Garden of Eden

if we often read the Holy Bible, we'd understand all about the truthfulness of Garden of Eden & The Promises God is giving us... His Holiness & The Love He's showing us! Praise & Worship Be to GOD!
 
jcsites said:
if we often read the Holy Bible, we'd understand all about the truthfulness of Garden of Eden & The Promises God is giving us... His Holiness & The Love He's showing us! Praise & Worship Be to GOD!
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Why often? Actually, didn't God break a promise right away?

3:But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

4:And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

5: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

They ate it and didn't die . . . and thankfully to the Serpent known as Lucifer, we now have Freedom of Will and Knowledge of Good & Evil and the ability to become as gods ourselves.

Praise & Worship Be to LUCIFER savior of Man!
 
bananabrain said:
sorry, i meant we as in that. it's the only "we" there still is!
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Which is not an insignificant point, of course.
bananabrain said:
apparently we also have goat-demons, associated with esau, mount se'ir and the "azazel" of the scapegoat ritual. i'm not sure how much older that stuff is though; the scapegoat ritual is in the Torah but the rest of it is, i think, much later.
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In Judges somewhere (too lazy to look right now), there is the tale of the tribe of Dan migrating to the city of Laish, which they took and re-named Dan, and picking up along the way a renegade Levite, Jonathan the heir of Gershom the son of Mosheh "Moses (?!)" or of Manasheh "Manasseh (?)" [here the text writes the letter nun above the line of the rest, for which I had to invent a special code, which is why I remember it; probably this quirk expresses doubt about whether that "n" belongs there, some scribe not wanting to accept that this guy could really be of Moses' family although Moses indeed had a son Gershom]. Anyhow, he had stolen gold and silver from his mother, and then fessed up and paid her back, and she dedicated it to God by making holy images (??? the family of Moses didn't have a problem with this???) which were worshipped in Dan until (book of Samuel says somewhere) David destroyed them as "a snare to the people".

Subsequently, of course, Jeroboam set up golden cows in Dan and in Bethel; so we can be pretty sure that the gold image was a cow. But what about the silver? I think (despite the lack of textual explicitness) that it was a silver goat, because after the fall of Israel the city formerly known as Dan got the Greek name of Panias (now Baniyas) after "Pan" their version of the goat-god, who apparently had a popular temple there.
bananabrain said:
you mean the crooked-racist-scumbag-and-proud-of-it.
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I was being nice :p
bananabrain said:
you were lucky, they only just let those two blokes out today for doing the same thing.
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Well, I didn't get arrested by the Iranians, but by the Turks; the commandant was actually quite taken with me, and said that he had been planning on giving a Western name to the child his wife would have in a few months, and had settled on "Jennifer" if it was a girl, and hadn't picked a boy's name, so now it was going to be "Robert". Alas, I lost his address, so I don't know if there is a guy running around named "Robert Ahmedoglu".

The whole story is a bit crazy, but you must bear in mind that this is back when I was subject to visionary seizures from time to time, as I've mentioned to Thomas on another thread; I really thought bringing peace to the Middle East was my job, and I had made a bargain with God that if he showed me Arpha-Khashd I would walk to the Iranian border and offer myself to Khomeini in exchange for one of the embassy hostages, whichever one was suffering most. I got over the ridge-line to Qotur, a little border-post where the Turks snagged me. I asked how close to Iran I had gotten, and was told, "Iran goes by water; water here flows east, so they call this Iran. We go by forts; we are here, so this is Turkey." I responded, "So if I take a piss here, they will smell me in Iran?" and the soldier laughed and laughed. I did indeed go out and "piss on Iran", and decided I had fulfilled my bargain (I had presented myself on territory Khomeini claimed, and if he wasn't able to get me, that was his lookout). My letter to Khomeini proposing to exchange myself did reach him, I am fairly sure, along with the report the commandant promised to send through diplomatic channels protesting that Iran's actions were causing crazy American kids to show up in the border region; Khomeini released one of the hostages, Richard Queen, who had multiple sclerosis which the stress was making worse. I hoped this would break open the whole crisis, but it still took months longer.
 
