The Fall of Man Continued

[b2]

Lucifer,

Way back at the beginning of the thread entitled God Lies, lucifer tells the truth, you stated:

the snake in genesis is lucifer, correct?
god (supposedly) never lies, correct?
god says, and i quote (from my mom's bible):

Quote
in the day that you eat from the tree you will surely die.

The snake was Satan aka Lucifer fallen from Grace/Heaven, however my NIV and American Standard do not render the verse as you have. Mine simply says you will die. . Which they did.

[Alzael]

Lucifer,

Way back at the beginning of the thread entitled God Lies, lucifer tells the truth, you stated:

the snake in genesis is lucifer, correct?
god (supposedly) never lies, correct?
god says, and i quote (from my mom's bible):

Quote
in the day that you eat from the tree you will surely die.

The snake was Satan aka Lucifer fallen from Grace/Heaven, however my NIV and American Standard do not render the verse as you have. Mine simply says you will die. . Which they did.

He still thinks the snake was Satan. Awwwwwww, just that's so cute. They're absolutely adorable when they're at this stage.



Mod Advisory Warning: The following is going to be very brutal. Those with weak stomachs should not watch what's about to happen to this one.

[rev45]

Mod Advisory Warning: The following is going to be very brutal. Those with weak stomachs should not watch what's about to happen to this one.

[One Above All]

Gimme a few hours. I have school in fifteen minutes.

Mod Advisory Warning: The following is going to be very brutal. Those with weak stomachs should not watch what's about to happen to this one.

I'm not sure what you think I'm gonna do, but it's not gonna be "very brutal", at least by my standards.

[grant]

Lucifer,

Way back at the beginning of the thread entitled God Lies, lucifer tells the truth, you stated:

the snake in genesis is lucifer, correct?
god (supposedly) never lies, correct?
god says, and i quote (from my mom's bible):

Quote
in the day that you eat from the tree you will surely die.

The snake was Satan aka Lucifer fallen from Grace/Heaven, however my NIV and American Standard do not render the verse as you have. Mine simply says you will die. . Which they did.

Is there a point to this?

[Nick]

Wow, tell me more.

[C]

in the day that you eat from the tree you will surely die.

So they DIDN'T die in the same day they ate from the Tree. More like uh, 900 years later or so?

[Historicity]

Very interesting, B2.

The KJV is from traditional texts and translations and it admits in its intro that while it was made from original texts it consulted all previous translations. 

Christianity is often based on the Septuagint (aka LXX)  or texts that were original to the Septuagint.  Modern Judaism has a Hebrew text called the Masoretic (aka MT) and it has some differences.

So my first thought is this might be a LXX vs MT matter.  I found this site: http://ecmarsh.com/lxx-kjv/ which gives the Brenton translation of the Septuagint on that as:

And the Lord God gave a charge to Adam, saying, Of every tree which is in the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil-- of it ye shall not eat, but in whatsoever day ye eat of it, ye shall surely die.

And the site treats the KJV as authoritative on the MT.

This site accuses the NIV of making a "soft focus" translation to avoid difficulties:

http://webspace.webring.com/people/np/paul_tobin/versions.html

Removing Difficulties by Translating in "Soft Focus"
Sometimes words are paraphrased to remove obvious difficulties that exist in the original Hebrew text. Take one instance of the warning of God to Adam in Genesis 2:17. I give three different versions below:

   Genesis 2:17 KJV But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.    
   Genesis 2:17 Good News Bible (E)xcept the tree that gives knowledge of what is good and what is bad. You must not eat the fruit of that tree; for if you do, you will die the same day.    
   Genesis 2:17 NRSV (B)ut of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in that day that you eat of it you shall die.    

The various translations above gives us an idea of what the original Hebrew is conveying, that if Adam were to eat the fruit he'll die on that very day. The problem is that Adam did partake of the fruit (Genesis 3:6). However he did not die, in fact he lived to a ripe old age of 930 (Genesis 5:5)!

The way NIV skirted this difficulty is interesting, watch:

   Genesis 2:17 NIV (B)ut you must not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.    

Can you see the theological rabbit being pulled out of the hat? Yes, by translating the passage in the "soft focus" mode, the specific curse to die on the very same day is no longer there. Thus a difficulty is removed!

