A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis

20–24.
The expulsion from Eden.

20. The naming of the woman can hardly have come in between the sentence and its execution, or before there was any experience of motherhood to suggest it. The attempts to connect the notice with the mention of child-bearing in ^15 f. (Delitzsch al.), or with the thought of mortality in ¹⁹ (Knobel), are forced. The most suitable position in the present text would be before (so Jubilees iii. 33) or after 4¹; and accordingly some regard it as a misplaced gloss in explanation of that verse. But when we consider (a) that the name Ḥavvāh must in any case be traditional, (b) that it is a proper name, whereas הָאָדָם remains appellative throughout, and (c) that in the following verses there are unambiguous traces of a second recension of the Paradise story, it is reasonable to suppose that verse ²⁰ comes from that recension, and is a parallel to the naming of the woman in 2²³, whether it stands here in the original order or not. The fact that the name Eve has been preserved, while there is no distinctive name for the man, suggests that חוה is a survival from a more primitive theory of human origins in which the first mother represented the unity of the race.—the mother of every living thing] According to this derivation, חַוָּה would seem to denote first the idea of life, and then the source of life—the mother.¹ But the form חוה is not Hebrew, and the real meaning of the word is not settled by the etymology here given (v.i.).—כָּל־חַי commonly includes all animals (8²¹ etc.), but is here restricted to mankind (as Psalms 143², Job 30²³). Compare however, πότνια θηρῶν, ‘Lady of wild things,’ a Greek epithet of the Earth-mother (Miss Harrison, Prolegomena to the study of Greek Religion 264).—21. Another detached notice describing the origin of clothing. It is, of course, not inconsistent with verse ⁷, but neither can it be said to be the necessary sequel to that verse; most probably it is a parallel from another source.—coats of skin] “The simplest and most primitive kind of clothing in practical use” (Driver).

An interesting question arises as to the connexion between this method of clothing and the loss of pristine innocence. That it exhibits God’s continued care for man even after the Fall (Dillmann al.) may be true as regards the present form of the legend; but that is hardly the original conception. In the Phœnician legend of Usōos, the invention is connected with the hunting of wild animals, and this again with the institution of sacrifice: ... ὃς σκέπην τῷ σώματι πρῶτος ἐκ δερμάτων ὧν ἴσχυσε συλλαβεῖν θηρίων εὗρε ... ἅμα τε σπένδειν αὐταῖς ἐξ ὧν ἤγρευε θηρίων (Præparatio Evangelica i. 10; Orelli, page 17 f.). Since sacrifice and the use of animal food were inseparably associated in Semitic antiquity, it may be assumed that this is conceived as the first departure from the Golden Age, when men lived on the spontaneous fruits of the earth. Similarly, William Robertson Smith (Lectures on the Religion of the Semites², 306 ff.) found in the verse the Yahwistic theory of the introduction of the sacrifice of domestic animals, which thus coincided, as in Greek legend, with the transition from the state of innocence to the life of agriculture.

