Genesis/Adam/Eve...If It's An Allegory then...???

[Prof]

Something that's always baffled me:

While there are a minority of biblical literalists, many Christians view the Genesis story, along with Adam and Eve, as an allegory, not literal truth.

What I've yet to understand, and which I hope someone here can explain, is:
If it's allegory, what use is it? What exactly is it an allegory for? And what, if any, consequences for Christian belief is it supposed to explain?

The reason I ask is that I am told by Christians of all stripe that all men are born sinners, and that Jesus was out atonement etc. Well, if the Adam and Eve story isn't true, and the fall didn't happen as such, then what are these people talking about? I can't be tainted by an original sin that only happened fictionally. And if the fall was only fictional, any sin I'm born with can only be God's responsibility.

What I can't wrap my head around is, if God is trying to tell us why we are sinners, or provide us with any knowledge of why we're in the situation we're in, what good is telling us a fictional story to explain why we're f*cked?
It's like: great story God. Thanks. Now I understand why I need to grovel and why I'm being punished for ancient sins...but...oh, not really...that was only an allegory. Lord, would you mind telling me what really happened, just to, you know, be fair and all that?

If God wants to reveal our history, and if our history has grave consequences for our behaviour and our eternal soul, what use is there in presenting a fictional story rather than telling us what the hell really happened?

Anyone clear this up? I'm sure it's basic apologetics. Thanks.

Prof.

[Agnostic Theist]

Look, it's just a story, ok!

[Chris Weimer]

there are numerous posts on that subject already, I suggest checking some of them out...

[Toto]

. . .
If God wants to reveal our history, and if our history has grave consequences for our behaviour and our eternal soul, what use is there in presenting a fictional story rather than telling us what the hell really happened?
. . .

Probably we couldn't handle the truth?

The conservative apologists do not describe this as mere allegory.

The liberals who describe it as allegory do not try to find literal meaning in it, and would prefer not to analyse it too closely, which would surely miss the point of the great allegory.

[Paul5204]

Why does God making us sinners make it God's fault? Does it change your opinion if I posit that in addition to us being made sinners from birth, God also allowed us to grow into knowing tov [good] and ra' [bad] and gave us the capacity to repent [i.e., seeing our past wrongs and doing whatever we can to make it right]?

Read Leviticus 4. So you stole some candy when you were 4. No big deal most would say, after all, you were young, impetuous, and ignorant. So we'll excuse/forgive you [although we'll scold you first]. But no. According to Leviticus 4, as soon as you grow old enough and truly realize that it was wrong to steal that candy, your guilt is now wholly yours and you must repent. If not, that sin at age 4 will be charged against you [and not because you stole at age 4 but because you refused to repent when you later came to truly understand the wrongness of the act; read also Numbers 15: he who with upraised hand reviles the Lord, that soul shall be cut off from his people...as I said on another thread on this board, a certain someone, with upraised hand, reviled his Lord and was cut off from his people]. But going back to what I said above, with that the posited scenario, it's a little hard to blame God for making me a sinner. God knows that God made me a sinner and God took that into account when developing the "code." Accordingly, my sin is only charged against me when I come to know the nature of that sin. Then the choice is mine, to repent or not, and I accordingly bear the consequence of that choice.

What really happened? There was a time when you and I did not know tov and ra'. At that same time, you and I also had no conception of death [as such] and tomorrow might as well be the next millenium, i.e., you and I were living a seemingly timeless existence. But like that man before us, you and I yearned to grow up. And round about the time that you and I were growing up, we came to know tov and ra'. And not coincidentally, it was round about that same time that we gained a sense of our own mortality....which brings us full circle, i.e., back to the beginning, those two souls, and those certain words....of every tree in the garden, eating, you may eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of tov and ra' not shall you eat of it, for in the day of your eating of it, dying, you shall die. As true today as it was then. And please don't tell me that you never yearned to grow up. But now that we have, the question is where are we at when it comes to the matter of repentance?

[Prof]

Paul,

Thanks for the response.

But...er...I couldn't really make any sense of it.

So, we should be repentent for growing up? We shouldn't partake of knowledge?

I take it you don't believe in the literal Adam and Eve story?

Are we born sinners? (It doesn't sound like it from what you wrote. But if we are born sinners, how so?).

Thanks,

Prof.

[Paul5204]

Prof:

(1) Yes, we were born sinners [think of it as God with the "controls" off]. I do not otherwise know exactly what you mean by "how so," though I will disclaim any knowledge of the how ["mechanically" speaking] it came to be that that first man and I were/are sinners. But one thing that not enough Christians bother to consider is that we can speak of that first man's disobedience until the cows come home, but as you and I know, there is an animus/motivation that accounts for what I will call our voluntary acts. So before he disobeyed, he had the mindset to disobey. And if we claim any intellectual integrity, we must account for that mindset [it came from somewhere]. I chose the "born with it" route because of the report that God put that man in the garden, where he was both naked [a sinner] and not ashamed [ignorant of his being a sinner]. Add to that the fact that the description appears to be almost exactly the mindset of our own children [who can run around naked without so much as thought one about their nudity]. But note that God apparently believes such a state of affairs to be a-okay [at least in the short-term].