Now in modern English we have an idiom "day" as a metaphor for "era, epoch" -- that sort of thing.  You can criticize John Wyndham's antiwar novel Day of the Triffids on many grounds but it would be silly to point out the story takes more than 24 hours or that some parts of it happen at night.  On one hand a lot of our modern idiom comes from the Greco-Roman classical texts and on the other hand a lot comes from the Bible.

I just told a joke there.  Did you get it?  I had a friend once who had studied Ancient Greek at Harvard but had dropped out for lack of money and joined the Army to get GI Bill funding to go back to Harvard afterwards.  He told me that the "On one hand ... on the other hand" is a Greek construction much more commonly used by them than by us.

So is day used to mean a brand new era in the Bible elsewhere?

Deuteronomy 31:17 Then my anger shall be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide my face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall befall them; so that they will say in that day, Are not these evils come upon us, because our God is not among us?



31:18 And I will surely hide my face in that day for all the evils which they shall have wrought, in that they are turned unto other gods.

Moving on, there is this Bible contradiction.  The KJV:

2 Kings 24:8 Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months. And his mother's name was Nehushta, the daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem.

2 Chronicles 36:9 Jehoiachin was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem: and he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD.

The common sense reading is that the second one contains an ancient typo.  The general opinion is that if the Bible has suffered from typos and well intentioned tampering, will more tampering do good?  According to the NIV writers (should they be called translators?) the answer is Yes:

NiV 2 Kings 24:8 Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he became King and he reigned in Jerusalem for three months.
   
NIV 2 Chronicles 36:9  Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign and he reigned in Jerusalem for three months and ten days.

[Historicity]

BTW, in researching this this morning I ran into this interesting site which I cited above as a URL.  Its URL does not include its actual name.

http://webspace.webring.com/people/np/paul_tobin/index.html
The Rejection of Pascal's Wager: A Skeptic's Guide to Christianity  with articles like:

Was Papias a Reliable Witness?
The Authorship of the Petrine Epistles
Sex in the Evangelical World
David and Solomon
Moses and the Exodus
Common Fundamentalist Apologetics
The Identity of the Evangelists: Second Century Guesses
The Papacy
Christianity and Medical Science
Christianity and the Suppression of Greek Rationalism
Psalm 22:16: A Prophecy of the Crucifixion?
The Epistle of James: A Jewish-Christian Document
Ignatius and Jewish-Christianity
The Apostolic Succession: Polycarp & Clement
The Apostolic Fathers
The New Testament: A Pseudo-Apostolic Collection
Reliability of Patristic References to Jewish Christianity
The Fate of the Jerusalem Church

[One Above All]

Before you read my post, here are a few things that I demand from you.
You will have a basic understanding of what you're talking about.
You will not engage in intellectually dishonest tactics (dodging, lying, et cetera).
You will not use fallacies (strawman, begging the question, et cetera).

If you do not comply, I will not reply to you, unless a mod tells me to or if I feel like it.

Lucifer,

b2,

Way back at the beginning of the thread entitled God Lies, lucifer tells the truth, you stated:
<snip>
The snake was Satan aka Lucifer fallen from Grace/Heaven,

As you can plainly see on the very first page of that thread, someone directed me to another post which explains the origin of that mistake. However, let's ignore that for now and assume that the snake is Satan.
Satan is not Lucifer. Lucifer is a title attributed to an angel, a king and even Jesus himself.
The first one is just a random angel, the second is the origin of the "Lucifer=Satan" mistake and the third is... well, it's Jesus. Last I checked, Jesus is supposed to be one of the good guys[1].

however my NIV and American Standard do not render the verse as you have. Mine simply says you will die. . Which they did.

Can you prove that the NIV is better than my mom's?
Assuming you can, Genesis 3:3 (NIV) says:

but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

Last I checked, they touched it, ate it and died almost a thousand years later. However, even if we ignore that God said that when they touched it they would die, here are a few more inconsistencies:

Adam and Eve were perfect.
To be perfect one must only be able to do good.
God told them that they would die when they ate from the tree.
The snake told them that they would not die; rather that they would know the difference between good and evil, and thus be like God.
Eve saw that it was OK to eat from it and wanted to learn (thus proving that knowledge is good).
They realized that they were naked and covered themselves (thus proving that being naked is bad).
God punished them for the two previous things (thus proving that God punished them for doing the right thing; thus proving that God is not good).

1.	"Supposed to be" being the most important part of that sentence.