Speaker 1: Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Here thousands of
Speaker 1: hours of Dennis's lectures courses in classic radio programs. Had
Speaker 1: to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles. Go to Dennisprager dot com.
Speaker 2: Ongoing Study of Genesis. We have reached all the way
Speaker 2: to chapter three, so you've only missed two chapters. I
Speaker 2: hope that, my regular class, that you brought some Bibles
Speaker 2: with you. If not, I will read the sentences anyway.
Speaker 2: And it's not a worry one second. Please, I'm I
Speaker 2: announced that after don't forget in the midst of the
Speaker 2: drama of Genesis. Yes, just a.
Speaker 3: H okay.
Speaker 2: Now last week, no last section whenever. That was two
Speaker 2: weeks ago. That's right, two weeks ago. You recall the
Speaker 2: creation of women took place. By the way, I think
Speaker 2: some A word about a subject that is often raised
Speaker 2: is do Genesis one and Genesis two have different creation accounts?
Speaker 2: This is one of the bases by which people frequently
Speaker 2: speak of the what's called a documentary hypothesis.
Speaker 3: Who wrote the Torah is.
Speaker 2: A is one of the great ongoing riddles of both
Speaker 2: religious and non religious people. I don't have an answer
Speaker 2: to that, as I've often said I am intellectually open
Speaker 2: to whatever scholars show me. At the same time, I
Speaker 2: treat it as if it's divine, So there I allow
Speaker 2: my intellect free reign. My intellect is always open to
Speaker 2: reading what scholars write. On the other hand, I do
Speaker 2: not close my religious soul to the divinity of the text.
Speaker 2: I found music is the best analogy that I can give,
Speaker 2: and I've given it frequently because I love music and
Speaker 2: it's helpful. I do not find that I enjoy music
Speaker 2: more the more I study about modulations of keys and
Speaker 2: the use of triads and so on and various works.
Speaker 2: There is a given point I found others may not
Speaker 2: where in my study of music, I enjoyed the music
Speaker 2: less the more I studied how it was written, that
Speaker 2: I ended up seeing e flat instead of hearing a
Speaker 2: gorgeous melody that happened to me. It may not happen
Speaker 2: to you, but it can happen to people. And I'm
Speaker 2: afraid that a lot of scholars of Bible see all
Speaker 2: the notes but don't hear the music. I want to
Speaker 2: know the notes, but I am more interested in the
Speaker 2: final analysis in the music. Do Genesis wanted to conflict
Speaker 2: I don't think so. To the modern mind, we write
Speaker 2: stories as follows and January eighth, the following happened on
Speaker 2: January tenth, This happened in February, the following happened, and
Speaker 2: we go on.
Speaker 3: That's how we moderns write. Now.
Speaker 2: I have no problem with that, But that's not how
Speaker 2: the Torah was written. But whether it is by God
Speaker 2: or by man, that is not how people wrote in
Speaker 2: the ancient world. It was stories without chronological interest. Generally speaking,
Speaker 2: they would give the story and if they had another
Speaker 2: version of the story. Whereas our mind says, look two
Speaker 2: stories that contradict each other.
Speaker 3: That's not how they thought.
Speaker 2: They said, Wait a minute, reality has a great many
Speaker 2: angles to it in some ways, that's more sophisticated. Wouldn't
Speaker 2: you think that it would be interesting to read I
Speaker 2: don't know about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 3: Let's say, and you read it, you read three stories
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 2: They each accentuated different details, Lincoln's perspective, John Wilkes booth perspective,
Speaker 2: the country's perspective, just to make up three. Wouldn't that
Speaker 2: be an interesting way of reading about it? I think
Speaker 2: it would illuminate more. But then somebody will say, uh huh.
Speaker 2: You see it couldn't have happened the way it was written,
Speaker 2: because one story gives you this perspective and another gives
Speaker 2: you this. For example, in one case it says, and
Speaker 2: God created Adam male and female.
Speaker 3: He created them.
Speaker 2: Then in the next one you have God created Adam,
Speaker 2: and how is the woman? She doesn't get a name yet,
Speaker 2: how is the woman created? It was created by the way,
Speaker 2: as I pointed out, from his side, not from his
Speaker 2: rib from his side. So people say, you see, it's contradictory,
Speaker 2: But why is that contradictory? One statement is I want
Speaker 2: you to know God, or the author capital a smole
Speaker 2: A is saying, I want you to know that the
Speaker 2: human being is a full human, that there are male
Speaker 2: humans and there are female humans, and they are absolutely equal.
Speaker 2: Now in chapter two, I'll give you the details of
Speaker 2: how it happened. There are scholars who say, you see,
Speaker 2: it's contradictor which one do we listen to? One or
Speaker 2: two shows that there are two different versions here. I
Speaker 2: don't read it that way. It's not a defense of
Speaker 2: the text so much that I'm making as a defense
Speaker 2: of a sophisticated idea that you can get the story
Speaker 2: and you can have two different perspectives, but they're not
Speaker 2: contradictory in any way. Number If number one had said,
Speaker 2: if chapter one had said God created Adam male and female,
Speaker 2: he created them, and he created them at the exact
Speaker 2: same moment, and he never took her from his side,
Speaker 2: and then chapter two said that, you know what, Adam
Speaker 2: was created and then the woman was created from his side.
Speaker 2: So you know what, we have a contradiction. Otherwise, I
Speaker 2: don't see it as a contradiction. Thanks Ron, I don't
Speaker 2: see it as a contradiction. Just as more information. Remember,
Speaker 2: Torah means teacher. It does not mean history. Torah means
Speaker 2: it comes from the Hebrew verb lejorote, which is to teach.
Speaker 2: If you look at it that way, I think it's
Speaker 2: a much better way of understanding what's going on. Now.
Speaker 2: The last thing we learned in chapter two is that.
Speaker 3: Adam and his.
Speaker 2: Wife were naked, but they weren't embarrassed by the fact.
Speaker 2: Who is not embarrassed by nudity? The answer is, kids,
Speaker 2: what I said last week and will very very basically recapitulate,
Speaker 2: is I think you have in the story of the
Speaker 2: Garden of Eden, and I have always believed this. I
Speaker 2: think you have the story in the garden of Eden
Speaker 2: of every.
Speaker 3: One of us.
Speaker 2: Every one of us starts out in the garden of Eden,
Speaker 2: and we grow up. However, a lot of people want
Speaker 2: to stay in the garden of Eden. A lot of
Speaker 2: people don't want to grow up. In fact, the more
Speaker 2: I grow up or the older I get, some will
Speaker 2: debate whether I grow up that much. That's a separate issue.
Speaker 2: You already heard I was controversial. But the more I
Speaker 2: do get older, the more I realize that that's what
Speaker 2: life is about.
Speaker 3: Growing up.
Speaker 2: And of course is every one of us who is
Speaker 2: an adult knows. But this is one of the great
Speaker 2: secrets that children don't know, is that getting older and
Speaker 2: growing up have little to do with each other. It
Speaker 2: is one of the you know what I knew I
Speaker 2: was an adult when I met immature fifty year old,
Speaker 2: because when you're a kid, you just think, oh, fifty
Speaker 2: forty thirty, they're adults, they're mature because they got older.
Speaker 2: And then as you get older, you realize that's not
Speaker 2: true at all. There are people who never grow up,
Speaker 2: who don't want to grow up. That's the Peter Pan
Speaker 2: legend if you will. Women accuse a lot of men
Speaker 2: of doing that, for which reason a lot don't want
Speaker 2: to commit, because commitment takes it For men, in particular,
Speaker 2: an active of renunciation of part of their childishness, of
Speaker 2: gallivanting around the world as a kid forever, wandering from
Speaker 2: flower to flower. It's not I'm using a be analogy. Please,
Speaker 2: it was. Take it as an insult to women who
Speaker 2: be compared to flowers. But that's really what is involved
Speaker 2: in life, I am convinced is the act of growing up,
Speaker 2: and growing up means shedding a lot of the innocence
Speaker 2: it does. It's shedding innocence. It doesn't mean becoming coarse,
Speaker 2: you can do that when you shed innocence, but it
Speaker 2: does mean shedding the innocence of our childhood.
Speaker 1: This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Speaker 1: Now back to more of Dennis Brager's Timeless Wisdom.
Speaker 2: They were naked and didn't even know it. They weren't
Speaker 2: embarrassed by it at all. Everything was natural. They had
Speaker 2: no pain, they had no suffering, and as I pointed
Speaker 2: out last time, they were bored out of their mind.
Speaker 2: That is what I believe the text is in the
Speaker 2: final analysis, really wanting to tell us that if we
Speaker 2: could have a beautiful, beautiful life freed of all pain
Speaker 2: in the garden of Eden, or know it all, really
Speaker 2: have it all in the sense of understanding the nitty
Speaker 2: gritty of life with the ultimate nitty gritty, the sexual
Speaker 2: nitty gritty, we would opt for the pain and growing
Speaker 2: up and non innocence over no pain and innocence. That's
Speaker 2: what we would do. That's what I think. The story
Speaker 2: is here to tell us not so much that Adam sinned,
Speaker 2: though that is an element obviously, but rather that this
Speaker 2: is what it is to be human. Listen, the only
Speaker 2: thing that Adam was told not to do. It's amazing.
Speaker 2: He could do anything he wanted except one thing. Eat
Speaker 2: from the Tree of knowledge of good and bad. It's
Speaker 2: the only thing he couldn't do. And lo and behold,
Speaker 2: it's exactly what he did, by the way, which proves
Speaker 2: that eating from the tree is not what gave man
Speaker 2: the ability to choose between right and wrong. We had
Speaker 2: that ability prior to eating from the tree. What there was, however,
Speaker 2: was a contradistinction between two trees, the tree of knowledge
Speaker 2: of good and bad and the tree of life. And basically,
Speaker 2: what God is saying, and what the text is saying,
Speaker 2: is this, human beings, you have your choice. You can
Speaker 2: eat from the tree of immortality, or you can eat
Speaker 2: from the tree of knowledge of good and bad. But
Speaker 2: you can't eat from both. You want to be immortal, fine,
Speaker 2: go ahead, but you cannot then be fully human. You
Speaker 2: want to be fully human, then you die. That's what
Speaker 2: God said. You eat from that tree and you'll die, Okay.
