Question about Genesis

Unix

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Read the reviews. Much emphasis on J P E documentary hypothesis, I would not recommend that. The documentary hypothesis should be discarded in it's old form.
I'd suggest a read of Genesis 1-11 :)
I suggest instead: Genesis - Berit Olam -series
Scripture quotes are from the NRSV-CE unless otherwise noted.
For a Bible Version about Joseph in Gn, I think Confraternity Version is the best (not available electronically). Buy the Mass Market paperback OT or a family Bible. Search for Sirach Confraternity on abebooks or amazon or ebay to find the Mass Market paperback, or on Douay Confraternity for the family Bible.
 
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LuxMundi

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Read the reviews. Much emphasis on J P E documentary hypothesis, I would not recommend that. The documentary hypothesis should be discarded in it's old form.

I am repeatedly disappointed with the Berit Olam commentary series. Westermann's commentary is perhaps the standard work of reference and contains a full discussion of the Documentary Hypothesis. There are no better commentaries out there in their depth and breadth.
 
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Unix

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I haven't ordered more volumes of the Berit Olam -series, I prefer commentaries with that scope. Westermann's would be far too exhaustive.

I agree that some of the Berit Olam -series volumes are bad, as an example let's take the Lv, Nm, Dt -volume.
 
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Unix

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So You dislike the Berit Olam -volumes You've bought just because they are brief? Although I admit that omitting something is dangerous. I haven't started reading yet the Gn volume I have.

Is that a series of commentaries? Any volumes that You'd specifically recommend to me?
Which is why I like Continental scholars, exhaustivity is their middle name. :)
 
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apocolypticremedy999

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"Cursed is the earth because of you"


the idea that God wouldnt be worthy of worship if he were a trickster is ludicrous.
he saved adam and eve and destroyed the evil babylonians.
whats not worthy about that?

I know that atheists have a real inferiority complex about these things.
you wouldnt happen to be an atheist would you?
hmmm?

Are you seriously accusing me of being an atheist? No, I'm certainly not, and you should know that, after all I do have a Christian icon near my name.

God just isn't a trickster, period. He's trustworthy and that's what makes him so trustworthy, is that he doesn't trick anyone into anything.
 
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juvenissun

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that was the flood that destroyed the garden and would have destroyed adam and eve if they hadnt left.

BTW, nephilim (fallen human beings) arent mentioned till the time of the flood.
(or rather one of eth floods)

So, where did Adam and Eve left and to where?
Where was the Garden and where was the Flood?

Are you talking about space, or time-space? If time-space, then why should the Garden be destroyed?

Don't just make statements. Given them, you need to answer questions for clarification.
 
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BobAliceEve

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The account of the events that happened in the Garden of Eden is factual. It came directly from God to Moses by Revelation. Genesis is the first of the Five Books of Moses. God did not spend His time passing symbolic or any other form of fairytale to Moses. A civilization is built on solid facts not on flexible stories. God laid the foundation of a new and solid civilization by giving Moses solid foundational facts just as Christ built on that solid foundation by adding solid facts. The Law and The Prophets was a schoolmaster to bring (all of) us to Christ. That could not happen on a fluffy batch of fables.
 
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LuxMundi

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So You dislike the Berit Olam -volumes You've bought just because they are brief? Although I admit that omitting something is dangerous. I haven't started reading yet the Gn volume I have.

Is that a series of commentaries? Any volumes that You'd specifically recommend to me?

I am studying theology at the moment so have access to pretty much any commentary I want. :clap:

By 'Continental' I mean those scholars that come from Europe.

My favourite commentary series are the Continental Commentaries, Hermeneia, and Old Testament Library.
 
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Unix

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Try the volume on Mt 8-20, by Ulrich Luz, look for example at 11:27, it was added by the post-easter Church. Arians and United Church of God use Mt 11:27 specifically in their heresy. For those of You who don't have access to it, here it is: http://cykeltaxi.se/164.jpg
I am studying theology at the moment so have access to pretty much any commentary I want. :clap:
[...]
My favourite commentary series are the [...] Hermeneia [...]
 
