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Is the apple the forbidden fruit that is the cause for needing the priesthood, wearing garments and going through the temple? Or is the eating of the apple the ritual that made Adam a man in the first place? I thought JS taught that before Adam came to earth, wherever he was before, he was the angel Michael, and eating the fruit of this earth gave him his human body from whatever spiritual form it was before, therefore loosing his divinity. I was never endowed so maybe this theology is clarified during the temple ritual.
I don’t think the temple ceremony has much more clarification than what you read in the bible or the Book of Moses on the subject – it is not any more specific…it is symbolic in nature, like the scriptures. My belief has always been that God made Adam as a man, and then created Eve as woman, but were in an immortal state in the Garden, to walk in the presence of God and live forever in a garden that spontaneously produced fruit and growth without the need of a gardener.
It was by taking of the forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve’s bodies were changed, to mortal bodies with blood that can become sick and die and reproduce. Although I personally believe the transformation was by the power of God, not a chemical change introduced by a fruit of some kind (apple isn’t specified anywhere that I know of). Michael was a spiritual man in heaven, and his spirit entered the body of Adam when God created Adam in the Garden, Adam was then an immortal man, then Adam became a mortal man when he partook the fruit and God banished him from the Garden.
I like to think of the fruit of the tree of “knowledge of good and evil” as symbolic to the actual partaking of the knowledge. I think the meanings can run rather deep with this one. The true purposes of God required Adam and Eve to partake – why did he command them not to partake?
Why did the “serpent” need to convince Eve to partake, when they needed to end up eating it before they could progress anyway?
Do we face any similar situations in our lives? (the parallels could be many)
Are there other parallels to the story that we should consider?
Well, I’ll give it a go, I guess.
spacious maze wrote:Is the apple the forbidden fruit
The forbidden fruit is symbolic (in my opinion only), and was not an apple per se, though the ‘brethren’ were careful to specifically state that it was not symbolic of sexual activity. I agree with that.spacious maze wrote:that is the cause for needing the priesthood, wearing garments and going through the temple?
The ‘apple’ demonstrates that there had to be a trigger to get the Fall underway, and that the trigger was problematic (or, paradoxical) and under the control of Adam & Eve (us). The Fall is the cause for the need of garments and temple, although the priesthood itself specifically goes well beyond the Fall, both before and after, according to the temple. The ascension theme of the temple is all about returning to heaven.
spacious maze wrote:I thought JS taught that before Adam came to earth, wherever he was before, he was the angel Michael, and eating the fruit of this earth gave him his human body from whatever spiritual form it was before, therefore loosing his divinity. I was never endowed so maybe this theology is clarified during the temple ritual.
That’s
archangelto you, bub! 😆 uhm. Adam is not looked at, typically, as ‘divine’ unless you’re going the direction of the Adam-God teachings. I’m kinda hoping you’re not going there, but it’s not clear to me as to whether you are or not.
I’m not sure what you’ve said is documented as being from Joseph, though I do believe he did teach that. In written form, it’s typicaly Brigham Young that is quoted on these things. BY did say it came from Joseph, though, IIRC. BY did definitely say that Adam and one of his wives (!) came to the Garden of Eden so they could eat physical fruit and thus change their immortal bodies to mortal bodies.
I am 100% confident that he intended this to be metaphorical, not literal. Since he described the whole rib-into-Eve thing to be a child’s “fairy-tale”.
😆 HiJolly
I see the whole narrative as figurative – and probably of our pre-mortal existence and how we needed to accept the Father’s plan but then “follow Lucifer” in order to fulfill our ultimate potential. (I also don’t believe the original story included an apple.) Iow, I don’t believe at all in a literal Garden of Eden. Old-Timer wrote:Iow, I don’t believe at all in a literal Garden of Eden.
I personally tend in the same direction as Ray. The creation story is a very deep, powerful and symbolic myth. By myth, I don’t mean fake, false and irrelevant like a child’s story. It is vitally important! The story of Adam and Eve goes back as far as history and writing. Permutations are found in all cultures, even ones that should never have had contact with others and shared this story.
I currently think this story should be applied and understood through our life experience. We are Adam and Eve. I don’t personally think it is a news story, a literal journalistic account of the first two humans on the earth. A tangible fruit did not transform them physically via chemical processes. It may be a way of talking about the natural evolution of or even tweaking of human-like creatures and making them into what we think of as humans today, like you and me. I think it may be a story talking about interaction between divine “supernatural” beings and humans. I also think it may be a way of talking about spirit beings (us) lowering ourselves into a tangible reality to experience corruption and refinement — AKA the “Plan of Salvation.”
It is interesting to note that the Jews got this story from the vast Sumerian library material available while in captivity in Babylon (circa 600 BC if I remember right). The word we have translated as “Serpent” in the English Bibles comes from a Hebrew word that they also translated from Sumerian. In the original Sumerian, this word could indicated a “Serpent” like a snake. But it was also a word that was a title something like “The keeper/protector of hidden wisdom.” It’s sort of like kids today saying someone is a “beast” which means they are really cool and impressive, not that they are literally a beastly animal.
