I like your idea. But when did the curse happen? Technically it was supposed to take place outside the Garden. That means everywhere that Adam went the curse was sure to follow.(pa-rum-pum...(drum sound)).
You could see the curse as affecting the whole human race, if you assume we inherited it, of because the human race is
adm, but that is going beyond what the story actually tells us. There is also a problem that a lot of people, both now and throughout history, manage to avoid eating their bread by the sweat of their brow. But however you apply it to the whole human race, it is still only people affected by the curse, not animals, not any plants either apart from thorns and thistles on farm land, who did quite well out of the deal.
Did Cain and Abel have these problems? Sure.
Cain might have. Would explain why he was so grumpy. But Abel? He herded sheep and goats. They love thistles.
The curse wasn't just for Adam. It was for all adamah. For we all come from Adam Genesis 3:20, says she is the mother of all living, so Adam presumably was the father of all the living.
That depends on why she was called mother of all living. The phrase 'because she was mother of all living' take us out of the direct narrative of Genesis 3, into what is more of an editorial comment, a bit like the end of chapter 2 where we are told that Eve being made from Adam's rib, flesh of his flesh, was the reason husbands and wives become one flesh when they get get married. Which is pretty odd if you take it as a consequence of Eve being made from a rib, but fits beautifully if Adam and Eve represent or symbolise every husband and wife. So was she mother of all living because everyone is descended from her, is it because she represents or symbolises every mother (which is what Paul seems to be doing when he switches back and forth between women, Eve and childbirth in 1Tim2:13-15). Or does all living go beyond the human race (the Hebrew
chai means any living creature) and say they through her seed, all of creation will share in the inheritance of the children of God (Rom 8).
The word adamah also is a descriptive word. Hebrew names usually took on what their character was or their origin; jacob=deceiver, grasper isaac=laughter abram=father and so forth. Adam was called this because he was taken from the ground, hmmmmmmm, not an ape???????
Ook. Then again God being a potter making us from clay is a metaphor we find throughout the bible, and nowhere else is the clay meant to contradict biological origins. (Did you know that the word formed in Genesis 3 is the same as the word for potter?)
adm seems to be a pun that works on many different levels. On one level
adm 'Man' means the human race, or you can read it every man is
adm, and we have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. On another level he is called
adm because his skin was ruddy. Or it points to the potter metaphor, Adam is named after the red
adamah clay God formed him from. An interest little detail is that in Egypt black earth referred to the fertile land water by the Nile, while the desert was the red earth (the actually words are quite different in Egyptian and Hebrew, so it is the idea rather than the etymology.) But looking in Genesis 2 where we see God creating Adam from the dust of the earth, the creation account is set in a wilderness Gen 2:5
When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up--for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground. For Israelites who had spent generations in Egypt the wilderness would have been the red earth, it was where their flock herding forefathers had come from. Echoes of the song of Jeshurun, Deut 32:10
He found him in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness; he encircled him, he cared for him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.
Never said anything against this. I just said it will produce thistles for him. When I said it is all over I meant "widespread" not "termination".
That is what I figured. Had to think about it though
The word says the ground will now produce thistles for YOU. It may have been a regular plant/weed but now it will be produced as part of the curse (extra).
I would agree with that. But it means Genesis doesn't doesn't mention any change in plant or animal biology as a result of the fall, (apart from a certain snake, which isn't really about a literal snakes.)
8:22 doesn't but 8:20 sure does imply it. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly. Creation was subjected without its permission or own causation, because we are left with the question, why was it subjected. Answer: man. So although it "doesn't say it", if you really read them together the puzzle is connected.
Isn't man part of creation? Wasn't it the will of man that led to the fall? Romans 8 says it wasn't anything to do with human decision or anything else in all creation. It was God's purpose from the beginning, so all creation would share in our inheritance in Christ.
But any time I mentioned Gnosticism, I did it for legitimate reasons, challenging claims you were making that you simply didn't back up. You may have quoted the bible, but what you claimed it meant didn't match what the text said. You need to back up you interpretation, especially when no on else here, on either side, shares your approach. In this case, because we were dealing with two very different views of how the fall is supposed to have changed all of creation, which need to be distinguished, and both of them addressed.
