In this paper I will examine the story of Adam and Eve. I will focus on their fall: first, I will examine their judgment, concentrating on the announcement of their death by God. As we know, they did not die immediately after their disobedience; was then the serpent right, who told them that “you will not die” (v.4)?

Then I will present the different opinions of scholars on the possible meaning of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Related to this problem is also the variety of interpretations of their sin: was it simply the eating of some sort of fruit or is there a deeper, allegorical meaning behind the story? I will conclude the paper with some contemporary interpretations of the fall, which try to focus on the positive aspects of disobedience, or interpret the story as a collective story, a story of our own individual falls.

Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (vv.6-7) which then caused their expulsion from the Garden (v.23).  God told Adam and Eve that in the day they eat of the forbidden fruit they would surely die (2.17). But interestingly, the serpent correctly stated the facts (v.4): the penalty of death does not immediately follow the act of eating; Adam and Eve, despite their disobedience, continue to live; Adam, in fact, died in an old age of 930 years (5.5). Why had God cancelled the death sentence from verse 2.17 and did not enforce it right away?

Some explain the story as a lessening of the punishment through the mercifulness of God: God tempers his judgment with mercy. Others interpret the phrase “on the same day” not literally, but rather as meaning “at the same time when”, “at that time when”, or “if”, and support their argument by quoting similar examples from the Scripture (Gen 2.4; 5.1; Ex 6.28; 10.28; 32.34). The phrase here is “not necessarily a precise time-pointer; in the original Hebrew it is exactly the same as the corresponding phrase in Genesis 2.4 where it is indefinite in meaning”.^[1] According to this opinion then, the death of Adam and Eve, even when it followed hundreds of years later, was the fulfilment of God's threat from 2.17.

This view does not necessarily presuppose that humans were originally created immortal and that as the consequence of their disobedience they became mortal, which is the traditional understanding. How would we then explain Gen 3.22, where God drives Adam and Eve out of the garden, in order to deny him access to the tree of life, i.e., immortality? This verse seems to deny the immortality of Adam and Eve. Verse 3.19 (“You are dust”) gives us the impression that the dissolution of the body is a normal thing^[2]. We can conclude, therefore, that man was not created immortal; it does not mean, however, that he would die anyway. It seems that his access to the tree of life was not limited before his disobedience. Only after it, as a punishment, this access is denied to him, so he has to die. Death seems to be the natural fate of a being made from the dust.

If we read the story without our preconceived idea of God as all-powerful, all-knowing and unchanging, sooner or later we would ask the question whether it is possible that God might change his mind? Is it not open to God to reverse his decision on a matter?  In several passages of Scripture, God is depicted as changing his mind. In the Book of Jonah (3.4-10) God commands the prophet to tell the Ninevites that their city will be overthrown in forty days.  Despite the apparent unconditional nature of the pronouncement, the Ninevites seek God's mercy and are spared the judgment.

We usually think in terms of omniscience: if God has infallible knowledge of all future events, including the choices of humans, then God's change of mind is only apparent rather than real. This, however, raises the question: Why did God send his prophet to predict an event that he knew would not occur? Does this not make God a deceiver?

There are different attempts to answer this question. Some have attempted to defend God by suggesting that God has a good reason for leading us to believe some things will happen, even if they actually won't. God has done this in order to restrain us from sin and lead us to repentance. This explanation, however raises serious doubts about God's truthfulness.

Another possibility is that God has certain plans for men but these could be changed at their intercession or “conversion”. The idea that God could apparently change his mind is not… alien to Hebrew theology… There are many famous instances of God “repenting”^[3] in the Old Testament. It could work in both ways: sin can bring about disaster, instead of blessing: “the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth” (Gen 6.5); “I promised that your house and the house of your father should go in and out before me for ever; but now the Lord declares: Far be it from me” (1 Sam 2.30); “I repent that I have made Saul king” (1 Sam 15.11,23,26).

On the other hand, by repenting one can avoid or lessen the announced judgment: Abraham's intercession for Sodom (Gen 18); the sparing of Nineveh because of her conversion (Jonah 3.7-10); Hezekiah's fear of God and prayer (Jer 26.18-9); the intercession of Moses for Israel (Ex 32.11-4) and the prayer of Amos (Amos 7.1-6). Perhaps the most powerful passage is Jer 18.7-10, where both possibilities are included:

If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will repent of the evil that I intended to do to it.  And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will repent of the good which I had intended to do to it.