(2) No, we shouldn't repent for growing up, but in growing up we became "truly" aware of how wrong some of our prior conduct was. And it is that prior conduct for which we must repent. To relate this to (1) above, that is how God takes care of the born sinners part of the equation. The sin is not charged against you until you are in the position of being able to do something about it [albeit after the fact].

I was otherwise trying to make the point that the story of that first man is not all that different from our own stories. I have a rather distinct recollection of wondering why I couldn't do all these things that grown-ups do [I had my own personal, "you shall not" command[s]], being told in response to my questioning, all about how you can't do these things right now because you don't yet have the discernment of an adult, and then yearning and yearning and yearning that I could grow up, get that discernment, and then do all those things I was then prohibited from doing. And now let me add the missing link [as it were]: my cousin telling me that the real reason why we couldn't do all the things that his and my parents do is that our parents wanted to have those things for themselves and didn't want to share them with us. Maybe it's just dumber than a box of rocks me, but that sounds an awful lot like the backdrop for that certain temptation in that certain garden. All you need do is substitute that talking serpent for my cousin.

And as I tried to make plain but apparently instead made as clear as mud, the traditional view is that the Genesis command [as it were] was in the nature of a prohibitory injunction with the death penalty imposed for violation of the same. Hardly sounds like a merciful God. But if you liken the command to the command of mom to not to touch the stove, then one can see that the command was protective. As I said, if you read Leviticus 4, you can see that one's duty to repent and offer sacrifice only arises when one is aware of the wrongfulness of the conduct [i.e., either unaware of the nature of the act or that the act itself is unlawful]. So if you take as a given that the man was born a sinner, you can see that the command was for his protection [i.e., without the knowledge of tov and ra' the man would never understand the nature of his actions and so would not be in wrong standing (as it were) vis-a-vis God].

As you can probably guess, I'm a heretic, as I've no time for the traditional view of the story. In addition to the above, we can add the woman. Tell me, one of you who holds the traditional view, if the man was lonely, why not make Steve instead Eve? Would the man die of loneliness if he had another man for a companion? No. So why introduce a female? Sexual reproduction? But wait, doesn't that man have access to the tree of life? So what need has he to reproduce? And if you're Christian, you're boxed in, as your Lord made rather plain the proposition that there is no need for reproduction on the other side since you'll be living forever [in your new "tent" not made from hands, eternal in the heavens, as that other Paul put the matter]. So someone isn't going to be living forever. In literary terms we call it foreshadowing. And the Hebrew word we erroneously translate as "alone" also means "separation." Which explains why the late esteemed scholar of the Hebrew language, George Ricker Berry, translates the verse as: Not good is being the man to his separation. Query: separation from whom? The only other actor in the story is God [and by the way, if there were no other humans but this man, just how and why would he feel alone...can you miss/yearn for something entirely beyond your experience...remembering of course that before you and I knew who, what, and where we were, we were being breast-fed and handled by other humans, so of course we would miss humans, but according to this story, there was no breast-feeding and there was no prior handling by other humans...but there is that report of God creating/making the man and then "putting" [some handling there] in the garden. And to clinch the debate, or what should clinch the debate for Christians, what did your Lord come to do? End your separation from God? That has ALWAYS been the problem and it was indeed the problem prior to a certain someone eating the fruit of a certain tree. And as some of my learned Jewish friends would say, that woman was taken out of man so that a man could be taken out of her. And not coincidentally the first thing that happens once a certain someone loses access to the tree of life, you guessed it, ha-adam knew his wife and she conceived. The only thing my learned Jewish friends haven't yet figured out is that is was a certain Man who was to eventually be born of a woman, born under law...

(3) It depends on what kind of knowledge that you're talking about. There's what I will call material/physical knowledge, and then there's what I will call spiritual knowledge. Our kids are not as stupid as we tend to think they are, and they can be taught much about the material/physical. As you and I know from our lives, we actually learn the material/physical much faster than we learn the spiritual. So I'm not saying that we ought not be learning about the universe and how everything in it works. But depending on just how ready one is to acknowledge sin, spiritual knowledge may not be all that great a thing to possess.

(4) I don't have an opinion as to whether the story is literary or allegorical. My own view is that it does not really matter, as even with Aesop's fables, the moral of the story would remain the same. And in line with what I said above, you could believe in the literal but be drawing the wrong moral, so what gain is the literal to you?

