Adam and Eve

An "apple" is NEVER mentioned in the Bible as a 'forbidden fruit'. The account in Genesis simply says 'fruit', with no further identification. Though apples ARE known to grow in that area, and are mentioned in the Bible a few times (Song of Solomon 2:3, Proverbs 25:11) , it's never with the idea of being 'forbidden'.

(Genesis 2:16-17) ". . .God also laid this command upon the man: "From every tree of the garden you may eat to satisfaction. But as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die."

(Genesis 3:6-12) ". . .Consequently the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was something to be longed for to the eyes, yes, the tree was desirable to look upon. So she began taking of its fruit and eating it. Afterward she gave some also to her husband when with her and he began eating it. ......"

Yes it is and it's a sin too

Actually, if truth be known, most people get angry with God from time to time... and I can't see anything wrong there as we are human, and created in his image. If we didn't get angry we would not be the full humans God intended.

However, getting angry does not necessarily mean any loss of love for God. As a father, I used to get angry with my kids occasionally when they were little. That did not mean I loved them any less. When my parents were alive, I would be annoyed with them sometimes too, but there was always an atmosphere of love surrounding that anger.

So, no. Provided your anger is vented within an atmosphere oof love and respect for God, there is nothing wrong with being angry with him. Sometimes that anger is caused by our lack of understanding of a whole situation (eg WHY did God allow suffering in that situation?) and only in retrospect do we see the reasons for something happening. If God truly made us in his image, and he wants us to lead full lives and love him, not because we HAVE to, but because we CHOOSE to, then he will expect us to get angry a little sometimes too. And God is bigger than all that, surely?

The answer to this question is greatly affected by what religion the answerer is. Please see the following views:

JewishAnswer:

It wasn't an evil tree, it was the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The common interpretation is that God did intend for Adam and Chava (Eve) to eat from this tree. Why? Man was the only being in creation to have free will; and without knowledge of good and evil, man could not choose good over evil thereby bringing himself closer to God. Also, without having this knowledge of good and evil, the gift of free will would have been pointless. Furthermore, the "sin" that got Adam and Chava cast out of Eden wasn't eating the fruit, it was because they attempted to hide after the fact. This is a Jewish perspective.

As for the serpent, it was just a serpent. The Christian concept of Satan/devil does not exist in Judaism and the Tanach.

This is a big area to cover all the bases.

I personally think it was poorly written and moses got better at writing later on the Pentateuch. Snake.... Hebrew word is nachash as the serpent known by its hiss, enchanter, wise one. The bible does not say Satan here, although the bible has no problem mentioning Satan anywhere else. Satan means adversary, so to call someone Satan as Jesus did to peter, doesn't mean a red faced, trident bearing, horned evil guy, it means to be adverse to, or against. Because the bible does not say Satan i do not believe it was Satan. I do believe it was another member of the garden populace. Cain knew his wife in the land of Nod. Everybody got the boot. I perceive Adam to be the governor of eden or the leader, as per 'Gods chain of command'. If this is so, then the sin that happened via the hisser, enchanter was Eve's adulterous fornication with another male other than her begotten Adam. The bible says that Adam knew his wife in chapter 4:1. It doesnt say Adam knew his wife again like in all other parts of the bible. I suspect chapter 4 is the first time Adam knew his wife and begat Seth. not Cain or Able. Cain was from the serpent encounter and Able was God's "Multiplying THY conception" by 100%, twins. Abel a shepherd, Cain to till the cursed ground. God wanted God's lineage. Eve is mentioned for the last time in chapter 4:1 and she "boasts", I have gotten (created) a son from (like) the lord (created). She equalled her creation with Gods ability to create. In the garden she said "the serpent beguiled me and i did eat". matter of factly, just like that, you can almost hear the "so what of it" attitude. Bye, Bye Eve.. Sorry for the digression.

