Jehovah and His Premortal Ministry

[JLHPROF]

12 minutes ago, Ahab said:

If you are then I am right there with you, my brother.  Choose for yourself whether you want to turn around now.

The reason I believe God did not want us, or Adam and Eve to disobey him when he told them they should not eat fruit from that tree and thereby gain knowledge of good and evil was not because it is bad to know what is good but because it is bad to know what is bad.

Knowledge of anything evil, such as knowing what is involved in doing something evil, is never a good thing to know.  It can be useful in catching bad guys who do evil things, and to help us avoid doing those evil things ourselves, but it would be much better to just know what is good, including what is good to know to help catch the bad guys who do evil things.  And unless you are a police officer or something like that who has to concern yourself with catching bad guys so you can get them off of the streets so that they no longer can do any bad things, it is better to just focus on the good and positive stuff that will  help you and other people to live good lives.

But the knowledge of good and evil available after eating the fruit from that tree didn't come ala carte, where Adam and Eve could pick only the good knowledge and avoid knowing anything evil.  If they were to know what was good they also had to know what was evil, as well, since to know one is to know the other since it is the opposite of the other.

So faced with that, it would have been better for them to remain innocent and not know anything at all about good or evil than to know anything about what is evil.  Except that by knowing what was evil they could also know what was good too, and who was good and who was evil.  So it could turn out to be a good thing, after all, as long as they chose to do good rather than to do something evil and not repent of any evil they did.

I'm afraid I disagree.  Without the fall there would have been no resurrection.  The fall was the plan all along.  How do we know?  Because we selected a Savior to redeem us from the fall before there was one. 

The plan was to fall.  It was intentional.  Adam and Eve chose to break a law to achieve the result God needed.  God had to warn them of the consequences of breaking a law.  But he had already set apart his heir to reverse the effects.  It was always supposed to happen.

[JLHPROF]

13 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Then I'm in good company.  Since the man we are speaking of was also a heretic.

[SettingDogStar]

18 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

I'm afraid I disagree.  Without the fall there would have been no resurrection.  The fall was the plan all along.  How do we know?  Because we selected a Savior to redeem us from the fall before there was one. 

The plan was to fall.  It was intentional.  Adam and Eve chose to break a law to achieve the result God needed.  God had to warn them of the consequences of breaking a law.  But he had already set apart his heir to reverse the effects.  It was always supposed to happen.

Resurrection still applies in a terrestrial state. Those angels who are terrestrial, translated, will need to be “changed in a twinkling of an eye.” They will experience death but so quickly that it will seemingly not be noticed and be changed to a celestial state. That changes can only happen because of the atonement, as any upward progression can for humans. So even without the “fall” to a telestial state Christ’s resurrection would still be needed.

[mfbukowski]

6 hours ago, theplains said:

Seems pretty clear to me.

"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, nevertheless, thou mayest choose for thyself,
for it is given unto thee; but, remember that I forbid it, for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."

"Thou mayest choose for thyself for it is given unto thee" means Adam had the free choice to obey or disobey that
was given unto Adam by God.  If God had said, "thou mayest eat", that would have confused Adam but instead it
says, "thou mayest choose".

All of God's commandments telling us not to do something are predicated upon us being able to choose for ourselves
because the choice is given unto us.

Thanks,
Jim
 

But that is exactly the point.

They had never had the option to choose anything, as the story is told.  Here they are, adults apparently in a figurative situation in a figurative garden and are given an ambiguous figurative choice.  OR make it all literally historically correct- we will get to that scenario in a minute

The purpose of the story is to show that we HAVE a choice and ARE able to choose for ourselves.

The entire point of the story is to teach US that:

Quote

All of God's commandments telling us not to do something are predicated upon us being able to choose for ourselves
because the choice is given unto us.

We make a choice and receive the consequences and whether or not we consider them "good" or "bad" at the time of the choice.

And then we have the opportunity to make the best of those consequences.

I always wonder how the story can be taken literally in respect to Jesus and being saved.  Suppose Adam and Eve never sinned.  Could they have multiplied and replenished the earth as they also had been commanded to do?

Would NOT following that commandment also be a transgression, therefore that becomes the Fall?

