Comments on: What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden?

By: Jo Ana Davidson

Jo Ana Davidson — Sat, 24 Jun 2017 15:04:35 +0000

I am a beginner in studying Genesis. I’m reading from Jeff A. Benner’s A Mechanical Translation of the Book of Genesis. Here are some ideas I am considering:
I don’t believe God was saying I will see to it that you die if you eat from The Knowledge of Good and Evil: I don’t think He pronounced death. I think He was saying it will be a natural effect. Here’s why I think this. The scripture teaches His Words are life and health to us. We know from John that in the beginning was the Word. . .
Adam and Eve hid from God- The Word- their life source. They felt ashamed because of their nakedness. They removed themselves. This new knowledge they had caused them to be afraid of the Holy One-pure love. God asked them who told you that you were naked. Could it be that the serpent immediately accused them of being naked and they with their new insight agreed healing self-condemnation upon them. I would like to say here that I tend to think the reference to the two trees God set in the midst of the Garden of Evil were spiritual metaphors. The scripture often refers to humans as trees. Also, when Jesus healed the blind man by first placing spit in his eyes. It’s interesting to note that the man first saw men as trees. In the Mechanical translation of Genesis it says to the serpent- spitted upon are you- referring to a bringing low. Jesus brought blindness down low and the blind man first sees man as trees. Then Jesus touched him again and he saw plainly. Is it possible that the man was seeing spiritually with the first touch of Jesus? Is it possible that Eve chose to dine on Words from the tree (another spiritual being formed in God’s Image)of The Knowledge of Good and Evil (Knowledge of Function and Dysfunction ~Mechanical Translation)that gives her the ability to judge from a perspective outside of Love. This perspective allows for accusation and condemnation bringing death- “. . . a dying you will die.”~ Mechanical Translation. I don’t think think this knowledge is for us to consider outside of Love. When Adam and Eve separated themselves from Love- The Father- it brought death. Therefore,God “spittted”on the ground~Mechanical Translation it was for Adam’s sake. Adam and Eve would now set mankind on a new journey. A journey of understanding a new facet of God’s Love- Mercy and Grace. I believe this journey ultimately leads us to being like God knowing ” function” and “dysfunction” but seeing through the eyes of love, by acknowledging we are just vessels that need to be filled with His Spirit of Love to an overflowing out to a world in need of His unconditional love. May the knowledge that is above all knowledge- The Love of God- fill us and consume us, so that our lives are filled with meaning and purpose as we interact with each other here on Earth.

By: Joyce

Joyce — Wed, 15 Feb 2017 03:27:13 +0000

Sin is unbelief. Eve doesnt totally believe in God’s word as He says do not eat nor touch the fruit lest you will die but she reason out with the serpent. And that she was deceived.

By: hmmm

hmmm — Sun, 18 Sep 2016 13:48:51 +0000

what’s a bce ? Before Christ’s Era ?

By: anthonyg27

anthonyg27 — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 20:47:00 +0000

It always amazes me how people can take the plain reading of the Hebrew text in Genesis or anywhere in the scriptures for that matter and twist it to fit their own ideas and agenda rather than reading with authorial intent in mind. There is absolutely zero evidence to support the idea of this penis issue. In fact is blasphemous. Idiots like Ed would make it even more blasphemous with statements like what he just said. Why can’t people just look at the text for what it says and quit trying to read into it something else not found, which is called Isegesis. We’re called to do exegesis. The original sin was pride. All sin stems from pride. Pride from the serpent taunting the woman that she can be like God like the serpent or Satan wanted to be, and pride in their disobedience to God’s command and will. Just that simple.

By: Irene Dawson

Irene Dawson — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 06:53:04 +0000

To me it makes more sense, that Eve came from Adam’s penis. After all, that is where life comes from, and other Ancient religions use ideas and imagery connected with procreation. And it makes sex more acceptable, it makes it part of the religious world, that it is part of God’s plan and is not a ‘sin’.

By: Ed VanDyke

Ed VanDyke — Wed, 30 Dec 2015 23:54:12 +0000

Ergo, a “boner” is simply a miracle from the Almighty, for creating life? Once that bone has been taken from man, a new life will be made in woman… Such a smutty Book (but the ways to draw a human audience, in Chapter1 haven’t changed in 6000 years)… 🙂

By: Nii Ayi Croffie

Nii Ayi Croffie — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 00:51:21 +0000

One thing I would say is that Satan’s pitch was the woman will be “like God knowing good and evil” but the woman “saw it was good to eat and desirable to make one wise”. My language is descended from Ancient Egyptian and Hebrew though a distant relative but in Akan knowing good and evil does not mean knowing preferences but your ability to judge. A proper translation of the name of the tree is the Tree of Judgement between Good and Evil. This eɔplains original sin not as knowing good and bad choices which the narrative says Adam (Adammah) and Eve (Hawwah) had already. NB:Eve is a German spelling. It is assuming or presuming to be Judge between God and the Devil which is what Good and Evil is ultimately. By this we declare we are more righteous than God. This attitude is manifest in Atheists and dogmatic religious people alike. So I do not agree with the premise of his book though it will be a good read.