The Hebrew writers, however, use two different words when talking about human and divine repentance:

The practice of using a different word for God's repentance as opposed to man's repentance makes clear that any analogy between them is only partial… God does not need to turn from evil as man does. It is the dynamics of human response, not any struggle of his own with evil, that cause God to “repent”.^[4]

Moberley brings also examples where God's repentance is denied (Num 23.19; 1 Sam 15.29), but he shows that here the word is used in a sense that God was never unfaithful to what he promised.

It seems from the above examples that God then did not know whether, for example, the Ninevites would repent. He was ready to act in both cases: if they do not repent, destruction will follow; if they repent, they will be spared. This means that God's threat was conditional: the city will be destroyed (unless they do not repent).

This last explanation seems to contradict our image of God as all-knowing, but it is probably a good approximation how the Hebrews thought about God. The death threat from 2.17 (“in the day that you eat of it you shall die”) could have had a quite different echo in their ears than in ours. It could have been understood as a conditional threat: “you will surely die, unless someone will tempt you to eat”; or “you will surely die, unless you repent”. It is quite possible, then, that for the Hebrew writers and listeners of the story it was not surprising that Adam and Eve did not die immediately. While for Westermann^[5] the not fulfilled threat of death penalty was a mystery that could not be explained only acknowledged, his interpretation is for Moberly a watering down of the problem; he believes that the idea of God's changing mind is consistent with the thinking of the authors of the Old Testament.

Others would deny that a literal change of mind can be attributed to God; he speaks to us on a level we can comprehend. Some would say that we have to interpret this story in a metaphorical or allegorical way: the sinful city was destroyed indeed by the conversion of its citizens and a new city was built up; Adam and Eve died indeed, but their death was not physical but spiritual. Thus the punishment is actually carried out on the spot: it is the expulsion from the garden and the tree of life, and this leads to spiritual death. The spiritual understanding can be supported also from the New Testament (Rom 6.23: “the wages of sin is death”; 8.6; Eph 2.1; 1 Tim 5.6). The tree of life thus has a spiritual meaning:

To be in the presence of the tree of life and to eat of it represents continued life in relationship with God, unbroken communion with him. This continued life, however, depends on continual obedience… Death is the result of sin… Life or death is a matter of one's relationship with God^[6].

The author of the story presents to us the relationship of God and humans in the terms of obedience and disobedience: one gives life, the other death. This concept is not unknown in the Old Testament: “the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, but lawlessness takes away life” (Prov 11.30; 3.18;). Westermann seems to follow a similar line of interpretation when he states that “to say no to God… is ultimately to say no to life; for life comes from God^[7]”. The difficulty with this explanation is that the verses of judgment (14-19) “do not sound like a description of what is true only when mankind is disobedient to God but as a description of the constant and unchanging experience of life of the ancient Hebrew.”^[8]

Next to the tree of life there is another tree in the Garden: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Though some scholars think “that only one tree is essential for the story and that there is some confusion between the trees”^[9], with two trees the polarity of life and death, obedience and disobedience, could be extended by one more contrast: the tree of life and the tree of death. In the following paragraphs I will examine the nature of this second tree. There are many possible answers to the question what this tree stands for and what was the sin of the first humans.

We could interpret the story literally and say that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a real tree with real fruit; what God was asking for was simply a test of obedience which they failed:

By the sheer act of disobedience they came to know evil as a horrible reality in their personal lives… a sense of pollution and guilt made them miserable… It was not organic chemistry but sin that worked devastation in their mind and bodies. So then, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was just a symbol of the moral issue between good and evil. It was a simple test of obedience. It did not need to have any special qualities of its own. Any other tree might have served the same purpose just as well.^[10]

Most people, however, would look for a different explanation and understand the tree symbolically.

The most interesting interpretation came from Henkey, In his view, God created Adam and Eve to bridge the spiritual and material worlds. The man (originating from the spiritual world) took on material qualities, and the woman (originating from the material world) took on spiritual qualities, so they could meet on equal terms. God's original intention was for Eve to become the mother of His Son. Only after the Incarnation she would give birth to her other children.  Eve, however, wanted all her children from Adam. The forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge was sexual intercourse, just as today boys and girls are excluded from sex. An interesting chain of thought, even when it cannot be supported from the text itself.

Because of some sexual connotations of the story, others also think that the forbidden fruit was sexual intercourse. One of the arguments to support this view is that the consequence of the transgression is that “the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons” (v.7). A new element appeared on the scene, the feeling of shame for nakedness.  Verse 2.25 states that “the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.”  Because they covered they genitals, one could conclude that their disobedience was indeed intercourse.  In v.3.5 it is noted that if man eats from the tree, he will become like God. To become like God could then mean to become able to create new life (through sex), just as God is able to create life. Procreation confers in a way immortality to humans^[11].  This argument has, however, its weakness: animals are also able to create new life, and even plants regenerate themselves.