Would each successive generation then have the opportunity to sin or not sin?  Why would ONLY they be the ones to be tested??  Did God really expect them NOT to eat of the tree nor any of their children?

And what goes to the core in the first place, WHY did he give them the tree in the first place if he wanted a perfect world forever?

But if they could not reproduce was it all for them only?   God created them with the plan that he would only have two perfect children who would live forever?   Would there be further trials?

What would have been Jesus' role if the Fall never happened?

Surely Evangelicals are smart folks who have this all figured out, right?   I have never heard those explanations- if you could direct me to somewhere I could find the info, I would appreciate it!

I am just wondering what it would be like to take the story literally and where it all was intended to lead then 

It seems Billy Graham had no answers or had not thought it through

https://billygraham.org/answer/what-would-the-world-be-like-if-adam-and-eve-had-never-sinned-or-do-you-think-it-would-be-pretty-much-the-same-as-it-is-right-now/

Quote

 

Q:

What would the world be like if Adam and Eve had never sinned? Or do you think it would be pretty much the same as it is right now?

A:

If Adam and Eve had never sinned, today’s world wouldn’t be the same as it was originally — not at all. In fact, it would be radically different, because it would be exactly the way God meant for it to be.

It’s hard for us to imagine what life must have been like before sin entered the world. But when God created Adam and Eve, He meant for them to live in a perfect world forever — a world without death or sickness or conflict or evil of any kind. And that’s the way the world was! Adam and Eve lived in a world of perfect peace and harmony — harmony with nature, harmony with each other, and most of all harmony with God.

But when they rebelled against God, they didn’t just fall away from Him. Sin — like a deadly, savage cancer — invaded the whole creation, and everything about our world changed. Death became the lot of the human race; evil gripped human society; even our hearts became hardened and rebellious toward God. The Bible says, “sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12).

The most important truth I can tell you, however, is that sin has been conquered! By His death and resurrection Jesus Christ defeated death and hell and evil — and some day His victory will be complete.

Yes, evil is real — but so is heaven, and so is Christ. Is your faith and hope in Him?

 

What would be the need for Christ or faith in anything?   We would already be perfect and in heaven- what would have been the purpose of the whole Adam and Eve Experiment that apparently went terribly wrong?

It just doesn't seem to make sense to me any other way!?

Edited September 21, 2019 by mfbukowski

[JLHPROF]

5 minutes ago, SettingDogStar said:

Resurrection still applies in a terrestrial state. Those angels who are terrestrial, translated, will need to be “changed in a twinkling of an eye.” They will experience death but so quickly that it will seemingly not be noticed and be changed to a celestial state. That changes can only happen because of the atonement, as any upward progression can for humans. So even without the “fall” to a telestial state Christ’s resurrection would still be needed.

Except they would be the only ones to get bodies.  You and I would never get here.

The fruit is symbolic of the way we get here.  It's why the fig leaves.  It's the whole reason for an Adam AND an Eve.  To provide mortal bodies.

And while the resurrection would be needed, the atonement wouldn't, nor would the bonds of death need to be broken because the thing that brought death into the world would never have happened.  And again, the atonement was preplanned before the fall. 

Sorry, but the fall was the plan.  I see no reason to believe otherwise.

[SettingDogStar]

9 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

Except they would be the only ones to get bodies.  You and I would never get here.

The fruit is symbolic of the way we get here.  It's why the fig leaves.  It's the whole reason for an Adam AND an Eve.  To provide mortal bodies.

And while the resurrection would be needed, the atonement wouldn't, nor would the bonds of death need to be broken because the thing that brought death into the world would never have happened.  And again, the atonement was preplanned before the fall. 

Sorry, but the fall was the plan.  I see no reason to believe otherwise.

Fair enough. However scriptures don’t dictate, at least to my reading (feel free to correct me) that he had to suffer for sins just that he had to die like a lamb. We don’t know what the exact plan was before this earth, we just know Christ had to come to save us. If we were terrestrial and Christ died for us then that would still fulfill the role of a Savior.

Just spit ballin. There’s a lot of blanks in both concepts or the plan of salvation either way, at least to me.

