to you, lisa an apple represents health. symbolically it represents beauty. remember im speaking from a psychologicl point of view (as i learned from my psych classes), not my own.

Lisa:
It's true (I believe) that guys like to control women. They like to control everything. Have you ever seen a guy without a tv-remote control.

Control leads to power. It's a pity that nearly all institutions (like the Church) are historically controlled by men (just like the Roman empire). They live on power.

Hopefully the next 2000 years will see a co-operation of male and female.

I have to say that I think people who get power tend to want to keep power, whether they are male or female. I know a number of women who are in positions of power, and they are just as capable as a man of defending their position ... just think of women you know on PTA boards or 'matriarchs of the family' ...

Hi,
I read a speculative piece forty or so years ago on the allegorical significance of the Adam and Eve myth. The author, whose name escapes me, pointed out that the Hebrews were an ethnic minority in Egypt at the time, with an entirely different religious philosophy which had the earliest known incest taboo. The Egyptians, on the other hand, went for line breeding their royalty like racehorses. This, according to the aforementioned speculation, was anathema to the Hebrews, who believed this sort of selective breeding was wrong: eating of the fruit of the Tree of Life (family tree?).

I have never seen this theory postulated since, but to me (one whose field this is not) it struck a chord at the time and seems as good an explanation as any other.

A wise man once told me that some will take the bible literally and some will take the bible contextually...neither is incorrect it is what we believe.

I think though that most religions have some sort of story about "once things were wonderful and then we screwed up" sort of a history. It's always nice to look back to wonderful days - sort of like how we envision the victorian era with horses pulling sleighs through pristine snowy woods, and ignore the nasty orphanages and coal mines and starving people.

It would be very odd to say that the Jewish people were anti-incest, so they wrote a story in which the founding members of their tribe *had* incest If their aim had really been to say that incest was bad, they would have had God create a whole bunch of people, who were all kicked out as a group, but that they still knew not to make love to their siblings ...

This discussion reminds me of questions that have cropped up in the past. There must be set answers, but I don't know what they are. Any ideas?

1. Where did the sons of Adam & Eve find their wives?

2. I think Adam is supposed to have married 'Lilith' after Eve. If that's right, where did she come from?

On point #1, Adam and Eve had lots of kids including girls, I think we have settled that they married the sisters. And that it was OK at the time, because it was God's plan that this happen. It was only much later that incest became bad.

Genesis 5:
"After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Adam lived 930 years, and then he died. "

I mean, Eve was made *from* Adam so she was a clone of him, if you want to start from there. And it was OK for them to have sex. That's just how God wanted things.

In fact in Genesis 6 it says:
"When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose."

So it says right there that they were marrying any they wanted

Right after the Bible talks about Cain and Abel being born, and Cain killing Abel, it says:

"And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch."

So Cain already was with his sister at that point.

On point #2, I looked on the web and found that Adam died first, with Eve crying over his body. I really have to say that these stories were written TONS of generations later so even if we assume they are true stories, the chance of people remembering the full exact truth is probably very slim. I personally believe these are metaphors and not actual reality, given the archaeological evidence we have about our world. But as far as the *stories* go, they seem to say that Adam and Eve were together until he died.

I agree Lisa I think these are metaphors which goes back to what I said earlier and taking the bible literally or contextually. How is it possible to have to 2 of the same race create mulitple ethnic groups? I feel that story is basically God created man and woman and said be fruitful and multiply.
Anyways if we look at the evolution suggestion that we came from apes, then why is it that evolution of apes are not continuing to happen. Why hasn't there been some guy walk out of the forest and somebody say hey where did you come from? and he replies hey I don't know I was an ape a few minutes ago!(sorry I know that wouldnt happen but you understand my point?)
If you reply evolution happens over an extremely long time I will agree with you but time hasn't stopped since as we should see apes changing to humans in our life time