Other arguments for the interpretation of the tree as sexual knowledge are: the word “know” has in Hebrew also some sexual colouring (Adam knew Eve; Gen 4.1); in Canaanite religion the serpent stands for the symbol of fertility; the penalty for Eve (v.16) mentions her desire for Adam that will result in pregnancy and painful birth; in the story of Gilgamesh, which seemed to influence the Hebrew writers, the primitive man Enkindu achieves his elevation from the animal world to humanity through an intercourse with a woman.

Others would argue that through the eating of the fruit Adam and Eve gained indeed new knowledge. There are, again, different opinions about the character of this knowledge.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil could represent universal knowledge; the expression “good and evil” stands for “everything”; “the totality is expressed by two extremes”^[12].  Adam and Eve's sin would be then their prideful search for the secrets of the universe.  There are other examples from the Old Testament for the use of the phrase “good and evil” in a similar sense (1 Kings 3.9; 2 Sam 13.22), but the uses of the phrase are diverse and do not give us absolute certainty regarding its interpretation.  Neither do we have any evidence that Adam and Eve achieved universal knowledge^[13].

The “knowledge of good and evil” could be moral knowledge.  Does it mean that Adam and Eve were not moral beings when God asked them not to eat from the tree?  This position would raise the question of their responsibility for what they did. Were Adam and Eve “like children who have not reached the age of accountability?”^[14]

Some scholars interpret the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as a boundary designed by God not to be transgressed by humans.  God, the Creator is limitless, infinite and independent; humans, on the other hand, as creatures, are limited and dependent on God. By eating from the tree humans refused this dependency in favour of human autonomy; they made an attempt to reverse the order established by God, so they can decide between good and evil and shape their lives independently:

The knowledge of good and evil means the taking of decisions concerning what is ultimately in one's own best interest.  The question in context revolves around the idea of who is to decide this, God or man… when man eats of the tree he decides that the decision with regard to what is good for him or not good for him is for him to make. He decides to be autonomous, independent of any will beyond his own.^[15]

Howard argues that this is the main theme of the story: “The main concern of the narrative as recorded is the penetration of the divine realm by the couple… with Yahweh's prevention of human attainment of divine attributes”^[16].  This issue comes up later also in Gen 6.1-4, where the daughters of men were married by the Sons of God and again in 11.1-9, where the people wanted to reach the gods by building the tower of Babel.  Howard concludes:

Whenever there is the possibility of mixing of the divine and human worlds, Yahweh is portrayed as the antagonist of humankind, stepping in and placing further limitations on the latter.  These are usually associated with common phenomena of human life. It is clear that J sees human aspiration for divine attributes or qualities as prohibited.^[17]

The refusal to accept the limited status of creature represents an attempt to grasp for the prerogatives of the creator; “ultimately”, however, the attempt to be more than human leads to a condition which is less than human^[18].

Some contemporary scholars have a more positive view about commandments and boundaries between God and humans: “freedom can truly exist only in the presence of limitation… development needs prohibitions”^[19]. God's commandment then defines the limits for humans within which they can function authentically.  Just as a parent sets certain limits for their children, for their own benefit, in the same way God deals with his creatures:

The command then opens up the possibility of a relationship to the one who commands. By the command something is entrusted to the man; he is given an area of freedom which the animals do not possess; it is not a limitation but an enlargement of his potential.^[20]

Some would go even one step further, by maintaining that not only the giving of the commandment was a good thing, but also it’s trespassing by Adam and Eve. They support their view with the example of the human family: there are stages of development, through which a child goes through.  First, it is completely dependent on its parents and obeys the commandments. But sooner or later the day comes when this child should become independent.  It should rebel against its parents and differentiate itself. The story of Adam and Eve is then a story of moving from the stage of childlike innocence to adult maturity.^[21] Their disobedience was a necessary step to human maturation. Their awakening shame has positive aspects: they know something which they did not know before.  It is right for us to cover our bodies, so “something positive has resulted from the act of Adam and Eve”.^[22]

Hanson^[23] also understands the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as “the tree of growing up”. Eating of this tree then is the process of self-differentiation of a child from its parents, its daring to become what it is destined to be: a creature who bears God's image. Even their penalty, the fear of death is a positive experience; it encourages men and women to be ambitious, to create children or novels. May approaches the problem psychologically:

This remarkable story is actually describing… what happens in every human being's some time between the ages of one and three, namely, the emergence of self-awareness. Before that time the individual has lived in the Garden of Eden, a symbol of the period of existence in the womb and early infancy when he is entirely taken care of by parents, and his life is warm and comfortable.  The Garden stands for that state reserved for infants, animals and angels, in which ethical conflict and responsibility do not exist; it is the period of innocence in which one knows “neither shame nor guilt”.^[24]

The eating of the tree of knowledge and the ability to distinguish between good and evil “represent the birth of the psychological and spiritual person.”^[25] Hegel is ready to call the Fall of humanity a “fall upward”. This theology uses images and terms like “creational suffering”, or “suffering of becoming”, because self-consciousness has its burdens, too.  One day, for example, we become aware of our mortality.

