Blog #2

Within the scripture of Genesis 2-3, knowledge is given a focal point quite indirectly. Adam is a culmination of being created from dust (Adam in Hebrew means Earth), and given life through the breath of God. Earth had yet to be a green, lively place due to rain not falling yet, but God created the Garden of Eden for Adam to take responsibility to watch over and reside within it. God gave his first and only command to Adam to follow, which was “and the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” But god believed that the man should not be alone, therefore he manifested each organism of Earth to find his match and allowing Adam to name each one of them. Adam was not satisfied with any, so God put Adam to sleep, extracted one of his ribs, and created Eve (the first woman) and named them husband and wife. Once god was not present, a serpent appeared and asked Eve ““Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?” Serpents/snakes is a symbol of wisdom in previous cultures. This deceiving serpent persuaded Eve to take a bite from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and she fed a bite to Adam. Knowledge of good and bad resembles the ability to make moral decisions. So did eating from the tree give Adam and Eve this ability? Well, if god gave such a command to not eat from the tree before eating from the tree, Adam and Eve have a moral compass to know that eating from the tree is disobedient to their creator. According to Michel Legaspi, the eating from the tree is a representation of knowledge of responsibility. If God said that the tree was forbidden, then there had to be something to acquire that would provide to be useful towards the man. Eating is a particular thing to be said regarding what action is prohibited as well. Eating symbolizes, in Legaspi’s words, “To speak of eating is to bring in to view the man’s position as a dependent, embodied creature: he lives by drawing nourishment from the earth.” This act of course was a disobedience, but I believe it to be the first of many tests towards the products of Gods creations. The disobedience exposed humans to have their own consciousness and also was the first instance in which one of Gods creation was showed to have the ability to do wrong. God’s punishment towards the two (besides making child bearing painful for woman) was that they were banned from the garden. I think this was as merciful as a punishment they could have received and it was due to God still loving his “children” even after doing wrong.