and grapes
and plums and mangoes and strawberries. God doubtless made them that
way so Man could not only nourish himself, but also enjoy his food; viz: not
only eat because he has to, but also because he'd like to.
†. Gen 3:6c . . and that the tree was desirable as a source of wisdom,
The "wisdom" available from the tree was in the form of intuition; which
Webster's defines as: the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or
cognition without evident rational thought and inference. In other words:
intuition is a kind of insight that knows about certain things without having
to be either told or taught.
†. Gen 3:6d . . she took of its fruit and ate.
You can just see Eve's eyes brighten from the sugar rush as she realized the
Serpent was right after all-- she didn't die. So the woman brought it home
and convinced her man to try it too.
†. Gen 3:6e . . She also gave some to her husband, and he ate.
It's well known among sales managers that consumers are more likely to
buy from a friend or a relative, especially from a spouse, than from a
stranger. No doubt Eve ate some of the fruit right then and there in front of
her husband to demonstrate that it was tasty, nourishing, and perfectly
safe-- as anyone could plainly see.
Did Adam die the instant he ate the fruit as predicted in Gen 2:17? Answer:
Yes, and No.
Adam's heart didn't stop the instant he ate the forbidden fruit, but rather;
quite a few decades later (Gen 5:5). However, Adam's body actually really
did die the instant he ate the fruit. How so? Answer: That's when his body
lost its perpetual youth and began to age.
I have a can of Bush's Grillin' Beans in the pantry whose expiration date is
Nov 2013. It'll no doubt be safe to eat for a good while beyond that date,
but will no longer be considered fresh. And that's how it is for man. He's
fresh only up to a point, then begins to spoil.
One morning years ago as I was looking in the mirror shaving getting ready
for work, I noticed that my once-thick hair was thinning; and upon closer
examination, I also noticed that my face was beginning to sag a bit and
there was the slightest hint of bags under my eyes. And then it hit me like
an icy wind that my youth was over and the aging process had kicked in. I
was just 32. (That was back in 1976. You should see my face and hair
now)
Death then, includes one's gradual debilitation. Man enjoys a relatively brief
period of freshness before he begins to fall apart; and from then on his
remaining time on this globe can be defined as the throes of a living death
for which there is no known treatment except one: the tree of life.
Did Eve first deftly dice the fruit and camouflage it in a tasty parfait so her
husband wouldn't know what he was eating? No. Adam knew exactly what
he was doing. He went into it with eyes wide open.
†. 1Tim 2:14 . . Adam was not the one deceived
†. Gen 3:7a . .Then the eyes of both of them were opened
Eve ate the fruit first; but her eyes weren't opened until after the rootstock
of the race tasted it. That incident introduced an important biblical absolute
that regulates even the scope of the Lord's crucifixion. (cf. Rom 5:12-19)
Although Eve was tricked, she wasn't innocent.
†. 1Tim 2:14b . . the woman being quite deceived, fell into transgression.
I have to wonder why the husband went along with his wife and did
something he knew full well to be breaking God's commandment and putting
himself at risk of death. Genesis doesn't reveal why Adam chose to eat the
fruit. I suppose he had his reasons, but apparently God didn't think they
were sufficient to excuse the man's disobedience. But when your wife is
sitting right beside you happily munching away on something that you were
led to believe was deadly poisonous, and she's still healthy, lucid, and
exhibiting no ill side effects; how is a man supposed to react to that?
I think Adam was cautious at first, and kept a wary eye on Eve for some
time waiting to see if she would get sick; and when she didn't, he surely had
to wonder if maybe God was wrong. (The Serpent was pretty smart. It
somehow knew that Eve was immune to the fruit, and that nothing would
happen to either of them until Adam sampled it.)
†. Gen 3:7b . . and they perceived that they were naked;
Shazaam! Their newly acquired moral compass kicked in with an intuitive
sense of propriety. In other words: Adam and his wife found themselves
slaves of a natural sense of right and wrong so powerful that even if
Almighty God himself told them it was okay to remain in the nude; they
would not have believed Him.
†. Gen 3:7c . . and they sewed together fig leaves and made
themselves loincloths.
I seriously doubt they had a needle and thread. The word for "sew" is taphar
(taw-far') which just simply means to fabricate clothing. If taphar were used
to strictly mean needle and thread; then it would appear that Job stitched
fabric directly to his own skin (Job 16:15).
Why didn't they cover their whole bodies? Whey just their pelvic regions?