Edited September 21, 2019 by SettingDogStar

[Robert F. Smith]

7 hours ago, The Nehor said:

But it can also be true.

I am not convinced on one point of that though. Are we sure they could never have children without the Fall? One figure said it was the only way but he might have been lying. As it stands the story makes God into a trickster. He gives two contradictory commandments. Nephi knew the story but still insisted God does not give commandments without providing a way to follow them.

I need to stop.

Procreation is only possible for adult humans and gods.  Eve & Adam are innocent because they are not yet knowledgeable.  As children, they are not yet accountable.  Once they have become like gods and know the difference, God must immediately prevent their obtaining eternal life -- flaming sword, cherubim, and all that.  They are fully human now, in a telestial state.

[Robert F. Smith]

7 hours ago, The Nehor said:

...............Something can be both liturgy and history. .............

Of course.  The Exodus of Israel from Egypt was real, but the Passover is a holy ordinance of the Jews -- and was on that first night in Egypt.  Jesus and his Apostles ate Passover, a real one, but which was a liturgy, and we still celebrate it each Sunday as liturgy by eating actual bread and water.

7 hours ago, The Nehor said:

..................... there was an actual Adam and Eve who fell from an actual Eden, with all the consequences that fall carried with it.

Yes, and there are many actual Adams & Eves performing that liturgy all the time.  In fact, Adam and Eve are archetypal names, not the actual names of any one person.  Adam is Hebrew for "man, mankind."  All the great non-LDS scholars agree on that.  Yet real people play that role everyday, including the first to have played that sacred role.

7 hours ago, The Nehor said:

I do not know the details of what happened on this planet before that, but I do know these two were created under the divine hand of God, that for a time they lived alone in a paradisiacal setting where there was neither human death nor future family, and that through a sequence of choices they transgressed a commandment of God which required that they leave their garden setting but which allowed them to have children before facing physical death..............................

I am not convinced completely that the fruit is real but why not? .......................... Admittedly I do not think they fell due to the fruit. They fell because of the laws of the Universe. They disobeyed God.

Elder Holland is in full speculative mode here, but his instincts are correct at each point.  Not being from a high, liturgical tradition (such as Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, or Anglicanism), he doesn't automatically see things in liturgical terms.  Rather than understanding the timeless quality of such events, he tends to think in sequential terms.  Mormons frequently think like Methodists, while relegating their own esoterica to an ethereal realm.  They seem unable to fully integrate or absorb the deep things of God.  That's the Protestant and Pioneer ethic talking in modern Mormon culture.  When will be become the Saints of the Last Days?

[Robert F. Smith]

9 hours ago, Ahab said:

A more correct translation of "rib" is "side" and our illustrious brethren have told us repeatedly for generations that Eve was taken from the side of Adam.

..................

Brigham Young,

Quote

    “Though we have it in history that our Father Adam was made of the dust of this earth and that he knew nothing about his God previous to being made here, yet it is not so; and when we learn the truth we shall see and understand that he helped to make this world and was the chief manager in that operation.
    “He was the person who brought the animals and the seeds from other planets to this world and brought a wife with him and stayed here. You may read and believe what you please as to what is found written in the Bible. Adam was made from the dust of an earth, but not from the dust of this earth. He was made as you and I are made, and no person was ever made upon any other principle.”      Journal of Discourses, 3:319.

“yet man is the king of kings and lord of lords in embryo.”  Journal of Discourses, 10:223.

Joseph F. Smith, John R. Winder, Anthon H. Lund, First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,

Quote

“all who have inhabited the earth since Adam have taken bodies and become souls in like manner.”
* * * * *
“True it is that the body of man enters upon its career as a tiny germ embryo, which becomes an infant, quickened at a certain stage by the spirit whose tabernacle it is, and the child, after being born, develops into a man. There is nothing in this, however, to indicate that the original man, the first of our race, began life as anything less than a man, or less than the human germ or embryo that becomes a man.”  Improvement Era, Nov 1909, 75–81 (emphasis added).  Heber J. Grant, Anthony W. Ivins, and Charles W. Nibley explicitly agreed to this in 1925 as the next First Presidency.

Spencer Kimball and Bruce McConkie both emphasized that stories about creation of Eve from a rib, or of eating fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil are figurative (not to be taken literally).

