Mark, I've been reading this thread with interest but I'm not sure about participating or to what extent. So for now I'll just toss out a couple of things for consideration or passing over as each person chooses.

tst wrote:


I would submit that Adam and Eve were sinless prior to the "Fall." As such, the "cause" of the Fall was not a lack of character, it was something else.

I would suggest that the "something else" was Pride. By God's command and design, Mankind was at the "top of the totem pole" on earth and nothing on earth was higher. NONE could be an adequate or equal in the helpmeet department for Adam, and God gave Adam enough time alone to realize that for himself. Thankfully, God is still patient with us.

They also knew God and talked with God, an interesting side discussion in itself as to "who" or "what" they talked with since the Scriptures clearly state that no human can see God and live.

But suffice it to say that they knew God as Creator and LORD, a "step up," if you will allow the understatement, from themselves.

Then along came someone else who had Pride as the "problem," someone who sought to turn God's "latest creation" into his own.

The "appeal" was to Pride; "be like God, knowing good and evil."
An interesting appeal since there was no evil at that time, especially to "children" who had mentally never even thought about "evil."

And you can safely bet that the fruit that hung on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was VERY good, very pleasing, and very tasty...no bitterness there.

That IS how temptation, even today, comes to us...presented as very appealing and desirable.

"Sounds good to me!" "I want to be more like God!"

Kids!


Also, Mark, you were talking about the days of creation. I believe the text teaches literal "24 hour" days. But I'm not sure if discussing that is what you had in mind, so I'll leave it at that for the time being.

Hey, Queenie. Good idea for a thread topic. Though you are right, it will get interesting.

By confidence, I mean just that. Confidence in who the creator is. Confidence in His power. Confidence that He has made provision for our every need. Confidence that we are important to Him. Confidence that no matter what happens in this life, He is worthy of our praise and worship.

I believe that we have all come to appreciate our belief systems and understand that our differences are what helps us get through this time in our lives.

I for one have changed immensely in that I am interested in hearing what others think, but don't necessarily agree or support that

*********************EDIT***************

Wow! I go to work and can't get here and I have all sorts of stuff to reply to and comment on. I will get to all of it eventually...I hope...

FH,

You're more than welcome to add your input as we go along. FWIW, I do agree with you about the 24 hour day being what is referred to here. I just pointed out that there are those who make the case for it being some time period longer than that. A Jewish scholar I was listening to today made the case for it not having to be a literal 24 hour day based on the idea that before Adam, it was all still about God and His time or timing, which really has little to do with how we perceive time at all, since He is infinite and exists outside of time.

This teacher said that with the creation of Adam, as a finished completed creation, with the breath of God breathed into him, the clock being used to measure time stopped being God's and became Earth time, a 24 hour cycle of night into day and back again. Can't really say his premise is correct, only that using the same text, with his own assumptions, he seemed able to rectify creation as being either literal 24 hour days or longer periods of time with no significant theological repercussions to either argument.

Queenie,

I will address some of what you said further when I get to it, but for now I want to point out that while we are free to make our choices for ourselves, God does not choose whether the outcome is to be good or bad, for He can only choose what is good, and in fact best. He can use whatever choices we make to His overall benefit and for His glory, no matter what we choose.

He does see the end from the beginning and even knows what choices we will make at any given time, but that is not to say that He makes those choices for us in any predetermined sort of way. We often fail to realize that God knows what will occur because He is looking at all of time from outside of time itself. Nothing we do surprises Him because He already knew what we would do, and He has planned for that.

Knowing that something will happen in a certain way does not mean that the outcome has been predetermined, only that it was known before it happened, just not to us, since He can see everything that is yet to take place as clearly as He has seen what already took place in ages past.

God needs us for nothing and yet He created Man for a purpose. And that purpose is that we might have a relationship with Him. When you consider that the God who created the universe, simply from His own act of will, and spoke into existence the stars, the sun and the moon as well as the planet we live on, in just the right place to sustain the life of Man with all the things Man needs to survive, and then created us solely for the reason that He wants us to know Him personally, it staggers the mind.

