[Jack2006]

I am not confused at all. It is those who see it as God's 100% literal commandment and then bizarrely justify why they don't agree with everything it says who are confused.

[Radix]

The Bible is quite a bit deeper than the mere words on text.

Allegory and Symbolism are big parts of the entire work.

The hard part is the discerning between what was real and genuine for the one Covenant as opposed to what was or is real and genuine for another Compact.

When I am confronted with different positions that seem contradictory I tend to try to understand the position of the contrarian and work from some common point toward at least some understanding.

My sense here is that, at least one of us has so made up their mind about something that even a reasonable discourse is unlikely to bear good fruit.

Perhaps that is true of more than just one here.

So then, I will say that that the entire point of the work might be....that "man should not eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."

It is (might be) all about knowledge, and in my experience, most people have very little of it.