Quote

“And I, God, created man in mine own image, in the image of mine Only Begotten created I him; male and female created I them. [The story of the rib, of course, is figurative.]”  “The Blessings and Responsibilities of Womanhood,” Ensign, 6/3 (Mar 1976), 70, 
https://www.lds.org/ensign/1976/03/the-blessings-and-responsibilities-of-womanhood?lang=eng .

Bruce McConkie not only shared this same view, but extended it to include the partaking of fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Mormon Doctrine 2nd ed. (1966), 242; "Eve and the Fall," in Woman (1988), 60.

Even evangelical christians agree on this approach:  John Walton, “Origins Today - Genesis Through Ancient Eyes,” https://youtu.be/qsZddI-Tr4I .

Edited September 21, 2019 by Robert F. Smith

[JLHPROF]

13 hours ago, SettingDogStar said:

Those angels who are terrestrial, translated, will need to be “changed in a twinkling of an eye.” They will experience death but so quickly that it will seemingly not be noticed and be changed to a celestial state. 

Someone once suggested that the "twinkling of an eye" might be 3 days.  The idea being that no person was more perfect or righteous than Christ and even he was in the grave that long.  That nobody would be resurrected faster.  After all if a day to God is a thousand years here, a twinkle of God's eye might last three days...

I love speculation.

[SettingDogStar]

Just now, JLHPROF said:

Someone once suggested that the "twinkling of an eye" might be 3 days.  The idea being that no person was more perfect or righteous than Christ and even he was in the grave that long.  That nobody would be resurrected faster.  After all if a day to God is a thousand years here, a twinkle of God's eye might last three days...

I love speculation.

That could work, but also Christ had a work to perform in the Spirit world. He probably could have left the Spirit world whenever He felt like it...maybe. Haha

[RevTestament]

On 9/16/2019 at 5:55 PM, theplains said:

The church's Gospel Topics (Fall of Adam and Eve) says "Adam and Eve expressed their gratitude
for the blessings that came as a result of the Fall"with a reference to Moses 5:10-11.

What specific law (s) did Adam and Eve obey to get these mentioned blessings?

Thanks,
Jim

 

On 9/17/2019 at 7:47 AM, RevTestament said:

I have some additional questions.

Did God create the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?

If not, how did it get in the garden?

If so, does God know evil?

If so, why is it bad for man to know evil?

How can we be like Yeshua, if we don't know evil?

I'm jealous now because you answered Teddy's questions, but not mine...

There were a few members who offered answers. I don't agree with everything they said, but they offered some perspective. I will add another.

If Adam and Eve already had eternal life, how come God put the Tree of Life in the garden?

If Adam and Eve were as children, was there a need for them to grow up? How would they do that if they didn't learn how to overcome evil - to "know" evil as YHVH Elohim did?

Why not just keep Adam and Eve up in heaven, and not have to deal with this problem of evil leading them astray? Why put the tree there in the first place?

Could it be that this story is the gospel in a nutshell? That this earth was created as a place for man to learn to overcome evil rather than being a puppet of God, and being commanded in all things? 

It seems to me the point of the story is that if Adam and Eve had not "fallen" ie broken the law, the earth would not have fulfilled its purpose. The rest of the earth outside of the garden would have just languished...

P.S. If you want to call a transgression a sin, that is fine by me. Get over it. It makes no difference in the overall scheme of things. Yes, any time we disobey God, it's a sin. To me the tree represents the word - the commandments - God began to speak to man under Adam and Eve. Before that they were innocent of the law. As Paul point out, then the law came, and I died. It is the law which renders the need for a judgment. Adam and Eve's "sin" or "transgression" brought spiritual death upon mankind. Before that, there was none. That seems serious enough to be a sin imho. It seems to be the definition of sin really. So what if Joseph Smith called it a "transgression?" It matters not. The effect is the same.

[RevTestament]

17 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Two of them were.  Everyone (even children) knows that life eternal does not come from a tree or its fruit.  Same for knowledge of good and evil.  Such knowledge does not come from eating fruit.  Trees which grow fruit for food can be literal, but not for eternal life or knowledge of good and evil.  One needs to think through the difference.  We have an old saying that "money doesn't grow on trees."  The expression is not meant to be taken literally.