By: Ian Booysen

Ian Booysen — Sun, 19 Apr 2015 09:59:41 +0000

I just want to pose a question, if I may. To start off firstly in a way I agree with Phillip, but my thoughts tell me something different. The bible notes “God is a spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. Now, sin, what is the sin we are referring to in the bible.

Phillip notes the following:-
We are immediately confronted with an Eve cursed with an irresistable desire to “overflow” her husband in whatever he does.This mirrored his curse in ever struggling to contain her. Why? Because The woman would not listening to her husband. So there was a fall.
As the Nephesh God deposited in Adam was imparted to his wife, they both were thereby covered with a garment of something not unlike the glory of God.
In the New Testament Paul called sin “coming short of the Glory of God.”
Doing what was right, was impossible to the human race because of the lack of this glory the first couple were endowed with. Good points.

Eve means life. We are all human and understand anything if we relate things to human understanding. The penis, Adam and eve. Have we looked at this in the spirit. God is a spirit?
ADMAN the first man selected by god. Eve the life within Adam. The conversation with ourselves – do it no don’t. Who is doing the talking between both and the actions of both are wrong for not understanding Gods, word. Madness. If the meaning of Eve is life surely it places
a different way of looking at it. So, what is sin, and how is the spiritual side being applied? there is always anther way of looking at not understanding. Darkness or no light.

My mane is Ian and on iabooysen0@gmail.com

By: Phillip

Phillip — Fri, 12 Dec 2014 09:00:05 +0000

It is surely understandable most books and scholarly papers reviewed on this site would necessarily tend to lean on the conservative side, but even so I was expecting something with a little bit more meat on its bones in a piece about Adam and Eve in the Garden.
This nonsense about a penis bone pales in comparison to many other aspects of what took place between this first couple of the human race, like Adam leaving Eve for 120 years and returning to what Rabbis called to the “rulers of the fields” the Cro-magnum hominids of his origin before God put within him the nephesh and he became a “living personality”.
Whatever bone it was which God took from Adam, it was surely DNA without which a human woman could not have been possible.

The entire account, and far from being any “myth, is crammed full of the most graphic and telling details full of the realness of their existing in a hoary past truly relatable to anyone today in a marriage relationship.
We are immediately confronted with an Eve cursed with an irresistable desire to “overflow” her husband in whatever he does.This mirrored his curse in ever struggling to contain her. Why? Because The woman would not listening to her husband. So there was a fall.
As the Nephesh God deposited in Adam was imparted to his wife, they both were thereby covered with a garment of something not unlike the glory of God.
In the New Testament Paul called sin “coming short of the Glory of God.”
Doing what was right, was impossible to the human race because of the lack of this glory the first couple were endowed with.
The research by scholars such as Hislop reported that in the ancient legends of the earliest, people were very much aware of Mother Eve causing this catastrophy and there sprung up taunt songs vilifying her as the “Crab” which as they taunted, a crab goes sideways from the straight path when it walks.
And it also seems that in the Garden, Adam was simply oblivious, or wholly ignorant, and one may even say-indifferent-to his shining garment of eternal glory which God had given to him as a covering for his body.
So there were two very important and consequential things which happened to the Father of the human race when he disobeyed God’s instructions and did eat from the tree of the knowledge of Good and evil.
The day he did so, he began to die, and so he became painfully aware of this wrong and therefore of what was right also, when God thrust him unceremoniously out of the Garden.
Ever since then in every country and in cultures of every clime, All civilizations which sprung up afterwards, have been trying to get back to the Garden.

By: elizabethe9

elizabethe9 — Sun, 17 Aug 2014 15:56:07 +0000

Let me put down some comment here as a lay person in Biblical scholarship, because I am only a graduate of high school in 2013 that learn to put a high regard to the Bible as the truth that God wants all Christians to understand it and do good things accordingly. I am so interested to learn more about this discussion, but I believe that as far as I can understand it in the Indonesian translation, where my father as a pastor has also guided me through, the position of Eve as a person beside Adam has been put so high, as symbolized by the bone of Adam’s rib, close to his heart, either not above nor far below his central beat of the man’s life since it early stage.