God forbade Adam to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, warning him that the day he ate from it, he would die without remedy. To convince Eve to eat the Forbidden Fruit, the snake told her that she would in no way die, but that God knew that the day they ate, their eyes would open and they would be like gods, knowing good and evil. After Adam and Eve ate, their eyes were indeed opened and they didn’t die, and Adam lived more than 800 years.[1]
It makes no sense that God, the main protagonist of Genesis, doesn’t fulfil his threat. Therefore, we must investigate how He can be right, and the serpent, whom we tend to associate with the devil, is mistaken.
Since God warned Adam and Eve that if they ate the forbidden fruit they would die, we assume that prior to this they were immortal. Although we tend to associate immortality with never dying, we can also associate it with the ability to remember previous lives as this entails acknowledging that life continues after death.
Being aware of past lives allows one to live in harmony because it entails realizing that what one does to another in this life, another will do to him in the next life. Those who are not aware of the laws of karma may think they can get away with bad behaviour if they’re smarter or stronger.
By eating the forbidden fruit, and no longer remembering their past lives, Adam and Eve didn’t die physically, but spiritually. They became mortal when the fear of what would happen to them after death began to mark their lives.
Earlier on, we reflected on the difference between pure (7 pair of each species) and impure animals (1 pair of each species) and also on how pure animals repopulated the earth. We then discovered that the best way to avoid incest and inbreeding was that, with each new generation, each male lineage from father to son, crossed with each of the 7 female lineages, always from mother to daughter, in such a way that 8 generations later it did so again with the first female lineage. And we also discovered that there are 8 generations between God (the generation before Adam) and Enoch and that this explains why Genesis indicates that Enoch walked with God.[2]
Each individual [can be regarded as the result of the crossing of the male lineage of his father with the female lineage of his mother. These lineages may have crossed before and may do so again in the future. Genesis suggests that if they do so after crossing with each of the 7 lineages of the other sex, they attract the same spirit. Enoch was the reincarnation of god; the reincarnation of Adam’s father.
After being cursed by God, Adam called his wife Eve, which means ‘living’, because she was going to be the mother of all the living. Immediately afterwards, Yahweh God said: “Now that the man has become like one of us in knowing good from evil, he must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat and live forever.”[3]
The information that Eve is the mother of all living suggests that through the mother one inherits the inability to remember past lives. The information that God decided to prevent Adam and Eve from living forever hints that God knew that they were going to try to lengthen their lives.
If one reincarnates when X generations later the male lineage of his father crosses again with the female lineage of his mother, one can lengthen his life by preventing that these two lineages from crossing again.
Although Yahweh said: “let their days be 120 years”, the sum of the ages of the first seven patriarchs is 7 x 7 x 120 – 1 year. The fact that the age of each patriarch is not 7 x 120 years implies that the age of each patriarch affected the ages of the other 6, and that Adam and his direct descendants managed to lengthen their lives to the maximum.[4]
Several biblical stories mention the tradition of sacrificing the firstborn to a god named Baal or Molech. It is difficult to understand how parents were able to sacrifice their firstborn. In the event that they thus managed to lengthen their own lives, it means only that their fear of death and their love for themselves was stronger than their love for everyone else.[5]
When we read the Bible, and reflect upon reincarnation, we can ask a lot of questions: If there are continually more people on Earth, where do the new souls come from? Is there a limited number of souls? What happened to the souls of all those who died in the Flood? What will happen when all those souls find bodies in which to reincarnate?
Since in the days of paradise couples only had one son and one daughter, the pattern that souls followed to get from one body to the next was much simpler. After the expulsion from paradise, violent deaths altered this pattern. By having more children, to replace those who died in a violent way, it wasn’t clear through which son the lineage of the patriarch passed. Although normally it is the first-born son, he doesn’t always look like his biological father. This is because a child’s mother is not always the first person that the child’s father slept with.
The story about Judah and Tamar says that Er, the firstborn of Judah, was evil in the eyes of Yahweh and that Yahweh put him to death. Er was evil in the eyes of Yahweh because he had slept with another woman, before sleeping with Tamar, the spouse that Judah had chosen for him. Er didn’t die physically because he accompanied Jacob when he entered Egypt. He only died spiritually because the pattern that the soul of God followed, and that had passed through the male lineage of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Judah, was no longer going to pass through him.[6]
When we reflect upon immortality –never dying–we realize that it has its drawbacks: if nobody dies, nobody can be born either because then there would continually be more people, so that eventually there would no longer be enough room for everyone on Earth. The idea of life that renews itself is more attractive because it entails being able to enjoy the different stages of life and seeing children and grandchildren grow up.
BIBLE REFERENCES: [1] Gn2:16 / Gn3:4-7 / [2] Gn7:2-3 / Gn5:22-24 / [3] Gn3:20-22 / [4] Gn6:3 / Gn5:3-24 / [5] Jr7:30-31 /Dt12:31 / Ju2:11-13 / [6] Gn38:1-7 / Gn46:12
The next 10 articles are:
5 PHILOSOPHY versus THEOLOGY 0 Adam and Eve
6 PHILOSOPHY versus THEOLOGY 0 The snake
7 PHILOSOPHY versus THEOLOGY 0 Cain and Abel
8 PHILOSOPHY versus THEOLOGY 0 Cain’s descendants
9 PHILOSOPHY versus THEOLOGY 0 The Flood
10 PHILOSOPHY versus THEOLOGY 0 Noah
11 PHILOSOPHY versus THEOLOGY 0 Evil since childhood
12 PHILOSOPHY versus THEOLOGY 0 Repopulating the Earth
13 PHILOSOPHY versus THEOLOGY 0 The tower of Babel
14 PHILOSOPHY versus THEOLOGY 0 An only language
15 PHILOSOPHY versus THEOLOGY 0 Whores
16 PHILOSOPHY versus THEOLOGY 0 20 patriarchs