Moreover, the entire Creation & Garden Story is "a temple story," according to Anglican Bishop Tom Wright.  The story of the creation of humans and their predicament with trees of knowledge and life are not a historical account, but rather a liturgical sequence dramatically acted out in temples.  In fact, the Babylonian story of creation, Enuma elish, was enacted as a liturgical drama in the main temple in Babylon each year.  That Babylonian creation drama (same as the Assyrian one) even included the same acts of creation and in the same order as in Genesis 1.  Scholars are astonished at the similarities.

Why the similarities, which can cause consternation?  Because God instituted that liturgical sequence at the beginning, and we find remnants of it throughout every culture and civilization.

Would you be willing to reach into your vast storehouse of knowledge and provide sources for some of your assertions here? LIke the Enuma elish being enacted in Babylon each year? Just as many sources as you can please. 

I happen to agree with you - that the Enuma elish and the story of Gilgamesh were not the originals copied by later Jewish scribes while in their Babylonian diaspora, but that they themselves had an earlier source. In fact one was found which dates to 1900 BC: 

Irving Finkel's Ark Tablet
A collector brought a tablet into the British Museum in the 1980s which Irving Finkel, the assistant curator, began to translate. The Museum was eventually able to obtain the tablet, which based upon style and wording has been dated to 1700 - 1900 BC, making it perhaps the oldest extant example of the Sumerian flood myth. 
In his book, The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood, Finkel offers the first translation of this small tablet of 60 cuneiform lines. This includes a description of the animals entering the boat two by two.

If we keep going back in time, I think we end up with the original source as you said, being instituted by God.

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, RevTestament said:

Would you be willing to reach into your vast storehouse of knowledge and provide sources for some of your assertions here? LIke the Enuma elish being enacted in Babylon each year? Just as many sources as you can please. ...................

Ephraim Speiser discusses it in the first volume of the Anchor Bible, Genesis (Doubleday, 1964).  Here is a blurb from Wikipedia:

Quote

The Enûma Eliš (Akkadian Cuneiform: 𒂊𒉡𒈠𒂊𒇺, also spelled "Enuma Elish"), is the Babylonian creation myth (named after its opening words). It was recovered by Austen Henry Layard in 1849 (in fragmentary form) in the ruined Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh (Mosul, Iraq). A form of the myth was first published by George Smith in 1876; active research and further excavations led to near completion of the texts, and improved translation.

The Enûma Eliš has about a thousand lines and is recorded in Old Babylonian on seven clay tablets, each holding between 115 and 170 lines of Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform script. Most of Tablet V has never been recovered but, aside from this lacuna, the text is almost complete.

This epic is one of the most important sources for understanding the Babylonian world view. Over the seven tablets it describes the creation of the world, a battle between gods focused on supremacy of Marduk, the creation of man destined for the service of the Mesopotamian deities, and ends with a long passage praising Marduk. Its primary original purpose is unknown, although a version is known to have been used for certain festivals, there may also have been a political element to the myth, centered on the legitimization or primacy of Mesopotamia over Assyria. Some later versions replace Marduk with the Assyrian primary god Ashur.

The Enûma Eliš exists in various copies from Babylon and Assyria. The version from the Library of Ashurbanipal dates to the 7th century BCE. The composition of the text probably dates to the late second-millennium BCE, or even earlier, to the time of Hammurabi during the Old Babylonian Period (1900 – 1600 BCE). Some elements of the myth are attested by illustrations that date to, at least, as early as the Kassite era (roughly 18th to 16th centuries BCE). * * * 

