"Taboo, Violation, and Deconstruction: The Narrative of 《The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil》 in the Perspective of J. Derrida’s Deconstructionism"

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 287-326
Author(s):  
Il-sung Choi
Author(s):  
Olga Lomakina ◽  
Oksana Shkuran

The article analyzes methods of explication of the traditional and widely used stable biblical expression «forbidden fruit». The study is based on a diachronic section – from the interpretation of the biblical text to the communicative intention of dialogue participants in the media space illustrating nuclear and peripheral meanings. The analysis includes biblical texts that realize the archetypal meaning of the biblical expression «forbidden fruit» in which it is called the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The secularized interest in the kind of tree, on which forbidden fruits grew, is motivated by a realistic presentation of a sad history of the first people’s fall in the Book of Genesis. Scientific hypotheses have their origins since the Middle Ages, when artists recreated the author’s story of eating the forbidden fruit. For religion, the variety of the fruit is not of fundamental importance, however, visualization in the works of art has become an incentive for the further use of the biblical expression with a new semantic segment. Modern media texts actively represent the transformation of the biblical expression«forbidden fruit» for different purposes: in advertising texts for pragmatic one, in informative, educational, ideological texts for cognitive one, in entertaining textsfor communicative one, lowering the spiritual and semantic value register of the modern language. Therefore, the process of desemantization and profanization of the biblical expression results in the destruction of national stereotypes in Russian people’s worldview.


Problemata ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 193-213
Author(s):  
Martina Barnaba

This paper aims to investigate the dialectical nature of the myth of original sin as described by Hegel. For introductory purposes, I will briefly highlight the process by which Hegelian philosophy operates the translation from religious representation to concept, demonstrating how this reading is at the basis of the interpretation of the myth. Then I will analyze the functioning of the dialectical movements of the biblical episode of Genesis 3 within the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, in order to discuss the issues of good and evil, innocence and guilt, will and arbitrariness. In this reconstruction the dialectic will emerge in its importance as a structure that permeates human consciousness as well as reality in general. In the specific case of the tree of knowledge, we will witness the concretization of this eternal conciliation of contradictions in two specific areas, which will be treated in the last section: the question of evil on the one hand, which will be demonstrated as a necessary negative element that triggers the dialectical movement itself, and the question of freedom on the other, which will appear as the result of the emancipation of the subject from the natural state in which he finds himself in the so-called "garden of animals".


1984 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Trigg

What is the relationship between the concept of sin and that of freedom? There is a powerful tradition in European thought linking the idea of moral evil with human freedom. Only with a broadening of consciousness, with the awareness of alternative possibilities, did man become able to choose between good and evil, and was responsible for that choice. The myth of the Fall, it seems, shows that eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil gave man the ability to sin, because the awareness of alternatives allowed man to pursue one rather than the other. Without that freedom thus acquired man was innocent and incapable of moral evil.


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-169
Author(s):  
Hendro

Proverbs 30 contains the only prayer in the Book of Proverbs – a prayer of contentment. Contentment appears to be a theme consistently taught in the Old Testament and the New Testament. It was discontentment toward God that drove Eve and Adam to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And until this day, it was our discontentment with God, ourselves, and others, that drove us searching around desperately. 


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (14) ◽  
pp. 5-12
Author(s):  
Adrian D. COVAN ◽  

We learn from the texts of the Holy Scriptures and contemplations of the Holy Fathers that man was created in the image and likeness of God adorned with virtues. Resting in the Garden of Eden, the man's mind was set on contemplation of God, abounding in divine images. Dominated by the spirit, man was living in a particular state of joy and happiness. God shared him from His state of goodness, endowing him with all the spiritual and material sweetness. Man's fall into sin was a consequence of eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, tempted by the cunning devil disguised in primordial snake. The expel of Adam from heaven identifies with the process of humanity restoration the heavenly Father started at the gates of the biblical garden, promising to the first inhabitants of the earth to help them find the way back to their lost home, by sending in this world the Redeemer.


