I think you got something there. Pictures of adam and eve after the fall show fig leafs covering their private areas. That would be some confirmation on the fall occurring from having sex outside each pair which caused the fall.
Again - grapes don't grow on trees. But figs, dates, and olives certainly do. All are also common in the region, and I think the reference to fig leaves would be suggestive to human minds about it being a fig. So in that light, I think it is highly probable that, in accordance with the OP's theory, Renaissance artists likely copied Classical Greek and Roman poetry when they came up with apples.
Hi, moonbeam. I'm Jane. [post=278223]Now, what serpents were like before they became the creatures we know as snakes . . . ?[/post] Here's a clue: Remember the fire-snakes which attacked the Israelites as they wandered in the desert after escaping Egypt? And Yahweh said to Moses, "Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live." So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live. --Numbers 21:8-9. You will remember that this "serpent on a pole" is one of the images which guarded the entrance to the Temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem which Solomon built. It is also one of the objects and worship-practices which King Hezekiah of Judah (726-697 BCE) destroyed during his puritanical reforms. He removed the High Places, broke down the Pillars, and cut down the Sacred Pole (Asherah). He broke into pieces the Bronze Serpent which Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel (Northern Kingdom) had made offerings to it; it was called Nehushtan. --2 Kings 18:4. Chapter 18 of 2nd Kings goes on to describe how Israel (the Northern Kingdom) was attacked and destroyed by the Assyrians. Judah (the Southern Kingdom) was also attacked but, at Jerusalem, Hezekiah successfully fought off the Assyrians. The implication is clear. The Northern Kingdom did not reform its rituals and thus paid the price. But the Southern Kingdom did reform, and Yahweh protected them. It was sometime after this point in history that the Hebrew Bible began to be written down. Their oral storytelling traditions have a strong hold on the Jewish people. Like most peoples, they prefer their stories told to them just the way their grandparents had recited the ancient stories to them. But theological politics has a way of bending even the most cherished traditions. And Hezekiah's puritan reformers and, a century later, the adherents of Josiah did everything they could to stamp out or, at least, bend any "impure" (pagan) elements of Jewish folk religion. The biblical prophets were also reformers. (But not exactly puritans. The prophets had a far broader social agenda, politically.) And theirs may have been some of the first writings to have actually been written down. Amos (775 BCE), Hosea (770 BCE), the first Isaiah (most of Chapters 1-39, 740 BCE), and Micah (738 BCE). Their prophetic scribblings on papyrus likely predated the Hezekiah reforms, so their actual texts may have survived intact. One of the prophet Isaiah's unedited visions reports seeing: Yahweh sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the Temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory." --Isaiah 6:1-3. Seraphs. The puritan reformers mostly excised "seraphs" from the written Hebrew Bible. (Or transformed them into unnamed evil creatures.) But reports of seraphs exist throughout other ancient Jewish literature, down into Roman times, and beyond. They were popular creatures . . . Flavius Josephus's Jewish Antiquities 1.1.4. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan to Genesis 3:14. Genesis Rabbah 20:5. Revelation 4:6-8. The pseudoepigraphic Life of Adam and Eve. Also in Isaiah 6:6 and 14:29 and 30:6. (Seraphs also flutter about in surviving ancient texts from Egypt and Mesopotamia and elsewhere.) Moonbeam, did you catch my earlier hint? The word translated as "poisonous" in Numbers 21, above . . . ? In the original Hebrew, it is the word for "seraph." The Bronze Serpent of Moses in the (pre-Hezekiah) Jerusalem Temple was, yes, a seraph. A winged serpent. A serpent with hands and feet and ears, six wings, and could talk. (Or sing.) Then came the incident in the Garden of Eden, with Eve and the forbidden fruit . . . Bad seraph ! ! Upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. --Genesis 3:14. And you shall be deprived of your hands as well as your feet. There shall be left for you neither ear nor wing. --Life of Adam and Eve 26:3. The feeling I get from Isaiah is that Yahweh kind of liked his seraphs. The above punishment? . . . This sounds more like the poison-pen work of Hezekiah's puritans. Jane.
