Knowing good and evil like 'us' in Genesis 3?

[Anna Karpathakis]

Greetings all: I am new to this group and must admit that I registered for this bcz of a question I have: in Genesis 3 in the English Edition, God says that Adam and Eve is now like "us" knowing the difference between good and evil. Whom does the "us" refer to?

Thank you,
Anna

[Ken McRae]

Hi Anna -

That's a good question. I have no training in the original Hebrew, but it is my understanding that the Church views this word, (in light of the holy Incarnation,) as an obscure Old Testament reference to the holy Trinity of Divine Persons; and insofar as Jesus is the Eternal Word, it is generally believed, I think, that it was He who spoke it, and indicated by this word 'us' that All Three, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, participated equally, not just in the creation of man, but all things.

in humility,
Theophilus

[Kosmas Damianides]

Genesis 1:26
Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth."

I thought youmight also be interested to know.

In Hebrew God is known by the word Elohiym.
So where its says "Then God said..." in Genesis it realy should be "Then Elohiym said..."

If you knew Hebrew you would know that this word is written in Plural form (ie. more than one,many) .

Alah is the Semitic Arabic term for God Alahiym would mean many Gods -- so Eloha means One God but Elohiym denotes plurality within the Godhead.

So this means that Moses who wrote Genesis is refering to the Holy Trinity: God - (the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit).

ICXC
KOSMA

[Eugene]

You are right, Kosmas, Elohiym is plural form. What is interesting is that the verbs related to God's actions sometimes have plural form and sometimes singular (in Hebrew verbs has plural and singular forms). For instance, Genesis 1.1 says "bara Elohim" - "Gods created" ("created" in singular form), while in Genesis 1:26 it says Gods said ("said" in singular) - let us make man.

However, there is another mystery in Genesis 1:26 - who are those "us" that God is referring to? Actually, the exact translation of 1:26 is the following: "Behold, Adam became like one of (from) us, knowing good and evil". Even holy fathers had different opinion on the meaning of this sentence. All the fathers agree that God can't be talking about Himself here, because God doesn't know the evil ("to know" in Biblical Hebrew means mostly to know in action and experience, as opposed to the Hellenistic meaning as discoursive, imaginative or "theoretical" knowledge). St. Maximos the Confessor (in Questions to Thallasios, XLIV) says that God here is being ironic and is saying "you wanted to become like one of us - like a god, so now you did became like one of us". However, Didim the Blind in "Commentaries on Genesis" says that loving and caring God could not be ironic when responding to such a tragedy. So, Didim suggests another explanation (that I think is more appropriate): "one of/from us" is satan. Didim says that satan, in spite of his fall, retains a good angelic nature, because God did not create evil, satan's evil is only a product of his perverted free will. So satan is still "one of/from us" - the one from Trinity and angels. Didim compares it with Psalm 81.6 that says "I said: Ye are godlike beings, and all of you sons of the Most High, Nevertheless ye die like men, and fall like one of the princes". Here, says Didim, the psalm also refers to satan in the phrase "one of the princes".

The Scripures are full of breathtaking mysteries.
In Christ,
Evgeny

[Kosmas Damianides]

Thank you Evgeny you are very polite,

But I believe that the Fathers (St John C'stom, St Maximus and St Didim the Blind) were not well versed in Aramaic.

Furthermore, are you saying that Satan helped create us? Certainly not! God did not require helpers to create the world or humankind. He only said a Word and it was so. But with us God fashioned us from the earth, HIMSELF.

The Jews believe that it was angels who were conversing with God in Genesis and others explain the Royal plural which is a load of garbage. If there was a royal plural, then why only use it sometimes and not other times and why does God talk to himself? Furthermore I think creation is not from angels but from God alone.

We are God's creation if angels who are imperfect helped make us (and I don know how they could have since they are only messengers[ie Messenger=Angelos] then dosn't that makes us imperfect creations of angels?

I don't claim to know more than the Holy Fathers or anyone else, but I do understand that this is truly a great mystery. The creation of Man and Woman was not an angelic creation but a Godly creation. "You shall be Holy because I am Holy" (Lev 11:44)

God Bless ICXC NIKA

[Eugene]

Sorry, Kosmas, may be I didn't make my claims clear. By saying that ELOHIM is plural, I ment that this is the indication that God is Trinity. Although you are right, Judaists explain the plurality of the word ELOHIM as a royal plurality or as angels.

I didn't mean also that either angels or Satan helped to create us, Satan had nothing to do with our creation. But when Adam fell, he became like Satan, and that is what the prase "he became like one of us" means, according to Didim.

It is quite possible that St. Maximos knew Hebrew. In his book "Questions and answers to Thallasios" he presents the meanings of names from Old Testament based on their Hebrew roots. So he was either consulting with someone who knew Hebrew, or he knew Hebrew himself.

In Christ,
Evgeny

[Tim Grass]

I'd be interested if this conversation got rolling again... the "us" of Genesis... how early is that being used as the TRinity? Are there some Fathers who don't think of it that way? What about the fact that our Scriptures are the Greek, not the Hebrew... and the Greek has "Kurios," which is singular, not "Elohim" which is plural?

Thanks.

--tim

[Vasiliki D.]

I'd be interested if this conversation got rolling again... the "us" of Genesis... how early is that being used as the TRinity? Are there some Fathers who don't think of it that way? What about the fact that our Scriptures are the Greek, not the Hebrew... and the Greek has "Kurios," which is singular, not "Elohim" which is plural?

Thanks.
--tim

For the most part, I have heard all priests refer to that as a Trinitarian reference. I agree with you that the "Old Testament' books were in Hebrew, were translated by the Seventy, then disappeared. Then were re-translated into Hebrew from the Septuagint and now everyone loves to refer to the Hebrew rather than the Septuagint! :-)

So, if we stick to the Greek for Genesis 3 and what we know today. We say that each person in the Holy Trinity is a unique identity (singular) but of the same essence. So, if one person of the Holy Trinity is communicating to the other person of the Holy Trinity it would be singular to singular, right? Kurios to Kurios ... I cant rememnber where but there is another that says (I think it is a Psalm), "my Lord said to my Lord" ...????