I'll be back later...I need to go home to my wife right now...

Mark

Mark,

I understand what you are saying. I think this is what I was trying to say, but sometimes my words don't convey my true meaning. What I find that some people have a very hard time imaging that G-d is into our lives that much. Personally I believe it. I have come to depend on it to make my way through this.

That's pretty mind boggling when you think about it, not to mention how he must hurt for us knowing, at least for me, knowing when I was going to make such awful choices and watched me doing them knowing it will killing me inside.

Did you mean but only NOT to us? Meaning G-d knows what will happen, but not to us?

And it staggers the mind that he wanted it to be with EACH ONE of us.

Have a great evening with your wife?

I went and edited it since you quoted it and it is still clear as mud...

What I meant was that it is we who do not know what will happen, but God does know. It is just us that is in the dark on it.

That help?

Mark

Immensely, though I really knew what you meant, just wanted to make sure.

The result is still the same mind bogglingness because of what you write and I have come to believe true. I think we get caught up in that it needs to be happy all the time and that's just not life. We all have a journey to walk in finding our relationship with G-d, some do quickly some do not so quickly.

And possible we can see this with Adam and Eve as well. Adam heard what G-d said and chose something different and G-d knew that didn't he? Because if Adam hadn't of chosen that way, we wouldn't have the bible stories to ponder today would we? Or see how it fits into our life.

Mojo, I checked out the site and downloaded a few to my laptop at work. I listened to two of them yesterday and found them to be interesting.



Mvg, I think people misunderstand what it is that God does when He preordains something should happen. The bible does not teach a sort of kismet or fate at all. Fatalism is not a biblical concept, though it sometimes appears those in the stories have accepted it as true. God can and does use our mistakes for His own good in the long term. He has also planned for the choices we have made and knows what will happen as a result and has planned for that as well.

But what this means is not the same thing as saying that God will do things His way regardless of our choices so much as He will do it in spite of our choices. He hasn't planned our choices for us, but knows before we do what they will be. What is missing from the fatalist's point of view is the fact that we do still have the power to choose for ourselves. While no matter what we choose, God will come out the other end still God and still in control and still all knowing...it is still up to us to make the choices. It isn't God's plan that is at stake, but our relationship with Him, which is, in the final analysis, what we are here for.


Queenie, As Exodus1414 said, as a Christian I believe there are references throughout the Torah and Prophets that point to the trinity, even without the NT writers POV thrown into the mix. Gen 1:1 uses a word for God that is plural in form and yet used with singular pronouns and verbs. The very first verse of the text shows this anomaly and I would choose to believe that it was for a reason. But at this point, I think we might need to avoid the debate and just accept that the language is what it is and seek commonality rather than division. Debates are seldom won by logic and conversion, but only by sheer force of will of one or the other sides. This results in winners and losers and though the battle might be won, it can be at the cost of the relationship, which I think is God's whole point.

Exodus1414, I think that what you say is true as to God giving us everything we need but still requiring that we somehow participate. Often times our participation needs to be accepting what God is offering to us but we do need to keep on truckin'. I also think that like any good teacher, God knows that we will retain more of what He is teaching us if He can get us to arrive at the answer rather than jut giving it to us.

But the commandments, I think are a case of God saying, "Look at this...I don't want you to get this wrong so I'm not leaving it up to you to figure out. Make sure you pay attention to this because it will be on the final test..."

FH, I think you hit on the heart of the choice issue. Since sin had not yet gained a foothold in the world, it was not sin that caused the pride, but pride that caused the sin.



When the serpent came to Eve and began discussing the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he suggested that eating of the fruit would make her and her husband like God himself. While we read it today as "knowing" good and evil and thinking that it simply means that we will be able to tell the difference, the concept expressed here goes much deeper than that.

