Naming each animal appropriately would be beyond clever. It would demonstrate a remarkable intellect and insight. Being the first man God created in His own image and likeness should resonate in this matter.
Genesis 3 Q&A
- Thread starter BibleStu
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I've already addressed these assertions. You have not added anything to what you said before, nor have you addressed any of my arguments. It's OK with me if we disagree. You seem to require me to agree with you, but I'm OK with you not agreeing with me.
There is no way to make the initial names for things particularly "appropriate" or not, as they are just names, unless the names are somehow both pithy and descriptive (in terms of the language that God gave Adam). But we are not told what names Adam gave to the animals, so we have no idea how pithy the names were. The argument seems to be just assuming the names were pithy.
Naming things is generally easy (try it!) and does not require special intelligence.
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The fact that God invited Adam to name the animals -- although He could have done it Himself -- indicates that the names would indeed be appropriate and very fitting. God saw everything as "very good" at the end of the creation week. And let's not forget that God gave Adam and Eve dominion over the whole animal kingdom. So there is a lot more behind the scenes than what is disclosed in Scripture.
Ronald Nolette
Well-Known Member
I'm not saying Adam is an "imbecile," nor did I say anything that in the slightest way implied that he was. His degree of intelligence is completely irrelevant one way or another, and has no bearing on the point under contention. Maybe you just haven't heard of this view and are having trouble wrapping your mind around it. Here is a quote from a conservative commentary, the Bible Knowledge Commentary, the Genesis part by Allen P. Ross: "Then, as though to show that alienation between the man and the woman go far beyond the shame that each now feels in the presence of the other, the author recounts the petty attempt on the man’s part to cast blame on the woman (“she gave me,” v.12) and, obliquely, on God (“the woman you put here with me”). In the man’s words there is an ironic reminder of God’s original intention: “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him” (2:18). As an index of the extent of humankind’s fall, the man now sees God’s good gift, the woman, as the real source of his trouble." The ESV Study Bible, which is also quite theologically conservative, says: "The fact that Adam was 'with her' and that he knowingly ate what God had forbidden indicates that Adam's sin was both an act of conscious rebellion against God and a failure to carry out his divinely ordained responsibility to guard or 'keep' (Gen 2:15) both the garden and the woman that God had created as 'a helper fit for him' (2:18, 20)."
I've read every word of three commentaries on this stuff in addition to writing my own answers. None of them had or so much as described a theory like yours, that Adam was brilliant (no one says this, and again, there is nothing in the Bible that states or clearly implies it), that Eve was merely "tricked" (and not actually rebellious), or that Adam deliberately sinned in order to be with Eve, whom he knew was merely tricked into sinning. The latter is merely a speculative theory. It simply cannot be asserted as confidently as you have been doing.
You seem to be surprised that someone has a theory that contradicts yours, and your response, rather than come to grips with it and carefully refute it, is to descend into angry abuse, which makes it hard for you even to read and understand what you are responding to. Again: I am not saying Eve ate the fruit because she was stupid. She ate the fruit because she was an innocent naif who trusted the serpent rather than God, because she liked what it said more, and ultimately (this was the real sin) placed her own judgment above God's. The situation with Adam is less clear. He was undeceived by the serpent (as Paul says). But beyond that we do not actually know why he chose to eat the fruit. The most straightforward way of reading the text, I think, is simply to say that Eve's example and suggestion influenced him. He ate because she did. Again, he too was a naif, no matter how excellent he was otherwise in his mental abilities, his body, and his habits. He obviously did not anticipate the disaster he was bringing upon himself. One imagines him like many a smart young person, bending the rules: "Maybe it won't matter. Maybe God will forget. Maybe God will forgive. Maybe God will shrug it off. Maybe I'll just get a slap on the wrist. And this is such nice-looking fruit and here is nice Eve giving it to me!"
You don't have to be stupid, a caveman, or an imbecile to have such thoughts. But if you have no experience of evil, sin, punishment, an angry God, Satan’s true nature, etc., then...yeah. Then it’s easy. Inevitable even.
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I see what you're referring to (Ezek 28:14) and that's a good point, and I'm going to add it. And I agree it's an error, but the error isn't mine, just by the way. I was in fact arguing against a theory that you also are rejecting.