1986 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-10
Author(s):  
N. F. S. Grundtvig

Created in the Image of Goda little-known account of Grundtvig from 1814The creation of man in the image of God means according to Grundtvig that man is created with the purpose of resembling the Trinity - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Man is therefore tripartite, comprising body, soul and spirit, equipped to feel, imagine, and apprehend. As Father, God cannot be truly imagined, since our images are limited by time and space. When man nevertheless sets out to imagine God, it is as Creator, according to the Bible as “the living word” – as the Son. The Holy Spirit then becomes the power that unites the Father and the Son. Grundtvig believes that man must be created with free will, “for otherwise there was something that did not obey Him”, that is, God - namely the human will.However, Grundtvig does not envisage the newly-created man as a perfect image of God, but rather as a healthy new-born baby is “fully-developed” - with the potential to become the perfect image of God. The Fall breaks off this development, occurring as it did because man abused his reason by doubting the truth of God’s word: “of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it,” for “thou shalt surely die.” Instead man believed the devil’s words, which were lies, and let his reason serve his desire. If we doubt that we participate in this sin, we will be convinced “when we realise how little abhorrence we have of such a fall.” This was pride, and this was how we lost our immediate communion with God.This account is found in the first volume of Grundtvig’s second World Chronicle, published in 1814. Only the one volume was published; it has never been reprinted, and is therefore little-known.


The Agonist ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-74
Author(s):  
Bradley Kaye

When Nietzsche writes in Ecce Homo: “Theologically speaking - listen closely, for I rarely speak as a theologian - it was God himself who at the end of his days work lay down as a serpent under the tree of knowledge: thus he recuperated from being God. - He had made everything too beautiful. - The devil is merely the leisure of God on that seventh day.”  (Ecce Homo, “Beyond Good and Evil,” §2) He is insinuating an alliance with an uncited source - Pelagianus Hereticus who believed there was no ‘original sin’ but that the will power of human beings could bring humanity to salvation.  A method that bears stark affinities with Nietzsche’s writings on will to power in the sense that human will power wills a transcendence to what is, rather than the metaphysics of a transcendent God providing grace to those in need of salvation from above. This marks an interesting detour in church orthodoxy, a path not taken and one has to wonder that given Nietzsche’s reputation as a well read historian of ideas and theology whether he was writing a sort of theological exegesis through ressentiment.  A history of ideas for the future through the eyes of those who lost as a kind of error, a kind of pathos. In this paper, I try to explore this treatment of Nietzsche’s work to bring a new interpretation onto his work, one that is hidden in plain sight in lieu of his work on pushing ethics beyond good and evil, his views on phantasmagoria, and the penultimate writings at the end of his productive years where he describes his writings as “Dionysus versus the Crucified.”


2015 ◽  
Vol 127 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michaela Bauks

Meine These lautet, dass der Baum der Erkenntnis von Gut und Böse in Gen 2–3 identisch ist mit dem Baum des Lebens, wie er aus Weisheitstexten bekannt ist. Beide Bäume verweisen auf die menschliche Existenz im Diesseits. Der Tod ist in Gen 2–3 nicht als der »Sünde Sold« (Röm 6,23) gedacht, sondern ist Teil derThe motif of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2–3) is similar to the tree of life in Proverbs. Both trees deal with human existence in this world. Death is not yet »the wages of sin« (Rom 6:23), but part of the human condition. The didactic narrative with mythical features in Gen 2–3 does not deal with sin, but is concerned with the tension between human knowledge and behaviour in relation to God.Le motif de l’arbre de la connaissance du bien et du mal (Gn 2–3) correspond à l’arbre de vie des textes sapientiaux. Les deux arbres font référence à l’existence humaine dans le monde. La mort n’y est pas conçue comme »le salaire du péché« (Rm 6,23), mais elle fait partie de la condition humaine. Par conséquent, le récit didactique aux traits mythiques de Gn 2–3 ne traite pas du péché, mais de la tension entre connaissance et comportement humain par rapport à sa relation avec Dieu.


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