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[Souper Hero]

How would Adam and Eve have known beforehand they should eat the fruit? This is an attempt to reframe my own understanding of the origin of evil and original sin.

Here's what it looks like. Disobeying God = Evil. Obeying God = Good. If you the Christian agree with this, seems fair to say Adam and Eve had intrinsic knowledge of Good and Evil before eating the forbidden fruit gaining the knowledge of good and evil. If Adam and Eve had no intrinsic knowledge that disobedience was evil and to avoid it, and obedience was good and to do that instead, what basis did God originally have rights to hold them to account?

I'll argue for the Christian here. Suppose a parent says to the child, "don't eat that, you'll get sick and die." The child has never died before, so he's not learning from experience that death is to be avoided. Neither has he ingested poison to know from experience that it's bad and should be avoided. What's the dynamic between commands to be obeyed resulting in obedience? Is there some intrinsic quality of knowing?

I'm attempting to establish the real difference between plain obedience and knowledge. They must be inherently different otherwise the Adam and Eve story falls apart for me. Again, if in the context of a creature/God relationship can grant the creatures knowing disobedience is evil, shouldn't it follow that they both had knowledge of good and evil before supposedly gaining it by eating the fruit?

[jimwalton]

Your confusion stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what is meant by the knowledge of good and evil. In the ancient world, God was often associated with the concept of wisdom, and "the knowledge of good and evil" is a idiomatic way that they expressed that concept of wisdom. For instance, in the Gilgamesh Epic, the primitive Enkidu becomes wise (possessing reason) not by eating the fruit of a tree but instead by engaging in sexual intercourse with the prostitute Samhat, who was sent to entice and capture him. The tree in this story, therefore, is to be associated with the wisdom that is found in God (Job 28.28; Prov. 1.7). It's not that Adam and Eve didn't know about good and evil before this, but that God was inviting them to acquire wisdom (godliness) in the proper way at the appropriate time by obedience to him. "Good and evil" is a legal idiom meaning "to formulate and articulate a judicial decision (Gn. 24.50; 31.24, 29; Dt. 1.39; 1 Ki. 3.9; 22.18). The idea is that they would seek God's ways instead of their own. The tree corresponds to their ability to decide. What was being forbidden to the humans was the power to decide for themselves what was in their best interests and what was not.

So you are right that Adam and Eve had intrinsic knowledge of good and evil before eating the fruit. They knew full well what their choices were, and God was clear about what the consequences were. Unfortunately, what they chose was to be self-govererned than God-oriented, relying on their own faulty "wisdom" rather than on the wisdom of God. God had a grand goal for them (abundant life), but that life could only be had by staying in relationship with God who is Life.

The serpent, in chapter 3, intimated that life could be had apart from God, that God's wisdom was not the necessary course, and that a desirable end could be achieved on one's own recognizance. They were all lies.

I know I haven't dealt with your specific question of obedience and knowledge, but maybe a better understanding of the situation at hand (Gn. 2.17) changes the question. I'm certainly willing to talk more.

[Souper Hero]

Interesting point of view. I don't want to get to off track, but let me digress just a bit here. Imagine a child's psychology. They say, "I wanna be just like daddy when I grow up." No one bats an eye. Why should the child be chastised for having enough esteem for his dad so as to be just like him? His dad would be proud, no? I get that there is a huge difference between usurpation and emulation, but if God is the ultimate being, any healthy minded person should want to be just like him, no?

[jimwalton]

I'm having a little trouble following your analogy, but I'm guessing you are relating what you wrote to Adam and Eve? If that's the case, your analogy is skewed off to the side.

We are supposed to be like God (1 Jn. 3.2 and other places). That's exactly the goal. Not divine, but emulation, to use your word.

> Why should the chid be chastised to having enough esteem for his dad so as to be just like him?

He shouldn't, and this was not the case with Adam and Eve. The point wasn't that they had too much esteem in their search to be like Him, but that they chose to disregard him to follow their own path to "godliness"—a path that wouldn't take them there.

[Progedy]

Genesis 3

6 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. 7 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.
...
11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

It seems clear to me that what was bestowed was knowledge of good and bad, not free will or decision-making ability.

[jimwalton]

The key to this is found in Gn. 3.22. Walton, in "The Lost World of Adam and Eve," comments: "If a legitimate option is that from the start people were moral, and pain and suffering were already a part of a not-yet-fully ordered cosmos, we cannot think of death and suffering as having been foisted on us by Adam and Eve's malfeasance. Many have thought it unfair that all of us should suffer the consequences of their offense. Instead, we can have a much more charitable attitude toward Adam and Eve when we realize that it is not that they initiated a situation that was not already there; it is that they failed to achieve a solution to that situation that was in their reach. Their failure meant that we are doomed to death and a disordered world full of sin. These are profoundly significant consequences for what was a serious offense. In contrast, Christ was able to achieve the desired result where Adam and Even failed. We are all doomed to die because when they sinned we lost access to the tree of life. We are therefore subject to death because of sin. Christ succeeded and actually provided the remedy to sin and death. It's not so much that paradise was lost, but that it was ungained. We didn't lose paradise, we forfeited sacred space and the relationship it offered, thereby damaging our ability to be in relationship with God and marring his creation with our own under-developed ability to bring order on our own in our own wisdom. As Yoda said, 'Reckless is he … now things are worse.' "

Hopefully this is a helpful quote. If not, I'll try again. Just let me know.

Here in Gn. 3.22, we find God using the same phrase with much more loaded import than just knowledge: "They have indeed come to know good and evil." As I mentioned, in the ancient Near East, "good and evil" is a legal idiom meaning "to formulate and articulate a judicial decision." The idea is that of "mature wisdom" that has reached a level of accountability and culpability. The phrase is used other times in the Bible to correspond to the making of moral decisions. In making this particular decision in direct disobedience to the spoken word and will of YHWH, the humans have attained an accountability and culpability, setting themselves up as judges, and declared their autonomy from God. They have become like God in some ways (completely self-determining, autonomous, and "sovereign" over their world), but in other ways they have cut off their chance to achieve these things properly.