palmer (04/11/83)
There has been a lot of talk on this net about "man's fallen nature." This all centers on the fact that man, woman, and snake decided that the pursuit of wisdom was more important than the mindless following of rules. Before the "fall", man spent his days doing nothing, all of his needs were taken care of, and he was immortal. He created nothing (God had a monopoly on that), and he left no mark down through time. So empty was this period, that the Bible doesn't even mention how long it was, or what they did during this time. Then the snake came, and showed man a way out of his stagnation. As a result, God got angry and turned them out of the garden, which, to my mind, was the best thing he ever did. If a person does nothing, and leaves no mark, can he ever really be said to have existed? Life today may not be paradise, but at least its something. With thanks to the snake, David Palmer
hutch (04/22/83)
David made a good point with his article, that we know relatively little about what went on in Paradise. As you would expect, I sort of disagree with his assertion that it was an empty period. At least some of the role of Adam was that he was to name things, a mystical concept as well as a linguistic one. There are other Hebrew traditions about what Adam did before the fall, as well as what Eve did. (Perhaps if we promised not to be too rude, someone who knows more about this could tell us what some of the traditions are?) Anyway, it was implied in the Fall that Adam was no longer fit for the work which he was origianlly set for, and that the burdens of his life after the fall might in fact have been those things which he was to do, before he fell, now made onerous and unpleasant. Hutch