Well, obviously Adam and his wife were experiencing a guilt complex over
sex and the human body; where before, they didn't feel naughty about that
at all.
Some say there were no agents in the fruit to cause the changes in human
nature that occurred in the Adams. But I'm not so sure. According to an
article in the Oct 8, 2011 issue of the Oregonian; new research reveals that
some, if not all, the plants we eat actually change the behavior off human
genes in ways never before imagined. A new study led by Chen-Yu Zhang, of
Nanjing University, found that fragments of plant genetic material survive
digestion and wind up swimming in the bloodstreams of humans and cows.
Those tiny strands of RNA that somehow make it through the toxic acids and
enzymes in the gut come from rice and the plant family that includes
broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower and cabbage. Zhang found that they
can muffle or amplify human gene expression in various ways. The discovery
could lead to ways of designing plants that act as medicine or even change
our own genetic structure for the better (or the worse).
And it's well known what happens to kids when they move into adolescence.
Hormonal chemicals kick in, and their childish innocence vanishes; right out
the window. They lose interest in kid's toys and begin to take an interest in
things more appropriate for their age; including a very noticeable interest in
themselves, and in the opposite sex; and most especially in what others
think about them. In other words: they become self-conscious; which
Webster's defines as: uncomfortably aware of oneself as an object of the
observation of others.
Those adolescent changes aren't miraculous changes-- they're totally
natural, hormonally induced, organic changes. So if kids undergo a natural
kind of change because of the chemicals generated by the glands in their
own bodies, then there is good reason to believe that the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil actually did contain something that caused Adam
and his wife to morph and develop a natural sense of propriety.
At any rate, the pending dialogue, between God and Man in the next few
verses, implies that God himself had no hand in making those two people
change. On the page of scripture, their altered human nature is directly
related to the fruit and to nothing else. So instead of stretching our
imaginations to construct a spiritual explanation, I think it would be better to
stick with the biological one and let it go at that.
Cont.
/
†. Gen 3:5b . . who know good from evil.
The serpent finally convinced Eve that the tree was not just a path to
enlightenment, as if there are many such paths; but rather "the path".
†. Gen 3:6a . . When the woman saw that the tree was good for
eating
By watching what birds and animals eat, people can often tell what's safe for
human consumption. That's not always true of course, but it's a pretty good
rule of thumb. So the woman could safely assume the tree wasn't poisonous
if there wasn't a growing pile of dead critters at the base of the tree.
†. Gen 3:6b . . and a delight to the eyes,
Most fruits and vegetables are very appealing-- just look at bananas and
pears and apples and oranges and watermelon and cantaloupe and grapes
and plums and mangoes and strawberries. God doubtless made them that
way so Man could not only nourish himself, but also enjoy his food; viz: not
only eat because he has to, but also because he'd like to.
†. Gen 3:6c . . and that the tree was desirable as a source of wisdom,
The "wisdom" available from the tree was in the form of intuition; which
Webster's defines as: the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or
cognition without evident rational thought and inference. In other words:
intuition is a kind of insight that knows about certain things without having
to be either told or taught.
†. Gen 3:6d . . she took of its fruit and ate.
You can just see Eve's eyes brighten from the sugar rush as she realized the
Serpent was right after all-- she didn't die. So the woman brought it home
and convinced her man to try it too.
†. Gen 3:6e . . She also gave some to her husband, and he ate.
It's well known among sales managers that consumers are more likely to
buy from a friend or a relative, especially from a spouse, than from a
stranger. No doubt Eve ate some of the fruit right then and there in front of
her husband to demonstrate that it was tasty, nourishing, and perfectly
safe-- as anyone could plainly see.
Did Adam die the instant he ate the fruit as predicted in Gen 2:17? Answer:
Yes, and No.
Adam's heart didn't stop the instant he ate the forbidden fruit, but rather;
quite a few decades later (Gen 5:5). However, Adam's body actually really
did die the instant he ate the fruit. How so? Answer: That's when his body
lost its perpetual youth and began to age.
I have a can of Bush's Grillin' Beans in the pantry whose expiration date is
Nov 2013. It'll no doubt be safe to eat for a good while beyond that date,
but will no longer be considered fresh. And that's how it is for man. He's
fresh only up to a point, then begins to spoil.