Speaker 2: So that brings us to chapter three. Chapter three begins
Speaker 2: with the serpent being declared or the snake, or the
Speaker 2: serpent being declared the most cunning of all the animals,
Speaker 2: of all the wild animals that God made. And he
Speaker 2: said to said to the woman, which is interesting in
Speaker 2: and of itself. This whole thing, by the way, is
Speaker 2: very difficult stuff. That's why, as I pointed out when
Speaker 2: I first gave it, I waited a long time to
Speaker 2: teach this. I have taught Deuteronomy, I have taught Exodus,
Speaker 2: and I would never touch the beginning chapters of Genesis.
Speaker 2: It's still it's still in some ways puzzling, But I'm
Speaker 2: trying to sort out the puzzle with you. Well, first
Speaker 2: of all, why is the serpent used clearly. I don't
Speaker 2: know how clearly is appropriate a word. But what we
Speaker 2: have here again, and those of you who have been
Speaker 2: taking this with me, no much of the beginning of
Speaker 2: Genesis is to destroy polytheism. It's to destroy the gods
Speaker 2: of the of ancient human beings, of ancient man. One
Speaker 2: of them was the serpent. The serpent was a very
Speaker 2: revered symbol, as you can see in almost all ancient pictures.
Speaker 3: God uses the serpent.
Speaker 2: Here to chastise him, just as by the way, all
Speaker 2: the ten, well nine of the ten plagues against the
Speaker 2: Egyptians were against Egyptian gods. The first plague was against
Speaker 2: the Nile, which was an Egyptian god.
Speaker 3: It was turned to blood.
Speaker 2: The ninth plague was against Ra, the sun god darkness.
Speaker 2: What most Jews and non Jews do not realize about
Speaker 2: Judaism is that its real intent was to destroy Polytheism,
Speaker 2: is to destroy the worship of false gods. We have
Speaker 2: plenty of false gods today. But that brings me to
Speaker 2: an entirely different subject, which you can get it right
Speaker 2: outside the room afterwards. But in the meantime, this issue
Speaker 2: here is the destruction of false gods. One of them
Speaker 2: here being the serpent. Okay, so the serpent speaks to
Speaker 2: the woman. First question is why didn't the serpent speak
Speaker 2: to man? Good question, isn't it? Why didn't the serpent
Speaker 2: go to the man? Why did the serpent go to
Speaker 2: the woman? I don't have a complete answer, but it's
Speaker 2: the sort of question that makes reading this stuff come alive.
Speaker 2: When I learned this stuff as a kid in Yeshiva,
Speaker 2: that was the way we were taught to learn, and
Speaker 2: it's been the greatest, single, greatest vehicle of learning in
Speaker 2: my life. I read newspaper, articles, books and Torah in
Speaker 2: that way. Why did the author say X? And not?
Speaker 2: Why why didn't the serpent go to Adam? Well, you
Speaker 2: could have any number of thoughts that could come to
Speaker 2: the mind. First is he thought he'd have a better
Speaker 2: chance with the woman. I think that that's the most
Speaker 2: obvious answer that one might say. Is that a put
Speaker 2: down of women, that women are more easily talked into
Speaker 2: the wrong thing? Well, I don't think so, in light
Speaker 2: of how of what was done with Adam. I mean,
Speaker 2: when you will see how Adam got to eat from
Speaker 2: that tree, you can truly leave that text saying men
Speaker 2: are silly putty. I mean nothing in comparison to what
Speaker 2: the woman he put up no fight whatsoever is you'll see.
Speaker 2: So I'm not sure it's a statement that women are
Speaker 2: more easily changed or persuaded to do the wrong thing.
Speaker 2: What might have been is she was not instructed Adam was.
Speaker 2: She got it second hand. That's what I think is
Speaker 2: going on here, Rather than so much that the woman
Speaker 2: is a more persuadable creature than the man. That might
Speaker 2: be it might have been an element. I don't deny it,
Speaker 2: but I think the more obvious thing is God's instruction
Speaker 2: of not eating from the tree of knowledge of good
Speaker 2: and bad was given to Adam. It was not given
Speaker 2: to his wife. I'm not saying e because we don't
Speaker 2: know her as yet. That's the reason I'm not. I'm
Speaker 2: not giving her the name yet. That's my that's my suspicion.
Speaker 2: So the serpent speaks to her, and I'll read to
Speaker 2: you from the English translation I have, which is, none
Speaker 2: of them are great, they're just relatively good. And the
Speaker 2: uh and he said to the woman yep.
Speaker 3: Well it doesn't say yep, mind says yay.
Speaker 2: Now I prefer yep yea yay half God said, didn't
Speaker 2: God say you shall not eat of any tree of
Speaker 2: the garden?
Speaker 3: Already?
Speaker 2: This is really it's priceless. It is just priceless. The
Speaker 2: serpent is a major liar. He goes to the woman,
Speaker 2: or it goes to the woman and says, hey, didn't
Speaker 2: didn't God say you can't eat of any tree? He's
Speaker 2: totally made up. Do you see the what the serpent
Speaker 2: is trying to do here? If he would have said,
Speaker 2: if the serpent would have said what God really said,
Speaker 2: she wouldn't have been persuaded because she would have realized
Speaker 2: how reasonable God's demand was. But the serpent makes up something.
Speaker 2: Why did God say eat of all the trees? He
Speaker 2: actually said that God eat of all the trees except
Speaker 2: for one. Here comes the serpent and says, hey, didn't
Speaker 2: God say don't eat from every tree in the garden?
Speaker 2: Totally inverted what God had said. People do that all
Speaker 2: the time. In order to get people to do something wrong,
Speaker 2: to violate a law, they will exaggerate what the laws
Speaker 2: are to make them seem absurd. So he's delegitimizing already.
Speaker 2: That's another reason, by the way, that I believe that
Speaker 2: the serpent went to the woman and not Adam, because
Speaker 2: she didn't hear the actual directions, but rather he did
Speaker 2: so he could confuse the serpent can confuse her. So
Speaker 2: didn't God say, you can't eat from all the trees
Speaker 2: of the garden. So verse two, and the woman said
Speaker 2: to the serpent, of the fruit of the trees of
Speaker 2: the garden we can eat. But of the fruit of
Speaker 2: the tree which is in the midst of the garden,
Speaker 2: God said, do not eat of it, neither touch it,
Speaker 2: lest you die. Okay, she got it all wrong. The
Speaker 2: only part she got right was that God said you
Speaker 2: eat of all the trees. Why did she get wrong?
Speaker 2: Anybody realized what she got wrong? Why did she say
Speaker 2: here that has nothing to do with what God instructed touching?
Speaker 2: He never said don't touch it. She got it all wrong.
Speaker 2: It's like telephone. What we have here is that proverbial
Speaker 2: game of telephone, wherein I tell you something, you tell
Speaker 2: somebody else something, and by the end of it it
Speaker 2: is unrecognizable all God said. God really is getting a
Speaker 2: bad rap here. He sounds like he's a jerk. The
Speaker 2: serpent makes them sound like a jerk, and so does
Speaker 2: the woman. Don't touch it all he said was don't
Speaker 2: eat of it, and the serpent says, you can't do
Speaker 2: it of any of the trees. So God gets a
Speaker 2: bad rap, as it were. Now, Also, I don't have
Speaker 2: an answer for this, but there's a very interesting thing here.
Speaker 2: She said the tree in the middle of the garden.
Speaker 2: Why didn't she say the tree of knowledge of good
Speaker 2: and bad? Interesting, isn't it? Because I'll tell you why
Speaker 2: it's interesting. If you look at verse chapter two, verse nine,
Speaker 2: the tree that is described as in the middle of
Speaker 2: the garden is the tree of life. I don't have
Speaker 2: an answer to that, but you have to admit that
Speaker 2: that's pretty interesting. The words cannot have been, you know,
Speaker 2: erroneously thrown in it's they're too precise. The tree of knowledge,
Speaker 2: the tree of life is described.
Speaker 3: As the tree in the middle of the garden.
Speaker 2: And now she's telling the serpent we can't eat or
Speaker 2: touch of the tree in the middle of the garden.
Speaker 2: So she got it all wrong. She identified the tree wrong.
Speaker 2: She said that we can't touch it, and the serpent
Speaker 2: got wrong. As I said in his original question.
Speaker 1: Okay, this episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Speaker 1: Now back to more of Dennis prager's timeless wisdom.
Speaker 2: Next verse number were three. But of the fruit of
Speaker 2: the tree, which is in the midst of the garden,
Speaker 2: God said, do not eat of it, nor touch it,
Speaker 2: lest you diverse four. And the serpent said to the woman,
Speaker 2: you won't surely die.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: Now that's interesting. I wonder how he knew. I'm very serious.
Speaker 2: It is an interesting question. How did he know that?
Speaker 2: I don't have an answer, but you gotta admit it
Speaker 2: does make it. Serpents sound fairly impressive. Maybe that's why
Speaker 2: it's called the most cunning of the animals. Who knows,
Speaker 2: Maybe he figured it out. What exactly will happen? Anyway,
Speaker 2: that's what he says. For God knows that the day
Speaker 2: you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and
Speaker 2: you'll be like God, knowing good and evil. This is
Speaker 2: very heavy stuff. Okay, what is the serpent doing here?
