The Genesis of Good and Evil

The Fall(out) and Original Sin in the Bible

Mark S. Smith

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780664263959
• eBook ISBN: 9781611649000
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

For centuries, the Garden of Eden story has been a cornerstone for the Christian doctrine of the Fall and original sin. In recent years, many scholars have disputed this understanding of Genesis 3 because it has no words for sin, transgression, disobedience, or punishment. Instead, it is about how the human condition came about. Yet the picture is not so simple. The Genesis of Good and Evil examines how the idea of the Fall developed in Jewish tradition on the eve of Christianity. In the end, the Garden of Eden is a rich study of humans in relation to God that leaves open many questions. One such question is, Does Genesis 3, 4, and 6, taken together, support the Christian doctrine of original sin? Smiths well-informed, close reading of these chapters concludes that it does. In this book, he addresses the many mysterious matters of the Garden story and invites readers to explore questions of their own.

Chapter One

How Common in the Scriptures
Is the Fall?

The Fall is actually quite rare in Scripture, a fact that I find very intriguing given its immense importance to Christians. The twentieth-century giant of biblical theology, Gerhard von Rad, observed this omission in the Old Testament: “The contents of Gen. ch. 2, and especially ch. 3 are conspicuously isolated in the Old Testament. No prophet, psalm, or narrator makes any recognizable reference to the story of the Fall.”¹ Other important biblical scholars agree. The great biblical theologian Brevard S. Childs wrote: “It is striking that the ‘fall tradition’ plays virtually no role in the rest of the Hebrew Bible until it was revived in the Hellenistic period (e.g., IV Ezra).”² More recently, the learned historian of biblical religion Ziony Zevit has offered a similar assessment: “What is not reflected in the Hebrew Bible and what was not known in ancient Israel was a Garden story that expressed the myth of a Fall.”³ As these remarks suggest, biblical scholars are largely in agreement about the lack of witnesses to the Fall in the Old Testament/Hebrew Scriptures.⁴

In this chapter we will take a look at the few passages in the Hebrew Bible that might seem to refer to the Fall in Genesis 3.⁵ Then we will examine references in Jewish literature between the Old and New Testaments (called intertestamental literature or Second Temple literature). Finally, we will look at New Testament references. This exploration will take a few unexpected twists and turns.

The Fall in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible?

There are two passages in the Hebrew Bible that at first glance might seem to allude to the Fall.⁶ The first is Ezekiel 28 (verses 11–19). This passage has been viewed as a reference to Adam in the Garden, especially since verse 2 uses the Hebrew noun ’adam (“a mortal” in NRSV), which is the same as the word for Adam.⁷ Verses 11–19 refer to “Eden, the garden of God” (verse 13). This passage also refers to a “cherub” (verses 14 and 16), a figure similar to the familiar “cherubim” (literally, “cherubs”) at the end of Genesis 3 (verse 24). The cherub in Ezekiel 28:16 “drove out” the human because of his iniquity. Initially the human had been “the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty” (verse 12). This human was “blameless in your ways . . . until iniquity [‘awlatah] was found in you” (verse 15), and “you sinned” (verse 16). As a result, this human was “cast . . . from the mountain of God” (verse 16).⁸ These details sound like the Garden of Eden story in Genesis 2–3.

At the same time, this does not mean that Ezekiel 28 was referring back to Genesis 2–3. In fact, Ezekiel 28 departs in significant ways from Genesis 2–3. Ezekiel 28 does not describe the first woman. It is not about Adam and Eve. Instead, it is about an individual male. As “the prince of Tyre,” he is also located in historical time (Ezekiel 28:2).⁹ Unlike Genesis 2–3, the scene in Ezekiel 28 does not take place early in the history of the world, as verse 7 refers to the nations and verse 17 refers to kings. Ezekiel 28 also assumes the existence of trade in verses 16 and 18 and sanctuaries in verse 18. It is not like Adam and Eve in the Garden at the beginning of human history.¹⁰ This royal figure is also “covered” in verse 13, unlike the first human couple before their eating the fruit in Genesis 2–3.¹¹

Ezekiel 28 shows a vocabulary of sin (“iniquity was found in you,” verse 15) and other faults (“Your heart was proud,” verse 17); contrary to many Christian readings, these are absent from Genesis 3. Other details in Ezekiel 28 also differ from anything seen in Genesis 2–3. In Ezekiel 28, God is said to have “cast you to the ground” in verse 17. This punishment does not happen in Genesis 3. Thus Genesis 3 and Ezekiel 28 differ in significant respects.¹² If one of these passages served as a model for the other, it may have been Ezekiel 28 that informed Genesis 2–3, and not the other way around. I am going to suggest below that Ezekiel 28 stands closer to the basic, traditional story that also informed Genesis 2–3. In any case, Ezekiel 28 is not a reference to the Fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3.