Very slightly rewritten:
But Satan was a fallen angel, so how did he come to take the form of a snake in Gen 3:1?
There are two ways to make sense of this theory. One is the common way: Satan is a spiritual being, like angels, which might at least sometime be spatio-temporally located, but which lack a body. Indeed, sometimes, perhaps they lack any spatio-temporal location (more on that further down). In the same way that demons could inhabit the bodies of pigs (see Matt. 8:30-33), presumably Satan could inhabit (or otherwise animate) the body of a snake, and even make it speak, or seem to speak. The other theory begins from the observation that the “seraphim” (a kind of angelic being, but probably not the sort of entity normally called an “angel”) were actually flying serpents, since the Hebrew word, seraphim, meant (at least in one sense) “serpents.” So the serpent might have simply been a seraph, and then maybe the suggestion, according to the theory, is that Satan was originally such a seraph. The three enormous problems with this are (a) when the heavenly seraphim are actually described in Isaiah 6:1-8, they are described as beings with six wings, human appendages, and voices, and certainly not flying snakes; (b) Satan and other deadly and evil things are called “serpents,” and it seems unlikely that the visual appearance of any holy thing in God’s presence would be associated with such a symbol of death; and to really clinch the matter, (c) Ezek 28:14 has a figure called “Lucifer,” often taken as referring to Satan, who is described not as a seraph but as a cherub, and nobody thinks cherubim were serpentine. So I suggest we stick with the common theory.
Davy
Well-Known Member
No, I don't have to be a wizard and know God's heart in order to realize the Eden story is a euphemism, just like "that old serpent" was just another title for Satan himself, and the idea of a snake being another type of euphemism. Satan is a cherub, who also was in God's Garden with Adam and Eve.
You don’t have to be a wizard to explain what such symbols as the serpent, the two trees, Adam and Eve, and eating the forbidden fruit mean. If you think the story is not literally true, and is true symbolically, then the various elements of the story would have to stand for some other, deeper truths that are literally true. Right?
Davy
Well-Known Member
Why did Paul say this?
1 Tim 2:14
14 And Adam was not seduced; but the woman being seduced, was in the transgression.
Douay-Rheims
Ziggy
Well-Known Member
Genesis is the same story as the Gospels.
Adam is the Son of God that failed. Jesus is the Son of God that succeeded.
Eve is the mother of all living. That is the church in the NT.
The serpent are the vipers sitting in Moses seat showing that they themselves are God.
Woe unto them.
There is only one tree.
But if you take from it out of lust and covetousness it leads to death.
If you are given it through faith it leads to life.
The fruit is only forbidden to those who try to steal it and break in through some other way.
The woman was decieved because it was offered her but she also coveted it in her heart.
She didn't wait for the Lord, and she had no faith.
Adam knew better, but he listened to his wife.
What does that mean for Christ and the church?
HAVE YOU SEEN THE CHURCH LATELY??
They be running after that sepent with open arms.. free free free... give me give me..free STUFF.
So what happens when the body is whoring around but the head knows better?
Decapitation?
Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent.
Christ forgave the church, and also blamed the serpent.
We've come a long way baby,
let's stop messing it up.
REPENT!
Hugs
Adam is the Son of God that failed. Jesus is the Son of God that succeeded.
Eve is the mother of all living. That is the church in the NT.
The serpent are the vipers sitting in Moses seat showing that they themselves are God.
Woe unto them.
There is only one tree.
But if you take from it out of lust and covetousness it leads to death.
If you are given it through faith it leads to life.
The fruit is only forbidden to those who try to steal it and break in through some other way.
The woman was decieved because it was offered her but she also coveted it in her heart.
She didn't wait for the Lord, and she had no faith.
Adam knew better, but he listened to his wife.
What does that mean for Christ and the church?
HAVE YOU SEEN THE CHURCH LATELY??
They be running after that sepent with open arms.. free free free... give me give me..free STUFF.
So what happens when the body is whoring around but the head knows better?
Decapitation?
Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent.
Christ forgave the church, and also blamed the serpent.
We've come a long way baby,
let's stop messing it up.
REPENT!
Hugs
I’ll answer your question in order to move the conversation along, but please make your point. I’m not going to play the game in which I let you pretend to be my teacher and elicit lessons by the Socratic method.