Speaker 2: The serpent is doing something critically important for us. Remember,
Speaker 2: you got to read it always. What do I learn
Speaker 2: from this? Or you're not understanding what the thing was
Speaker 2: written for? What whom is the serpent now blaming for
Speaker 2: this law?
Speaker 3: God?
Speaker 2: The serpent is doing a very interesting thing. He's saying
Speaker 2: to her, you got this law from God because God
Speaker 2: needs the law, not because you do. Is that clear
Speaker 2: to you? He's saying. The serpent is saying, he's afraid
Speaker 2: the day you eat it, you'll be like him. You'll
Speaker 2: know good and evil just like God knows. So he's afraid.
Speaker 2: That's why he gave you the law. Miss That's what
Speaker 2: the serpent is saying. If you would understand that, then
Speaker 2: you would realize it's not for your sake. I can't
Speaker 2: tell you how important this is, because a lot of
Speaker 2: people think that laws, religious laws are given for God's sake,
Speaker 2: and that immediately renders them. I believe unworthy of being followed.
Speaker 2: Every law, any religious law, to be worth its salt,
Speaker 2: has to be given.
Speaker 3: For our benefit, not for God's benefit.
Speaker 2: If you are told in Judaism to keep the Sabbath,
Speaker 2: you are not told to keep the Sabbath for God's sake.
Speaker 2: You are told to keep it for your sake. God
Speaker 2: can't be made happy or sad, as it were, through
Speaker 2: a law. They are given for us. This law was
Speaker 2: given for us, not for God's sake. But the serpent
Speaker 2: turns it around. He is worried if you do this,
Speaker 2: So the law's not for you, madam, it's for God.
Speaker 2: Now you know why it begins verse one, and the
Speaker 2: serpent was very cunning. Now you realize how inverted everything is.
Speaker 2: First it gives you a ridiculous law, don't eat from
Speaker 2: any of the tree trees. Then he gives you. Then
Speaker 2: when we understand the real law he gave you, it's
Speaker 2: obvious that it's solely given for God's sake, not for
Speaker 2: your own.
Speaker 3: By the way, what does knowing good and bad mean?
Speaker 2: Or good and evil? What is the tree of knowledge
Speaker 2: of good and evil mean? The more that I have
Speaker 2: delved into this, the more and the more I look
Speaker 2: at where tov varah, good and bad are listed together
Speaker 2: as a unit in the Bible, it generally means everything,
Speaker 2: knowledge of everything. In other words, for we have it
Speaker 2: in English where we would say, well, you know, he knows,
Speaker 2: he knows the pros and the cons. If you know
Speaker 2: the pros and the cons of something, you really know it. Well, right,
Speaker 2: you got to know both sides. That's what it really means,
Speaker 2: knowing both sides. That's a that would be the tree
Speaker 2: of knowledge of both sides would probably be the most
Speaker 2: accurate translation, not literally accurate, but in explaining what it's
Speaker 2: what it involves. So it's the tree of knowledge of
Speaker 2: everything of both sides. You will know, you will know
Speaker 2: them if you eat there now.
Speaker 3: Verse six.
Speaker 2: Uh, by the way, just I'm sorry, I'm five. We
Speaker 2: have here a classic presentation of the way all of
Speaker 2: us tend to do what's wrong. First we would overstate
Speaker 2: the prohibition, then knock the motives of the pro of
Speaker 2: whoever prohibited it, and then realize and then say, I
Speaker 2: won't really suffer from it. It's almost like, for example,
Speaker 2: with drugs. With narcotics, people will say people who will
Speaker 2: use it will say, well, you know, they just banned.
Speaker 2: The government bans everything. This is just another thing that
Speaker 2: they're banning. Number two, why do they knock it? Because
Speaker 2: they want to deprive me of real freedom. It's not
Speaker 2: for my sake, it's for the government's sake to have
Speaker 2: more power or whatever the reason might be.
Speaker 3: And Third, if I take.
Speaker 2: It, I'm not going to really suffer from it, whatever
Speaker 2: it is that is. We often use that type of
Speaker 2: argument to enable ourselves to do something wrong. That's exactly
Speaker 2: what happens here verse six. And when the woman saw
Speaker 2: that the tree was good for food, that it was
Speaker 2: a delight to the eyes, and that it was desired
Speaker 2: to make one wise. She took of the fruit and
Speaker 2: ate for the next part. It's a very interesting thing.
Speaker 3: I think that we have here a very.
Speaker 2: Interesting assessment of the woman. The woman is tempted in
Speaker 2: every way. She's tempted by her eyes, she's tempted by
Speaker 2: her appetite, and she's tempted by her mind. That's very important,
Speaker 2: and I think that in some ways it makes her
Speaker 2: look a lot better.
Speaker 3: It wasn't merely wow.
Speaker 2: And she was convinced by the serpent, and it looked good,
Speaker 2: and she ate no. She thought about it. She looked
Speaker 2: at it after hearing the arguments, and one of the
Speaker 2: arguments for doing it. And you know the word seiko.
Speaker 2: That word is here las guille to become sensical, to
Speaker 2: become sensed wise. That's the word that is used. That
Speaker 2: was one of the three things that appealed to her.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you something. If something appeals to your eyes,
Speaker 2: your appetite, and your mind, that's the triple threat. As
Speaker 2: they say, it is very hard to say no to
Speaker 2: one of them, let alone to all three of them.
Speaker 3: Who would you.
Speaker 2: With the promise that you actually might know everything as
Speaker 2: a result, you wouldn't eat of it. It's an interesting question.
Speaker 2: I think what the text is saying here. Please understand
Speaker 2: why the woman was tempted. Okay, now she took of
Speaker 2: it and she ate. I find this all so impressive
Speaker 2: on her part. After all, you figure she could have
Speaker 2: said to herself, maybe we will die when we eat it.
Speaker 2: I'll give it to my husband first, right, he'll be
Speaker 2: my official taster. Doesn't say that she took it. In
Speaker 2: other words, she's stuck by her convictions. If I am
Speaker 2: gonna eat, if I am gonna do it, I will
Speaker 2: eat first. And it says she took from its fruit
Speaker 2: and she ate.
Speaker 3: She didn't die.
Speaker 2: Now, remember it's remember God said when you eat from it,
Speaker 2: you'll die. She obviously didn't die, so she can only
Speaker 2: conclude the serpent's right.
Speaker 3: That's interesting, isn't it.
Speaker 2: I totally understand why would she would give it to
Speaker 2: her husband after that?
Speaker 3: It makes perfect sense. The serpent seems to have.
Speaker 2: Turned out right. I didn't die. My eyes are opening.
Speaker 2: The thing's delicious. I'm getting wiser and wiser and newter
Speaker 2: and neuter by the moment. And that's terrific too, because
Speaker 2: sex before nudity was very boring. And here we go.
Speaker 2: So what happens. It's the end of that. And she
Speaker 2: also gave to the man with whom she.
Speaker 3: Was and he ate. Okay, now you have to admit.
Speaker 2: That she comes out somewhat more impressive than he does. Here,
Speaker 2: that was it. The serpent goes through this whole routine.
Speaker 2: You will be wise. God is wrong. Don't you want
Speaker 2: to know everything? She looks at the tree. It's beautiful.
Speaker 2: She'll get wiser a whole thing. And with him he adam, Here,
Speaker 2: here's an apple.
Speaker 1: This episode of timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Speaker 1: Now back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom.
Speaker 2: Now, now this is This is a very interesting thing.
Speaker 2: It really is. It's actually a puzzle to me how
Speaker 2: easily he ate? What is one to conclude from this?
Speaker 2: There were two possibilities only either he knew what it
Speaker 2: was a fruit from the tree of knowledge of everything,
Speaker 2: or he didn't know what it was. Now we don't
Speaker 2: know that doing it's a very interesting thing. It doesn't
Speaker 2: say she didn't say, here, look, this is from the
Speaker 2: tree of knowledge of good and bad. You'll love it.
Speaker 2: I ate from it and look at me, I'm I'm
Speaker 2: happy and alive, and the serpent's doing a beautiful dance
Speaker 2: and we're all thrilled. Nothing like that happened. She just
Speaker 2: said here, did he know? It's a very I don't
Speaker 2: have the answer to that, but it occurred to me
Speaker 2: studying this that that's a real question. Did he know
Speaker 2: what he was eating? We we don't know. For shoe,
Speaker 2: it looked different from any of the other fruit. So
Speaker 2: now there are two possibilities. If he knew what it was,
Speaker 2: why did he eat? Okay, on the assumption that he
Speaker 2: knew it was from the forbidden tree, which God himself
Speaker 2: had forbidden Adam, why did he eat from it? I
Speaker 2: don't have an answer except to say, possibly that he
Speaker 2: had total trust in her, or he was totally controlled
Speaker 2: by her. It was very possible. We don't, I mean
Speaker 2: psychologically or however.
Speaker 3: We don't know.
Speaker 2: But if he didn't know what it was, it is
Speaker 2: fascinating that he took it so easily, no questions, nothing,
Speaker 2: What if he didn't know what it was. If he
Speaker 2: didn't know what it was, then she is an sob
Speaker 2: see that that's important. If he didn't know what it was,
Speaker 2: she tricked him.
Speaker 3: Is that right 'tis a fruit.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a fascinating issue which maybe more years of
Speaker 2: study will lead me to one conclusion or the other.
Speaker 2: I have to believe. Please hold it because I want
Speaker 2: to go through. Do write it down though I want
Speaker 2: to take questions later. Please don't forget it, and any
Speaker 2: of you, if you have anything to say, please write
Speaker 2: it down because I want to take stuff later. I
Speaker 2: just don't want to stop in the middle. But that's
Speaker 2: a very tough issue. My suspicion is he knew what
Speaker 2: it was. The reason I do is because God wouldn't
Speaker 2: have punished him. Otherwise God only would have punished her,
Speaker 2: if punishment is a correct term. And last week I
Speaker 2: noted that I don't fare if he didn't know what
Speaker 2: it was, how could he be held culpable. So my
Speaker 2: suspicion is he knew what it was. And look, his
Speaker 2: wife's chewing Adam here. She's not dying, she's loving it.