20. חוה] LXX Εὕα [Εὔα] (in 4¹), Aquila Αὖα, Vulgate Heva, Jerome Eva (English Eve); in this verse LXX translates Ζωή, Symmachus Ζωογόνος. The similarity of the name to the Aramaic word for ‘serpent’ (חַוֵּי, חִוְיָא, Syriac , Syro-Palestinian [Matthew 7¹⁰]); (compare Arabic ḥayyat from ḥauyat [Nöldeke]) has always been noticed, and is accepted by several modern scholars as a real etymological equivalence (Nöldeke Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, xlii. 487; Stade Geschichte des Volkes Israel, i. 633; Wellhausen Reste arabischen Heidentums 154). The ancient idea was that Eve was so named because she had done the serpent’s work in tempting Adam (Bereshith Rabba; Philo, De Agricultura Noë, 21; Clement of Alexandria Protrepticus ii. 12. 1). Quite recently the philological equation has acquired fresh significance from the discovery of the name חות on a leaden Punic tabella devotionis (described by Lidzbarski Ephemeris, i. 26 ff.; see Cooke, A Textbook of North-Semitic Inscriptions, 135), of which the first line reads: “O Lady ḤVT, goddess, queen...!” Lidzbarski sees in this mythological personage a goddess of the under-world, and as such a serpent-deity; and identifies her with the biblical Ḥavvah. Ḥavvah would thus be a ‘depotentiated’ deity, whose prototype was a Phœnician goddess of the Under-world, worshipped in the form of a serpent, and bearing the title of ‘Mother of all living’ (see Gressman l.c. 359 f.). Precarious as such combinations may seem, there is no objection in principle to an explanation of the name Ḥavvah on these lines. Besides the Ḥivvites of the Old Testament (who were probably a serpent-tribe), Wellhausen cites examples of Semitic princely families that traced their genealogy back to a serpent. The substitution of human for animal ancestry, and the transference of the animal name to the human ancestor, are phenomena frequently observed in the transition from a lower to a higher stage of religion. If the change took place while a law of female descent still prevailed, the ancestry would naturally be traced to a woman (or goddess); and when the law of male kinship was introduced she would as naturally be identified with the wife of the first man. It need hardly be said that all this, while possibly throwing some light on the mythical background of the biblical narrative, is quite apart from the religious significance of the story of the Fall in itself.—אם כל־חי] William Robertson Smith renders ‘mother of every ḥayy,’—ḥayy being the Arabic word which originally denoted a group of female kinship. Thus “Eve is the personification of the bond of kinship (conceived as exclusively mother-kinship), just as Adam is simply ‘man,’ i.e. the personification of mankind” (Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia², 208). The interpretation has found no support.—21. Point לָאָדָם, as in verse ¹⁷.

22–24. The actual expulsion.—22. Behold ... one of us] This is no ‘ironica exprobatio’ (Calvin al.), but a serious admission that man has snatched a divine prerogative not meant for him. The feeling expressed (compare 11⁶) is akin to what the Greeks called the ‘envy of the gods,’ and more remotely to the Old Testament attribute of the zeal or jealousy of Yahwe,—His resentment of all action that encroaches on His divinity (see page 97). In verse ⁵ the same words are put in the mouth of the serpent with a distinct imputation of envy to God; and it is perhaps improbable that the writer of that verse would have justified the serpent’s insinuation, even in form, by a divine utterance. There are several indications (e.g. the phrase ‘like one of us’) that the secondary recension to which verse ²² belongs represents a cruder form of the legend than does the main narrative; and it is possible that it retains more of the characteristically pagan feeling of the envy of the gods.—in respect of knowing, etc.] Man has not attained complete equality with God, but only God-likeness in this one respect. Gressman’s contention that the verse is self-contradictory (man has become like a god, and yet lacks the immortality of a god) is therefore unfounded.—And now, etc.] There remains another divine attribute which man will be prompt to seize, viz. immortality: to prevent his thus attaining complete likeness to God he must be debarred from the Tree of Life. The expression put forth his hand suggests that a single partaking of the fruit would have conferred eternal life (Budde Die biblische Urgeschichte 52); and at least implies that it would have been an easy thing to do. The question why man had not as yet done so is not impertinent (Delitzsch), but inevitable; so momentous an issue could not have been left to chance in a continuous narrative. The obvious solution is that in this recension the Tree of Life was a (or the) forbidden tree, that man in his first innocence had respected the injunction, but that now when he knows the virtue of the tree he will not refrain from eating. It is to be observed that it is only in this part of the story that the idea of immortality is introduced, and that not as an essential endowment of human nature, but as contingent on an act which would be as efficacious after the Fall as before it.—On the aposiopesis at the end of the verse, v.i.—23 is clearly a doublet of ²⁴; and the latter is the natural continuation of ²². Verse ²³ is a fitting conclusion to the main narrative, in which it probably followed immediately on verse ¹⁹.—24. He drove out the man and made [him] dwell on the east of ... [and stationed] the Cherubim, etc.] This is the reading of LXX (v.i.), and it gives a more natural construction than Massoretic Text, which omits the words in brackets. On either view the assumption is that the first abode of mankind was east of the garden. There is no reason to suppose that the verse represents a different tradition as to the site of Eden from 2⁸ or 2^10 ff.. It is not said in 2⁸ that it was in the extreme east, or in 2¹⁰ that it was in the extreme north; nor is it here implied that it was further west than Palestine. The account of the early migration of the race in 11² is quite consistent with the supposition that mankind entered the Euphrates valley from a region still further east.—the Cherubim and the revolving sword-flame] Literally ‘the flame of the whirling sword.’ It has usually been assumed that the sword was in the hand of one of the cherubim; but probably it was an independent symbol, and a representation of the lightning. Some light may be thrown on it by an inscription of Tiglath-pileser I. (Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, i. 36 f.), where the king says that when he destroyed the fortress of Ḫunusa he made ‘a lightning of bronze.’ The emblem appears to be otherwise unknown, but the allusion suggests a parallel to the ‘flaming sword’ of this passage.