Dream said:
Ha ha ha! Great story, and I believe that really happened.
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I was a very strange kid during my religious egomania. One important thing I did was type the Hebrew text of the Tanakh into a big ASCII file: professor Parunak was the lead on that project; I was just the typist and proof-reader, but since I had to make some changes to the coding scheme in light of experience, he credited me in his paper about it, and I said "Thanks, I'll forever be a footnote!" which I meant jokingly but-- it turned out to be true, and is probably my claim to immortality such as it is. All on-line Hebrew Bibles now are based on the "Michigan file" (or "MCW" file, since Clarendon and Westminster universities did further rounds of proof-reading; Westminster is a Presbyterian seminary founded by my great-grandfather), and in the Jewish Publication Society translation of the Tanakh, I am named in the preface about the transmission of the text, in such honorable company as Jacob ben Asher (greatest of the medieval "Masoretes" who kept the manuscripts copied faithfully with side-notes counting the letters and occurrences of rare spellings etc.) and the early printers and Kittel (who prepared the scholarly edition of Jacob ben Asher's manuscript with annotations on variant and proposed emended texts). Apparently the ethic of academia will require my name to be mentioned as long as the book is still studied.

At this time, my religion was "Me-ism", which is to say that I needed to believe myself very central to God's plans for the world. I was not the Messiah, but rather the re-incarnation of Elijah and John the Baptist, charged with judging candidates for Messiah-hood and giving the holy oil of anointment when I found someone suitable. If Jesus came back and wanted to be Messiah, he was welcome to apply for the job: good resume' but I was dubious about some of those recommend letters! Khomeini was under my jurisdiction because of veiled hints that he was the Hidden Imam: I wrote him respectfully, bismillah al-Rahman w-al-Rahim (In the Name of God the Merciful and Compassionate) and all that, but blasting his conduct as un-Qur'anic and signing myself Ilyas Yahya (Elijah / John the Baptist), expressing willingness to be his "guest" and discuss things further if he would let the most miserable of his "guests" go.

A couple years later, Menachem Begin found himself in my sights, because he had allowed himself to be addressed as Begin melekh Y'hudim "Begin King of the Jews!" by a Likudnik crowd. I was incensed by the massacres in the Sabra and Chatila camps on Rosh Hashanah and Begin's evasion of any responsibility for it (he pointed out that it was Christian Phalangist militia who did the killings, and claimed to have had no idea that such a thing might happen; but in the days before, Israel had said they were going into Beirut to "prevent" revenge killings, so obviously they had indeed thought about the possibility, and rather than prevent, they hired the equivalent of Shabbas goyim-- gentiles who are hired to do on Saturday what Jews can't-- to be their "Rosh Hashanah goyim"). I wrote, on a strip of red cloth, in deep red paint, in very archaic Hebrew, in the name of Elijah, citations of every Torah provision I found him to be in violation of, and concluded chayYHWH im nappol mat.ar pen k-divriy "As THE LORD lives, there shall be not a rain-drop except by my word" which was Elijah's curse on king Ahab after one of his murders. Having got that out of my system, I forgot about it until next summer, when I read in the news that Israel had a severe drought, not a single rain all year; so I wrote again, this time in plain black pen on plain notepaper, in English except for the Hebrew lettering addressing him as Menachem B (meant as a pun; it could be read as "Menachem the second", there having been a king Menachem-- not a good one-- in the old days); this time I told him he had until Yom Kippur to repent. During the High Holy Days, he resigned, although his majority in the Knesset was unthreatened-- and he refused for the rest of his life to answer any questions about why he had resigned. I sent him my last communication, L-shanah t.ovah tiktab "Be written down for a good year" (traditional greeting at that holiday season) in severe square-hand in light-blue art-pencil (Israeli flag color) on note-card. I thought that overthrowing the Israeli government would bring peace between them and the Palestinians; it has not turned out to be so easy.