Now to answer your question of did God set us up for failure, I purport that no he didnt set us up but the potential for failure was always there, that is why the tree was in the midst of the garden because it would be encountered, although, god does say, "behold the man has become AS ONE OF US, knowing good and evil. If man was made in God's image it would not have been a full image if part of what is God was missing from the image, the ability to know good from evil. So I don't know exactly what to say about "setting us up" but God did have a plan in case it did. God was ready for it, after all God is a God of love and tender mercies toward all generations.

Did he set us up for failure on purpose... the answer is 'no'.

Was this an oversight on his part?.. the answer, again, 'no'.

Firstly, we have to realise that the whole story of Adam and Eve is allegorical. This means that the likelhood of Adam (meaning 'mankind' in Hebrew) and Eve (meaning 'from man') being real people is remote, as it the possibility of the story of Eden as written in Genesis. This does not mean that the story is a fairy tale, as in essence it is real truth and tells the story of how mankind (Adam) turned away from God because of sin, and his own self importance and weakness (Eve). As the above answer says, the serpent was never mentioned as 'Satan' in the story, but the parallels are definitely there. So, in this story, we have the whole history of the rejection of God by humanity wrapped up in a wonderful tale of two people.

Next, let's look at the tree. If God sis not wish Adam and Eve to eat of this tree why put it there in the first place? God, however, is eternal and therefore exists outside the constraints of time. He can see the past and future. He would have known what was going to happen in the 'garden'. Therefore, he knew that the fall would take place. Was he setting us up for failure? No. We failed ourselves by turning away from God because of our own stupidity and not because of Satan (although he, no doubt, relishes in the fact). The simple fact is that unless that 'tree' was there, we would never know the difference between good and evil, and therefore we would never have the freewill to love God because we want to, and not because we are forced to as we don't know anything different. That love would be genuine; a forced love would not. The tree in the garden was not an oversight, nor a set-up for failure by a vindictive god. It was an act of love on God's part, to ensure that we, as his creation, were truly made in his image: as beings with a spiritual dimension, as beings with freewill, and beings with the capability to love freely and not out of instinct.

This great act of love, however, would necessitate evil and suffering coming into the world as a result of our knowledge of good and evil. It would mean that we could reject God (as many do) despite this great act of love. For those who accepted him, this giving of freewill would still mean that sin would form a barrier between God and us. However, as an eternal God, who sees the future as well as the past, who knew we would rebel and who knew we would have the freewill that would separate us from him through sin, he provided, at the beginning, a rescue plan for us in Jesus Christ, who would allow that sin to be no more, and the gulf between God and humanity healed, despite that gift of freewill and out rejection of him.

So, it wasn't a set us up for failure on purpose, or an oversight on his part... it was an act of love.

Christian Answer GENESIS 2 :17 " But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Two points raise themselves for consideration:

Point One - evil is already known in the world.

Point Two - God does not say ' IF ' but ' WHEN' (to use modern wording). He knew they would eat from it.

Now, I'm no theologian but does point one not imply that earthly creation was already contaminated by evil, that it was either already 'fallen' or potentially so?

And, does not point 2 similarly imply that He knew that Adam and Eve were inevitably going to eat from that tree?

Yet, He had already pronounced His creation to be "very good" ( GENESIS 1:31) and had made Adam and Eve "in His own image" (GENESIS 1:27).

Also, in GENESIS 1: 29, God informs Adam and Eve that He has given them "...every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat".

The logical conclusions from these snippets of information are that the seed of the Fall was part of the good creation and that Adam and Eve's role in the unfolding story was to do what God could not do ( given that " ...in Him there is no darkness"1 John:5). It is man who must contain and overcome that evil...or at least the form of man perfected in Christ will overcome it. The 'consequences of the fall' therefore are defined in Genesis...death, work, suffering...only with the incarnation of God in man as Jesus Christ are the consequences for us made bearable and transcended.

This might seem all rather messy(!) but it seems that the fall of Lucifer ( leader of the Angelic Choir which sang the song of creation, which in effect sang the world into being) was a consequence itself of the discord he inserted into the song from love of his own beauty or from his own self awareness!

