The tree of life vs. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil

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gkroo

Banned
#21
Aug 18, 2015
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#21
Pro_15:4 A wholesome tongue is a tree of life: but perverseness therein is a breach in the spirit.

Rev_2:7 He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.
Rev_22:2 In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
 
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gkroo

Banned
#22
Aug 18, 2015
193
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#22
The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil are both in the tongue.

Pro_18:21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.
 
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Omni

Banned
#23
Aug 12, 2015
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#23
What I find interesting about this topic is that Christians and Jews tend to view this in different ways. Whereas Christians generally take the position that the story is a story about the origin of evil, death, and suffering, Jews often take a more practical stance: that knowledge of good and evil is necessary for humans to be able to make thought out autonomous decisions that lead to better consequences.

In most Jewish interpretations, humans have an innate desire towards "Tikkun Olam" (or, "healing the world"), while evil as a concept (HaSatan) and as an inclination in all humans (Yetzer Hara) is something to be sifted away if this Tikkun Olam is to be realized. And to that effect, it is essential that people "eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil", in order to be able to make such distinctions and make thought out decisions to begin with.

The Christian interpretation seems to be more dogmatic than that: the world was perfect when Adam and Eve had no knowledge of any distinction between good and evil, and they ruined it for the rest of us by eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The problem with this is that evil as a concept in potentio, already existed in the Garden of Eden (personified in the serpent), and it was separated from goodness (which requires evil as its contrast). Both Adam and Eve had no knowledge of either of these until they actually ate the fruit.

In that vein, I tend to think more of this story as an allegory for growing up. If a child has no knowledge of good and evil, yet the outside world ("beyond Eden") contains both, it is necessary at some point for the child to begin learning how to make distinctions between the two. Good and evil are two opposing facets of a dualism that comes to fruition in the minds of humans only when they begin to learn to distinguish them from one another. Until that point, they don't subjectively exist.
 
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