A ritual text from the Seleucid period states that the Enuma Elis was recited during the Akitu festival.^[46] The purpose of the reading, if it occurred, and even the identity of the said text to be used as this festival is a matter of debate amongst scholars. Most analysists considered that the festival concerned and included some form of re-enactment of Tiamat's defeat by Marduk, representing a renewal cycle and or triumph over chaos, however a more detailed analysis by Jonathan Z. Smith led him to argue that the described ritual should be understood in terms of its post-Assyrian and post-Babylonian imperial temporal context, and may include an elements of psychological and political theater addressing the non-native origin of the Seleucid rulers who then controlled the area; he also questions whether the Enuma Elis read during that period was the same as that known to the ancient Assyrians. Whether the Enuma Elis creation myth was created for the Akitu ritual, or vice versa, or neither, is unclear; nevertheless there are definite connections in subject matter between the myth and festival, and there is also evidence of the festival as celebrated during the neo-Babylonian period that correlates well with the Enuma Elis myth.^[47] A version of the Enuma Elis is also thought to have been read during the month of Kislimu.^[48][49]

It has been suggested that ritual reading of the poem coincided with spring flooding of the Tigris or Euphrates in following the melting of snow in mountainous regions upstream – this interpretation is supported by the defeat of the (watery being) Tiamat by Marduk.^[50] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enûma_Eliš .

 

 

Edited September 21, 2019 by Robert F. Smith

[mfbukowski]

10 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Of course.  The Exodus of Israel from Egypt was real, but the Passover is a holy ordinance of the Jews -- and was on that first night in Egypt.  Jesus and his Apostles ate Passover, a real one, but which was a liturgy, and we still celebrate it each Sunday as liturgy by eating actual bread and water.

Yes, and there are many actual Adams & Eves performing that liturgy all the time.  In fact, Adam and Eve are archetypal names, not the actual names of any one person.  Adam is Hebrew for "man, mankind."  All the great non-LDS scholars agree on that.  Yet real people play that role everyday, including the first to have played that sacred role.

Elder Holland is in full speculative mode here, but his instincts are correct at each point.  Not being from a high, liturgical tradition (such as Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, or Anglicanism), he doesn't automatically see things in liturgical terms.  Rather than understanding the timeless quality of such events, he tends to think in sequential terms.  Mormons frequently think like Methodists, while relegating their own esoterica to an ethereal realm.  They seem unable to fully integrate or absorb the deep things of God.  That's the Protestant and Pioneer ethic talking in modern Mormon culture.  When will be become the Saints of the Last Days?

We have a long way to go, and I hope the deadline is farther out than it seems lately, or it could be VERY few who catch the train before it pulls out of the station.  Sometimes it seems we are running in reverse, but it has improved in the last 40 years, starting I think with FARMS and all of that.  Thanks for that and thanks Bob, for the great post and all those great points!

We really need to grow up and actually understand this as adults should understand it.  We have been stuck at Perry 2 or 3 for too long.

The notion that there were and ARE real Adam and Eves living the story every day is the key.  We are talking about real people here every single time they enact the story in their lives.

Edited September 21, 2019 by mfbukowski

[The Nehor]

11 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Of course.  The Exodus of Israel from Egypt was real, but the Passover is a holy ordinance of the Jews -- and was on that first night in Egypt.  Jesus and his Apostles ate Passover, a real one, but which was a liturgy, and we still celebrate it each Sunday as liturgy by eating actual bread and water.

Yes, and there are many actual Adams & Eves performing that liturgy all the time.  In fact, Adam and Eve are archetypal names, not the actual names of any one person.  Adam is Hebrew for "man, mankind."  All the great non-LDS scholars agree on that.  Yet real people play that role everyday, including the first to have played that sacred role.

Elder Holland is in full speculative mode here, but his instincts are correct at each point.  Not being from a high, liturgical tradition (such as Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, or Anglicanism), he doesn't automatically see things in liturgical terms.  Rather than understanding the timeless quality of such events, he tends to think in sequential terms.  Mormons frequently think like Methodists, while relegating their own esoterica to an ethereal realm.  They seem unable to fully integrate or absorb the deep things of God.  That's the Protestant and Pioneer ethic talking in modern Mormon culture.  When will be become the Saints of the Last Days?

Of course we are all supposed to reenact it as well and they are archetypes. I do not go to the temple for a history lesson.

I agree with Elder Holland on it being literal as well. I suspect Elder Holland understands the archetype. Even if he was not an apostle the rest of his talks and even that one show he appreciates the universality of the concepts of Fall and Atonement.

I choose to embrace the temple presentation as both in the same way I accept the Atonement as both mythic and something that actually happened.