Speaker 2: And uh, I guess that's why he did it.
Speaker 3: He was he was somewhat.
Speaker 2: Malleable when God was talking to him. He was very
Speaker 2: influenced by God. When his wife was talking to him,
Speaker 2: he was very influenced by his wife. Adam basically was
Speaker 2: whoever got to me last?
Speaker 3: I listened to.
Speaker 2: Him next verse and the eyes of them both were opened,
Speaker 2: and they knew that they were naked. Now that is fascinating.
Speaker 2: That is about as fascinating a verse as exists in
Speaker 2: the torum. You know, you're imagine it's your first time
Speaker 2: reading the text. I would think that the single most
Speaker 2: curious thing in your mind, the thing you're most curious
Speaker 2: over is what'll they learn when they eat from the
Speaker 2: tree of knowledge of good and bad? Right to me,
Speaker 2: that's the suspense of the story, not what'll happened to them? Well, yeah,
Speaker 2: wattle happened to them, but not in the sense will
Speaker 2: God kill them? But wattle happened to them. What will
Speaker 2: be different? One thing, and only one thing is mentioned.
Speaker 2: They discover sexuality. They knew sex. They had to have
Speaker 2: known intercourse because they were told to be fruitful and multiply,
Speaker 2: and that was the only way to do it. By
Speaker 2: the way, it's a fascinating question to be able to
Speaker 2: have intercourse without really knowing sexuality. Now animals do it though,
Speaker 2: so an effect what they had I assume was intercourse
Speaker 2: Allah animals, wherein you did it? It was one of
Speaker 2: the pleasurable acts of your life. But animals don't go
Speaker 2: around embarrassed at their nudity. It's just one of the
Speaker 2: acts that they perform in order to procreate the species.
Speaker 2: Was that what sex was like prior to eating from
Speaker 2: the tree of Knowledge? I don't think there's an answer, obviously,
Speaker 2: but it is interesting they learned their naked In other words,
Speaker 2: they learned the sexy side and the naughty side of sex,
Speaker 2: the bad side, the top side, because there are a
Speaker 2: lot of sides to sex. As that great.
Speaker 3: He just was killed.
Speaker 2: He was a UCLA professor of psychiatry. Stolar Robert Stoler
Speaker 2: wrote a book called Sexual Excitement. I think he was
Speaker 2: one of the leading psychiatric thinkers human thinkers of our time.
Speaker 2: He was killed by a speeding kid driver a couple
Speaker 2: of months ago, and it's really it's an unbelievable loss
Speaker 2: at any rate. Stoler wrote in this book, he wrote real,
Speaker 2: which is why he was controversial. He actually wrote about reality.
Speaker 2: And he wrote at the end of one chapter, I
Speaker 2: never memorized books. I can't. I mean, I never rememorized lines.
Speaker 2: That's not my gift to memorize. But I committed to
Speaker 2: memorization the last two lines of one of his chapters.
Speaker 2: One of the pre eminent psychiatrists in the world. He
Speaker 2: was writing on male female love making, and he said,
Speaker 2: let me see if I remember. I don't remember it exactly.
Speaker 2: See that I committed two lines to memory and forgot
Speaker 2: one of them, but I remember the second. The first
Speaker 2: line was something to the effect of when people when
Speaker 2: people have sex, it is not frequently love making too bad.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, in the scientific treatise about human beings,
Speaker 2: you don't expect the writer to write too bad as
Speaker 2: the end of the chapter. But what he was pointing out,
Speaker 2: which I think a lot of us like to deny
Speaker 2: in our desire to romanticize life, is the non loving
Speaker 2: element of sex, which is a very powerful part of it.
Speaker 2: After all, you love your child, you love your parents,
Speaker 2: you love maybe a cousin or a friend, but you
Speaker 2: don't want to make love to them. If it were
Speaker 2: only love, then we would be making love to all
Speaker 2: the people we love or want to make love to them,
Speaker 2: but we don't. And you know how powerful non sexual
Speaker 2: love is. You have it for your children. That's very powerful,
Speaker 2: at least when they're young. And just joking, just joking,
Speaker 2: and so you know the power of non sexual love.
Speaker 2: Clearly sex is a lot more and often not even
Speaker 2: about love. There can be very unloved having powerful sex.
Speaker 2: And that's a very powerful force that was unleashed when
Speaker 2: they did this, And that really, in effect is what
Speaker 2: divides us from our innocent child childhood from adulthood. That
Speaker 2: divides everybody that you can't help that you simply grow
Speaker 2: into an understanding of those differences.
Speaker 3: So that's the.
Speaker 2: Thing they learned. They were no longer innocent, and we
Speaker 2: all know what innocent means, and it has to do
Speaker 2: with that big dragon in our lives which concerns our sexuality.
Speaker 2: So what did they do. They immediately made for them
Speaker 2: fig leaves and made them into in modern Hebrew, it's' belts.
Speaker 2: But the assumption is that they were wider than belts
Speaker 2: what they made for themselves. So it says, I have
Speaker 2: here girdles. Translation is anybody aprons coverings? They're all good? Okay?
Speaker 2: Was mini skirt? Is that what I heard from their numbers?
Speaker 2: Wouldn't that be funny? And she made for herself a
Speaker 2: mini skirt all right? Next next verse, and they heard
Speaker 2: the voice of God of the Lord God walking in
Speaker 2: the garden toward the cool of the day or the
Speaker 2: spirit of the day, might even be better. Actually, I
Speaker 2: think than cool of anybody have spirit of the day
Speaker 2: or what wind of the day? Breezy time. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: have not figured out why that was thrown in. It
Speaker 2: might have meant more to the ancients than to us
Speaker 2: those words. And Adam and his wife hid themselves from
Speaker 2: the presence of God amongst the trees of the garden.
Speaker 2: Which is almost funny to hide yourself among trees from God,
Speaker 2: but they did. And God called out to Adam. Now
Speaker 2: why did God call out to Adam and not both
Speaker 2: of them? Because it was to Adam that he gave
Speaker 2: the instructions.
Speaker 3: God's fair.
Speaker 2: And he says, and this is the number of rabbinic
Speaker 2: sermons given on this verse could fill the Encyclopedia Judaica.
Speaker 2: And God said to Adam, where art thou?
Speaker 3: Where are you?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 3: Of course, why do rabbis love to.
Speaker 2: Make a sermon on that sentence, because obviously God knows
Speaker 2: where Adam is. So the question is not for God's sake,
Speaker 2: it's for our sake. Where are you?
Speaker 3: You got to know where you are?
Speaker 2: God knew where he was obviously anyway, So he answers,
Speaker 2: I heard your voice in the garden, and I got
Speaker 2: scared because I am naked, and I to which God said,
Speaker 2: who told you your naked? That's really it's priceless. I
Speaker 2: love this. You didn't happen to have eaten from that
Speaker 2: tree that I told you not to eat from, by
Speaker 2: any chance, So Adam said, well, in fact I did.
Speaker 3: So what does Adam say?
Speaker 2: This is one of my favorite lines in the entire Bible.
Speaker 3: This woman you gave me. I didn't ask for the apple.
Speaker 2: I didn't ask for the woman. Get the hell out
Speaker 2: of here. Isn't that a riot? It's absolutely funny. I
Speaker 2: did I ask for this woman.
Speaker 3: You gave it to me, and she got me to
Speaker 3: do it. That is why it's so priceless.
Speaker 2: It's not only shifting blame to her. Is she shouldn't
Speaker 2: have been born. It's worse than blaming her, it's blaming
Speaker 2: he was blaming God. If you didn't make her, I
Speaker 2: promise you I never would have eaten from that tree.
Speaker 3: And he's right, he got a hand it to him.
Speaker 2: A monkey could not have convinced him to eat from
Speaker 2: the tree. So this woman that you made that's what
Speaker 2: I love. It's God's fault. You know, there are people,
Speaker 2: you know, I get angry at people, you know, blaming
Speaker 2: government for their problems. This is the ultimate. It's God's fault.
Speaker 2: She is the one who gave me an i ate.
Speaker 2: So God said, now, by the way, it's interesting here.
Speaker 2: They all tell the truth. When God asked the questions,
Speaker 2: they all tell the truth. Did he not tell the truth?
Speaker 2: The woman who you made gave me an i ate?
Speaker 2: Is that absolute true? That's why God doesn't respond anymore.
Speaker 2: He got the truth from Adam, so fine. He knows
Speaker 2: it's true. It's a very interesting thing. So he goes
Speaker 2: to the woman who was whom he made. And so
Speaker 2: God says to the woman, what'd you do?
Speaker 3: What did you do? I don't think He said, what
Speaker 3: you do? What did you do?
Speaker 2: And the woman said, the serpent tricked me and I ate?
Speaker 2: Is that true?
Speaker 3: Yes? It is true?
Speaker 2: Huh yeah, So God again, it's very They all tell
Speaker 2: God that you listen, the serpent trick. Nobody takes responsibility.
Speaker 2: I mean, their character I won't speak about. But at
Speaker 2: least they told the truth. You know, you can imagine
Speaker 2: Adam could have said, gee, I didn't know it was
Speaker 2: that apple. That is another reason, by the way, that
Speaker 2: I believed that he knew what he was eating, since
Speaker 2: with God roaming, he could have easily said.
Speaker 3: I didn't know.
