“Was the garden of Eden a real place? “
At some point in the past, whether about 6,000 years ago or millions of years ago does not matter, God created life out of nothing. God set the process of evolution in motion and at some later point, H.Saps evolved out of previous life forms. This is not my personal opinion, it is established official mainstream (Catholic & Orthodox) doctrine. To deny this is heretical. At some LATER point, H.Saps was “ensouled.” This is not my personal opinion, it is established official mainstream (Catholic & Orthodox) doctrine. To deny this is heretical.
Let us entertain the following hypothetical pre-history of the human race, consistent with the above doctrine. At some point, some member of the species H.Saps had the ideas of “good” and “evil” for the very first time. This was a cognitive advance over the passions and perceptions of all of his predecessors who had viewed their world strictly in terms of “pleasure and pain” or “hunger and satiety” or “prey and predator” or whatever. Some member of H.Saps had the first inkling of what we would later come to call a sense of morality and mortality (i.e., conscience). THIS is the point recounted in Genesis, not the chronologically prior point when life got going or when species H.Saps differentiated from whatever came before H.Saps. THIS was point when man came to see himself as “made in God’s image.” WHERE he came to this realization, in a garden or in a wasteland or in front of a campfire is irrelevant. Though, admittedly, it must have been SOMEWHERE.
The Christian religion is not concerned with the material of which man is made or the previous life forms out of which he evolved; the Christian religion is solely concerned with the salvation of his soul. Hence, the pre-history, prior to mankind’s moral awakening, is not recounted in Genesis; what is recounted in Genesis is his moral awakening, not his material (biological) provenance. To interpret Genesis as a factual history of mankind’s biological provenance is a crude (materialistic) blunder. Just as to ask what the chemical composition of the soil in the Garden was or what river (Tigris, Euphrates etc.) flowed through the Garden, is to misunderstand Genesis in the crudest possible (materialistic) way.
“Was the garden of Eden a real place?” The Garden was simply wherever that particular man lived who first had the idea of “good and evil”--call him “Adam” (really). The place does not matter; what matters is that mankind reached out to God in that moment. The account in Genesis may indeed contain references to historical-factual events or geological formations which could in principle be identified today (such as rivers flowing through present-day Iraq)--however; a) the place is not the point of the account in Genesis; b) fixating on allegedly historical-geological factuality is risky: if the allegedly factual parts of the account turn out to be false, then the moral-allegorical point of the account may well be discredited. And c), the Bible has, this respect, no more credibility than does, for example Homer’s Odyssey or Illiad which also refer to events and places which may indeed have some basis in fact.
The blunder which RJH, for example, makes is in supposing that the biological history of man is the same as the moral history of man, and that these two histories were co-temporaneous with the geological history of the earth. We have seen in other threads to what absurd contortions this position leads. He argues that fossilization takes place in a matter of minutes, that H.Saps and T.Rex were alive simultaneously, that the light from distant quasars is no older than the earth itself, etc.
Once you distinguish the moral history of man (which is comparatively recent and about which Christianity has something to say) from the biological history of man (which is of considerably longer duration and about which science has something to say), you can have your cake and eat it too: you can admit that evolution really happened over a very long period (millions of years) AND that some time in the last 6,000 years or so some guy named Adam was “ensouled” by God with the knowledge of his having been made in God’s image (with a knowledge of good and evil).
So what is literal and what is real in the Biblical account? I think the foregoing makes clear that the terms “literal” and “real” are mis-applied here and that “allegorical” and “real” are not mutually exclusive.
As for proving any of this: Pythagoras’ theorem is the sort of thing which can be proven. But a man who needs proof of his faith has no faith at all; he has something else which only superficially resembles faith.
-Removed-Parable? I know what a parable is and what purpose a parable serves. So what in you opinion is the moral of the story of the parable of Adam and Eve? If God says don't do something then don't do it? It's too late for that because it's already done, so iyo what could the moral of this story be?
Originally posted by lemon limeI believe divegeester may be too ignorant to understand what versions/translations of the Bible means.
I just wanted to know if you are referring to what the Bible actually says or not.
Did the tree of the knowledge of good and evil have fruit on it? You were suggesting it wasn't a "fruit tree". Every translation and version of the Bible I've seen suggests it was a fruit tree. This is why I'm asking you what version or translation of the Bible ar ...[text shortened]... /i] don't ask 'What passage are you referring to?' Just answer the question... or not answer it.