The Cherubim.—See the notes of Dillmann, Gunkel, Driver; Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament³, 529 f., 631 ff.; Cheyne in Encyclopædia Biblica, 741 ff.; Jeremias Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients², 218; Haupt, The Sacred Books of the Old Testament, Numbers, 46; Polychrome Bible, 181 f.; Furtwängler, in Roscher’s Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie article Gryps.—The derivation of the word is uncertain. The old theory of a connexion with γρύψ (Greif, griffin, etc.) is not devoid of plausibility, but lacks proof. The often quoted statement of Lenormant (Les Origines de l’histoire i. 118), that kirubu occurs on an amulet in the de Clercq collection as a name of the winged bulls of Assyrian palaces, seems to be definitely disproved (see Jeremias 218).—A great part of the Old Testament symbolism could be explained from the hypothesis that the Cherubim were originally wind-demons, like the Harpies of Greek mythology (Harrison, Prolegomena to the study of Greek Religion 178 ff.). The most suggestive analogy to this verse is perhaps to be found in the winged genii often depicted by the side of the tree of life in Babylonian art. These figures are usually human in form with human heads, but sometimes combine the human form with an eagle’s head, and occasionally the human head with an animal body. They are shown in the act of fecundating the date-palm by transferring the pollen of the male tree to the flower of the female; and hence it has been conjectured that they are personifications of the winds, by whose agency the fertilisation of the palm is effected in nature (Tylor, Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology, xii. 383 ff.). Starting with this clue, we can readily explain (1) the function of the Cherub as the living chariot of Yahwe, or bearer of the Theophany, in Psalms 18¹¹ (2 Samuel 22¹¹). It is a personification of the storm-wind on which Yahwe rides, just as the Babylonian storm-god Zû was figured as a bird-deity. The theory that it was a personification of the thunder-cloud is a mere conjecture based on Psalms 18^11 f., and has no more intrinsic probability than that here suggested. (2) The association of the winged figures with the Tree of Life in Babylonian art would naturally lead to the belief that the Cherubim were denizens of Paradise (Ezekiel 28^14. 16), and guardians of the Tree (as in this passage). (3) Thence they came to be viewed as guardians of sacred things and places generally, like the composite figures placed at the entrances of Assyrian temples and palaces to prevent the approach of evil spirits. To this category belong probably in the first instance the colossal Cherubim of Solomon’s temple (1 Kings 6^23 ff. 8^6 f.), and the miniatures on the lid of the ark in the Tabernacle (Exodus 25^18 ff. etc.); but a trace of the primary conception appears in the alternation of cherubim and palm-trees in the temple decoration (1 Kings 6^29 ff., Ezekiel 41^18 ff.; see, further, 1 Kings 7^29 ff., Exodus 26^1. 31). (4) The most difficult embodiment of the idea is found in the Cherubim of Ezekiel’s visions—four composite creatures combining the features of the ox, the lion, the man, and the eagle (Ezekiel 1^5 ff. 10^1 ff.). These may represent primarily the ‘four winds of heaven’; but the complex symbolism of the Merkābāh shows that they have some deeper cosmic significance. Gunkel (page 20) thinks that an older form of the representation is preserved in Apocalypse 4^6 ff., where the four animal types are kept distinct. These he connects with the four constellations of the Zodiac which mark the four quarters of the heavens: Taurus, Leo, Scorpio (in the earliest astronomy a scorpion-man), and Aquila (near Aquarius). See Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament³, 631 f.

