MyChainsAreGone
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- Apr 18, 2009
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And perhaps you are UNDER-thinking it...You are still overthinking it.
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And perhaps you are UNDER-thinking it...You are still overthinking it.
v4-5 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
v7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
what exactly did Adam and Even "not know" before eating the fruit. The serpent tells them if they eat the fruit they will know the difference between good and evil... do we accept this? After they ate it, they knew they were naked. being naked is neither good/evil yet Adam and Eve knew they were naked after eating the fruit and before it seems they did not. To me this seems to be about either shame or the lust of being naked that they experienced. They always knew their bodies weren't covered but something was different after eating the fruit that uncovered bodies meant something else.
so how does Adam and Eve knowing they were naked connect with them knowing good and evil? if they didn't know good and evil how were they to know that following God was good and following the serpent was evil?
There are a lot of things that I could respond to in your post... but let me just challenge the really big points that I don't think are defensible.
First point...
There's no solid basis to assert that the nakedness was only a "metaphor." The account is related as a truthful historical account... not some sort of analogy or metaphor.
And your assertion that "nakedness" and "shame" mean the same thing actually makes no sense... because the very assertion that they were naked without shame is an intentional declaration that they are not the same... and should not be treated as synonymous.
There is zero evidence in all of the bible that God's provision of the "coats of skin" constituted some sort of "sacrifice" for sin, or that God's provision of clothing had anything to do with dealing with their sin.
I had certainly heard that teaching all my life, but when I really studied this passage carefully, it's a doctrine I was forced to reject. Here's why:
For these three reasons, I find that I can no longer endorse the teaching that The clothing of Adam and Eve constituted a sin-sacrifice of any sort.
- Nowhere in the entire bible is this account referenced as a sacrifice... something that is extremely unlikely if indeed it was THE prototypical sacrifice in all of human history. We aren't even told in the text that an animal died to give its skin! (Some Jewish Hebrew scholars even suggest that the Hebrew text supports the interpretation that God clothed them with human skin... not animal skins!).
- All sacrifices require repentance on the part of the sinner to have any effect at all. The account of the fall records NO repentance on the part of Adam nor Eve. Quite the opposite, actually.
- No sacrifice in all of the scriptures is performed by the hand of God; every sacrifice is always performed by the sinner... literally, the hand that sinned wields the knife!
As I pointed out in my first post on this topic, there's a lot in this account that we have traditionally added as a part of our collective understanding... and many of those things crumble when subjected to honest evaluation. So it is with some of your assertions.