So in the Garden of Eden, the Keeper of Hidden Wisdom (the serpent) offers the fruit, which even in the story is described as an awakening into a new, previously not-experienced awareness of opposites, of the difference between good and evil.
Ray, Valoel, Do you believe Adam and Eve were real people who had those names and started the human family? Heber, I believe there was a “first man and woman” – into whom God inserted spirits to create humans. In 1909, the First Presidency published what I think was a masterpiece entitled “The Origin of Man”. I know someone who argues that it denounces evolution, but it has two paragraphs that I find fascinating. My beliefs are summed up quite well in that statement, especially in those paragraphs.
The link to the whole statement is:
The passage says:
“It is held by some that Adam was not the first man upon this earth and that the original human being was a development from lower orders of the animal creation. These, however, are the theories of men. The word of the Lord declared that Adam was “the first man of all men” (Moses 1:34), and we are therefore in duty bound to regard him as the primal parent of our race. It was shown to the brother of Jared that all men were created in the beginning after the image of God;
whether we take this to mean the spirit or the body, or both, it commits us to the same conclusion: Man began life as a human being, in the likeness of our Heavenly Father. 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.” That last sentence is fascinating to me.
Ray, Valoel, really insightful responses. Old-Timer » 11 Aug 2009, 18:49 Quote:I see the whole narrative as figurative – and probably of our pre-mortal existence and how we needed to accept the Father’s plan but then “follow Lucifer” in order to fulfill our ultimate potential. (I also don’t believe the original story included an apple.) Iow, I don’t believe at all in a literal Garden of Eden.
Question , Ray and others: If you don’t believe in a literal Garden of Eden, what do we do with Luke 3:38. They are giving the genealogy of Jesus back to Adam where it says Adam was a son of God. Also, Brigham Young said the only method used by God for peopling worlds, was the birthing process. So was Adam placed in the garden?
jeriboy wrote:
Question , Ray and others: If you don’t beleive in a literal garden of eden, what do we do with Luke 3:38. They are giving the genealogy of Jesus back to Adam where it says Adam was a son of God. Also, Brigham Young said the only method used by God for peopling worlds, was the birthing process. So was Adam placed in the garden?
In the NT we find two separate genealogies for Christ. Neither one works. Therefore, they are symbolic, much like a parable.BY also said that the story of Eve being made of Adam’s rib was a “child’s fairy tale”. So don’t look at BY too literally, either. Especially when he’s speaking of the creation/Garden of Eden.
HiJolly
Luke 3:38 could be accurate or not, no matter whether or not there was a literal Garden of Eden. Frankly, the two aren’t related at all. One lays out ancestry; the other describes a location story. No correlation whatsoever. Same with the Brigham Young quote. When you parse it carefully, it actually supports an evolutionary creation for Adam’s body – saying it was through “the birthing process” that Adam’s body was created and the world was populated. That quote seems to support an allegorical interpretation of Eden, but it also could be used by those who believe in a literal Eden to support a belief that Adam was placed there after his physical body had matured but before his immortal spirit was placed inside it.
i just think the easiest and most profound interpretation is a symbolic, allegorical one – and NONE of the “good” in a literal interpretation is destroyed by a symbolic, allegorical one, imo. (Fwiw, I feel the same way about Noah and the flood. I think the power doesn’t lessen at all if it was a local flood that was globalized for dramatic and allegorical effect. I actually think treating it allegorically gives it a deeper interpretive power than requiring it to be literal.)
Quote:Old-Timer said…Same with the Brigham Young quote. When you parse it carefully, it actually supports an evolutionary creation for Adam’s body – saying it was through “the birthing process” that Adam’s body was created and the world was populated.
I was under the impression that Luke 3:38 was to be taken literly, that the garden of eden was prepared for God the Father and one of his Eternal companions. And that their eating of the fruit was how Adam and EVE was created from the dust of the earth, the same as you and I, meaning he is a son of God. I once had the thought that this could not be true because it says that Jesus is the only begotton of the father in the flesh. However McConkie says in Mormon Doctrine page 741, under the title Son of God, that Father Adam, the first man, is also a son of God. Again, it is amazing how difficult it is to reach a consensus on just about any point of doctrine.
I’m a bit lost, jeriboy. In all my years in the Church and in all the places where I’ve lived, I’ve never heard that one about the Garden of Eden – and calling Adam a son of God could mean almost anything, even coming from non-apostle McConkie’s book. Seriously, I’ve never heard that explanation of Luke 3:38 or that interpretation of the Garden of Eden. I really don’t know what else to say.
Quote:Old-Timer said…Seriously, I’ve never heard that explanation of Luke 3:38 or that interpretation of the Garden of Eden. I really don’t know what else to say.
I would be more than happy to bury it if no one has heard about it. I am 66 and perhaps come from an older school of thought. If you have an interest read the quote in Mormon Doctrine and perhaps ask some older well informed person, if nothing comes of it we can give it a proper burial. ” The terrible thing about the quest for truth is that you might find it.”
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