Adam & Eve are created as lords of wisdom and lords of the world.
Only one rule is placed before them: to avoid their own death.
The serpent, however, claims that their natural, selfish, free existence is incomplete, illegitimate, evil. Rather, the only way to true knowledge of good and evil is by subjugating their desires to his.
For, he claims, if they undergo the asceticism and martyrdom of eating the fruit they know will kill them, they will in fact not die, but receive some as-yet unknowable true blessedness & godliness.
But the serpent has lied. Adam & Eve, by rejecting the wisdom of the body, are made into slaves, ashamed of themselves.
It must amuse the serpent to have his modern victims think they're cleverer than their ancient parents, as they make the same mistake attempting to rectify the original even as the warning is right in front of them.
Adam & Eve are created as lords of wisdom and lords of the world
Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden because God feared they'd eat the fruit of the Tree of Life, though.
The serpent is the creation of the demiurge. Therefore the demiurge is imperfect, cruel, full of malice, loveless and he revels in the joys of taunting the weak hearts of man.
We must look above. The one, the good. Perfection. We must indulge in the secret knowledge. Gnosis is just over the hill.
"Why have you forsaken me?"
"I am not your God."
It is frustrating to watch people fall for the same 6,000 year lie.
There is no "demiurge", and no gnostic doctrine contains any truth to it. It's just another word for satanism.
Why do Christians think the serpent is satan? God even commands it to crawl on its belly and bite the ankles of women, he's literally referring to a snake, not evil personified.
>suffering is inherently imperfect
Stop it.
There is no personification of evil in Christian theology.
Evil is a void in the fabric of Good.
>He's literally referring to a snake
As opposed to a figurative referral?
The snake being a creature first corrupted and fallen from glory is symbolic, treachery is bad.
>muh metaphors
The symbolism comes from the literalism
they misread a passage in revelation about satan as leviathan
>The serpent is the creation of the demiurge.
Uhhhh which gnostic texts have you been reading pham coz I don't remember that one.
That's just some twisted mix of Plato and christianity.
ITT: DUDE WEED LMAO meets Christianity
>because God
because the Gods, in the plural. Don't fall for the post-Babylonian Yahwist/monotheist meme.
Because YHWH, then. Whatever you want to call the creator in Genesis. Either way, he was the one that kicked them out and for the stated reason.
But the passage doesn't say YHWH, it says Elohim.
Further reference for those who are interested:
youtube.com
So refer to the second sentence instead of the first.
Revelation 12:9 So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
Leviathan is an animal, a sea monster if you will. Has nothing to do with the serpent/enchanter in the Garden. More like Predator X or Megalodon.
While Elohim for God is a plural word with the Hebrew -im suffix, it is used in the singular sense: Let us make man in our image.....so Elohim made man in his image.....
Trinity. Plural word, singular God.
But Genesis is a Elohist, not a Yahwist book.
studybible.info
en.wikipedia.org
they did eat from the tree of life. the tree of knowledge was the one that was forbidden
It can be read in this way too, sure.
Right, so just whatever entity or entities. Fact still remains that Adam and Eve were cast out by the aforementioned because of the fear that they would partake of the fruit of the Tree of Life.
right, it has nothing to do with the serpent in the garden. Leviathan is slayed as a heroic act by YHVH in Isaiah. revelation was referencing this apocalyptic prophecy and connect Satan to this sea monster, not referencing the snake in the garden
you're right, but to say that it is a reference to a trinity is a bit of stretch. using a plural form in the singular is grammatically correct, not something specific to this usage of god in the plural. this plural singular form is just a way of saying that he is the god of gods
It would not be heroic for the Almighty to kill an animal.
There is only one God.
He is the King of Kings, and the Lord of Lords.
Not the "God of gods".
>Isaiah 27:1
>In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.
It's a continuation of the same motif as Ba'al Hadad slaying the great serpent Lotan
sorry bud, that's how hebrew works
It isn't, actually. It's this.