Speaker 2: I thought it was from the Tree of the life
Speaker 2: right or any other tree. But he didn't. He told
Speaker 2: the truth. He was too scared to lie. Perhaps or
Speaker 2: given credit, he told the truth. He told the truth,
Speaker 2: and he said what it was. So I think we
Speaker 2: can infer from that she didn't trick him. It was
Speaker 2: simply her presence. I think he told the whole truth
Speaker 2: and nothing but the truth. The woman gave it to
Speaker 2: me and I ate. Okay, she said the serpent tricked me,
Speaker 2: which is true. It's not the whole truth because she
Speaker 2: knew what she was doing at any rate. But he
Speaker 2: did trick her, at least that's her perception. Let's put
Speaker 2: it this way, that the serpent misled her into believing,
Speaker 2: into getting confused, and she ate. So God doesn't say
Speaker 2: another word to her, just like God didn't say another
Speaker 2: word to Adam. So God goes to the serpent, and
Speaker 2: notice this is verse fourteen. He doesn't ask the serpent
Speaker 2: the single question, because what's the serpent going to say,
Speaker 2: who's the serpent gonna blame it on? There's nobody left.
Speaker 3: It's interesting, isn't it.
Speaker 2: That's why God didn't say to the serpent, and why
Speaker 2: did you do it? So God says to the serpent,
Speaker 2: because you did this, you will be cursed from of
Speaker 2: all most pursed.
Speaker 3: Of all the animals that exist.
Speaker 2: You will crawl, you will walk on your belly, and
Speaker 2: you will eat dust all the days.
Speaker 3: Of your life.
Speaker 2: I think clearly was to d de deify the serpent,
Speaker 2: which is what I spoke about in all of Genesis.
Speaker 2: And then fifteen, I will put enmity between you and
Speaker 2: the woman and between your seed and her seed. This
Speaker 2: is clearly an anti pagan polemic, wherein the mixture of
Speaker 2: the human and the animal in Paganism was very great.
Speaker 2: This is a total separation. Human is human, serpents are serpent.
Speaker 2: There is no relationship in any way. And you'll be,
Speaker 2: you will be. They'll bruise your head, that you serpent,
Speaker 2: and you'll bruise their heel. Okay, Then to the woman, sixteen,
Speaker 2: I will greatly multiply your pain and your travail and
Speaker 2: pain you will bring forth children.
Speaker 3: That's part one.
Speaker 2: Now, very interesting thing here is I will multiply your pain.
Speaker 2: In other words, she had pain for childbirth from Eden.
Speaker 2: It doesn't say, now you will give birth and pain.
Speaker 2: I will multiply what already exists. That that's an interesting
Speaker 2: point that I don't think a lot of people realize
Speaker 2: that there was pain and child birth originally. According to
Speaker 2: the Genesis story, what happens is it will be multiplied. Okay,
Speaker 2: now you know sex, now you know life. So I'm
Speaker 2: not going to protect you. What God is really saying
Speaker 2: is if you want knowledge of everything man and woman, okay,
Speaker 2: but don't ask for my protection.
Speaker 3: You want life on its terms.
Speaker 2: Here you are? Are you with me? My friends? This
Speaker 2: is critical. That's what really happened. God softened life for
Speaker 2: us till we said, in effect, no, I want it all.
Speaker 2: I want to know it all. And therefore, if that's
Speaker 2: the case, God removes protection.
Speaker 3: That's why we get mortal.
Speaker 2: We get pained, we get hurt from each other, we
Speaker 2: get hurt from nature, we get hurt from childbirth. We
Speaker 2: in effect opted for that. Remember it does not say
Speaker 2: and God said I'm going to punish you. The word
Speaker 2: punished does not occur here, but it did occur with
Speaker 2: the serpent, and it does occur with Adam. The woman
Speaker 2: does not have the word curse. The serpent is cursed
Speaker 2: to travel on his belly. Man has cursed earth, you'll
Speaker 2: see in a moment, but the woman does not have
Speaker 2: anything cursed. This is the consequence of what you did,
Speaker 2: much more than it is punishment. The problem comes next.
Speaker 2: What else will be the result of this leaving of
Speaker 2: Eden as it were? And your desire will be to
Speaker 2: your man or your husband, and he will rule over you. Now,
Speaker 2: this is an interesting and very difficult segment, which does
Speaker 2: not please feminists, but the point is free shows that
Speaker 2: the original intent was that man and woman be totally equal, right,
Speaker 2: which is exactly what existed beforehand. But now you have
Speaker 2: you have, I have removed that element of my protection
Speaker 2: as I just spoke about, and I'm gonna let nature
Speaker 2: go its merry way. That means you have pain and
Speaker 2: child birth, men will be dominant, But that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that that's God's will. You are not subverting God God's
Speaker 2: will if you take if you take a painkiller for childbirth,
Speaker 2: and you are not subverting God's will. If you have
Speaker 2: an equal relationship with your husband. This is not saying,
Speaker 2: and this is my desire that women suffering childbirth and
Speaker 2: men rule over them.
Speaker 3: That is not what I stated here.
Speaker 2: It's simply saying that now that natural forces will go,
Speaker 2: this is what will happen. But by the way, to
Speaker 2: a certain extent there is that is what it is about.
Speaker 2: In most cultures men have dominated women, which is not
Speaker 2: something to be proud of. It's simply a fact of life.
Speaker 2: But just as we can have painkillers, we can have
Speaker 2: inequality killers. Right, the two of them are very allowable.
Speaker 2: The other part is the tougher part, that you will
Speaker 2: your desire, your yearning will be for your husband. This
Speaker 2: part is much less easily subverted than the male ruling
Speaker 2: and childbirth pain. Yearnings are not nearly as easily destroyed
Speaker 2: as are inequalities and physical pains, and that yearning does exist.
Speaker 2: My argument here would be that this is in a
Speaker 2: slightly different category, much more of the unchangeable, though people
Speaker 2: will want to change it. That's why get you see
Speaker 2: all these books in bookstores of yes you can live
Speaker 2: without a man, Yes you are something without a man,
Speaker 2: Yes you don't need a man, and so on. There
Speaker 2: is in many women nothing exists for all but in
Speaker 2: many women. In most women a deep yearning for a man.
Speaker 2: Now you say, well, isn't there deep yearning in men
Speaker 2: for a woman? As I said when I gave a
Speaker 2: course on this, it's a slightly different yearning. Women yearn
Speaker 2: a man and men yearn for women. They're not the
Speaker 2: exact same yearning. Don't yell at me for this, Okay,
Speaker 2: I am the bearer of bad tidings, is not the
Speaker 2: creator of the problem. Uh. That doesn't mean that men
Speaker 2: cannot grow into that yearning. But that is a good
Speaker 2: yearn If women didn't yearn for a man, men wouldn't marry.
Speaker 3: You don't have any book.
Speaker 2: Go to any bookstore and find me any book. And
Speaker 2: they write books on anything. Anything that'll sell they write on.
Speaker 2: You will never find the book how to get her
Speaker 2: to commit? Why not? There is book after book after
Speaker 2: book about getting him to commit? Why men don't commit?
Speaker 2: The Peter Pan complex. Why isn't there?
Speaker 3: What was there?
Speaker 2: What was the why is there? The tinker Bell complex?
Speaker 2: There should be one. There should be about women who
Speaker 2: won't commit? Right are women who leave? Why they have
Speaker 2: men who leave women and women who love them? There's
Speaker 2: no book men who leave? No there isn't there is
Speaker 2: book men to leave women and women who love them?
Speaker 2: Why is there women who leave men and men who
Speaker 2: love them? It happens, But that's not the issue.
Speaker 3: That yearning is actually a good thing.
Speaker 2: One of us better yearn or we won't ever cement,
Speaker 2: we'll never stick together. That yearning is critical, but it
Speaker 2: is the cause of great pain to a woman. And
Speaker 2: by the way, that is also a statement. Remember man's
Speaker 2: problem here becomes Man's consequence of eating is macro or macro.
Speaker 2: Women's consequence is micro. Notice that micro is the personal
Speaker 2: that's where women specialize. Doesn't mean they're only interested any
Speaker 2: more than men are not only interested in the macro.
Speaker 2: But as a talk show host for ten years, I
Speaker 2: can tell you when I discuss micro topics on my
Speaker 2: list is Linda, Jenny, bar and when I talk macro,
Speaker 2: it's Ira, Tom and Joe. Because that's where they specialize.
Speaker 2: That's why you go the old There is truth to
Speaker 2: it that when you go to a party, men will
Speaker 2: talk about sports, stocks, investments, and politics. Women will talk
Speaker 2: about real life. That's why I prefer women's discussions at parties.
Speaker 2: The macro stuff, I mean, it comes out of my ears.
Speaker 2: I do it for a living. I rather talk about
Speaker 2: the nitty gritty of life, the real things.
Speaker 3: But that really is what you have here.
Speaker 2: Her consequences are micro, his consequences are macro. The consequences
Speaker 2: of his eating from the tree are in verse seventeen.
Speaker 2: And to Adam, he said, because you hearkened into the
Speaker 2: voice of your wife, in other words, as opposed to
Speaker 2: hearken to mine. His punishment isn't because he listened to
Speaker 2: his woman. It's because he listened to his woman and
Speaker 2: not God. And have eaten of the tree of which
Speaker 2: I commanded you. In other words, in other words, I
Speaker 2: commanded you not to and you listen to her, saying
Speaker 2: you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground,
Speaker 2: you see, the serpent is cursed, and Adam is cursed.
Speaker 2: But specific, to be very specific, the ground is cursed
Speaker 2: for Adam in toil. Cursed is the ground for your sake.
Speaker 2: In toil, shall you eat of it all the days
Speaker 2: of your life? Thorns also and thistles it will bring
Speaker 2: forth to you, and you will eat the herb of
Speaker 2: the field and the sweat of thy face.
Speaker 3: You will eat.
Speaker 2: Bread till you return unto the ground, for out of
Speaker 2: it where you taken for dust you are, and into
Speaker 2: dust you will return, all for one apple.