1. Ethnic parallels.—The Babylonian version of the Fall of man (if any such existed) has not yet been discovered. There is in the British Museum a much-debated seal-cylinder which is often cited as evidence that a legend very similar to the biblical narrative was current in Babylonia. It shows two completely clothed figures seated on either side of a tree, and each stretching out a hand toward its fruit, while a crooked line on the left of the picture is supposed to exhibit the serpent.¹ The engraving no doubt represents some legend connected with the tree of life; but even if we knew that it illustrates the first temptation, the story is still wanting; and the details of the picture show that it can have had very little resemblance to Genesis 3.—The most that can be claimed is that there are certain remote parallels to particular features or ideas of Genesis 2⁴–3²⁴, which are yet sufficiently close to suggest that the ultimate source of the biblical narrative is to be sought in the Babylonian mythology. Attention should be directed to the following:—

(a) The account of Creation in 2^4 ff. has undoubted resemblances to the Babylonian document described on page 47 f., though they are hardly such as to prove dependence. Each starts with a vision of chaos, and in both the prior existence of heaven and earth seems to be assumed; although the Babylonian chaos is a waste of waters, while that of Genesis 2^5 f. is based rather on the idea of a waterless desert (see page 56 above). The order of creation, though not the same, is alike in its promiscuous and unscientific character: in the Babylonian we have a hopeless medley—mankind, beasts of the field, living things of the field, Tigris and Euphrates, verdure of the field, grass, marshes, reeds, wild-cow, ewe, sheep of the fold, orchards, forests, houses, and cities, etc. etc.—but no separate creation of woman.—The creation of man from earth moistened by the blood of a god, in another document, may be instanced as a distant parallel to 2⁷ (pages 42, 45).

(b) The legend of Eabani, embedded in the Gilgameš-Epic (Tablet I. Column ii. line 33 ff.: Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, vi. 1, page 120 ff.), seems to present us (it has been thought) with a ‘type of primitive man.’ Eabani, created as a rival to Gilgameš by the goddess Aruru from a lump of clay, is a being of gigantic strength who is found associating with the wild animals, living their life, and foiling all the devices of the huntsman. Eager to capture him, Gilgameš sends with the huntsman a harlot, by whose attractions he hopes to lure Eabani from his savagery. Eabani yields to her charms, and is led, a willing captive, to the life of civilisation:

But later in the epic, the harlot appears as the cause of his sorrows, and Eabani curses her with all his heart. Apart from its present setting, and considered as an independent bit of folk-lore, it cannot be denied that the story has a certain resemblance to Genesis 2^18–24. Only, we may be sure that if the idea of sexual intercourse with the beasts be implied in the picture of Eabani, the moral purity of the Hebrew writer never stooped so low (see Jastrow, American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, xv. 198 ff.; Stade, Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, xxiii. 174 f.).

(c) Far more instructive affinities with the inner motive of the story of the Fall are found in the myth of Adapa and the South-wind, discovered amongst the Tel-Amarna Tablets, and therefore known in Palestine in the 15th century B.C. (Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, vi. 1, 92–101). Adapa, the son of the god Ea, is endowed by him with the fulness of divine wisdom, but denied the gift of immortality:

This looks almost like a travesty of the leading ideas of Genesis 3; yet the common features are very striking. In both we have the idea that wisdom and immortality combined constitute equality with deity; in both we have a man securing the first and missing the second; and in both the man is counselled in opposite directions by supernatural voices, and acts on that advice which is contrary to his interest. There is, of course, the vital difference that while Yahwe forbids both wisdom and immortality to man, Ea confers the first (and thus far plays the part of the biblical serpent) but withholds the second, and Anu is ready to bestow both. Still, it is not too much to expect that a story like this will throw light on the mythological antecedents of the Genesis narrative, if not directly on that narrative itself (see below, page 94).