One morning years ago as I was looking in the mirror shaving getting ready
for work, I noticed that my once-thick hair was thinning; and upon closer
examination, I also noticed that my face was beginning to sag a bit and
there was the slightest hint of bags under my eyes. And then it hit me like
an icy wind that my youth was over and the aging process had kicked in. I
was just 32. (That was back in 1976. You should see my face and hair
now)
Death then, includes one's gradual debilitation. Man enjoys a relatively brief
period of freshness before he begins to fall apart; and from then on his
remaining time on this globe can be defined as the throes of a living death
for which there is no known treatment except one: the tree of life.
Did Eve first deftly dice the fruit and camouflage it in a tasty parfait so her
husband wouldn't know what he was eating? No. Adam knew exactly what
he was doing. He went into it with eyes wide open.
†. 1Tim 2:14 . . Adam was not the one deceived
†. Gen 3:7a . .Then the eyes of both of them were opened
Eve ate the fruit first; but her eyes weren't opened until after the rootstock
of the race tasted it. That incident introduced an important biblical absolute
that regulates even the scope of the Lord's crucifixion. (cf. Rom 5:12-19)
Although Eve was tricked, she wasn't innocent.
†. 1Tim 2:14b . . the woman being quite deceived, fell into transgression.
I have to wonder why the husband went along with his wife and did
something he knew full well to be breaking God's commandment and putting
himself at risk of death. Genesis doesn't reveal why Adam chose to eat the
fruit. I suppose he had his reasons, but apparently God didn't think they
were sufficient to excuse the man's disobedience. But when your wife is
sitting right beside you happily munching away on something that you were
led to believe was deadly poisonous, and she's still healthy, lucid, and
exhibiting no ill side effects; how is a man supposed to react to that?
I think Adam was cautious at first, and kept a wary eye on Eve for some
time waiting to see if she would get sick; and when she didn't, he surely had
to wonder if maybe God was wrong. (The Serpent was pretty smart. It
somehow knew that Eve was immune to the fruit, and that nothing would
happen to either of them until Adam sampled it.)
†. Gen 3:7b . . and they perceived that they were naked;
Shazaam! Their newly acquired moral compass kicked in with an intuitive
sense of propriety. In other words: Adam and his wife found themselves
slaves of a natural sense of right and wrong so powerful that even if
Almighty God himself told them it was okay to remain in the nude; they
would not have believed Him.
†. Gen 3:7c . . and they sewed together fig leaves and made
themselves loincloths.
I seriously doubt they had a needle and thread. The word for "sew" is taphar
(taw-far') which just simply means to fabricate clothing. If taphar were used
to strictly mean needle and thread; then it would appear that Job stitched
fabric directly to his own skin (Job 16:15).
Why didn't they cover their whole bodies? Whey just their pelvic regions?
Well, obviously Adam and his wife were experiencing a guilt complex over
sex and the human body; where before, they didn't feel naughty about that
at all.
Some say there were no agents in the fruit to cause the changes in human
nature that occurred in the Adams. But I'm not so sure. According to an
article in the Oct 8, 2011 issue of the Oregonian; new research reveals that
some, if not all, the plants we eat actually change the behavior off human
genes in ways never before imagined. A new study led by Chen-Yu Zhang, of
Nanjing University, found that fragments of plant genetic material survive
digestion and wind up swimming in the bloodstreams of humans and cows.
Those tiny strands of RNA that somehow make it through the toxic acids and
enzymes in the gut come from rice and the plant family that includes
broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower and cabbage. Zhang found that they
can muffle or amplify human gene expression in various ways. The discovery
could lead to ways of designing plants that act as medicine or even change
our own genetic structure for the better (or the worse).
And it's well known what happens to kids when they move into adolescence.
Hormonal chemicals kick in, and their childish innocence vanishes; right out
the window. They lose interest in kid's toys and begin to take an interest in
things more appropriate for their age; including a very noticeable interest in
themselves, and in the opposite sex; and most especially in what others
think about them. In other words: they become self-conscious; which
Webster's defines as: uncomfortably aware of oneself as an object of the
observation of others.
Those adolescent changes aren't miraculous changes-- they're totally
natural, hormonally induced, organic changes. So if kids undergo a natural
kind of change because of the chemicals generated by the glands in their
own bodies, then there is good reason to believe that the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil actually did contain something that caused Adam
and his wife to morph and develop a natural sense of propriety.
At any rate, the pending dialogue, between God and Man in the next few
verses, implies that God himself had no hand in making those two people
change. On the page of scripture, their altered human nature is directly
related to the fruit and to nothing else. So instead of stretching our
imaginations to construct a spiritual explanation, I think it would be better to
stick with the biological one and let it go at that.
Cont.
/