I had some further visions (one of Jesus as he emerged from the tomb affected me deeply), and then they stopped, and I underwent a great "deflation" of my ego: it started to occur to me that I wasn't, actually, all that central to the universe. I moved toward Buddhism, avoiding the Bible as bad for my mental health; uprooting my "self" and the ego-centric delusions it was leading me into seemed much more to the point. It is really only in recent years that I have sufficient detachment to be able to look back at my younger persona (my mom, I think, still has a picture of me in full "Prophet" regalia, wool robes and sandals, hair over my shoulders and held back with a copper headband pressing a tiger's eye to the middle of my forehead) with the proper humility and amusement. But as I said to Thomas elsewhere, I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything.
 
Bobx, your story is a positive one. Grand delusions are commonplace, probably a major contributor to our social history. Your experience was tempered since you were compassionate and willing to do your best. Also, I see nothing wrong with simply having your name on the Michigan File.
A couple years later, Menachem Begin found himself in my sights, because he had allowed himself to be addressed as Begin melekh Y'hudim "Begin King of the Jews!" by a Likudnik crowd.
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That seems to be an attempt to manipulate Begin unless the statement was actually meant to be a criticism. Could it have been a criticism of his style of leadership?
 
What a fabulously interesting man you are, Bob.
Thanks for sharing your story here and your wisdom in this forum.
 
Dream said:
I see nothing wrong with simply having your name on the Michigan File.
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It's my little form of immortality, though I suppose Van Parunak's name will survive in the footnotes longer than they'll bother to mention me.
Dream said:
That seems to be an attempt to manipulate Begin unless the statement was actually meant to be a criticism. Could it have been a criticism of his style of leadership?
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No, it was an expression of hope that he might be the Moshiach (in the sense of a "political Messiah" who would expand Israel's borders), with no sense of blasphemy or trivialization. Later, some right-wingers even considered Ariel Sharon in Messianic terms (but I had given up on policing Messiah-candidates at that stage of my life).
 
Lunitik said:
Everyone knows Eve ate an Apple from a tree forbidden to her, it has caused her and Adam to be kicked out of "Paradise".

The tree is the Tree of Knowledge, knowledge of what? Good and evil, the base separation many religious people still insist on. From there, we have created many other distinctions and differences in the world around us and our social behavior. We have even created laws to define what is bad and set out punishments for it... fine.

Could it be possible, though, that re-entry to Paradise is as simple as transcending good and evil again? Why or why not? I posit that this is exactly what religions teach, but I am interested in why so many miss this.
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To begin with, the reason why Adam and Eve were banned from the Garden of Eden was not because they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. They were cast out of the garden to prevent them from eating of the tree of life and live forever. This is an allegory for the granting of attributes: Freewill, Intellect, and others. And the holding back of attributes that man could not be granted with as the one of eternal life, which belongs with God only. (Gen. 3:22)

There was nothing bad with eating of the tree of knowledge, hence it was in God's plan that man did it. Instead of death only life comes from knowing good from evil. According to Hosea 4:6, people rather die for lack of knowledge. If the faithfuls of Jim Jones had known a little better about their isane leader, almost a thousand of them had been saved from their massive suicidal act.

A re-entry into paradise is impossible for two reasons: First, because the whole Genesis account of creation is an allegory. And second, paradise is not a place for one to get into but a condition to be invited in, as Jesus himself said that it is within each one of us. (Luke 16:21)
Ben
 
Ben Masada said:
To begin with, the reason why Adam and Eve were banned from the Garden of Eden was not because they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. They were cast out of the garden to prevent them from eating of the tree of life and live forever. This is an allegory for the granting of attributes: Freewill, Intellect, and others. And the holding back of attributes that man could not be granted with as the one of eternal life, which belongs with God only. (Gen. 3:22)

There was nothing bad with eating of the tree of knowledge, hence it was in God's plan that man did it. Instead of death only life comes from knowing good from evil. According to Hosea 4:6, people rather die for lack of knowledge. If the faithfuls of Jim Jones had known a little better about their isane leader, almost a thousand of them had been saved from their massive suicidal act.

A re-entry into paradise is impossible for two reasons: First, because the whole Genesis account of creation is an allegory. And second, paradise is not a place for one to get into but a condition to be invited in, as Jesus himself said that it is within each one of us. (Luke 16:21)
Ben
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Actaully a split of the oneness of the two caused a sealing away of the oneness of soul and spirit with the bodies which is why those like plato made mention of that.
 
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