The difficulty with this view is that it is not supported from the text itself. Vv.14-19 seem especially troublesome: here God announces his judgment to the serpent, the woman and the man; each of them is punished and the consequences of their sin are painful; if the disobedience was really a necessary step to become mature adults, then God makes an impression of a completely insensitive and ignorant parent, who does not have a clue how to raise children.

So the “fall upward” is probably a projection of our values back to Biblical times. The disobedience is not a positive value in Genesis; in fact, the increasing sinfulness is a general concern in the book: “the wickedness of man was great in the earth” (6.5).

Still another view claims that the story-teller tries to explain present conditions, like the hatred between humans and snakes, death, the pains of childbirth, by certain events which happened in the past. Westermann disagrees:

The answer which the narratives gives then is not a piece of objective information which answers directly the question about the cause… It is part of human existence that a person is fallible. One cannot be a human being other than a fallible human being^[26].

This is certainly true, but it does not seem to capture the whole picture. The writer of the story would probably argue that Westermann does too easily away with the presence of sin, as something that is inevitable and unavoidable, when he says that humanity can exist only as sinful. Though it is true generally, but the writer would hasten to add that individuals, like Abel or Noah, can choose to live righteous life and they certainly did so.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bruner, William T. Children of the Devil. Philosophical Library, New York, 1966.

Dubarle, A.M. The Biblical Doctrine of Original Sin. Geoffrey Chapman, London, 1964.

Fretheim, Terence E. Creation, Fall, and Flood. Augsburg Publishing House, Minneapolis, 1969.

Fretheim, Terence E. “Is Genesis 3 a Fall Story?” Word and World, 14:144-153 Spr.1994.

Hanson, Richard S. The Serpent was wiser. Augsburg Publishing House, Minneapolis, 1972.

Henkey, Károly. ( His thoughts are available on the Net:
http://www.rc.net/toronto/paxromana/irasrend/tanulmany.html)

L'Heureux, Conrad E. In and Out of Paradise. Paulist Press, New York, 1983.

May, Rollo, Man's search for himself, Norton and Company, New York, 1953.

Moberly, R.Walter. “Did the Serpent get it right?” Journal of Theological Studies, 39:1-27 Ap 1988.

Spanner, D.G. Biblical Creation and the Theory of Evolution. The Paternoster Press, Exeter, 1987.

Wallace, Howard N. The Eden Narrative. Scholars Press, Atlanta, 1985.

Westermann, Claus. Genesis 1-11. SPCK, London, 1984.

 

NOTES

[1] D.G.Spanner. Biblical Creation and the Theory of Evolution. The Paternoster Press, Exeter, 1987, p.71.

[2] A.M.Dubarle. The Biblical Doctrine of Original Sin. Geoffrey Chapman, London, 1964, p.80.

[3] Walter R.Moberly. “Did the Serpent get it right?” Journal of Theological Studies, 39:1-27 Ap 1988, p.10.

[4] Moberly, p.11.

[5] Westermann, p.225.

[6] Terence T.Fretheim. Creation, Fall, and Flood. Augsburg Publishing House, Minneapolis, 1969, p.73.

[7] Westermann, p.224.

[8] Moberly, p.19.

[9] Howard N.Wallace. The Eden Narrative. Scholars Press, Atlanta, 1985, p.103.

[10] Bruner, p.66.

[11] To read more about the thought of Karoly Henkey, visit Pax Romana web site:
http://www.rc.net/toronto/paxromana/irasrend/tanulmany.html

[12] Wallace, p.119.

[13] Fretheim, p.75.

[14] Bruner, p.65.

[15] Fretheim, p.76.

[16] Wallace, p.130.

[17] Wallace, p.132.

[18] Conrad E.L'Heureux. In and Out of Paradise. Paulist Press, New York, 1983, p.71.

[19] Fretheim, p.77.

[20] Westermann, p.224.

[21] Wallace, p.117.

[22] L'Heureux, p.70.

[23] Richard S.Hanson. The Serpent was wiser. Augsburg Publishing House, Minneapolis, 1972, pp.39-43.

[24] May, p.181-2.

[25] May, p.182.

[26] Westermann, p.277.