Speaker 3: Finally, after that, you do wonder what happened?
Speaker 2: But you know, it's these these lacunai, these gaps in
Speaker 2: the narrative that are always so fascinating. What did Adam
Speaker 2: and Eve do?
Speaker 3: Then?
Speaker 2: You know? Did they look at each other that they embrace,
Speaker 2: they make love? Did they get angry at each other?
Speaker 2: Did they start hunting snakes? You know, you just wonder
Speaker 2: what did they do? Who knows? What is the next sentence?
Speaker 2: It almost seems like a non sequitur the next sentences.
Speaker 2: And Adam named his wife Eve, for Eve means jerk nothing.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine?
Speaker 2: You know, he was so ticked off now because she
Speaker 2: was the mother of all living things and Hebrew and Hebrew,
Speaker 2: all these original names proved to me, and I don't
Speaker 2: want to prove it to you if you don't feel
Speaker 2: this way. But for me personally, the whole st is
Speaker 2: allegorical because the names mean that Adam means earth, Eve
Speaker 2: means life, so it's earth and life. I mean, we're talking,
Speaker 2: I think very symbolically here. Even the names canaan Abel
Speaker 2: means something in that way that tend to make it
Speaker 2: an allegory, but if you wish to take them literally,
Speaker 2: I have no problem whatsoever.
Speaker 3: And it's very touching. Verse twenty one.
Speaker 2: By the way, you notice there's no protest. Isn't it interesting?
Speaker 2: There's no protest from Adam and Eve. It's not fair.
Speaker 2: First of all, why do you think there was no protest?
Speaker 2: One is I'll bet you they were pretty relieved that
Speaker 2: they didn't die. That may truly be one of the
Speaker 2: reasons that there was no protest. Another one was a
Speaker 2: sense of yeah, well, we now our eyes are now
Speaker 2: open and we understand what you're describing.
Speaker 3: It's as if I were to say to.
Speaker 2: You, you don't want to lie, no problem, you want
Speaker 2: a driver's license. Okay, let me just tell you the
Speaker 2: following the chance of your being killed in a car
Speaker 2: crash or the following the number of people who who
Speaker 2: are remained in a crash is the following. You've now
Speaker 2: opened your eyes to driving. Let me tell you the
Speaker 2: realities of driving. You get what I'm saying, and you're
Speaker 2: not going to complain. You will just you'll swallow hard
Speaker 2: and say I understand this. That's what comes with getting
Speaker 2: a driver's license. They got a driver's license to live,
Speaker 2: and here are the risks that come with it, and
Speaker 2: so you don't get complaints for all we know. Incidentally,
Speaker 2: they weren't terribly depressed. Who knows, I'm serious, We don't know.
Speaker 3: After all.
Speaker 2: What he did afterwards was give his wife a name,
Speaker 2: which is very interesting. It certainly doesn't bespeak of anger.
Speaker 2: So anyway, God made this a touching And then the
Speaker 2: next thing is God made for Adam and his wife
Speaker 2: garments of skin and clothe them.
Speaker 3: Twenty two.
Speaker 2: God said, behold, man is like one of us, knowing everything.
Speaker 2: And now lest he put forth his hand and take
Speaker 2: from the tree of life and eat and live forever.
Speaker 3: Therefore God sent.
Speaker 2: Him forth from the garden of Eden to till the
Speaker 2: ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out
Speaker 2: Adam or the atom the man, and he placed at
Speaker 2: the east of the garden of Eden the Cherubim and
Speaker 2: the flaming Sword, which are like angels, with the flaming
Speaker 2: sword which turned every way to keep the way to
Speaker 2: the Tree of life. So it's not available to us
Speaker 2: in the state that we are, but the tree of
Speaker 2: immortality still exists. It's an interesting hint isn't it. It
Speaker 2: wasn't destroyed, it's just guarded from our reach. Well, what
Speaker 2: does that imply? You'll infer what you want. But it
Speaker 2: is interesting, isn't it, that it's still there wherever that
Speaker 2: may be. It's a tough thing here that God said
Speaker 2: he'll be one of us, that man will be one
Speaker 2: of us. This is really the lesson of the story.
Speaker 2: We can know a lot. We human beings can know
Speaker 2: an awful lot. The problem is when we think we
Speaker 2: can know everything, and that is called the Greeks call
Speaker 2: it hubris. It's a tremendous arrogance that the human can have.
Speaker 2: We can know everything, we can play God. The belief
Speaker 2: of the Bible is and it's one of my favorite quotes.
Speaker 2: I believe it's from Proverbs reschid hochmayerrata Dounai. Wisdom begins
Speaker 2: with awe of God. If you don't acknowledge that there
Speaker 2: is something higher than you with all of your knowledge,
Speaker 2: you'll be a fool. That's the biblical notion. I believe
Speaker 2: it deeply that I will give one example of this.
Speaker 2: I think the biggest fools of the twentieth century have
Speaker 2: been secular intellectuals. Not all secular intellectuals or fools. But
Speaker 2: the biggest fools have been secular intellectuals. They gave us
Speaker 2: theories like communism and Marxism, they gave us arianism, they
Speaker 2: gave us racism. It is a very very powerful lesson
Speaker 2: to be learned, as scholars have noted. And you were
Speaker 2: more likely to be anti Semitic in Nazi Germany if
Speaker 2: you graduated high school or college than if you didn't go.
Speaker 2: The Anti Defamation League has pointed out that blacks do
Speaker 2: not have any more anti Semitic tendencies than whites, except
Speaker 2: for one group of blacks, Blacks that go to American colleges.
Speaker 2: Anti Semitism among them is far higher than among blacks
Speaker 2: who don't go to college. There is a real worry
Speaker 2: that I have of the pursuit of knowledge with no
Speaker 2: notion of God attached. And that's the lesson that is
Speaker 2: being taught here. You think you can know tou Verah,
Speaker 2: you think you can know everything.
Speaker 3: Well, if you.
Speaker 2: Don't know that I God am higher and know more,
Speaker 2: you will ruin your lives, which is exactly what we
Speaker 2: do time after time with the hubris of thinking that
Speaker 2: we can understand everything without God. That's what is talked
Speaker 2: about in these last sentences of chapter three, and it's
Speaker 2: the whole point of the story. You can know a
Speaker 2: lot man, but the moment you think you're one of us,
Speaker 2: you are doomed. And it was Marx who said man
Speaker 2: is God. Apparently they weren't all that angry with each other,
Speaker 2: because chapter four, verse one begins and Adam knew his
Speaker 2: wife Eve, and she got pregnant and gave birth to Cain. See,
Speaker 2: I told you it wasn't wasn't all that bad. They
Speaker 2: had sex, and the way this again proves that knowledge
Speaker 2: of good and evil has a lot to do with sex.
Speaker 2: That the biblical word for having sex is you get
Speaker 2: the phrase you know, well, do you know her? Biblically?
Speaker 2: People have used that often as a joke, but it
Speaker 2: is to know biblically is to have sex with that.
Speaker 2: And there is a lot of There is both a
Speaker 2: lot of truth to that and a lot of I
Speaker 2: think relationship to the tree of knowledge of good and bad. Anyway,
Speaker 2: he knew his wife. It's interesting it doesn't say he
Speaker 2: slept with her, he lay with her. It sometimes does,
Speaker 2: but that's the first time it's used. And I'm sure
Speaker 2: it's related to the tree of knowledge.
Speaker 3: She gave birth to.
Speaker 2: Cain. Why because I have gotten the man with the
Speaker 2: help of God.
Speaker 3: Kayan.
Speaker 2: Any of you who know Hebrew know Lee means to
Speaker 2: buy or to acquire. Cain therefore means acquired that which
Speaker 2: was acquired. That's how he got his name. Okay. And
Speaker 2: she continued to give birth, and she gave birth to
Speaker 2: his brother.
Speaker 3: Hovel in English able.
Speaker 2: And now hovel means it could really means nothingness.
Speaker 3: Or vanity.
Speaker 2: The beginning of Ecclesiastes is heavell ha aalim hakol hovel
Speaker 2: vanity of vanities. Everything is vanity or nothing of things,
Speaker 2: or emptiness of emptiness. So they have acquired an emptiness
Speaker 2: for kids. And you think you've seen odd names. I'll
Speaker 2: never forget a former US ambassador to the Dominican Republic.
Speaker 2: I saw a letter from him in the New York
Speaker 2: Times about twenty years.
Speaker 3: Ago, Phelps Phelps.
Speaker 2: I just wondered, of all the names in the world,
Speaker 2: why his parents gave their son Phelps the name Phelps.
Speaker 2: So I don't.
Speaker 3: Know the uh.
Speaker 2: She gives birth to the two of them. Abel is
Speaker 2: a Abel Where are we we are? In Verse two?
Speaker 2: Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain was a
Speaker 2: tiller of the ground. And it came to pass after
Speaker 2: some time that Cain brought of the fruit of the
Speaker 2: ground an offering to God. By the way, one of
Speaker 2: the points here is the universality of sacrifice and the
Speaker 2: universality of prayer and belief in God. Cain brings from
Speaker 2: the fruit of the earth an offering to God. And
Speaker 2: Abel also brought an offering of the first of his flock,
Speaker 2: and of the fat thereof. This is truly fascinating. And
Speaker 2: the Lord had respect unto able and to his offering.
Speaker 3: What other translations do you have? And the Lord what.
Speaker 2: Turned to paid heed to I'm sorry received. In other words,
Speaker 2: God preferred able sacrifice. Okay, here's my sixty four thousand
Speaker 2: dollars question after I read verse five.
Speaker 3: But to Cain and to his.
Speaker 2: Offering, he had no respect, and Cain was very angry,
Speaker 2: and his countenance fell. Here's my question to you, How
Speaker 2: did Cain know that God preferred able sacrifice?