P.S. Something I did not relate prior, so you didn't question me about it, but only a fool would believe that there was no decay or death prior to that man's disobedience. That there was decay and death prior is made plain by the command: From every tree of the garden, eating, you may eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of tov and ra' not shall you eat from it, for in the day of your eating from it, dying, you will die. So, that being the case: (a) this man had knowledge beyond his life experience, (2) there was decay and death, or (3) from the man's perspective, God was speaking gibberish when it came to that part about "dying" [as death was beyond his prior life experience]. I choose no. 2 [my God does not implant false memories and does not speak gibberish].

[Chili]

Something that's always baffled me:

What I've yet to understand, and which I hope someone here can explain, is:
If it's allegory, what use is it? What exactly is it an allegory for? And what, if any, consequences for Christian belief is it supposed to explain?


Allegory, yes, but allegories speak on behalf of truth and so the story is true.

It tells us lots and here the "fall of man" must be part of the mythology since salvation is native to mankind (unless you think the preacher can give it to us). If this is true the "fall of man" is needed to make this possible and that alone makes the fall of man a good thing.

The reason I ask is that I am told by Christians of all stripe that all men are born sinners, and that Jesus was out atonement etc. Well, if the Adam and Eve story isn't true, and the fall didn't happen as such, then what are these people talking about? I can't be tainted by an original sin that only happened fictionally. And if the fall was only fictional, any sin I'm born with can only be God's responsibility.

We are born sinners and if the cross of eternal salvation is for sinners only we must become very creative sinners.

You should scrap the idea that Jesus was our atonement because that makes wishy-washy cowards out of people.

The Adam and Eve story is true but maybe not exactly the way you think it is true. Very briefly, in this story Man fell and Adam and Eve became his second nature. In this sense is it wrong to say that Adam and Eve sinned because they were created by Man's sin.

Of course it is Gods responsibility but since you are in charge of God it becomes yours.

What I can't wrap my head around is, if God is trying to tell us why we are sinners, or provide us with any knowledge of why we're in the situation we're in, what good is telling us a fictional story to explain why we're f*cked?
It's like: great story God. Thanks. Now I understand why I need to grovel and why I'm being punished for ancient sins...but...oh, not really...that was only an allegory. Lord, would you mind telling me what really happened, just to, you know, be fair and all that?

Your head is already wrapped around God and all you need to do is unwrap it so you can expose God. In Catholicism (and Judaism) the church (in the bible called pharisees) must crucify our second nature to set our prior God identity free (which means that there are no Christians in churches in case you missed that).

If God wants to reveal our history, and if our history has grave consequences for our behaviour and our eternal soul, what use is there in presenting a fictional story rather than telling us what the hell really happened?

It's not a fictional story and it tells us exactly what happened.

I'm sure it's basic apologetics. Thanks.

Prof.

Yes, basic apologetics. Your welcome.

[hezekiah jones]

Allegory, yes, but allegories speak on behalf of truth and so the story is true.

:confused:

[Chili]

:confused:

Well you can't really have an allegory of nothing, can you?

[hezekiah jones]

But although you stipulated the tale is allegory, you appear to imply that the allegory bears at least enough relationship to the facts that the allegory is itself truth (and therefore not allegory).

Hence my confusion (which has by no means been allayed by your apparently rhetorical inquiry).

[dado]

...if the Adam and Eve story isn't true, and the fall didn't happen as such...

even if the story is true "as such", reading a "fall" and original sin into it is a much later interpretation completely at odds with the thinking and beliefs of the very people who wrote and preserved the story. Jews do not accept the concept of original sin, there is no such thing, the idea that a human should consider him/herself as starting of "tainted" is, frankly, a revolting concept.

[fallingblood]

If humans are born into sin, what happens if they die at birth? They, being borned into sin, would be sentenced to hell, that's if hell exists. I can't beleive that because God is supposed to be loving.
I think the Adam and Eve story is just a story. Something to warn us that we should listen to God, but while listening to him, they will be temptations. The temptations can then lead to death.

[Bracer]

Allegory, yes, but allegories speak on behalf of truth and so the story is true.

Sorry to jump in here, because I have nothing of any real substance to add, but I second hezekiah's :confused: -- reminds me of that great soliloquy from The Simpsons:

"The following story is true. By which I mean it's false. It's all lies. But they're entertaining lies, and does that not in fact reveal a greater truth? The answer, is no..."

[Chili]

But although you stipulated the tale is allegory, you appear to imply that the allegory bears at least enough relationship to the facts that the allegory is itself truth (and therefore not allegory).

Hence my confusion (which has by no means been allayed by your apparently rhetorical inquiry).

