[donaldscrankshaw] Donald: The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

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Posted by Donald:
The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
http://www.donaldscrankshaw.com/posts/1207777735.shtml


   I've mentioned this idea [1]before, but I'd like to expand on it a
   bit. So let's start with the story from Genesis 3 (NIV translation):

     Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the
     Lord God had made. He said to the woman, âDid God really say, âYou
     must not eat from any tree in the gardenâ?â
     The woman said to the serpent, âWe may eat fruit from the trees in
     the garden, but God did say, âYou must not eat fruit from the tree
     that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or
     you will die.â â
     âYou will not surely die,â the serpent said to the woman. âFor God
     knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you
     will be like God, knowing good and evil.â
     When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and
     pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she
     took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was
     with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened,
     and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves
     together and made coverings for themselves.
     Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was
     walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the
     Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to
     the man, âWhere are you?â
     He answered, âI heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I
     was naked; so I hid.â
     And he said, âWho told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from
     the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?â
     The man said, âThe woman you put here with meâshe gave me some
     fruit from the tree, and I ate it.â
     Then the Lord God said to the woman, âWhat is this you have done?â
     The woman said, âThe serpent deceived me, and I ate.â
     So the Lord God said to the serpent, âBecause you have done this,
     âCursed are you above all the livestock
     and all the wild animals!
     You will crawl on your belly
     and you will eat dust
     all the days of your life.
     And I will put enmity
     between you and the woman,
     and between your offspring and hers;
     he will crush your head,
     and you will strike his heel.â
     To the woman he said,
     âI will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
     with pain you will give birth to children.
     Your desire will be for your husband,
     and he will rule over you.â
     To Adam he said, âBecause you listened to your wife and ate from
     the tree about which I commanded you, âYou must not eat of it,â
     âCursed is the ground because of you;
     through painful toil you will eat of it
     all the days of your life.
     It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
     and you will eat the plants of the field.
     By the sweat of your brow
     you will eat your food
     until you return to the ground,
     since from it you were taken;
     for dust you are
     and to dust you will return.â
     Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all
     the living.
     The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and
     clothed them. And the Lord God said, âThe man has now become like
     one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach
     out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live
     forever.â So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to
     work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the
     man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim
     and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the
     tree of life.

   There are a number of ways of looking at this story, and I'm not
   talking about whether the story is literal or figurative. What is the
   Knowledge of Good and Evil? Why was this knowledge forbidden to
   mankind? I had one mythology teacher who believed that the whole thing
   was an immortality story, quite common in ancient mythologies, where
   the gods jealousy guard their immortality from humans who always want
   to live forever. After all, Adam and Eve were cast from the garden in
   order to prevent them from eating from the other tree, the Tree of
   Life. Of course, this interpretation tends to overlook the fact that
   the two were free to eat of the Tree of Life before they partook of
   the Tree of Knowledge.
   Many heretical philosophers view God as the antagonist of this story.
   To them, knowledge is the ultimate good, and innocence is a vice, not
   a virtue. They see God as trying to keep mankind ignorant and
   compliant. They read that last line, "The man has now become like one
   of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his
   hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever" as
   proof that God was trying to horde his knowledge so he could subjugate
   mankind, and believe that the wisdom gained by eating the fruit is
   worth it, no matter what the price, or the arbitrary punishment of a
   vain and greedy God.
   There is a strain of Christian thought which runs along similar, but
   less cynical, lines. They see the coming of Christ as the greatest
   good possible, and the redeemed man in Revelations as superior, or at
   least wiser, than the innocent man in Genesis. Because it is the Fall
   that led to these things, they see the Fall as a good thing, and that
   ultimately we are better off for it having happened. Some of them even
   believe that the Fall was meant to happen. After all, how could the
   Lamb of God have been slain before the beginning of the world (Rev
   13:8) if redemption, and thus the Fall, were not already in the works.
   And if God wanted us to Fall, who's to say we had much choice in the
   matter? Maybe I'm not the one, but I'll say it anyway: I reject this
   belief for the very simple reason that it portrays God as a capricious
   deity who made us Fall and then punished us for it. It's probably true
   that I don't understand God as well as I think I do, but I do think
   I'm staying truer to a straightforward reading of the text than those
   who imagine a divine conspiracy to undo us and then remake us.
   What are we to make of this story then? What's so wrong about the
   knowledge of good and evil? God has it, why shouldn't we? Why is
   immortality okay for us as long as we're ignorant (i.e., not like
   God)? And who's the us of "one of us" anyway? (There are a variety of
   interpretations for that one line, some which see God as being
   sarcastic--as man by no stretch of the imagination became like God,
   despite the serpent's promise, I can see that--and others that take it
   more literally.) I will, for the moment, put that aside and reflect on
   the Tree itself. What was the purprose of the Tree? Why give man the
   opportunity to fail like that? Was it simply a test? And what
   knowledge of good and evil did we gain from eating the tree? Shame is
   the only thing mentioned. Did Adam and Eve lack a conscience before?
   Did our innate sense of right and wrong only come from the tree?
   Here's where I'll start speculating, and to begin, I'll concede that
   the Christians who believe that redeemed man is wiser than innocent
   man have a point. We have gained something through the Fall that we've
   endured. I hold to the belief that while Adam and Eve were perfect,
   they were immature. They were intelligent, but not yet very wise. The
   serpent offered them a shortcut: eat the forbidden fruit, and you'll
   become like God. Notice that becoming like God wasn't a matter of
   power and immortality (to some extent, they already had that), but of
   knowledge. The wisdom which they knew they lacked. The fruit of the
   tree didn't necessarily have any supernatural properties. Merely by
   eating of it, they broke God's commandments, bringing sin and death
   into the world. They gained a firsthand knowledge of evil by partaking
   of it, and in this intimate knowledge of evil, fully understood the
   difference between it and the good they had forsaken. But, I maintain,
   there is another way to know evil. God, after all, knows good and
   evil, and it has not come from doing evil. Jesus knew good and evil,
   and not in the way the rest of humanity knew it. He knew it by facing
   it, resisting it, and overcoming it. If the Tree of the Knowledge of
   Good and Evil was a test, then failure was not the only option. There
   was also the possibility of success, and that would have meant
   understanding evil in the same way Jesus did, by opposing it. The
   Tree, then, would have taught mankind what they needed to learn, and
   they would have gained the knowledge that they needed to mature,
   without the catastrophe of the Fall, and the suffering it brought.
   That, I believe, was the purpose of the Tree, not as a test, but as a
   lesson. Failure made the lesson a much harsher one, but even so, we
   are learning. And ultimately, that failure itself is redeemed.

References

   1. http://www.donaldscrankshaw.com/posts/1092112293.shtml