Speaker 3: Anybody have an answer?
Speaker 2: Huh?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 2: God doesn't pick up sacrifices, You just offer them. Unless
Speaker 2: smoke didn't go up. Well, that's interesting. It's very physical. Yes,
Speaker 2: the fire came from heaven and aided up.
Speaker 3: Do you see that here?
Speaker 2: Sorry, okay, but this is rabbinic exegesis later on, and
Speaker 2: that's fine, but it doesn't say it. What can you
Speaker 2: infer from the text just reading what I call the
Speaker 2: shop the text itself? Yes, okay, that's my answers. Anybody
Speaker 2: have another answer? That's what I believe, I'll tell you.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you, yes, back there. Yes, what did I
Speaker 2: able to ask for only on the basis of what
Speaker 2: is written?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: Yes, I think that that's true, and that's what his
Speaker 2: answer was. That's why Cain knew. Let me if I may,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, sir. This uh what I believe, and it's
Speaker 2: I can't prove it, but I try to read only
Speaker 2: what's there without the light of thousands of years of
Speaker 2: various readings into it, which I appreciate, but I'm trying
Speaker 2: to read it anew. It seems to me that Cain
Speaker 2: knew because Cain knew what his brother offered, which is
Speaker 2: what you're pointing out, and knew what he offered, and
Speaker 2: as you pointed out, he knew what he felt he
Speaker 2: was doing it more or less ProForma or compared to
Speaker 2: his brother's sincerity. He felt that he was lacking.
Speaker 3: That's the issue.
Speaker 2: God doesn't need first borns or first fruits.
Speaker 3: That's pagan.
Speaker 2: God doesn't eat, so it can't be God's preference. It
Speaker 2: has to be here the internal devotion of the individual.
Speaker 2: And clearly that Cain's was greater. Cain knew it. You
Speaker 2: know what you feel, and sometimes not always at all,
Speaker 2: you can sense what another feels. My point here is this,
Speaker 2: and then this is now adding to this point. It's
Speaker 2: not written here. When you do things for a god,
Speaker 2: to God, sincerity is everything. When you do things for people,
Speaker 2: sincerity is much less important. It's one of the things that,
Speaker 2: in fact, I believe so deeply. It is one of
Speaker 2: the guiding principles of my own religious life. And I
Speaker 2: will explain. It says in the Torah that you give
Speaker 2: ten percent of your earnings to the poor, right Seduka.
Speaker 2: It also says in the Torah that when the Israelites,
Speaker 2: when the Jews built the temple, it said, let every
Speaker 2: Jew give whatever his heart prompts him to give. And
Speaker 2: I use that distinction to teach or to learn the following.
Speaker 2: What you do for God should come from your heart.
Speaker 2: What you do for human beings doesn't necessarily have to
Speaker 2: come from your heart. It is better to give ten
Speaker 2: percent of your money to charity, even if it's so
Speaker 2: because of the law, than to give one percent from
Speaker 2: your heart, because the poor need your money much more
Speaker 2: than they need your heart. But God needs your heart,
Speaker 2: not your money. And that's what the issue is here.
Speaker 2: The issue is that it was clear that it was
Speaker 2: insincere on Cain's part, and Caine knew it. Now, it's
Speaker 2: a very interesting thing that happens in life. If somebody
Speaker 2: does something better than you do, you have two possible reactions.
Speaker 2: Isn't that beautiful? I could learn from that, it's something
Speaker 2: for me to emulate. Or they should drop dead. Is
Speaker 2: that correct? Those are the two general possible reactions we
Speaker 2: have to other people's excellence or greatness in the same
Speaker 2: act that we have my God, that is really something
Speaker 2: to learn from. Or you know what, he should drop dead.
Speaker 2: Caine opted for the latter. We now go to verse six. Yeah,
Speaker 2: oh oh, And by the way, what's critical here, and
Speaker 2: it's right up my alley and what I've been speaking
Speaker 2: about in the last year. What is Cain's reaction? He
Speaker 2: got angry? My current theory of life is that anger
Speaker 2: is the most important emotion to get a hold of.
Speaker 2: I don't mean to suppress to get a hold of.
Speaker 2: Everybody in this room has anger. There is no human
Speaker 2: being in the world who is not angry. The questions
Speaker 2: are how angry and at whom we all have anger.
Speaker 2: My mother didn't love me enough. My father didn't love
Speaker 2: me enough. My brother didn't love me enough. My sister
Speaker 2: didn't love me enough. My husband didn't love me enough.
Speaker 2: My wife didn't love me enough. My kids don't love
Speaker 2: me enough. The government doesn't love me enough. My friends
Speaker 2: aren't faithful to me enough. People don't do enough for me.
Speaker 2: People cheat me. I get cut off when I go
Speaker 2: in the left lane. No people take my parking spot.
Speaker 2: And not only that, six million Jews were killed a
Speaker 2: generation ago. Okay, from the sublime, or from the ridiculous
Speaker 2: to the sublime, back to the ridiculous, back to the sublime.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of reasons to be angry. The
Speaker 2: question is is the anger is the anger appropriate? There
Speaker 2: are people, there are religious people who say never be angry.
Speaker 2: I get this a lot when I speak on interreligious forums, which,
Speaker 2: for those of you not in LA on the unhumble
Speaker 2: assumption that every one of you in La knows this,
Speaker 2: which is of course preposterous, but a lot of you do.
Speaker 2: Sunday nights, I speak to a priest, minister, rabbi on
Speaker 2: the radio every week for ten years, and it is
Speaker 2: not uncommon for a priest or a minister, much more
Speaker 2: so than a rabbi as it happens, to say that
Speaker 2: it is not good to have anger. I don't agree
Speaker 2: with that, but there is a lot of truth that
Speaker 2: anger is the breeder of evil that I believe deeply.
Speaker 2: It's very new part of me, or a new part
Speaker 2: of my thinking, that evil comes from anger more than
Speaker 2: any other one thing. The trouble is that people need
Speaker 2: to know what their anger is toward. Germans had a
Speaker 2: deep anger. A lot of psychologists hold that they are
Speaker 2: angry from the way they were raised, that Germans had
Speaker 2: a particularly severe upbringing, fairly loveless, severe authoritarian upbringing. Others
Speaker 2: also note the anger over losing World War One and
Speaker 2: that the right wing in Germany blamed their government for
Speaker 2: selling them short at the Treaty of Versailles. Whatever it was,
Speaker 2: it is clear that there was a lot of anger.
Speaker 2: Anger is okay if you channel it towards the appropriate source,
Speaker 2: so that, for example, I would say to a Jew,
Speaker 2: would I said this when the Prime Minister of Israel
Speaker 2: announced that Poles drink anti Semitism in their mother's milk.
Speaker 2: He is angry at Poland for the Holocaust. What he
Speaker 2: should be is angry at every Pole who participated in it,
Speaker 2: as opposed to Poland. It is good in my mind
Speaker 2: to be angry at those who do bad, but it
Speaker 2: is terrible to be angry at a group. That's where
Speaker 2: a lot of evil takes place, anger that is not deserved,
Speaker 2: and it just I don't control it. It is not
Speaker 2: coincidental that it says he was angry.
Speaker 3: Did anybody hurt him? No, he hurt himself.
Speaker 2: But he lashed out in his anger against Abel, who
Speaker 2: did nothing whatsoever to Caine, which, by the way, is really,
Speaker 2: in a sense much of history of persecution, certainly of
Speaker 2: the Jews. The Jews would live in most societies quite quietly.
Speaker 2: Not in the twentieth century. Jews have got a lot noisier,
Speaker 2: but in general Jews were very quiet, living their own lives,
Speaker 2: and were hurt. They were the Abels. There was a
Speaker 2: lot of anger around them. They did their thing. And
Speaker 2: it's not only Jews, who's not the only persecuted group
Speaker 2: in history. It's just it's the most ubiquitous. People get
Speaker 2: angry and they lash out at the abels around them.
Speaker 2: That happens all the time. The kid who cheats in
Speaker 2: class is very likely to be angry at the kid
Speaker 2: who doesn't cheat in class, and does well be your
Speaker 2: real anger at them? Why didn't you stoop to my level?
Speaker 2: There's an anger. In fact, there's a book out for
Speaker 2: ordinary men or ordinary people I don't recall, and it's
Speaker 2: about a group of Germans who murdered eighty thousand Jews.
Speaker 2: And before the war, they were postman civil servants. They
Speaker 2: were just brought in together and say, here, go kill Jews.
Speaker 2: Most of them aren't even anti Semitic, but they did it.
Speaker 2: And a big part of the reason was they didn't
Speaker 2: want the anger that they felt would be shown to
Speaker 2: them by their colleagues if they didn't participate. If you
Speaker 2: do good, the bad will be angry at you. It
Speaker 2: is a common thing in life. Anger is very tough issue.
Speaker 2: Causes a lot of bad stuff, And that's what God
Speaker 2: says to Cain in six While why are you angry,
Speaker 2: and why why do.
Speaker 3: You look sad? Number seven?
Speaker 2: If you do well, if you do good, won't it
Speaker 2: be lifted up? And if you don't do well, if
Speaker 2: you don't do good, sin sin sits or couches, crouches
Speaker 2: at the door, and you will desire it, but you
Speaker 2: can rule over it. Is that an effect the translation
Speaker 2: you all have in effect because a very tough sentence
Speaker 2: in Hebrew. If you get angry, it is very common.
Speaker 2: That's God's point here. When you get angry, the likelihood
Speaker 2: of your doing bad is increased tremendously. That's why you've
Speaker 2: got to rule over it. Evil sin is crouching at
Speaker 2: the door if you get angry, a bad you're doing.
Speaker 3: Bad is.
