Describe best as you can, the Garden of Eden and the serpent.

SGM Barry Kindred — Sun, 21 Aug 2016 12:52:18 -0400

Is it a snake as written?
Or something much much more different than described?

Response by SGM Barry Kindred made Aug 21 at 2016 12:54 PM

SGM Barry Kindred — Sun, 21 Aug 2016 12:54:31 -0400

What if the serpent described lolled like her, talked like her, and knew what God said?

Response by SGT Private RallyPoint Member made Aug 21 at 2016 12:55 PM

SGT Private RallyPoint Member — Sun, 21 Aug 2016 12:55:35 -0400

Do you want knowledge or life? We chose knowledge.

Response by Maj John Bell made Aug 21 at 2016 12:58 PM

Maj John Bell — Sun, 21 Aug 2016 12:58:08 -0400

The garden, me and my wife where ever. The snake, TV.

Response by ENS Private RallyPoint Member made Aug 21 at 2016 5:08 PM

ENS Private RallyPoint Member — Sun, 21 Aug 2016 17:08:02 -0400

And God said, you can have anything you want here, and eat from any tree, EXCEPT THAT ONE. And such is life, a woman goes against all common sense and eats that very apple she's been told not to eat... then she realizes, "shit, this makes me look bad.. Oh I know!... Adam, I picked this for you!" Of course, Adam eats the Apple not knowing it is from the tree - he's been tricked. God punished Eve for going against his word and Adam for trusting a woman. Adam has learned a valuable lesson, perhaps just as God has intended. And such is life.

By the way, if a woman blames her disobedience on a talking snake in the woods, and no one else was around to hear or see said mystical snake, was there really a snake in the first place? More importantly - is it even worth arguing over?

-I'd like to add that this isn't my personal opinion, rather a shipmate of mine told the story just like this the other day at work and I couldn't help, but laugh. I wanted to share it with the group. I hope you all can find humor in his and not take it in bad taste.

Cheers!

Response by MSgt Michael Smith made Aug 21 at 2016 10:16 PM

MSgt Michael Smith — Sun, 21 Aug 2016 22:16:11 -0400

It's a myth, so it can be whatever you want it to be. Evil tempts the weak.

Response by SSG Private RallyPoint Member made Aug 29 at 2016 8:18 PM

SSG Private RallyPoint Member — Mon, 29 Aug 2016 20:18:12 -0400

A good way to gain insight into the story of the Garden of Eden is to study and contrast the Garden of the Hesperides stories. In the Greek stories, the snake’s mission is to guard the golden apples instead of seducing humans into taking forbidden fruit. It’s also interesting that while the Hebrew story mentions a tree of eternal life and a tree of knowledge, there only exists a tree of life in the Greek story. It’s possible that in both stories the snake is protecting the tree of life. Since many elements of the story are common to many cultures, I think it likely that this story has been around for a very long time.

One of the main problems I see with the Hebrew version of the story is that attaining knowledge of good and evil was an act of disobedience to God. It reminds me of the story of Prometheus, who stole fire from the Gods and gave it man. The problem here is that to someone unable to distinguish between good and evil, how could they not be seduced by the serpent’s words? How could I avoid eating a green apple if I was colorblind? Man would have only known after eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge that eating from the tree and disobeying God was wrong. A mankind unable to distinguish between good and evil is not mankind, even my dogs are able to understand the difference between right and wrong, good and evil. I'm not sure how you could address this issue.