Revelation 16:3
Then the second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it became blood as of a dead man; and every living creature in the sea died.
The Hebrews are quite adamant that there is one God.
Deuteronomy 6:4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one!
This is the part they do not understand, if they are still Jews:
John 10:30 I and My Father are one.”
notice that in Isaiah it says he shall punish leviathan. if this is referring simply to this event in revelation where all the creatures of the sea are killed please tell me exactly what sins they have committed for YHVH to punish them. not to mention that leviathan is a mythical creature.
the meaning of elohim in this context means god of gods. there's no way around it. sorry if this is inconvenient for you. of course as the religion became monotheistic they add proclamations of there only being one god to their holy texts.
>the meaning of elohim in this context means god of gods.
Not that user, but this is false. "El" means God in Hebrew and "heem" is an inflectional ending to denote plurality so "eloheem" just means gods. If you wanted to say "God of gods" it would be "el ha-Elohim" because the "ha" prefix denotes being of something (elsewhere in the Bible God is referred to as "melek ha-melekim" aka "king of kings").
that is the literal translation. however in the bible elohim despite being plural is used in such a way that it clearly refers to a single entity by using elohim with a verb in singular form for instance. plural forms also can be used in hebrew to denote a singular entity that has power over all entities of that type. hence "god of gods"
No crime, no sin, they're animals. But they're all gonna die. The new heaven and the new earth have no sea.
The word Elohim means God, and the fact that it is a plural word to the Jew means that God cannot be defined by man even in number, and to the Christian that God is a triune spirit being.
Has nothing to do with "God of gods", as there is only one God. One Creator. One eternal being. One I Am.
Elohim is the plural of Eloha, not El.
El is the Canaanite demon god, the main one, and any time YHWH is described as El, it's always El Something. El Shaddai, etc.
Again, God is a triune being, relational even within himself, and the only God that exists.
There is absolutely nothing the context to justify tacking on "of gods" to the meaning of Elohim. Elohim either means God or gods depending on how you want to interpret it but there is nothing to suggest "of gods" is included.
Ah that makes sense because I was wondering where the h sound came from. Thanks for the clarification!
Always happy to help.
>Strangely, ´elohim is a plural noun that is regularly used as the subject of singular verbs. Its singular form is ´eloah. Of the several suggestions that have been made to account for this anomaly, three in particular seem most likely. The majority opinion is that the plural form is intended to communicate the notion of royal power and is so dubbed the "plural of majesty." Somewhat similar is the notion that the plural form designates a gathering up of all divine powers, all ´els concentrated into one divine being, often called a "plural of intensity." A less popular interpretation that has the advantage of support from Ugaritic texts is the understanding of the form as a "plural of cultic manifestation."
>In spite of the popularity of these views, the present writer finds that they have something of a desperate quality about them that does not command conviction. As an alternative, I would suggest that the plural form ´elohim is an elision or contraction of the formulaic phrase, ´el ´elohim, a construction which is for this reason very rare among pre-exilic texts (Ps 50:1). Understood in this way, the phrase from which ´elohim is derived is still somewhat ambiguous, for ´el is used both as a personal name for Israel’s high god, "El", or as a common noun meaning, "god." The phrase could then be translated both as "El of gods" and as a superlative construction meaning, "god of gods" or the "highest god." In point of fact, it may be overly analytical to make the two renderings mutually exclusive, for El was indeed regarded as the highest god of the pantheon, not only in Israel but also in Phoenicia and Aram. Consequently, ´elohim appears to be a contraction that is laden with connotations regarding Israel’s supreme deity.
biblicalheritagecenter.org
That's a nice quote but again the context dictates and there are multiple names for God that include the "of x" title and none of them follow that plural construction. I already gave you the example of "melek ha melekim" (king of kings) but there is also "avi ha kavod" (father of glory), "avi ha amorot" (father of lights) "melek ha goyim" (king of nations) and others that you can look up yourself.