[mfbukowski]

12 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Brigham Young,

Joseph F. Smith, John R. Winder, Anthon H. Lund, First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,

Spencer Kimball and Bruce McConkie both emphasized that stories about creation of Eve from a rib, or of eating fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil are figurative (not to be taken literally).

Bruce McConkie not only shared this same view, but extended it to include the partaking of fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Mormon Doctrine 2nd ed. (1966), 242; "Eve and the Fall," in Woman (1988), 60.

Even evangelical christians agree on this approach:  John Walton, “Origins Today - Genesis Through Ancient Eyes,” https://youtu.be/qsZddI-Tr4I .

Prior to 1990 also of course in the prelude to the presentation of the endowment it was flat out stated that the story was figurative in respect to the "man and the woman"

[mfbukowski]

2 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Ephraim Speiser discusses it in the first volume of the Anchor Bible, Genesis (Doubleday, 1964).  Here is a blurb from Wikipedia:

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enûma_Eliš#Dating_of_the_Myth

I find it fascinating that even the ancient Babylonian script it speaks of creation through the definition of words and "naming".  To create something is to "name" it.

In the beginning was the Word....

I have added the emphasis

Quote

 

When on high the heaven had not been named,

Firm ground below had not been called by name,

Naught but primordial Apsu, their begetter,

(And) Mummu†-Tiamat, she who bore them all, Their waters commingling as a single body;

No reed hut had been matted, no marsh land had appeared,

When no gods whatever had been brought into being,

Uncalled by name, their destinies undetermined—

Then it was that the gods were formed within them.

First eight lines of the Enuma Elis. Pritchard 1969, pp. 60–1
† Here Mummu may be an epithet, different from the god Mummu

 

Quote

 

Lord, truly thy decree is first among gods.

Say but to wreck or create; it shall be.

Open thy mouth: the Images will vanish!

Speak again, and the Images shall be whole!

(Other gods speak to Marduk) Translation, Table IV. Lines 20–. Pritchard 1969, p. 66

 

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Tablet 5[edit]

Marduk makes likenesses of the gods in the sky, creating constellations, and defines the days of the year from them. He creates night and day, and the moon also. 

 

 

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Construct Babylon, whose building you have requested,

Let its brickwork be fashioned. You shall name it 'The Sanctuary.'

(Marduk commands the other gods aka the Anunnaki)
Translation, Table VI. Lines 57–. Pritchard 1969, p. 68.......

 

Tablet 7[edit]

The remainder of Marduk's fifty names or titles are read.

 

 

 

Edited September 21, 2019 by mfbukowski

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enûma_Eliš#Dating_of_the_Myth 

...........primordial Apsu...........

That is the Abyss or Deep in Genesis 1

[Robert F. Smith]

3 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Of course we are all supposed to reenact it as well and they are archetypes. I do not go to the temple for a history lesson.

I agree with Elder Holland on it being literal as well. I suspect Elder Holland understands the archetype. Even if he was not an apostle the rest of his talks and even that one show he appreciates the universality of the concepts of Fall and Atonement.

I choose to embrace the temple presentation as both in the same way I accept the Atonement as both mythic and something that actually happened.

Of course they happened.  The point is that they were liturgical on that first occasion as well.  That's what everyone seems to miss.

[Ahab]

On 9/20/2019 at 5:17 PM, JLHPROF said:

I'm afraid I disagree. 

No need to be afraid if you do.  Just own up to it.  We each have reason and evidence to support our own beliefs, I suppose.

On 9/20/2019 at 5:17 PM, JLHPROF said:

Without the fall there would have been no resurrection. 

If there had been no fall then resurrection would not have been necessary.  Adam's and Eve's physical condition before the fall is what we will be restored to when we are resurrected. The thing they gained was knowledge of good and evil, and in that state they were innocent before God just as a baby is innocent when it doesn't know what is good or evil.

On 9/20/2019 at 5:17 PM, JLHPROF said:

The fall was the plan all along.  How do we know?  Because we selected a Savior to redeem us from the fall before there was one. 