The point was that Adam was put in authority over Eve (by God, at sentencing, later on in Gen 3), and that is because while Eve was deceived, Adam was not and thus at least shows better judgment, even if he too sinned gravely.
Davy
Well-Known Member
Then you answered your own question that you before asked me. So who is actually playing games, obviously not me. If you ever read Revelation 12:9 where God's Word tells you "that old serpent" of Genesis was actually just another title for Satan himself, that should have been enough to show that there was no talking snake in the Garden of Eden that tempted Eve. So superstitious speculations that it was a real snake that deceived Eve deserves a 'go study more' type of answer.
I cite the very text in question elsewhere (see the very first Q&A). I’m well aware; so I didn’t find it dispositive.
So that’s just your opinion. It doesn’t follow logically or with anything like certainty. Yes, it’s an opinion worth considering, but the mere fact that a text supports it (or can be taken to do so) does not mean other views cannot be sustained as well. After all, the view that Satan inhabited the body of the snake is consistent with Rev saying the snake was Satan.
If your proof text worked the way you wanted, then I guess we’d also have to conclude that Balaam’s ass wasn’t really an ass, it was God, and that the pigs Jesus sent Legion into weren’t really pigs, they were really Legion?
Anyway, you seem to be saying that Eve never talked to a snake, that that animal is mentioned in the narrative only as a symbol, and that Eve spoke to Satan himself, who wasn’t inhabiting the body of a snake at the time. Moses only wrote about a snake, for some reason.
Very well, if that’s true, and if the snake wasn’t real but only a metaphor, then what else in the story is a metaphor? Adam and Eve themselves? The trees? Etc. If you start saying that the story had some important metaphorical element, then what how far did the metaphor go? You basically need to retell the story in what you suppose was its literal version, and explain why Moses decided to use metaphor at such an important juncture, and also explain how the metaphors of the Genesis point to or help reveal the underlying literal realities. Or maybe most of Gen 1-11 is mythical or metaphorical, on your view?
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"no one says this" ??
because you've read a whopping three people's opinions??
dude.
“But it will be said, It was unjust to make Adam our federal head. How so? Is not the principle of representation a fundamental one in human society? The father is the legal head of his children during their minority: what he does, binds the family. A business house is held responsible for the transactions of its agents. The heads of a state are vested with such authority that the treaties they make are binding upon the whole nation. This principle is so basic it cannot be set aside. Every popular election illustrates the fact that a constituency will act through a representative and be bound by his acts. Human affairs could not continue, nor society exist without it. Why, then, be staggered at finding it inaugurated in Eden?
“Consider the alternative. “The race must have either stood in a full grown man, with a full‑orbed intellect, or stood as babies, each entering his probation in the twilight of self-consciousness, each deciding his destiny before his eyes were half‑opened to what it all meant. How much better would that have been? How much more just? But could it not have been some other way? There was no other way. It was either the baby or it was the perfect, well‑equipped, all—calculating man—the man who saw and comprehended everything. That man was Adam” (G. S. Bishop). Yes, Adam, fresh from the hands of his creator, with no sinful ancestry behind him, with no depraved nature within. A man made in the image and likeness of God, pronounced by Him “very good,” in fellowship with heaven. Who could have been a more suitable representative for us?
- A.W. Pink
“Consider the alternative. “The race must have either stood in a full grown man, with a full‑orbed intellect, or stood as babies, each entering his probation in the twilight of self-consciousness, each deciding his destiny before his eyes were half‑opened to what it all meant. How much better would that have been? How much more just? But could it not have been some other way? There was no other way. It was either the baby or it was the perfect, well‑equipped, all—calculating man—the man who saw and comprehended everything. That man was Adam” (G. S. Bishop). Yes, Adam, fresh from the hands of his creator, with no sinful ancestry behind him, with no depraved nature within. A man made in the image and likeness of God, pronounced by Him “very good,” in fellowship with heaven. Who could have been a more suitable representative for us?
- A.W. Pink
there's one person quoting a second person.
two witnesses.
do you really believe God accepts "you are a capricious & sadistic murderer, who created me only in order to kill me, who entrapped me and caused me to sin" as an answer??
have you tried telling God that when you ought to repent?
try it! tell Him it's His fault, that He is the author of sin & you're just an innocent pawn in His sadistic game!