What is at stake here is who has the right to make that decision? Since God made all of this and it is His in every sense of the possessive, He has a right to do with it as He wishes. It is not for any of the creation to tell Him what is right or what is wrong, since it is by His option that we are here at all.

So when we read that the serpent said that by eating from the tree we could know good and evil, it is really saying that we can be like God because we will be able to decide for ourselves what is right and what is wrong. When we take on the role of making that decision, we are in fact taking on the role of God and that breaks the first commandment pretty bluntly. We put ourselves above God or at least in a place equal to Him and so doing put our selfishness before Him. This is the essence of sin, ignoring God's opinion and elevating our own to equal or higher status.

Today the world is full of the concept of moral relativism and believes that there are no right or wrong answers. All that matters is that we believe we are right and feel good about ourselves. As long as we accept it, what others, including God thinks doesn't matter even a bit, since we will figure out for ourselves what is right and what is wrong.

It's the same lie the serpent told to Eve; "You will be like God..." He has had to tell no other lies since the first one accomplished what he wanted, the breaking of the relationship between Man and God, just as his relationship was broken when he too chose to make himself equal to God. It's the same lie he tells today...

Time for work...

Mark

Hi Mark,

I completely understand and agree with the debating part. Though I would also offer that at this point, I am really treading on unknown territory and want to explore the differences not as debate but as a learning opportunity for me.

For instance the part about the "us". I asked my rabbi that and she was explaining that the rabbi's suggest that G-d was talking to the angels at this part.

Having the differing points of view will help challenge me in a new and exciting way and that I welcome. I hope that makes sense.

But I agree, the debate thing.. Not what we are here for.

Alas, I think that is what happened with Adam and Eve. He knew what they would choose and let them learn the lessons by going through the experiences.

Alas the wayward mind possibly?

I think another important factor here is that it shows the key method Satan uses to exploit our weakness and inject doubt into our faith life. He focuses Eve's attention on the one item that God has made off limits rather than the many that God has made available. How quickly we still fall for the notion that God has abandoned us, or doesn't really love us, or is against us when we get something in our sights that that we want but aren't getting. Whether it is health, or a job, or a relationship, or a material item... we can all be dooped into believing that if it isn't going our way, then God must be either holding out on us (Eve), punishing us (Job), or must not exist (because a good God wouldn't allow _fill in the blank__).

I know this to be true in my case. And you are so right.

Agreed.

Queenie, I'd be willing to discuss this a little bit, but I'd rather not debate it. If a discussion is what you'd like to have then we can do that in the hope of gaining some understanding of the text and what Moses said when he wrote it.

Debating is fine, but if it's objective is to "win the argument," I rather not approach it from that perspective, but would rather approach it from the basis of "textual criticism" as is used for all literature and let the Scripture interpret Scripture.

I really am in agreement with you and seek the same thing in gaining understanding.

My understanding of Torah is extremely limited to almost nil. I am not interested in winning an argument as in challenging me to learn Torah. And understand other people's perspective.

Obviously at times we are going to get to parts that aren't the same interpretations, but I think if we keep as this is "my" perspective and understanding in it will allow for our differences while exposing other points of view.

Torah is meant to be discussed, argue and picked apart. I don't know much, but I know that.

Queenie and FH,

I look forward to the discussion, but alas, I have a meeting tonight that will probably go past 10. I will check in when I get home, but will only post if I'm not fried by then.

Mark

You guys haven't been waiting for me, have ya?

Why yes we have

We are moving to Japan. We'll be there for 3-4 years. We are all pretty excited about it. Hubby comes home from Guantanamo in May, finally. I get to do the move by myself, but I have done that before. Funny, just realized each move I have done on my own were moves to overseas duty stations (Okinawa and Guam).

I think its great to have a TORAH discussion here. I would like to participate when I have more time and energy. I do worry that the thread will slowly deteriorate into arguments of the Hebrew bible vs the Greek Testament. Maybe the thread title needs a little tweaking...