Is this another name for the tree of knowledge? That would explain things. However, this becomes the ‘tree of life’ at the end of the narrative. God originally tells Adam not to eat of the tree of knowledge (i.e., knowledge of good and evil), but every other tree is fine to eat from. And that was it: it was pack your bags time, and don’t slam the garden gate on your way out.īut which tree did Adam and Eve eat from? There is an inconsistency in the Genesis narrative. The way the writers of the Genesis story solve this problem, of course, is by presenting a narrative in which God initially did shelter his creation from these hardships, until humankind showed itself untrustworthy and ill-deserving of relief from these travails. But any God that allowed such things to afflict his people can’t be wholly good. Analysed this way, then, the Adam and Eve story is a kind of origin-myth for the hardships of the flesh: women’s pain in childbirth, man’s back-breaking toil in the field, the wife’s subjection to her husband.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |