What was the forbidden fruit?

Try Who Wrote the Bible by Richard E. Friedman. (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060630353/002-6800506-0300018?v=glance)

At least four different authors. Three (if I recall correctly) versions of Genesis that were combined. The various scriptures were combined/reconciled when the tribes of Israel recombined.

...sounds like the National Enquirer version

What was the forbidden fruit? It's a Adam's TESTICLE .. Sorry to say

Most accurate take on it here.

I'm not so sure the fruit of the tree of knowledge was really 'forbidden'.
Genesis could be read as 'Don't eat of that tree unless you are willing to die'. I'm guessing but I think they might have been. Having that knowledge may have been God's intention for them from the start. Just wanted it to be their choice.

Just try'n to make sense of the story...

This is just my opinion.

I believe the bible says the forbidden fruit is the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Gen 2:17, 3:11When Adam and Eve ate it mankind received knowledge of good and evil. God said they would die if they ate it. The serpent told them they would not die, rather they would become gods. Gen. 3:5 They chose to believe the serpent.

Many people on this forum have asked, why is there evil in the world? Why didn’t God just make a perfect world? The thing is, he did make a perfect world. Just a thought- Did Adam and Eve have any need for knowledge of good and evil? They were living in a perfect world created by God therefore wasn’t it all good? Did evil exist before they ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and thereby acquired knowledge of it?

I once heard a minister say that hell is the absence of God. It doesn’t seem possible we ourselves are capable of being God. Who amongst us can even begin to keep the magma from flowing up beneath our feet. It would seem that original sin was this rejection of God and wanting to be God. All kinds of evil can result from this self serving, self righteous, self importance. As a result of what Adam and Eve did a rift was created between man and God and they were put out of the Garden of Eden.

“ The episode in the Garden of Eden, as it is recorded, makes it clear that humanity took itself away from God, not the other way around. In addition, Genesis 3 gives no indication that Adam and Eve wanted the breach to be healed. All they did was justify themselves—Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent. Exile is a form of punishment that God has used from the very beginning. Here in Genesis 3, in the book of beginnings, we have the first instance of exile imposed by God Himself. It was exile from the Garden of Eden, from all that was wonderful and good that God had created, the perfect environment in which He had placed Adam and Eve. They could never go back.”
http://www.bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Bible.show/sVerseID/78/eVerseID/80

John 1 chapter 1 starts out by saying, ”In the beginning...”. What beginning is John talking about? The beginning of the world or maybe my beginning or your beginning? Maybe Adam and Eve are meant to be more than just the first two people there ever were. Maybe Adam and Eve are also representative of us. In essence maybe we are Adam and Eve and like Adam and Eve we have to choose.

Adam and Eve had a choice. They could choose to obey God or they could choose to eat the forbidden fruit. They ate the forbidden fruit and they and their children were exiled from the Garden of Eden. Now there were in the Garden of Eden two trees. One was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the other was the tree of life. Had they eaten from the tree of life they would have lived forever, but they chose the forbidden fruit. We too have to make that choice.

Throughout the bible from the beginning to the end the question is asked, “Choose ye this day whom you will serve.” We see it in Genesis when Adam and Eve were given the choice to trust the word of God that they would die if they ate the fruit or believe the lie and reject God by desiring to become their own gods (as if they could). We see it when Jesus says in Matthew 6:24 that we cannot serve God and self. We have to choose.

Deu. 30:19,20 “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: That thou mayest love the LORD thy God, and that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him: for he is thy life, and the length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”

*“therefore choose life”* God has made a way for us a way to dwell forevermore in his kingdom, that good land he has prepared for us. JESUS is the way. The bible says Jesus died for our sins. We don’t have to prove we are worthy or attain some kind of perfection. It’s a gift. We have been forgiven. It is a done deal. It is finished. Jesus died in our place so that we can have forgiveness of our sins and restore our relationship with God. Jesus is OUR tree of life. John3:16. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. What Chrisianity seeks to do is to restore our relationship with God through his son Jesus so that we might live forever in his perfect kingdom.

Hard to see that as "just your opinion" as it all follows the conventional theology of the major religions. I'd rather hear your own original thinking.

Just a question:
If you had the choice to make, would you wish your own children be forever unable to discern good and evil?

Keep in mind that evil obviously existed in the garden of Eden from the very start. Did that make it imperfect?

“If you had the choice to make, would you wish your own children be forever unable to discern good and evil?”

As things are of course people/Christians teach their children to discern good and evil to keep them from being injured. I don’t know about if we lived in a perfect world - doesn’t seem we’d need it. (It would seem Adam and Eve needed it though so they wouldn’t have made the choice they did.)
I did read one commentary online that said being able to discern good from evil brought people into a closer relationship with God because they would see both good and evil for what they were and hopefully choose good, a hard and sad lesson to learn.

I remember watching a TV show that asked the question: If there was a pill that would make you happy all the time, would you take it? Interestingly most of the people said no. They reasoned that in order to know what happiness was they had to experience hurt and sadness. The one person who wanted the pill without question was Phyllis Diller. I don’t know if you know who Phyllis Diller was. Her comedic career was based on people mocking and making fun of her. No doubt that greatly hurt her feelings much of the time.


“Keep in mind that evil obviously existed in the garden of Eden from the very start. Did that make it imperfect? “

You say “obviously”.

Wikipedia-“In Catholicism, Augustine of Hippo taught that the tree should be understood both symbolically and as a real tree - similarly to Jerusalem being both a real city and a figure of Heavenly Jerusalem. Augustine underlined that the fruits of that tree were not evil by themselves, because everything that God created was good (Gen 1:12). It was disobedience of Adam and Eve, who had been told by God not to eat of the tree (Gen 2:17), that was obnoxious and caused disorder in the creation’”

http://www.creationtips.com/tree_of_knowledge.html
What about the words for good and evil? Well, the word for good is the same one used throughout Genesis chapter 1 when God pronounced His creation “good” and “very good.” The meaning may at times be extended to mean beautiful, joyful, bountiful, or pleasurable. Again, there is nothing to indicate we should look for an unusual meaning of good.
The Hebrew word for evil that is used in the tree's description — ra‘ — has the sense of misery, woe, grief, or harm. The word means evil, and perhaps more. It points to something extremely sorrowful — so we can rightly understand that eating the fruit of this tree would reveal knowledge of good and misery.
Good is known; misery unknown
Adam (and Eve when she was created shortly after) knew only happiness. God had given them all they needed, located them in a beautiful garden of delights, and placed only one restriction on them: Don't eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. As they already knew good, eating from this tree would provide only knowledge of calamity, grief, and sorrow.
Some commentators wrongly say that God gave Adam and Eve a choice — they were free to eat from the tree or not eat from it. But God didn't give them a choice. Genesis 2:16 and 17 tell us that “the Lord God commanded the man … of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it.” He commanded Adam not to eat from it. He didn't say Adam could eat from it if he wanted to. Certainly Adam and Eve had freewill to disobey God, but no choice was given or implied in God's command.

Of COURSE they were given a choice. God could have chosen not to put the tree there to begin with, thus truly not giving them the choice.

The other error in your argument is failing to include the rest of the passage from Genesis 2:17 which continues - "for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.". So God wanted them to take the issue seriously but gave them the choice to know good and evil IF they were willing to die for it. They made that choice.

In the big picture, I think God was proud of them for it. He may have even used Satan to help accomplish his goals in this case.

was Gods goal that they should die? he did not just tell them what would happen if they ate of it, he told them that they must not.
I cannot see how the God in Genesis would be proud of them. The story tells that Adam and Eve were punished for their actions, they were expelled from the garden and forced to toil in the difficult conditions outside, they were only then refused access to the Tree of Life and this was on top of the consequence of their action which was the eating from the tree
What was Gods goal in this scenario?

'Proud' was probably not the right word to use. I think it would be more accurate to say that God was satisfied with the events as they took place.

God was probably not happy with the bare fact that they would then have to go through an arduous life and suffer the death of their body but I think he knew it was inevitable if they were to develop into the beings he wanted so badly for his own company. If what he wanted was the 'Cleaver Family' for company, he could have simply not put the tree of knowledge in the garden.

You might ask then why didn't he simply give them the knowledge of good and evil from the start. My guess is that the freedom of choice is That important to him. He wanted them to have the right to make even that basic choice as well as all the rest that follow.

It follows then that God's goal is what is, and has been, playing out in all our lives.

Does this not raise the question, of what use is a solution to a working model?

The working model is only a means to an end, not the end itself.

We were only discussing the goal of the events in the garden, not the ultimate end.

My apologies Lead, not my intention to misunderstand.
Still, we are suggesting here that Gods purpose was for us to disobey a direct command that would result in the punishment of death.
Having given man access to all the trees in Eden including the tree of life, was it so that man was incapable of becoming good company unless we exercised our single opportunity to disobey him?

That IS one way of putting it.
I would rather say: "Yes, we would have been incapable of becoming good (interesting, informed, competent, etc) company if we forever remained ignorant of the existence of good and evil. You can love infant children but spending an eternity with them would not be satisfying. You want to see them grow up.

Must have been pears because pears suck.

I agree with Leadfoot.

Before Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they weren't human. They were incapable of choice and incapable of love (because without choice there is no love).

I write software. The programs I write can do things, and they follow my instructions. I can make the software say it loves me, I can make it obey me and I can make it serve me. But, I can not make software truly love me until it has the choice.

It is only the ability to hate that gives love its value.

Humans are beautifully flawed. We are capable of great evil. We are also capable of great nobility, courage and kindness. One side can not exist without the other.

In the Genesis account, God created the body of man. But it was the Serpent (who by the way was not Satan) who gave man his soul.

Hadn't thought of it in those terms but that's one way to say it. I usually think of it in terms of choosing what to love gives it its value.

'Unconditional love' is the most bankrupt concept ever invented.

Had not considered that possibility. Who or what do you think the serpent was or represented?

The text is quite clear



The Serpent was a serpent. It was one of the "wild animals the Lord God had made".

When Genesis was written, the idea of the Christian Satan had not been developed yet. It is interesting to compare the Satan of Job with the Satan of the Apostle Paul, they are quite different beings.

Guess I always assumed it was metaphorical or that Satan used the form of a serpent just as God used various forms (burning bush, etc) to be visible to man and God then cursed the serpent so that it could no longer be used in that way. IDK, you could be right.

But about the Satan in Job vs Paul: Only did a cursory comparison but did not see a significant difference in essential nature. Only difference I have assumed between the two is the restrictions God temporarily removed from Satan in the case of Job. What differences do you see?