Abortion and Original Sin

Post Reply New Topic

Suffering is awareness of the context in which you undergo pain. For example, if you needed to cut my arm off to save me from a pack of zombies, I would miss the arm but would not suffer so much. It would be extremely painful but pain is temporary. The context in which I lost my arm was reasonable considering I still have my life. Now... if you fed my arm while i was alive to a pack of dogs and I lived afterwards, I would have suffered through the act and long after it because of the context in which I lost it - it was un-necessary and cruel.




I am not projecting my ideas. One must ask the question: Why did they not complain about being kicked out of the Garden... were they contempt? Were they scared? They were told that they would die and they were still alive... perhaps they were just happy to be alive, either way the text has a reason for everything, and there are words for punishment, suffered, etc. Or perhaps because it is not central to the story's message. Sometimes those interpretations/translations are lost in the various movements that have come about since it was written, but what I write are the questions that the rabbi's and jewish scholars have also pondered centuries - his first action is name his wife, and their second action is sex. The sex part makes sense, the naming of his wife does not. And neither makes much sense unless it was a voluntary choice, or they were just short-sighted and totally forgot what had just happened to them prior.




Like I said before, the story is largely alogorical and those guards are symbolic of barrier to entry. That guards with flaming swords was merely God putting Eden off-limits to humanity - you can't be immortal or know everything - in their attempt to be like him. That they would have preferred to remain there - I don't know - you never hear another complaint from the two following their banishment. The term torah means to teach or instruct. What is being taught in the story..., you don't read in any sense an attempt to go back to Eden - perhaps because it is not important to the message of the story, who knows.






This is the closest to mine that you'll find(it is a bit more literal: http://www.breslov.com/bible/Genesis3.htm#1) but my understanding of Genesis is from commentary from various jewish scholars:

Gunthar Plaut (Reform),
Nahum Sarna,
Shlomo Yitzhaki (somewhat Orthodox),
Samson Raphael Hirsch (Orthodox),
Dennis Prager (Reform),
Azarya Berzon,
Harold Kushner (Progressive Consrvative),
Abraham Joshua Heschel (Orthodox, Conservative)

but particularly Nahum Sarna and his powerful in-depth writings on understanding Genesis. Jewish traditions (Reform and Conservative) similar reading of the text is where I get my own as I was biblically illiterate a few years ago until I began reading the diverse works of those rabbi's/scholar's. I don't claim to author these opinions; they are the thoughts and interpretations of rabbi's throughout history.

For the sexless procreation I was talking about the awareness that came from eating of the fruit. It is clear that God had told them to procreate prior them eating of the fruit and they probably saw all the animals reproducing in the same manner, but only after they became "aware" (from eating the fruit)of their nakedness did procreation go on to take a new meaning. For animals, it is just merely a physical act, much like eating. With most if not all animals, awareness of the ugly, the beautiful, the romantic, the erotic, the dirty side of sex is a non-issue. It doesn't come up. It is not imbued with eros in any way.

Perhaps they were punished, and perhaps I am taking the wording too literal. The word punished is never used and there is no unfavorable reaction from the two characters of the story, and if there were, the text would have made light of that to illustrate humanities unhappiness with Gods ruling.

The guiding principle that - everything in the torah is for our benefit, not God's - influences a lot of this. Even if they were punished for trying to be God, it would be for humanity's benefit in how we treat one another. To play God is to assume the roll of right-giver and history is littered with examples of Humans playing God over one another and the devastating consequences of that pursuit are almost never pretty. But it is not punished in the sense of: you pissed a God off, you must suffer the rest of your existence for it. I guess that is the tone that I am reacting to. You can't make God happy or unhappy, angry or sad, unless it is relateing to your treatment of other human beings.

My interpretation that we opted out of Utopia(as utopia cannot exist for humans in our current state) doesn't sit well with you is fine - it doesn't quite sit well with me either. Existence is not questioned by a buffalo or squirrel. Its death is largely just a physical act. It doesn't reflect on all the various places it visited in its youth. When it mates, it is largely a physical act. And it does not suffer - it goes through pain, but that is it. In the final analysis, for most,

Childbearing is painful but the mother doesn't suffer so much unless she knows that the baby she is about to deliver may end her own life - then, even if she wants the baby to live instead of herself, there is a sense of suffering as she deals with both delivering a child and the possibility of ending her own life.. Suffering is awareness of your situation and the context behind your pain. or simply dreading for months the birth of a baby you did not have with your husband, especially if the babys biological father is of a different ethnicity - there would be suffering involved as its birth may sever your relationship with him. Context is key. A mother eagerly anticipating the birth of her child does not suffer. Undergoing pain and suffering are two different things.

Perhaps they suffered as we suffer today, I am fully prepared to admit that. I am probably reading the too literal and reacting too literally to the word "suffered" and "punishment" because it is not used/mentioned, especially when the Torah has words for it and use it when it is central to our (the reader) understanding of its concepts.

I think you are using a very different definition of suffering than I am.

I disagree. I don't see how you are deriving your interpretation from the text. Perhaps I am missing something. If so, please explain.


It's pretty sparse on dialog. You can't just fill in the omissions with any arbitrary fantasy. Alternate filler details that could be inserted are equally plausible without supporting the same interpretation.


OK, I don't see any real difference between that and my translation, at least not in content or meaning.


Are there any good online sources of their writings?