What is true of Babylonian affinities holds good in a lesser degree of the ancient mythologies as a whole: everywhere we find echoes of the Paradise myth, but nowhere a story which forms an exact parallel to Genesis 2. 3. The Græco-Roman traditions told of a ‘golden age,’ lost through the increasing sinfulness of the race,—an age when the earth freely yielded its fruits, and men lived in a happiness undisturbed by toil or care or sin (Hesiod, Opera et Dies, 90–92, 109–120; Ovid, Metamorphoses i. 89–112, etc.); but they knew nothing of a sudden fall. Indian and Persian mythologies told, in addition, of sacred mountains where the gods dwelt, with bright gold and flashing gems, and miraculous trees conferring immortality, and every imaginable blessing; and we have seen that similar representations were current in Babylonia. The nearest approach to definite counterparts of the biblical narrative are found in Iranian legends, where we read of Meshia and Meshiane, who lived at first on fruits, but who, tempted by Ahriman, denied the good god, lost their innocence, and practised all kinds of wickedness; or of Yima, the ruler of the golden age, under whom there was neither sickness nor death, nor hunger nor thirst, until (in one tradition) he gave way to pride, and fell under the dominion of the evil serpent Dahaka (see Dillmann page 47 ff.). But these echoes are too faint and distant to enable us to determine the quarter whence the original impulse proceeded, or where the myth assumed the form in which it appears in Genesis. For answers to these questions we are dependent mainly on the uncertain indications of the biblical narrative itself. Some features (the name Ḥavvah [page 85 f.], and elements of chapter 4) seem to point to Phœnicia as the quarter whence this stratum of myth entered the religion of Israel; others (the Paradise-geography) point rather to Babylonia, or at least Mesopotamia. In the present state of our knowledge it is a plausible conjecture that the myth has travelled from Babylonia, and reached Israel through the Phœnicians or the Canaanites (Wellhausen Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels⁶ 307; Gressman Archiv für Religionswissenschaft., x. 345 ff.; compare Bevan, The Journal of Theological Studies, iv. 500 f.). A similar conclusion might be drawn from the contradiction in the idea of chaos, if the explanation given above of 2⁶ be correct: it looks as if the cosmogony of an alluvial region had been modified through transference to a dry climate (see page 56). The fig-leaves of 3⁷ are certainly not Babylonian; though a single detail of that kind cannot settle the question of origin. But until further light comes from the monuments, all speculations on this subject are very much in the air.

2. The mythical substratum of the narrative.—The strongest evidence of the non-Israelite origin of the story of the Fall is furnished by the biblical account itself, in the many mythological conceptions, of which traces still remain in Genesis. “The narrative,” as Driver says, “contains features which have unmistakable counterparts in the religious traditions of other nations; and some of these, though they have been accommodated to the spirit of Israel’s religion, carry indications that they are not native to it” (The Book of Genesis with Introduction and Notes 51). Amongst the features which are at variance with the standpoint of Hebrew religion we may put first of all the fact that the abode of Yahwe is placed, not in Canaan or at Mount Sinai, but in the far East. The strictly mythological background of the story emerges chiefly in the conceptions of the garden of the gods (see page 57 f.), the trees of life and of knowledge (page 59), the serpent (page 72 f.), Eve (page 85 f.), and the Cherubim (page 89 f.). It is true, as has been shown, that each of these conceptions is rooted in the most primitive ideas of Semitic religion; but it is equally true that they have passed through a mythological development for which the religion of Israel gave no opportunity. Thus the association of trees and serpents in Semitic folk-lore is illustrated by an Arabian story, which tells how, when an untrodden thicket was burned down, the spirits of the trees made their escape in the shape of white serpents (Lectures on the Religion of the Semites², 133); but it is quite clear that a long interval separates that primitive superstition from the ideas that invest the serpent and the tree in this passage. If proof were needed, it would be found in the suggestive combinations of the serpent and the tree in Babylonian and Phœnician art; or in the fabled garden of the Hesperides, with its golden fruit guarded by a dragon, always figured in artistic representations as a huge snake coiled round the trunk of the tree (compare Lenormant, Les Origines de l’Histoire, i. 93 f.: see the illustrations in Roscher, Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie 2599 f.). How the various elements were combined in the particular myth which lies immediately behind the biblical narrative, it is impossible to say; but the myth of Adapa suggests at least some elements of a possible construction, which cannot be very far from the truth. Obviously we have to do with a polytheistic legend, in which rivalries and jealousies between the different deities are almost a matter of course. The serpent is himself a demon; and his readiness to initiate man in the knowledge of the mysterious virtue of the forbidden tree means that he is at variance with the other gods, or at least with the particular god who had imposed the prohibition. The intention of the command was to prevent man from sharing the life of the gods; and the serpent-demon, posing as the good genius of man, defeats that intention by revealing to man the truth (similarly Gunkel 30). To the original heathen myth we may also attribute the idea of the envy of the gods, which the biblical narrator hardly avoids, and the note of weariness and melancholy, the sombre view of life,—the ‘scheue heidnische Stimmung,’—which is the ground-tone of the passage.