Like Ezekiel 28, Ezekiel 31 shares some features with Genesis 2–3. It, too, differs in some notable ways.¹³ Like Ezekiel 28, Ezekiel 31 applies a constellation of themes resembling the Fall to foreign royalty. In this chapter, Assyria (verse 3) is compared with a tree in the “garden of God” (see verses 8–9), explicitly located in the Lebanon (verse 3).¹⁴ Eden is named in verse 16. In the end, this tree is destroyed, and “its branches have fallen” (*npl) in verse 12, along with “its fallen trunk” (mappalah) in verse 13 (see also verse 16, with the verb of *yrd also in verses 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18). So this chapter might seem to refer back to the Garden of Eden story in Genesis 2–3. Still, there are problems with this view.

Like Ezekiel 28, Ezekiel 31 does not relate the Fall of Assyria to the Fall of humanity’s first parents or to humanity more broadly. Like Ezekiel 28, Ezekiel 31 does not refer to a “primeval era”¹⁵ like Genesis 2–3. Ezekiel 31 refers explicitly to Assyria (verse 3), and it is addressed as an object lesson to the king of Egypt (verses 2 and 18). Only by removing such historical referents could one reconstruct any primordial figure in these passages.¹⁶ Ezekiel 31 also refers to the “uncircumcised” and those “killed by the sword” (verse 18). In other words, the passage is set in historical time marked by the cultural practice of circumcision and the military reality of war. This is no Eden of primordial times.

Neither Ezekiel 28 nor Ezekiel 31 envisions an ancient Garden of Eden as the home of the first humans. Instead, they depict the divine home to which privileged humans over the course of history could be admitted by divine permission. If any older myth were to be reconstructed behind these witnesses, it would not be the Fall of Adam and Eve, but the demise of a royal or priestly figure. I would take this point further. The scenario or type-scene about royal figures in Ezekiel 28 and 31 looks as if it has been adapted in Genesis 2–3 to describe the early history of God and humanity.¹⁷ In its adaptation, Genesis 2–3 added a number of significant features. It shows its own take on humanity, compared with Ezekiel 28 and 31: it adds Eve to the story, as well as the idea of Adam and Eve as the first humans. Genesis 2–3 further develops the characters of Adam and Eve, compared with their human counterparts in Ezekiel 28 and 31. The character of God is also an important innovation. In Genesis 2–3, God is developed as a somewhat mysterious character to consider and to get to know. Genesis 2–3 also shows a change in scenery from the Lebanon to a location vaguely to the east, probably Mesopotamia, which is set up by the reference to the four rivers ending with the Tigris and Euphrates (Genesis 2:10–14). Finally, where Ezekiel 28 and 31 speak of sin and fall about their human figures, Genesis 3 does not. Its aim is evidently different, an issue that we will explore in chapter 4.

Another passage from the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament to consider is Psalm 82. The Harvard professor emeritus Peter Machinist, who has offered many rich insights over the past four decades, has highlighted some themes shared by Psalm 82 and Genesis 2–3.¹⁸ Most pertinent for this discussion, Machinist suggests that Psalm 82:7 refers to the Fall of Adam.¹⁹ My translation of this verse reads somewhat literally, with the words relevant for our discussion enclosed in brackets:

Thus like a human/humanity/Adam [ke’adam] you [plural] will die [*mwt];

like one of the princes you [plural] will fall [*npl].

The language of death in the simile (“like”) here with the word ’adam might sound like the Fall of Adam. After all, this Hebrew word is also the word for Adam. Echoing some traditional Jewish and Christian sources,²⁰ Machinist suggests that the word has a double sense here involving both humanity and Adam. The terms that match in the two lines of this verse (in other words, its poetic parallelism) are “Adam/humanity” and “princes” or “officials” (as the word is sometimes translated). For Machinist, the first line could allude to Adam and the prospect of his mortal death to illustrate the Fall of the gods denounced by this psalm, while the second line could be a different way to refer to the Fall of these gods. Machinist also notes other themes in Psalm 82 that seem to echo Genesis 3, including the same verb form for “you will die” (temutun, in Genesis 3:4 and Psalm 82:7) and the same verb for “walking about” (Genesis 3:8 and Psalm 82:5).²¹ Machinist concludes by asking: “when Elohim [God in NRSV] in our psalm (v. 6) sentences the elohim [‘gods’ in NRSV] to ‘fall like one of the officials’ (ke’ah.ad hassarim), can we not hear an echo of Gen 3:22, in which God admits that eating of the tr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: What Are “Original Sin” and “the Fall”? Why Study Them Today?
• 1.  How Common in the Scriptures Is the Fall?
• 2.  What Was the Original Sin in Genesis 3 according to the Scripture and Christian Theologians?
• 3.  How Do Scripture Scholars Interpret Genesis 3 Today?
• 4.  Is Genesis 3 about Human Sin?
• 5.  Where Does the Story of Human Sin Begin in Genesis?
• 6.  Where Does Human Evil Begin in Genesis?
• 7.  Are Human Beings Basically Evil according to Genesis?
• Epilogue: My Questions about Genesis
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index of Ancient Sources
• Index of Subjects