Consider the stories that explain the origin of humankind. Why do beginnings matter so much? I myself am obsessed with the tale (Genesis Ch. 2-3) about the banishment of the first humans from paradise. Why do I care? I guess I'm quixotic enough to believe that someday my interpretation of those primal events might help me to win a celestial court case for the serpent.
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-whom for it's own part didn't neither threaten nor pay any humans to eat any fruit whatsoever, whereas only suggesting that this was indeed an option to take into consideration for anyone claiming to possess the highly regarded socalled 'free will'. However, more importantly than aiming to place any such original 'guilt' for having eaten said fruit, it seems obvious than Someone overreacted with an absurd disproportionality between the alleged offense in question - and how it was responded to by the beneficial Owner of the fruit. I say the Serpent is merely an innocent scapegoat in this whole mess, besides obviously the real victim here!
((also, having recently been allured onto this new-to-me format, I'm now experimenting with maybe being able to receive follow-up emails about possible follow-up comments, after all... which I assume will be the closest thing I'll get to actual 'notifications' on here..... we shall see!))
Yes, everything you said about my snakey friend is correct and will hold up in court! The Genesis story of the so-called Fall is a good example of the effectiveness of propaganda, especially when it's administered at a young age; for if you read the tale with a fresh mind, as if for the first time, you'll notice that everything the serpent sez to the humans is right and comes true; it's even backed up by the narrator and admitted by Jehovah God himself:
Genesis 2:17 has Jehovah God saying "in the day that you eat of the fruit of this tree, you shall surely die." Then, in 3:4-5, the serpent assures the humans that "ye shall not surely die," rather "your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Then, after the humans eat the forbidden fruit, in 3:7 the narrator admits "the eyes of them both were opened"; and in 3:22 Jehovah God cries "Behold, the man is become as one of us!" And the partakers of the fruit did NOT "surely die" on "the day that they ate of the fruit of that tree". For in the very next verse, Jehovah God banishes the humans from his pleasure garden and drives them off elsewhere "to till the ground". Dead people don't till. So, in conclusion, the serpent's testimony was proven true, and Jehovah God was shown to have lied to his employees. I rest my case.
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I only have one further note on a detail of your comment:
You say "Someone overreacted with an absurd disproportionality... (etc.)" — I think this is actually an element of genius in the scripture's composition that we modern minds miss: I suggest that Jehovah God did NOT overreact, and that there was NOT an absurd disproportionality in his curses, eviction, and punishment of the humans; for what is being implied by the scripture is that the humans had been fashioned initially as mindless slaves, and they were allowed to eat freely of the LIFE tree but barred from partaking of the KNOWLEDGE tree. Once they partook of the latter, they became Jehovah God's equal — they became "Eve God" & "Adam God" — so Jehovah God needed to kick them out of his realm "lest they put forth their hands, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever!" (3:22) Thus the fact that he set up cherubs as bodyguards plus a flaming sword to protect his pleasure garden was absolutely justified and totally commensurate with the new threat, since, by barring the humans from everlasting life, Jehovah made certain that they would remain MORTAL gods while he himself remained the only IMMORTAL god (as he reserved for himself exclusive access to the Tree of Life, which is like a Fountain of Youth). If the humans were to get their hands on the Life Tree, after having eaten of the Knowledge Tree, then they would be equal in every way to Jehovah — not only would they be mentally divine, they would also be able to keep on living indefinitely — that's why it's silly for Christianity to claim that Jehovah God "the Father" gave humankind the gift of his "Son" Jesus so that we humans all could enjoy Eternal Life — for Eternal Life is the very thing that Jehovah God strove to reserve for himself: That's precisely why we rival gods were banned from Eden's Paradise in the first place!!
Oh! Oh! Oh! You're right, of course!! And, having realised the mere logic of your reasoning above, I now can't help but almost automatically read the hierachy of American society and the ways of modern American politics (as well as European, of course) into all this... with the socalled Fall representing just about everything that the plutocracy and (especially certain parts of) government, political front figures and financial leaders fear the most and currently seem to be fighting by any means possible.
Power lies within the Tree of Knowledge, without which the mindless slaves can be kept in line, whereas once they've eaten the fruit, the only way to avoid them obtaining equality with the (socalled) gods, is kicking them out and never let them re-enter the garden of pleasure, and to keep them desperately busy tilling the ground in order to not starve to death.
Who cares, after all, about knowledge, equality and pleasure when they're kept on the very verge of starvation.
Tuesday's thought experiment; God is a plutocrat! :P
I'm so glad that you articulated this connection re the economy, plutocracy, etc... that is why those biblical myths or poetic tales are so strong and still relevant: I think it's desperately needed for modern society to recognize that the bible has much to say about our current economic inequality & about masters and slaves in general. (I often think of the God from the 2nd & 3rd chapters of Genesis as "Boss", & when I hear that title "the LORD" it brings to mind landlord or slavemaster.) The whole exodus from Egypt, which is the central event in the Hebrew Scriptures, deals with a people escaping from slavery and instituting a law that is deemed holy precisely because it calls for scheduled periods of private debt forgiveness, which renders kings unnecessary and makes impossible the formation of an oligarchy (the practice of charging interest/usury from debts is the secret ingredient that drags a free people inevitably into slavery/bondage/debt-peonage; and prior to the mosaic law, debt forgiveness was the exclusive right of the king)... and the Hebrew prophets are all "social justice warriors": their concern is primarily to protect the poor from the ultra-rich, and they're not against criticizing their own greatly beloved nation to solve these injustices. (Etc., etc.)
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