Speaker 2: Unless you control yourself. That was God's advice. God knew
Speaker 2: exactly what Cain would do. This is his advice, rule
Speaker 2: your anger, rule the desire for sin, and then ate,
Speaker 2: which is one of the most interesting verses. And Cain
Speaker 2: spoke to Abel his brother, and it came to pass
Speaker 2: when they were in the field, Cain rose up against
Speaker 2: Abel his brother and killed him. To a very bizarre sentence.
Speaker 2: Look at it again. And Cain spoke to Abel's brother
Speaker 2: and it came to pass. What did he say? Isn't
Speaker 2: that interesting? We don't know what he said. I guess
Speaker 2: he said, come with me out to the field. I
Speaker 2: don't know what he said, but whatever it was, he
Speaker 2: got up and he killed him. Did able to do
Speaker 2: a thing to Cain?
Speaker 3: Nothing?
Speaker 2: And he just killed him. And God said to Cain,
Speaker 2: just like he had said to Adam, Right, Cain, where's
Speaker 2: Abel your brother? And in one of the most famous
Speaker 2: answers in the entire Bible, Cain says, I don't The
Speaker 2: traditional translation is I don't know. I am my brother's keeper. Okay,
Speaker 2: these will be my final but they are big, big
Speaker 2: points this There is an incredible amount of material in
Speaker 2: this thing.
Speaker 3: Number one?
Speaker 2: Why didn't Cain say I killed him?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 2: Wouldn't that have been the most logical answer. I picked
Speaker 2: up a rock, bashed his head in, and he's dead. God,
Speaker 2: any problem? I mean, it's sincerely? Why didn't he answer that?
Speaker 2: Did God ever say thou shalt not murder? No ten Commandments,
Speaker 2: no seven Laws of the Children of Noah? Cain could
Speaker 2: have said, I killed them? What's the problem? I believe
Speaker 2: that this teaches one of the most fundamental rules of
Speaker 2: life and of Judaism and of the tour And that
Speaker 2: is the belief that revealed legislation is not necessary to
Speaker 2: know good from evil. We are expected to know that
Speaker 2: certain things are wrong just by the fact that we
Speaker 2: are human beings. That's why I never accept the argument, well,
Speaker 2: they weren't educated, How are they supposed to know that
Speaker 2: you don't beat children or you don't shoot children in
Speaker 2: the area they grow up in an area where a
Speaker 2: lot of kids are shot. People speaking of gang members
Speaker 2: will say, hell, how are they supposed to know? The
Speaker 2: answer is the belief written here that we have a
Speaker 2: conscience that just as you know you don't want to
Speaker 2: be killed, you know that this person doesn't want to
Speaker 2: be killed. That's why his answer is so important. He
Speaker 2: does not feign ignorance of the morality immorality of what
Speaker 2: he did. Okay, this is how I learn that conscience
Speaker 2: is implanted in the human being. According to the Bible,
Speaker 2: Cain knew what he did was wrong, but he gives
Speaker 2: a smart algy answer, g I don't know? Am I
Speaker 2: my brother's keeper? There are three ways to read his response.
Speaker 2: The Hebrew says laya datti hashomira rianofi. Literally, it can
Speaker 2: mean what I what you heard, I didn't know.
Speaker 3: Am I my brother's keeper? Or it could also be.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that I am my brother's keeper. There
Speaker 2: are three ways to read it, depending upon where you
Speaker 2: put the uh the accent. One is I didn't know,
Speaker 2: I don't I don't. Well, there are four ways. I
Speaker 2: don't know? Am I my brother's keeper? Just a snotty answer. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's one. Another one is I I didn't know that
Speaker 2: I'm my brother's keeper, having to do in effect with
Speaker 2: the act that he had just performed. I didn't know
Speaker 2: that that I'm responsible for my brother. Another one is
Speaker 2: I didn't know hashomer or I don't know am I
Speaker 2: my brother's keeper? You God are my brother's keeper? If
Speaker 2: you put the emphasis on I, it's all different. I
Speaker 2: don't know, am I my brother's keeper? Usually we say
Speaker 2: I don't know, am I my brother's keeper? But what
Speaker 2: if the accent is on I, am I my brother's keeper?
Speaker 2: Do you see all the existential things that come from this?
Speaker 2: You could all ask the same thing, Am I responsible
Speaker 2: for people? Or is God responsible for people? For those
Speaker 2: of you who wonder how God can allow evil, here
Speaker 2: is the answer. God allows evil because we are our
Speaker 2: brother's keepers. God, isn't anyone who's He says, why did
Speaker 2: God allow the Holocaust? Is asking Cain's question, you are
Speaker 2: my brother's keeper. Nahho, that's not true. The implication is unacceptable.
Speaker 2: We are our brother's keeper, not God. That's how he
Speaker 2: allows it. So I don't know how you want to
Speaker 2: read it, but it is a very interesting possibility in
Speaker 2: any of these directions. And the final point to be
Speaker 2: raised is verse eleven, verse ten, What did you do?
Speaker 2: God said the voice of your brother's bloods? And it's
Speaker 2: too bad that it doesn't translate it as bloods. It translates.
Speaker 2: I'm sure your translation is blood. Does anyone have bloods? Okay,
Speaker 2: that's where a literal translation would be very healthy of bloods?
Speaker 2: What translation is that? The Hebrew is the voice? I'll
Speaker 2: do it literally, the voice of the bloods of your
Speaker 2: brother are screaming at me from the earth. And here
Speaker 2: I think the rabbinic translation is right on. When you
Speaker 2: kill someone, you have not only killed them, you have
Speaker 2: killed all those they would that would have come from them.
Speaker 2: So the bloods of your brother are screaming at me
Speaker 2: from the earth means it's not just your brother's blood,
Speaker 2: but his kids that he never had, and the grandkids
Speaker 2: he never had, and so on and so forth. It's
Speaker 2: to give you an idea of how evil murder is
Speaker 2: what you have done when you murder, that this would
Speaker 2: be listed as the first sin of the human species.
Speaker 2: If I don't want to include the eating of the
Speaker 2: I guess the eating is the first, But this is
Speaker 2: the first that we can relate to. None of us
Speaker 2: can violate the trees in the garden. That's how bad
Speaker 2: it is. That is what you've done. When you commit murder.
Speaker 2: You have killed far more than that individual. And it's
Speaker 2: so powerful that they are screaming at me.
Speaker 3: You know who should be angry? God is in.
Speaker 2: Effect saying Abel, he's the one who's screaming. He's the
Speaker 2: one who should be angry. It's the victim who's angry,
Speaker 2: not the criminal who should be angry.
Speaker 3: You should control your anger.
Speaker 2: But he has justified anger because you murdered him. It's
Speaker 2: darn good lesson for our time, where we often invert
Speaker 2: whose anger we have sympathy with and whom we ignore
Speaker 2: when when that anger is unleashed. Let me take a
Speaker 2: couple of questions. I know that some of you had
Speaker 2: and if you don't, we could take it next time.
Speaker 3: Yes, yep, yeah, we're not up.
Speaker 2: To that yet, so let me take it when it
Speaker 2: comes up on the years. Is that we're not upright,
Speaker 2: it's beyond ya where we got Yes, just take five minutes, folks,
Speaker 2: if you could stay where you are.
Speaker 3: It's correct. I know.
Speaker 2: I don't know why people say apple. It's like a
Speaker 2: lot of people say that Jonah was swallowed by a whale.
Speaker 2: It never says whale, it says great fish. Maybe he
Speaker 2: had an apple in the great whale and that was
Speaker 2: you know, and they got mixed up back there. Yes, oh,
Speaker 2: that's in. It's an interesting question that he was present
Speaker 2: for the discussion.
Speaker 3: Yes, what verse is that? Six? Three six?
Speaker 2: The question was, I'll read you the verse. It's great.
Speaker 2: It's an interest. I have to think it through.
Speaker 3: Hmm uh.
Speaker 2: And she so she took this is eve, she took
Speaker 2: from the fruit fruit, and she ate and she gave
Speaker 2: it also to her husband who was with her, and
Speaker 2: he ate. So is the implication that he was with
Speaker 2: her during the dialogue with the serpent? Oh, well, we've
Speaker 2: established he knew where it came from. But yeah, but
Speaker 2: that would be at the very least. It's an interesting
Speaker 2: point because with her would seem totally redundant, not redundant, Yeah,
Speaker 2: redundant or superfluous. Who obviously where else is he going
Speaker 2: to be? Interesting point? Yes, contribute to the equation of
Speaker 2: sex and sin. Is that what you're basically asking? Well,
Speaker 2: the truth is it probably did for a lot of people.
Speaker 3: I don't think that that's the point. Here comes into
Speaker 3: the picture.
Speaker 2: Life changes, We're no longer innocent, and it really, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's primal stuff.
Speaker 3: Sex is the tnt of life.
Speaker 2: It is and it can blow things up and it
Speaker 2: can make the world, which it does. That's that drive.
Speaker 2: If you think of an asexual person, you think of
Speaker 2: a person with no drive, right, And if you think
Speaker 2: of a person with a great deal of drive, you
Speaker 2: automatically assume they have a strong sex component. And that
Speaker 2: is true. It's the dynamite of our lives. It's the dynamism,
Speaker 2: and it's not something we're happy to see, generally speaking,
Speaker 2: profoundly subside in our life. We feel life ebbing away.
Speaker 2: If that ebbs away, it's something people wish to preserve
Speaker 2: that part of them, whether they have the means to
Speaker 2: live it or not. As a physical issue, but having
Speaker 2: the drive is something everybody wants. It keeps you alive.
Speaker 2: So yes, I don't see it at all sinful. I
Speaker 2: see it as a root of a lot of sin, obviously,
Speaker 2: the most obvious being rape, another one being adultery, though
Speaker 2: that's more complex because they're all emotional and other.
Speaker 1: This has been timeless wisdom with Dennis Prager. Visit dennispragger
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