It is impossible to determine what, in the original myth, was the nature of the tree (or trees) which man was forbidden to eat. Gressman (l.c. 351 ff.) finds in the passage traces of three primitive conceptions: (1) the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, whose fruit imparts the knowledge of magic,—the only knowledge of which it can be said that it makes man at once the equal and the rival of the deity; (2) the tree of knowledge, whose fruit excites the sexual appetite and destroys childlike innocence (3⁷); (3) the tree of life, whose fruit confers immortality (3²²). The question is immensely complicated by the existence of two recensions, which do not seem so hopelessly inseparable as Gressman thinks. In the main recension we have the tree of knowledge, of which man eats to his hurt, but no hint of a tree of life. In the secondary recension there is the tree of life (of which man does not eat), and apparently the tree of knowledge of which he had eaten; but this depends on the word גַּם in 3²², which is wanting in LXX, and may be an interpolation. Again, the statement that knowledge of good and evil really amounts to equality with God, is found only in the second recension; in the other it is doubtful if the actual effect of eating the fruit was not a cruel disappointment of the hope held out by the serpent. How far we are entitled to read the ideas of the one into the other is a question we cannot answer. Eerdmans’ ingenious but improbable theory (Theologisch Tijdschrift, xxxix. 504 ff.) need not here be discussed. What is meant by knowledge of good and evil in the final form of the narrative will be considered under the next head.

3. The religious ideas of the passage.—Out of such crude and seemingly unpromising material the religion of revelation has fashioned the immortal allegory before us. We have now to inquire what are the religious and moral truths under the influence of which the narrative assumed its present form, distinguishing as far as possible the ideas which it originally conveyed from those which it suggested to more advanced theological speculation.

(2) Amongst other things which distinguish man’s present from his original state, is the possession of a certain kind of knowledge which was acquired by eating the forbidden fruit. This brings us to the most difficult question which the narrative presents: what is meant by the knowledge of good and evil?¹ Keeping in mind the possibility that the two recensions may represent different conceptions, our data are these: In 3²² knowledge of good and evil is an attainment which (a) implies equality with God, (b) was forbidden to man, (c) is actually secured by man. In the leading narrative (b) certainly holds good (2¹⁷), but (a) and (c) are doubtful. Did the serpent speak truth when he said that knowledge of good and evil would make man like God? Did man actually attain such knowledge? Was the perception of nakedness a first flash of the new divine insight which man had coveted, or was it a bitter disenchantment and mockery of the hopes inspired by the serpent’s words? It is only the habit of reading the ideas of 3²² into the story of the temptation which makes these questions seem superfluous. Let us consider how far the various interpretations enable us to answer them.—i. The suggestion that magical knowledge is meant may be set aside as inadequate to either form of the biblical narrative: magic is not godlike knowledge, nor is it the universal property of humanity.—ii. The usual explanation identifies the knowledge of good and evil with the moral sense, the faculty of discerning between right and wrong. This view is ably defended by Budde (Die biblische Urgeschichte 69 ff.), and is not to be lightly dismissed, but yet raises serious difficulties. Could it be said that God meant to withhold from man the power of moral discernment? Does not the prohibition itself presuppose that man already knew that obedience was right and disobedience sinful? We have no right to say that the restriction was only temporary, and that God would in other ways have bestowed on man the gift of conscience; the narrative suggests nothing of the sort.—iii. Wellhausen (Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels⁶ 299 ff.) holds that the knowledge in question is insight into the secrets of nature, and intelligence to manipulate them for human ends; and this as a quality not so much of the individual as of the race,—the knowledge which is the principle of human civilisation. It is the faculty which we see at work in the invention of clothing (3²¹ ?), in the founding of cities (4¹⁷), in the discovery of the arts and crafts (4^19 ff.), and in the building of the tower (11^1 ff.). The undertone of condemnation of the cultural achievements of humanity which runs through the Yahwistic sections of chapters 1–11 makes it probable that the writer traced their root to the knowledge acquired by the first transgression; and of such knowledge it might be said that it made man like God, and that God willed to withhold it permanently from His creatures.—iv. Against this view Gunkel (11 f., 25 f.) urges somewhat ineptly that the myth does not speak of arts and aptitudes which are learned by education, but of a kind of knowledge which comes by nature, of which the instinct of sex is a typical illustration. Knowledge of good and evil is simply the enlargement of capacity and experience which belongs to mature age,—ripeness of judgment, reason,—including moral discernment, but not identical with it.—The difference between the last two explanations is not great; and possibly both are true. Wellhausen’s seems to me the only view that does justice to the thought of 3²²; and if 4^16 ff. and 11^1–9 be the continuation of this version of the Fall, the theory has much to recommend it. On the other hand, Gunkel’s acceptation may be truer to the teaching of 3^1 ff.. Man’s primitive state was one of childlike innocence and purity; and the knowledge which he obtained by disobedience is the knowledge of life and of the world which distinguishes the grown man from the child. If it be objected that such knowledge is a good thing, which God could not have forbidden to man, we may be content to fall back on the paradox of Christ’s idea of childhood: “Except ye turn, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