Yes our Father knew that Adam and Eve would fall, eventually, and our Father did put a plan into effect before it even happened.  But that is not the same thing as saying the fall was necessary. Or perhaps we just need to define the reasons why the fall was necessary.  Necessary for what?  Necessary for them to be able to gain knowledge of good and evil, yes.  But necessary for their lives to continue while they remained innocent of any sin before God, no the fall was not necessary for that.

On 9/20/2019 at 5:17 PM, JLHPROF said:

The plan was to fall.  It was intentional. 

Yes Adam and Eve did intend to make that choice which resulted in their fall.  And I believe our Father knew they would fall before he sent them down there.  But I don't think it was necessarily our Father's intent for them to fall, just as it wasn't necessarily our Father's intent to have people kill his beloved son by crucifixion.  He knew both were going to happen and he was prepared for it but I don't think that's the same thing as saying he intended for both of those events to happen.

On 9/20/2019 at 5:17 PM, JLHPROF said:

Adam and Eve chose to break a law to achieve the result God needed.  God had to warn them of the consequences of breaking a law.  But he had already set apart his heir to reverse the effects.  It was always supposed to happen.

Looks to me like you're going to disagree with me no matter how much I try to explain my reasoning to you.  Oh well.  You must choose for yourself what you believe to be right, of course.

[Ahab]

On 9/21/2019 at 12:43 AM, Robert F. Smith said:

A more correct translation of "rib" is "side" and our illustrious brethren have told us repeatedly for generations that Eve was taken from the side of Adam.

..................

Brigham Young,

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    “Though we have it in history that our Father Adam was made of the dust of this earth and that he knew nothing about his God previous to being made here, yet it is not so; and when we learn the truth we shall see and understand that he helped to make this world and was the chief manager in that operation.
    “He was the person who brought the animals and the seeds from other planets to this world and brought a wife with him and stayed here. You may read and believe what you please as to what is found written in the Bible. Adam was made from the dust of an earth, but not from the dust of this earth. He was made as you and I are made, and no person was ever made upon any other principle.”      Journal of Discourses, 3:319.

“yet man is the king of kings and lord of lords in embryo.”  Journal of Discourses, 10:223.

 

I think sometimes some people are so intent on disagreeing with me that they can't see when they do in fact agree with me.

The physical bodies of both Adam and Eve were made from the dust of the earth they were created from, whatever planet that earth was on, and the dust of that earth Eve's physical body was created from was taken from the side of Adam's physical body.

Or at least that is my understanding of the story and I am sticking to it.

 

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, Ahab said:

I think sometimes some people are so intent on disagreeing with me that they can't see when they do in fact agree with me.

The physical bodies of both Adam and Eve were made from the dust of the earth they were created from, whatever planet that earth was on, and the dust of that earth Eve's physical body was created from was taken from the side of Adam's physical body.

Or at least that is my understanding of the story and I am sticking to it.

It is undeniable that every animal and plant on Earth is composed of naturally occuring elements ("dust, dirt").  The question is whether a god sits down at the potter's wheel and forms humans from wet clay, and that is not how it takes place.  What Brigham and the Brethren are saying is that all humans, including Adam & Eve, are formed by regular sexual reproduction.  The stork did not bring us, and we are not formed from someone's rib.  Not ever.

[Ahab]

4 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

...we are not formed from someone's rib.  Not ever.

Partners are sometimes formed from each other's side, though.  Or as they stand side by side, as equals. 

Or as in the case of Adam and Eve,  since Adam was created first, physically, before Eve, then Eve (Adam's partner before and to continue as his partner after her creation) was created from the side of Adam, which was her place.

 The word "rib" is what got some people's understanding all screwed up.  What we need to hear more about is how a husband and wife should work side by side as equals, both before and after they are married and even before they are created for each other, physically.

[The Nehor]

On 9/13/2019 at 9:26 PM, JLHPROF said:

I understand.  Petersen and Talmage both make convincing arguments.  Enough on Talmage's part that he established a whole new doctrinal belief system for the Godhead in the Church at the beginning of the 20th century.

I often wonder what percentage of today's Church membership would choose to join the 19th Century Church  (if they retained our current cultural outlook).  I don't think many of today's membership would choose to join the 19th Century Mormon Church.

 

I would. My ideas on the Godhead and the Plan of Salvation are idiosyncratic enough to work with either.