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Unix

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From the Genesis Berit Olam -series commentary, by David W. Cotter, A Michael Glazier Book, The Liturgical Press, ©Order of Saint Benedict, Inc., 2003, p.30:
The Human, still quite alone, was placec in a garden that God had planted in Eden, full of tees beautiful and nourishing as well as two other trees, one known as the Tree of Life7 and the other as the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Bd. The former tree disappears from the story until the very end. It is the latter tree that looms lage both in the story and in the biblical religions, especially Christianity.
Why did God forbid the consumption of its fruit on pain of death? There are several possibilities: God desired to withhold ethical knowledge from Humanity, making humans dependent on commandments; God desired Humanity to remain without the knowledge of sexuality, pleasure and pain, life and death; since Good and Evil are an example of merismus meaning something like "everything," God was commanding Humanity not to attempt universal knowledge. Yet others feel that the command is purely arbitrary, that God might equally well have forbidden something else just as long as Humanity realized that they were subject to divine command and not free to act at will.
The text does not say which of these possibilities, or perhaps some other, is meant here, but we can reason our way to some conclusions. When the serpent approached the woman and offered the fruit to her she already possessed ethical knowledge. She knew that her action would be wrong. If she already knew the nature of evil and possessed the ability to make moral choices, the tree's meaning must be something other. At any rate, knowledge of such sort is hardly a sin, but a good thing to be desired.
[...]
My suggestion is that the phrase refers to universal knowledge. Humanity is commanded not to try to become like God and know all things. For in doing so they will lose what is distinctive about their humanity, their very conditionality and limitation, and so die.8

7 See also Prov 3:18, 11:30; 13:12, 15:4
8 Note that the verb form of the prediction of death (mȏt tāmût) means that death will follow as a punishment but not necessarily immediately. It does not imply immediate execution. See Gn 20:7; Nm 26:65; Judg 13:22; 1 Sam 14:39, 44; 2 Sam 12:14, 14:14; 1 Kgs 1:4, 6, 16, 8:10; Jer 26:8; Ezek 3:18, 14.

p.36 In the Tradition
Why did God allow Man and Woman to be tempted? Was it fair, knowing that they were so utterly naïve? Augustine did not have an answer to the question that he found entirely convincing, but he inclined toward the idea that there is no virtue without the possibility of sin, and that God uses the example of the sinner to instruct the virtuous.
Then it cites On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis, 11.4.6, in Andrew Louth, Genesis 1-11, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Old Testament I (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2001) 80:
"If someone asks, therefore, why God allowed man to be tempted when he foreknew that man would yield to the tempter, I cannot sound the depths of divine wisdom, and I confess that the solution is far beyond ...
p.37: ... my powers. There may be a hidden reason, made known only to those who are better and holier than I, not because of their merits but simply by the Grace of God. But insofar as God gives me the ability to understand or allows me to speak, I do not think that a man would deserve great praise if he had been able to live a good life for the simple reason that nobody tempted him to live a bad one. For by nature he would have it in his power to will not to yield to the tempter, with help of him, of course "who resists the proud and gives his grace to the humble" (1 Pt 5:5) ... [My insertion: 1 Pt 5:5f (1966 JB):
headline: To the faithful
To the rest of you I say: do what the elders tell you, and all wrap yourselves in humility to be servants of each other, because God refuses the proud and will always favor the humble.* Bow down, then, before the power of God now, and he will raise you up on the appointed day;
* Proverbs 3:34 (LXX)
... Why then, would God not allow a man to be tempted, although he foreknew he would yield? For the man would do the deed by his own free will and thus incur guilt, and he would have to undergo punishment according to God's justice to be restored to right order. Thus God would make known his will to a proud soul for the instruction of the saints in ages to come. For wisely he uses even bad wills of souls when they perversely abuse their nature, which is good.
 
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Not to hijack the thread but I had a question about the trees also. In addition to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, there was the Tree of Life. If God made Adam & Eve with the intention of them living forever and made them in His imagine, what was the point of the Tree of Life? Weren't they supposed to have life forever? Or did Adam and Eve have a choice from the beginning as to whether or not they would live forever?

If Eden was paradise why would God need a Tree of Life in it?
 
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WayonDown

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The Word of God is full of symbolisms, and similitudes which can only be discerned by the mind and the Spirit of God. Here is what I believe the Lord has shown me concerning the Tree of knowledge to know good from evil...

Your post is interesting, and I'd like to know a bit more.