(3) The next point that claims attention is the author’s conception of sin. Formally, sin is represented as an act of disobedience to a positive command, imposed as a test of fidelity; an act, therefore, which implies disloyalty to God, and a want of the trust and confidence due from man to his Maker. But the essence of the transgression lies deeper: God had a reason for imposing the command, and man had a motive for disobeying it; and the reason and motive are unambiguously indicated. Man was tempted by the desire to be as God, and Yahwe does not will that man should be as God. Sin is thus in the last instance presumption,—an overstepping of the limits of creaturehood, and an encroachment on the prerogatives of Deity. It is true that the offence is invested with every circumstance of extenuation,—inexperience, the absence of evil intention, the suddenness of the temptation, and the superior subtlety of the serpent; but sin it was nevertheless, and was justly followed by punishment.—How far the passage foreshadows a doctrine of hereditary sin, it is impossible to say. The consequences of the transgression, both privative and positive, are undoubtedly transmitted from the first pair to their posterity; but whether the sinful tendency itself is regarded as having become hereditary in the race, there is not evidence to show.

(4) Lastly, what view of God does the narrative present? It has already been pointed out that 3²² borders hard on the pagan notion of the ‘envy’ of the godhead, a notion difficult to reconcile with the conceptions of Old Testament religion. But of that idea there is no trace in the main narrative of the temptation and the Fall, except in the lying insinuation of the serpent: the writer himself does not thus ‘charge God foolishly.’ His religious attitude is one of reverent submission to the limitations imposed on human life by a sovereign Will, which is determined to maintain inviolate the distinction between the divine and the human. The attribute most conspicuously displayed is closely akin to what the prophets called the ‘holiness’ of God, as illustrated, e.g., in Isaiah 2^12 ff.. After all, the world is God’s world and not man’s, and the Almighty is just, as well as holy, when He frustrates the impious aspiration of humanity after an independent footing and sphere of action in the universe. The God of Genesis 3 is no arbitrary heathen deity, dreading lest the sceptre of the universe should be snatched from his hand by the soaring ambition of the race of men; but a Being infinitely exalted above the world, stern in His displeasure at sin, and terrible in His justice; yet benignant and compassionate, slow to anger, and ‘repenting Him of the evil.’ Through an intensely anthropomorphic medium we discern the features of the God of the prophets and the Old Testament; nay, in the analogy of human fatherhood which underlies the description, we can trace the lineaments of the God and Father of Jesus Christ. That is the real Protevangelium which lies in the passage: the fact that God tempers judgment with mercy, the faith that man, though he has forfeited innocence and happiness, is not cut off from fellowship with his Creator.