pinklight

Don, are you saying she may have been deceived when she responded (about what they were given permission to eat, and what God said) to the serpent? Even if you are not, because I have heard this argument before, I would like to answer to some extent at this time.

Who deceived the woman?

Did she deceive herself regarding what God said? Or did the serpent deceive her (about God’s character)?

She said the serpent (the character, who said, ‘you will not surely die…you will become like God knowing good and evil’) deceived her. If she was right when she said this to God (and we accept that she was right when she spoke to him), then she wasn’t deceived when she responded to the serpent as that would make her rather to have deceived herself. But if we were to say that she deceived herself, then we would have to say that she did not deceive herself into eating the fruit (as her response hardly counts as an action of eating) but rather that she deceived herself into believing that she/they must not touch the fruit.

If one of the arguments is that she was deceived by, the first thing that the serpent said, the serpent’s question (twist of God’s word) then we would have to see what in her full response reflects any of the twist of the serpent’s question (as it was deceptive and twisted to be sure). And I see absolutely nothing except her answering the serpent’s question using the words the serpent did (which he got from the command God gave the man) ‘in the garden’.

And we CAN see that when she goes to eat, what the serpent said the second time he spoke to her, IS reflected in how she views the fruit, so we can know that she was deceived when she goes to eat. But there is no evidence whatsoever that she was deceived when she answered the serpent’s twisted question.