The fruit of the tree was self awareness in man, needed to overcome the effects of Lucifer's self awareness. Self awareness - the light of reason(?)- contains the darkness God did not and cannot contain. WE can remove that darkness with Christ's help. That is the only way to redeem creation!

When Adam and Eve hid, it wasn't so much of a sin. Rather, they were showing fear and respect for God's presence, since they now realized they were less worthy.

No. The Cambrian period began about 542 million years ago and lasted until around 488 million years ago. There were no humans at this stage:

Our earliest hominid ancestors did not evolve until around seven million years ago. The first modern humans evolved sometime before two hundred thousand years ago. And the biblical Adam and Eve are believed by some to have lived around six thousand years ago.
For a brief comparison of views on the biblical and scientific accounts, please visit: http://christianity.answers.com/theology/the-story-of-creation

S. H. Hooke (Middle Eastern Mythology) tells us that the story of Adam and Eve was based on earlier myths of the ancient Near East. If so, there was no need for anyone to record the actual words from God to Adam and Eve.

One thought:

God did not send Cain 'to foreign people'.

Genesis 4:8-16 reveals that when Cain killed his brother, his punishment was to be sent away to the land of 'Nod' ('fugitivness') . He was to become a 'fugitive' on earth. The ONLY people on earth at that time were Adam's descendants, so Cain took his sister as his wife, and lived apart from the others. Since people lived for hundreds of years, back then(Genesis 5:5), eventually he would meet other sisters, brothers, cousins, nephew, nieces, that he had not known, who were aware of what he'd done, so God set up a protection for him so he would not be killed(Genesis 4:15).

The Torah has one creation-narrative, which takes the form of a summary (Genesis ch.1) followed by an in-depth recap (Rashi commentary, Genesis 2:8). In accordance with that system, Genesis ch.1 is stating that God created humans in general, while the following chapter delves into some detail, including the name of the first man and how he got that name. See also:

Is there evidence against Evolution?

Can you show that God exists?

"the beginning" is the literal meaning of the word Genesis. The early church had no problem in believing the Bible to be literally true since they had experienced first-hand the power of God in His raising Jesus from the dead. This Jesus, is explicitly mentioned in John as the creator:

1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2The same was in the beginning with God. 3All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. Unlike today there was no controversy over Genesis 1 either. They saw it as completely logical and sensible to believe Genesis as literal history, since they had no evidence to contradict it.

Besides Adam and Eve, there were living organisms in the shape of animals, greenery, and other people. On the fifth day of Creation, God filled the world with wildlife. Creatures filled the air, the land, and the waters. On the sixth day, God created human beings. For example, Genesis 1:26-28 spoke of human creation in the plural, and as including men and women. The book then went on, in Chapters 2-5, to tell the specific life stories of Adam as the first man and Eve as the first woman. But information wasn't given about the rest of God's human creation. For example, the couple's sons Cain and Seth were identified as the fathers of many descendants. But their wives were left nameless, and homeless in terms of where they came from or who their parents were.

Cain was "jealous" of Abel, because... in effect... "God liked Abel best."

Not really... but, rather, God: "...looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering He did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast." (Gen.4:4-5 NIV)

With the sin of their parents, Adam and Eve... it's evident from the account that God instituted the sacrificial laws immediately upon the children of men.

"Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an OFFERING TO THE LORD. But Abel brought FAT PORTIONS FROM SOME OF THE FIRSTBORN OF HIS FLOCK." (Gen.4:2-4)

Among the sacrificial laws, there are both "BLOOD" and "GRAIN" offerings to the Lord, whereby one's atonement is sought for the forgiveness of one's sins.

It's evident from scripture that: "...the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness." (Heb.9:22)

So it was in the beginning and so it was also when the Israelites entered into covenant relationship with the Lord.

By sheer virtue of Abel's "blood sacrifice" offerings [where, by law, there is forgiveness], God looked upon his "offerings" with greater respect than "farmer" Cain's "grain offerings."

And Cain became jealous... and eventually enraged with his brother over the favor he held in the eyes of the Lord. No woman is mentioned as the cause of the world's first murder case.