Imagine a perfect world, a world filled with impeccable beauty. In this world, all life necessities are provided, man roams free with no shame of his nakedness, no evil is present, and the only “hitch”, per se, is the requirement of one to care for this oasis. Imagine now a darker world, one in which man has no free will, no independent thought, no judgment, no decision making ability, and ultimately, no real life. What if this heaven and hell were one in the same? Such is the predicament posed by the test of the Parable of Transgression: Did Adam and Eve fail God’s “test;” was this failure a stipulation for human life?
In order to examine these pressing questions, one must have an operational definition of this “life.” According to Dictionary.com, life is characterized primarily as “the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.” A secondary definition describes life as “a corresponding state, existence, or principle of existence conceived of as belonging to the soul; the general or universal condition of human existence.” This human existence, unique to mankind, is typified by cognitive awareness, that is, “having knowledge; conscious; cognizant; informed; alert; knowledgeable; sophisticated.” In the book of Genesis (in Tanakh), chapter two, this life is given rise “from the dust of the earth,” at which point “man became a living being.” This, however, as exemplified by operational definition, is not the dawning of human life, as this Earth Creature (as described in Tanakh as being called such by God in Hebrew, the language of creation) is not described as self aware. Earth Creature is placed in Eden, the paradise created for him by God, and is instructed to care for the “gift” that is this “perfect” home and to refrain from eating from the tree of knowledge of good and bad (implying in a merism of totality knowledge of all, as possessed by the divine). He is then given a partner, perhaps so that he is not alone as God himself-woman (From Man, called so by man, as he is given permission by God to do so). This loneliness, however, seems to be God’s motivation for presenting his test to Earth Creature and From Man.
At the opening of the book of Genesis (in Tanakh), the article “bereshit” is used to demonstrate chronology in terms of “when,” rather than using the traditional phrase “In the beginning,” as in the bible. This implies the presence of no definite time of foundation, but rather the presence of nothingness before the story begins, meaning creation began from nothing, and the creator who “speaks” metaphorically possesses some sort of extremely singular alterity. This defines the creator, “God,” inherently as unaccompanied in the universe before the metaphor of his performative utterance creates the duality around which all else is constructed. Though God is described as having no body or material form (and therefore cannot actually speak, walk on the earth, etc.), no empirical reality, and as being omnipotent and omniscient, for all his greatness he is still alone. Perhaps it is for this reason that God initially creates man; when he recognizes his own despair in Earth Creature’s loneliness, he gifts Earth Creature with his partner and blesses them with the ability to perpetuate and flourish in the garden, with the predisposition that only by becoming “one flesh” can they achieve completeness. These gifts of life, habitat, provision, perpetuation, and companionship are bound together by another resource which cannot be ignored, one which is not fully tapped until test is administered.
Underlying the character established in Earth Creature and From Man, but seemingly unaware to them, is the capability of free will, and in such, the capability to be the embodiment of the goodness of God. Having been made “B’tselem Elohim,” in God’s likeness, having God’s implicit ethical standards and potential, although not guaranteeing that Earth Creature and From Man will use this capacity, couches the existence of nothing evil in the totality of creation, especially once God himself declared his creation to be “tov meod,” or very good. What overshadows this faculty of natural goodness is free will, that is, the choice to neglect the inclination towards the good.
The employment of this ability to neglect the capability for good occurs at the moment From Man and Earth Creature are tempted by the serpent, an instrument of God, when he purposefully misrepresents the prohibition given to Earth Creature before the creation of From Man, regarding the tree of knowledge of good and bad. The serpent describes the knowledge attainable therein as being like that of the gods, divine in nature, and that by possessing it, man would become like sons of God. By this slip of information, God is arguably attempting to instruct Earth Creature and From Man to be candid in their actions by the agent of his serpent, and is testing their (specifically Earth Creature’s) discretion. By their disobedience, they are taught how to act by God’s will in the world, but God’s great desired outcome is also enacted: Earth Creature and From Man have the desire to acquire knowledge, and at the moment Earth Creature and From Man partake of the “forbidden fruit,” they become self aware, and thusly the true Adam and Eve.
Awaking in Eden from their ignorance, Adam and Eve realize they are naked, and are borne into human life in its truest form, as we are all born naked. When God “discovers” (it is also arguable that he already knew of this event, in his omniscience) this treachery, he gives Adam and Eve a chance to confess their betrayal. This is the true test of God for man, which man fails. But is this “failure” really failure? The relationship between God and mankind is now one characterized by enmity; he curses man and woman to a lifetime of “’itsavon,” toil. Adam and Eve are clothed in animal skins, a foreshadowing of death in the time of authorship of the chapter of Genesis, and are sent from the safe, simple, unthreatening, providing habitat that is Eden and into the challenging, menacing, working world of uncertainty outside.
Only here, in this outside world, are they able to propagate in the manner intended by God, and only here can Adam and Eve have true human life as operationally defined above. Adam and Eve, however, are not expelled from their perfect oasis in anger, which is a key component to the success/failure dilemma of the Parable of Transgression. God preserves the dignity of his creations by clothing them before their expulsion, and arguably protects them from the very same isolation he himself feels by guarding them from the tree of life (making them mortal, rather than eternal, as God is in a way which cannot be remedied; imaginably, it is difficult to find a partner who is also omnipresent and immortal), supporting the theory that God wanted Adam and Eve to fail the test, therefore succeeding.
According to this fabled tradition, we all are given rise to human life, that is, life lived in a self-aware, cognitive, intellectual, conscientious state. One may argue that this is a tragedy, to have been banished from Eden, a veritable heaven on Earth, but is it? An intellectual would argue that this is not at all the greatest tragedy ever beheld, but rather, the greatest liberation. For by the failure on the part of Adam and Eve in the Parable of Transgression are we freed from the ignorant prison that was Eden, freed to propagate ourselves, to seek knowledge, to hunt, to eat, to shop, to play, to love, to feel pain, to cry, to hate, to be angry, to kill, to die…to be truly alive.
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