And the lord said “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”
I think this excerpt from the bible is interesting. It proves that the serpent did not deceive Adam and Eve when he said they’d be like God. It says it right there. The question is how? If knowledge makes man like God, then is God really this preternatural force? Or is he like the Wizard from the Wizard of OZ, a man behind a curtain controlling an illusion? And what did he mean “Like us”? Does God have peers?
This is all in argument from the perspective of someone who’s not involved with magick and the occult.
This is one of the point that I think worthy of discussion, for example with a priest, if only to understand. I also raised an eyebrow reading the part where God “forbids” man to eat from the tree of life, although according to an explanation it was in order to be redeemed.
Some possibilities are that YHVH is a man turned god, and that “us” refers to the Trinity.
An author of magick wrote a theory about life’s frailty and a divine error that (still theoretically) a magician may try to correct. His interpretation of Genesis is that the tree of good and evil and the one of life are the same, which isn’t necessarily true, but nevertheless interesting…
I wouldn’t consider the Bible a reliable source of information. It’s been edited numerous times to accommodate for the Church’s political views. Even then, many of the stories aren’t meant to be taken literally. Some of them may have happened, but it’s likely they were embellished.
The answer seems self-evident. The “god” is pluralistic (i.e. one of many) and that man has consumed the Promethean fire and is now also a “god” by his own definition. Note too the censorious imperative “he must not be allowed”. What “fatherly” figure would say such a thing?. Succinctly exposes the nonsense, fallacies and illogicality in the Old Testament - and by default, within the entire Bible.
This is completely false, and I don’t know how this misinformation keeps getting around. The manuscript evidence for the Bible is staggeringly large compared to other texts of the same time period and we have access to Bible’s written throughout the years, and it isn’t just wholehandedly edited every few centuries. It’s surprisingly accurate, and the newer translations are practically as close to the original documents as we can get.
This is an audacious claim indeed! Since the council of Nicaea the bible has been altered and rewritten. And thats without the gnostic gospels. Even a cursory glance at later editions show very little resemblance to original texts.
You show the fact that you don’t know a single thing about what you’re talking about by bringing up the Council of Nicaea, which had nothing to do with the canon of Scripture whatsoever.
You’ll notice that there’s nothing to do with the Bible anywhere there. The books that composed the Canon of Scripture weren’t even officially a matter of faith (because no one questioned them before the Protestant Reformation) until the Council of Trent.
But we have over 25,000 manuscripts of the New Testament specifically, and less than 10,200 Old Testament manuscripts.
The next best is the Illiad with 643 manuscripts.
While there are variants among the texts of the Bible, they are hardly substantial.
If I bow to your, clearly, superior knowledge on canonical matters, my question still remains about the Dead Sea Scrolls and the gnostic gospels, such as those taught by the Ethiopian church and not in the Kind James bible?
Right, there are different sects that have more books. This is because the early Church did not have a lot of unification. And many city churches added to the books they already had. St. Pope Damasus I made a list of the canon for the Roman Church around 382 AD at the minor council of Rome. But, the Eastern Churches did not get the memo and continued to add to their canon.
I don’t think “best” is a good question. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church certainly has the largest canon, but I don’t know that it makes it the best.
We know about the differences of canons from many places. For example, in St. Dionysius I of Corinth’s letter to St. Pope Soter I, stated that he had added St. Pope Soter I’s previous letter to his Church’s canon, as well as making mention of the late St. Pope Clement I’s letter that they also added to their city canon.
So we can safely say, the average bible that most people know - the Gideons bible for instance festooning most motel bedrooms, is not a complete bible.