The Tree of knowledge, to know good from evil, was given as a sign of the natural law.

So if we take the Tree of knowledge as a symbol and not the actual literal meaning:

So what does Eve taking an apple from it, and eating it symbolise? That we chose to find out the difference between good and evil? If so, how?
 
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WayonDown

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It's not as though Genesis is a newspaper report of "What happened in the Garden of Eden," written the following day. The author(s) of Genesis was living in the same conditions we are - a world in which evil seems predominant, human nature seems fundamentally flawed, and even nature frequently seems out of whack. Genesis is an after-the-fact explanation as to how this state of affairs might have come to be. It is, at best, a crude and primitive explanation. I don't believe that anyone with a logical mind can "make sense" of Genesis in a satisfactory, connect-the-dots sort of way. You have to read it as you would poetry - i.e., let the language speak to you in a broad and symbolic way, without analyzing whether it "makes sense." The only way "the Fall" makes sense, IMHO, is that it was a fully God-planned event, with God knowing that only creatures who experienced the full spectrum of good and evil would ever achieve spiritual maturity and be capable of appreciating God's goodness. It is possible, of course, that Genesis is a literal account of precisely what occurred - I find this about as likely as finding a unicorn in my garage, but if it were true we could only say that the ways of God are indeed mysterious and beyond the comprehension of man because Genesis (and the God it portrays) is simply not logical or emotionally satisfying at the human level.

Great response, I never really quite thought of it like that. I didn't think Genesis was a literal account at all, but given the mysteries and surprises, I wasn't ready to fully discredit anyone's view.

But how are we to really figure out this broader meaning if it's indeed poetical in nature? More specifically, how do we know whose analysis is correct?
 
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WayonDown

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Read the reviews. Much emphasis on J P E documentary hypothesis, I would not recommend that. The documentary hypothesis should be discarded in it's old form.I suggest instead:

Scripture quotes are from the NRSV-CE unless otherwise noted.
For a Bible Version about Joseph in Gn, I think Confraternity Version is the best (not available electronically). Buy the Mass Market paperback OT or a family Bible. Search for Sirach Confraternity on abebooks or amazon or ebay to find the Mass Market paperback, or on Douay Confraternity for the family Bible.

I guess I really do need to invest in a commentary of sort, it might be Genesis now, but no doubt other issues will arise when I continue reading.

I have several Bibles: NIV, KJV, KJV amplified, NSRV-CE, Douay-Rheims, NABRE. I largely tend to avoid the KJV and the DR, not because I don't understand it, but I find it bothersome reading in an older style of English. For some reason I don't seem to take it as seriously when I hear people a-thying and a-thouing. I purchased the NABRE recently and found it quite good so far with plenty of footnotes and clarifications, the NSRV-CE was pretty good too, although my version is from the 1950's or something.
 
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jpcedotal

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I guess I really do need to invest in a commentary of sort, it might be Genesis now, but no doubt other issues will arise when I continue reading.

I have several Bibles: NIV, KJV, KJV amplified, NSRV-CE, Douay-Rheims, NABRE. I largely tend to avoid the KJV and the DR, not because I don't understand it, but I find it bothersome reading in an older style of English. For some reason I don't seem to take it as seriously when I hear people a-thying and a-thouing. I purchased the NABRE recently and found it quite good so far with plenty of footnotes and clarifications, the NSRV-CE was pretty good too, although my version is from the 1950's or something.

Give Dr Vernon McGee (free link) a try and also Stephen Armstrong (free link). Both are literal Genesis believers and though I see you are kind of leaning toward a more abstract understanding of Creation and the Garden, one should study the other view as well just to see if there is some legitimacy. I have studied both ways and I am a literal believer of the Garden and what happen within it. What made me believe is how the rest of the Bible falls in place more easily and points back to the more literal translation. Even Jesus believed in the Garden literally. If one believes in a more abstract interpretation then there will be other places in the Bible where one will have to "tweak" the Word in order for it to fit with this alternate understanding.
 
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jpcedotal

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Thanks, I will look into it. Although I don't know about Jesus believing in a literal interpretation, if that were so clear then this issue would be non-existent.

I am open to both sides whilst I still discover Genesis.

Cool, all I ask is that you give both sides equal study and Jesus will make it known what HE believes which really is all that matters.

:thumbsup:
 
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