Yes I see your confusion but I am trying to tell you that these same facts that are presented in the allegory can and must become ours through understanding. I think the purpose of the allegory is to present us with a vague image of this aspect of truth so it will be with us untill we recognize it in real life and at that time find complete and full understanding of its meaning. Until then it remains a hidden truth that lies even beyond the reach of science.

I should add here that the book of Genesis belongs to a mystery religion wherein the mystery of faith must answer these kind of questions to the believer.

[Chili]

even if the story is true "as such", reading a "fall" and original sin into it is a much later interpretation completely at odds with the thinking and beliefs of the very people who wrote and preserved the story. Jews do not accept the concept of original sin, there is no such thing, the idea that a human should consider him/herself as starting of "tainted" is, frankly, a revolting concept.


That's because it took 4000 years for salvation to be presented as fact in Christendom. The mythmakers were gnostic and knew exactly what they were writing.

The idea that humans are tainted is revolting but that is your interpretation and therefore your problem. In Catholicism we think that our fallen nature makes us human and earthly. This being the case we must be considerate and caring towards our fellow humans while at the same time we are given the freedom to make the most of life because that is the only time we have to 'color' our own heaven.

[Chili]

If humans are born into sin, what happens if they die at birth? They, being borned into sin, would be sentenced to hell, that's if hell exists. I can't beleive that because God is supposed to be loving.
I think the Adam and Eve story is just a story. Something to warn us that we should listen to God, but while listening to him, they will be temptations. The temptations can then lead to death.

. . . or maybe your idea of heaven and hell is wrong.

[Chili]

"The following story is true. By which I mean it's false. It's all lies. But they're entertaining lies, and does that not in fact reveal a greater truth? The answer, is no..."

If there are no allegories there the Simpsons will fade away.

[fallingblood]

Chili- what would be a right idea about hell?

[FordMadoxBrown]

Hello, Prof, my view of the Adam and Eve story is that it is a legend designed to illustrate or embody a truth about Hebrew man and His God. It wasn't intended for Christianity, but the Christians took it as appropriate to their needs, as they did with many parts of the OT.

The purpose of the story is to show how man fell out with God, by doing what he wanted to do instead a of keeping in line with God. It is a constant theme of the Hebrew Scriptures that the hebrews need to get back in line with God, and of course this idea also was taken over by Christianity for their own ends.

Your original questions seem to imagine that there is no middle ground between something being absoloute historical fact, and its being a pointless tale. On the contrary, most of the Bible falls in between these extremes.

[dado]

In Catholicism we think that our fallen nature makes us human and earthly.

the gnostic/mystic versions of x'ian salvation has always been with us - they are simply a rewording of the same mysticism in existence for as far back as we have records, from all over the globe. different languages, same result. unfortunately the "you are born flawed" concept is precisely what makes non-gnostic views of salvation such a powerful political tool.

i like what i've seen of your approach to catholicism: i wish it was the norm.

[Magdlyn]

All ancient cultures have their creation myths.

All are just as fantastic, weird and non-historical. If we keep that in mind, we need not take this one myth out of all others, quite so seriously. Even the other creation myth in Genesis contradicts this one. There is no sin, nothing forbidden, no power struggles, just "goodness." It simply creates the 6 day work week.

The A&E allegory, to me, is more specific than fall, or God's desire for us, or something about "sin."

Ancient herding/farming people told this story around their campfires to answer these questions:

How did we get here?

Now that we are here, what should we do, and why?

Why are men and women attracted to one another?

Why are men superior to women?

Why do we have to work so hard?

Why does giving birth hurt so much?

Even, why do we wear clothes for modesty's sake?

The snake and the trees were common symbols of the goddess religion that this culture was trying to replace. Her wisdom was seen as suspect. Eve is given a comeuppance when she follows the Goddess's suggestions. It is now time for women to be in subjection to men.

Since we are not longer ancient herding/farming people, do we really need to worry so much about the meaning of this old story, and whether is is at all relevant to our lives?

[dado]

Since we are not longer ancient herding/farming people, do we really need to worry so much about the meaning of this old story, and whether is is at all relevant to our lives?

no - but we need myths, so until something better becomes popular we're stuck with it.

[gregor]

It's turtles all the way down.

[Chili]

Chili- what would be a right idea about hell?

To be born again, spirit filled and whatever else that goes along with it but having to die first before anything good can happen to you. These are those now divided in the saver sinner complex and will remain there because they have started something they can't finish (no matter how much they "fear and tremble)."

[Chili]

All ancient cultures have their creation myths.

Are you suggesting that 'modern cultures' never become ancient?

It simply creates the 6 day work week.



That's to bad because on the seventh day evening did not follow the day (as it did on the first six days) and that would make sunday the everlasting seventh day with no more mondays to ruin our holy-day.

[Toto]

highpriestess's posts and their replies have been moved to a separate thread (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=89949), since they seemed to be a diversion from the OP.