The Garden of Eden . . . [post=277976]An allegory. Or a real place?[/post] An allegory. Certainly. But look at what archeologists tell us. The garden is connected to a house and the whole complex has a wall around it. House servants tend to the Lord's needs, cleaning and dressing their Lord in the morning. Other servants tend to the meals. Two further servants tend to the garden. Perhaps one male and one female. The garden consists of fruit trees. And these two persons alone are permitted to enter the Lord's garden. And they alone can sample the fruit trees. But they (as with the house and food servants) must follow a strict regimen. Remain pure. For the Lord who lives in the house likes to stroll through the trees in the cool of the evening. They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the Garden at the time of the evening breeze. --Genesis 3:8. The Garden of Eden is, yes, a real place too. Well. Actually dozens of places, where archeological evidence still remains. Plus hundreds (or thousands) of sites which have been lost. Before Christianity, every city-state from the Mediterranean to the East China Sea had a major temple dedicated to its patron god or goddess. No exceptions. (None anyway that I know of.) There is no standard configuration. But most temple complexes consist of a platform for burnt-offering sacrifices, the god's house and, connecting to it, a walled-garden. Specially trained priests and priestesses work in these temple complexes, part time or full-time. They see themselves as "servants" of the deity who lives in the house and who walks in the garden by night. They tend to this god's or goddess's every need. In Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean the garden typically consists of fruit trees. The Israelites, in their early semi-migratory years, housed Yahweh in a tent tabernacle. But when Solomon built the Jerusalem Temple, he built it to Mesopotamian standards. There would have been a Garden. And it would have had its Aarons and Miriams to tend it. This Temple became the center of Jewish cult life. When the Garden of Eden story was written down, Solomon's Temple and its garden may already have become a faint memory. (The Babylonians razed the Temple in 587 BCE.) But it lived on in Jewish cultural memory (and literature) as a deep painful memory. As something carelessly forfeited. Something "long lost." Yet still desired. What did we do, that God would cause this to happen? An allegorical place. But also a painfully real place. A place and time where Yahweh walked among them. A place of purity . . . An Eden which had been forfeited by perceived sin. And which needs to be restored. Jane.
However, getting back to paradise takes effort and progression. This planet is the center of the whole garden which is the universe. So the concept of it being in one place alone is accurate when you say its planet earth but also includes life on other planets extended in every direction from this planet.
I love how people give up on the Garden and just make it spiritual. Yes, there is a spiritual aspect, but making the Garde the whole universe weakens the message and allows a person to make it say anything they want. There was a discussion on which fruit. Only one fruit tree is mentioned by name and it is figs. Now look at ancient fig farming methods. Fig trees have both male and female trees. Only the female tree produces edible figs. The male figs are full of fig wasp larvae and taste bad. So, people planted only female figs. Then the trees produced no figs. Only when they planted the female figs in a circle with a maximum radius and then planted one male tree in the very center did they get figs. Trees outside the radius were too far for the wasps to fly. Thus, the one tree in the middle gave life to the grove by making it bear fruit, it was the tree of life. The Bible is using this idea to talk about a more spiritual concept of the tree of life. The rest of the Garden is historicall accurate also.
It was adultery. Before the fall there was a whole human community made up of pairs. One male and one female and even though they were two they together were really what one human being was. Going outside that paired oneness caused a split of the two and a separation of soul and spirit from the bodies. This whole universe fell. I believe in what is called the universal soul and universal spirit. If the universal soul and spirit were one with it you would have perfect immortal elements to go along with perfect immortal people and yes life on other planets. There is a lot to this. The environment is an extension of the highest life in that environment to support it. For earth its the human environment. There is a lot of detail to this. The heavenly kingdom exists beyond this whole universe.
If you don't tie the account of the Garden to known history/Archaeology of the time, you can make it say anything. There is an "adultery" component to this story, but it seems to be related to the use of the priestesses/temple prostitutes back then. The original posts were using the greek mythology, which was good. The serpent seemed most closely related to Python, the serpent God that lived underground (eating dust.) Since the Bible equates false Gods with Demons, the later association of the serpent with Satan is appropriate.
The serpent can be a unity symbol or a separation symbol. The holy serpent represents kundilini as a unity symbol involving sex. Sex between the two in the garden of eden kept the two one with a transfer of energy between the two. Going outside that paired oneness caused a split of the two and a separation of soul and spirit from body causing mortality.