ADAM IS NOT CURSED but the serpent is, and Cain is. so yes the Bible does tell us Adam didn't blame God for his sin, neither did his wife blame Satan. they confessed and stated factually what had happened. not so the Liar, and not so Cain -- and the result is that Adam & Eve are covered by innocent blood shed by God's own hand for their sake, and Satan & Cain are cursed.
how do you not see that? throw any commentary into the trash that says Adam blamed God for his sin!!
and yes, i do realize that means throw 95% of your human opinions away!
have you tried telling God that when you ought to repent?
try it! tell Him it's His fault, that He is the author of sin & you're just an innocent pawn in His sadistic game!
ADAM IS NOT CURSED but the serpent is, and Cain is. so yes the Bible does tell us Adam didn't blame God for his sin, neither did his wife blame Satan. they confessed and stated factually what had happened. not so the Liar, and not so Cain -- and the result is that Adam & Eve are covered by innocent blood shed by God's own hand for their sake, and Satan & Cain are cursed.
how do you not see that? throw any commentary into the trash that says Adam blamed God for his sin!!
and yes, i do realize that means throw 95% of your human opinions away!
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Well, I was challenging you on a point I’d never heard of before, which you were extremely dogmatic about. If it were an important theory, one of these commentaries (and introductions, etc.) would have mentioned it, surely. None did. Odd. And sometimes people do come up with strange readings all on their own.
OK, so Pink says here (incredibly) that Adam was “perfect,” and a calculating man. I have two reactions. Does he (or you) have any reason for saying so other than that Adam was made “very good” and named animals? Also, did Adam sin or not? He hid in fear. He knew that eating the fruit was sinful. I think we agree that he sinned. Now if he sinned, he was therefore fallible; although he was sinless and spotless before God, he could not have been created perfect, because perfection would mean infallibility. And if he was fallible, then...why? Because he was ignorant. Not stupid, not an imbecile, not wicked, just...innocent. Literally ignorant of all evil and deception and false appearance.
I have no idea why you would want to impute such doctrine to me. Is this a problem you are trying to solve?
Here is a huge mistake. Of course Adam was cursed. What do you think his sentence was, an unmitigated blessing? He was cursed to work in sweat and tool a land that would yield up its fruits with difficulty, after which, he would die. That was his curse. He was cursed—that is what “the Fall,” i.e., the fall from grace, was—because he had sinned.
If that’s true (and it certainly was; the latter points can’t be debated), then you need to ask yourself how it was that a “perfect” man could sin and after that actual merit being cursed.
While God was certainly merciful—he did not destroy them on the spot, which is what his initial warning sounded like—the sentencing (Gen 3:16-19) measured out serious punishments on both of them. Perhaps you have some special reason I (and other commentators) don’t have for denying that the punishments counted as “curses.”
Do you have any source for your (to me) strange theory that Adam sinned for Eve, so he could remain with her?
Adam was no saint, so stop treating him like one. No one in the rest rot the Bible does. So why do you? There is no reason to defend his reputation. Besides, I’m not saying he *blamed* God. I’m saying he was trying shift or share out the blame onto Eve (obviously), and that by mentioning irrelevantly just then that God gave Eve to him, he is even saying that he is not wholly guilty because there is this chain of causation that led up to the sin (which he does admit). There is nothing the slightest bit irreverent in saying this.
Because by far the vast majority of modern preaching and commentary says that Adam blamed his wife for his sin, and in doing so blamed God for giving her to him, and I'm under the impression you agree with them?
But this cannot be the case. The implications of Adam doing such a thing are exactly as I hyperbolicly said: Adam would be calling God a murderer in that case, accusing God of having given him a wife as a snare, who would cause him to sin, and thereby cause Him to die.
If Adam had been doing anything other than confessing his sin he would have been rejected by God - and he was not; he and his wife both were covered, they were given a promise of redemption, and the way to the tree of life was "kept" for them until His Salvation should appear.
Romans 5
Adam is called a type of Christ.
What did Christ do for His bride? He tasted death for her, to reconcile her to Himself.
Adam was not cursed.
Show me the verse where God says "cursed are you Adam"?
There is none. Satan is cursed. Cain is cursed. The ground is cursed "for Adam's sake" - for his benefit.
You are absolutely not qualified to be writing FAQ of Genesis while you refuse to believe Genesis.
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