What you think about Fall of Man (Adam and Eve)?

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Kewl!
I've never heard that one.

I'll add that to my collection.

Have both thought that myself, and heard it before: that the expulsion from the Garden of Eden was a metaphor for the transition from a hunter-gatherer economy (living within nature), to an economy based upon agriculture and domestication of plants and animals (mastery over nature).

This makes the most sense to me. And the female offering the male the apple, is like she is offering her fertility ... again the larger population.

It's true they could not have known better at the time, but maybe the whole point is so that they would know better; they had to make that one bad choice out of ignorance so that in the future they would have the knowledge to choose. So it was a necessary evil so that free will could come into existence. It's what makes us different from the animals. So the fall was not a good or bad thing, but an unfortunately necessary thing.

Not that I believe this literally happened to historical characters, but it is a myth that speaks to the human condition. Adam and Eve are supposed to represent all man and womankind, and the story of their fall can be applied to the individual as he or she grows from the state of innocence/ignorance of the child into an adult.

Culturally and historically applied, however, I agree with androbot01 and slave that it is a metaphor for the birth of agriculture. Before agriculture, people lived off the land, like Adam and Eve did. Once people settled, they became able to start accumulating wealth, which rise to class distinctions, jealousy, warfare, oppression.

The fact that the curse involved having to til the soil speaks to the agricultural interpretation.

How does the fall apply to you?

What is your downfall?

Perfection?
Food?
Guilt?
Sibling rivalry.

Mine are all the above and streaming brain flow. .. And I digress. ...

God had one rule
"We" broke it
613 ish more laws were brought to us by someone who started out a basket case.

me considering going to a drum circle soon.
Zvi.

You do know you are talking about mythology???

I am typing not talking.

And reading

And smiling

And going on with evening activities.

I do agree that graphic novels are part of the mythology of the 20 and 21st century.

I do think folks are trying to make a point.

Spoiler alert
if you are planning on reading all 66 books of The Bible

We win.

As creation/charter myths go, The Fall of Man of the Abrahamic religions is neither the worst, nor the best... It's quite easy to see how it can be used as a tool for oppression of women given how it was Eve who was "corrupted" first by eating an apple from the Tree of Knowledge...

However, the Hindu creation myth (a story about the sacrifice ff the primordial Purusha) is a lot worse, as it laid the foundation for the infamous the four-tier Indian caste system (Varna) - and the subsequent oppression of those unfortunate enough not to be part of the Varna - The Dalits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varna_(Hinduism)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalit

I personally prefer the Buddhist approach:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_o ... oned_Arrow

What is a pity to my opinion, is that many people tend to completely dismiss the story of the fall of man
But imagine these people, who wrote it, imagine that they had the feeling they came upon a very imporant truth here, but were just not capable to describe it in another than a mythological way. That's why I like the story, what could it be, that these people were trying to grasp.

And if this is a truth, not necessarily an "eternal" one, but it could just be that is part of a though process. Even our thinking now is "in process" (although many people on this forum tend to have "seen the light" already).

My hope, because I'm hopelossly religious, is that this thought process is part of the divine. And that when currently new arguments against God are on the rise, new arguments pro God will also come up, reinterpretation of the old ones, reinterpretation of old truths, still the same, but also something else. "Second fall of man". "Second redemption". Third one, Fourth one

Btw: according to some scholars, theories about a paradisiacal past and a future kingdom of God could have arisen at the same moment, although in the Bible Genesis is at the start and the Kingdom is at the end. But the biblical stories do not have to be written in chronological order.
It might even make sense why, people can dream of an arcadic past as much as of a glorious future. As long as they can escape the reality of everyday life for a moment.

The circles I run with might be seen as suspect but regardless:

The story of Genesis and expulsion from Eden seems to cover the idea of animal intellect rising to the level of being able to consciously perceive desirable vs. noxious stimuli rather than this simply being a pre-conscious process. Gaining knowledge of good and evil was simply that - moving psychologically into a new world were the opposites are part of the cognitive process.

(alternately with memorializing the agricultural revolution I think you have a more direct analogy for that with Cain killing Abel)

The serpent is often cited as being part and parcel with kundalini (or Fohat if one wants to give a deific name to it), which is a bit like saying the life drive itself brought this to pass.

At least with the way some interpret the parable of the Prodigal Son it's a journey of moving down into and getting wrapped up in the nature of opposites and then learning to nuance our way back out of them which is a significant aspect of the return trip home.