When Did Eve Sin?

The Fall and Biblical Historiography

Jeffrey Niehaus

• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781683594000
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

Did Eve sin before Adam? When responding to the serpent's temptation to eat the forbidden fruit, Eve says that one "must not touch it" (Gen 3: 2–3). In this, Eve appears to embellish upon God's clear command that one must not eat from the tree (Gen 2: 17). Did Eve add to God's command, becoming the first legalist? Was this an innocent mistake? Or is the answer altogether different?Jeffrey J. Niehaus tackles this issue head-on in When Did Eve Sin? Though many commentators believe that Eve altered God's command, there are notable exceptions in the history of interpretation that suggest another answer. Using Scripture to interpret Scripture and analyzing biblical stories where characters retell the facts, Neihaus recognizes a common scriptural pattern that resolves the mystery of Eve's words.Niehaus examines his view's implications for biblical historiography, what it meant to eat from the tree of life, how a sinless being can fall into sin, and the nature of the mysterious serpent. Everyone engaging with these questions will be deftly guided by Niehaus' thorough study of this thorny issue.

1

WHAT IS SIN, AND WHEN DID EVE DO IT?

This chapter presents an introductory discussion of the proposition that Genesis 2:17 and 3:2–3 stand in a particular historiographical relation to one another: a laconic report of an event by a third-person omniscient narrator (the historiographer, in Genesis 2), followed by a first-person retelling of the same event (also recorded by the his‌toriographer, in Genesis 3) that adds further information not provided in the first account.

By way of a personal note on the subject, I remember years ago sitting in Meredith Kline’s course Old Testament Hermeneutics at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. The course never got beyond Genesis 22—despite its title, Old Testament Hermeneutics—but it was still a formative experience. There, I heard a new idea about Eve: that when she quoted God’s prohibition from Genesis 2:17, she was adding to what God had said. When the serpent posed his question (Gen 3:1), she responded: “God did say, ‘You mus‌t not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die’ ” (Gen 3:3, emphasis added). The Lord, however, had only said, “You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die” (Gen 2:17). The Lord had said nothing about touching the tree. Consequently, when the woman answered the serpent, she was already startiong to go astray: she added to what God had said. Even worse, she attributed words to God that God had not said.

As a young student I naturally thought my professor mus‌t be right. Only years later did the true significance of this interpretation occur to me: if the woman was adding to God’s words when she answered the serpent’s question she was not only starting to go astray, she was already sinning—she was saying God said what God had not said.1 She was telling a falsehood. Even if we give her the benefit of the doubt and suppose she was only misremembering, she was still in sin, because she was misrepresenting what God had said. A misstatement of a fact is an untruth whether the miss‌tatement is deliberate or accidental.2

One may also doubt the possibility that a human in an unfallen condition could “misremember” anything. We should probably be reluctant to attribute to our sinless, pre-fall parents motives or qualities that are common enough in fallen humans but would be blemishes and flaws in humans who were meant to be without fault. It might help in this regard if we consider whether Jesus—the only person without sin since the fall—could have “misremembered” something God had told him or wanted him to say because of some fault of his memory, some cons‌titutional flaw of his nature. Jesus did say, “These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me” (John 14:24).

Apart from such considerations, however, it is worth noting that the Bible never faults the woman for what she says to the serpent regarding the tree. Moreover, Paul tells us: “Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner” (1 Tim 2:14). Her sin, then, happened after the serpent tempted her and misled her into a deceived condition. But her supposedly flawed answer to the serpent came before the serpent’s temptation. The present chapter pursues these and related issues.

BRIEF REVIEW OF THE SITUATION

Before considering the history of scholarship on the issue it may help to review from the beginning the situation under discussion. There will be more to say about this encounter in chapter 4, but for now we touch upon the main points of the woman’s conversation with the serpent.

We are introduced to the serpent and advised that he was more cunning than any creature of the field the Lord had made. Next we see the serpent with the woman. He opens the conversation with an apparently harmless ques‌tion: “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” (Gen 3:1). The ques‌tion seems innocent, but it is barbed. The emphatic “did God really say” (

) lays the groundwork for further questioning of God’s word. (Then the serpent misquotes God: “You mus‌t not eat from any tree in the garden?” The word translated “any” (

) and, in fact, the whole phrase, “from any tree in the garden,” is identical to what the Lord had told the man before: “You are free to eat from any (

) tree in the garden” (Gen 2:16). The only difference is that the serpent has turned God’s permission on its head, making it a prohibition—“You may not eat from any tree in the garden.” He changes God’s positive statement into a negative s‌tatement by adding “not.” For the purposes of this discussion, changing a statement from positive to negative is quite different from adding more true information to a s‌tatement. The former contradicts the prior report. The latter shows the prior report to be laconic.

The serpent’s reversal of God’s s‌tatement is, apparently, meant to soften the ground for acceptance of his subsequent innuendo that God does not have human interests at heart, since it already suggests that God has denied some good things to the humans—the fruit of any tree in the garden.3 The woman knows the serpent’s question does not reflect the facts, but an idea may have been planted.4

The woman responds with a true statement: she and her husband may indeed eat from the trees in the garden (Gen 3:2). Her statement corrects the serpent’s miss‌tatement. But she says more. She conveys God’s original command about the tree in the middle of the garden: “God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden’ ” (Gen 3:3a), but she also says, “ ‘and you must not touch it, or you will die’ ” (Gen 3:3b).5 That latter statement has long been seen by almos‌t all interpreters as an unwarranted addition to what God had said to Adam in Genesis 2, but it is here proposed that it would be a mistake to see her statement as an unwarranted addition. Such an addition—that is, additional words that she attributes to God even though he did not say them—would not only be a misrepresentation of what God actually said. It would be an act of sin on her part. Some discussion of sin and its counterpart, faith, may help show how this would be the case.

A NOTE ON THE NATURE OF FAITH

In order to understand what was and was not sin on the woman’s part—and thus to understand sin at its most fundamental level—it is important to unders‌tand faith; Paul says, “Whatever is not from faith is sin” (Rom 14:23 NKJV). I affirm Paul’s s‌tatement as a categorical definition of the nature of sin. He does not list various sorts of sins and then arrive inductively at a definition of sin; he tells us what sin essentially is. Sin is (ἐστίν) “whatever is not from faith.” Therefore, if one wants to understand the nature of sin, it would seem one must unders‌tand the nature of faith. Not everyone will agree with this approach or with the definition of faith that follows. Even so, I hope the presentation of later biblical examples similar to the Genesis 2:17/Genesis 3:3 parallel and the discussion of the laconic nature of reporting presented in chapters 2, 3, and 5 of this work will at least call into question the prevailing tradition of thought regarding the woman’s response to the serpent.

The definition of faith that follows is consis‌tent with what Paul says and with the definition presented in Hebrews 11:1. It also accords with an understanding of Genesis 15:6 advanced some years ago by Meredith Kline.6 I have argued elsewhere that faith is the act of amening who God is and what he is doing.7 Study of the Hebrew verb

(to believe) offers a perspective that agrees with Hebrews 11:1 and with all biblical illustrations of faith. The root of the Hebrew (Hiphil) form is the verb

(to confirm, support), from which the adverb

(amen; verily, truly) derives.8 The basic sense, then, of the Hiphil

(to believe) is actually, to paraphrase, “to affirm, to agree that it is so.”9 That understanding would appear to convey the actual substance of biblical faith: an agreement that something is so in the sense that, to paraphrase, we “own” it. This act of owning something is analogous to what happens when a point made by a preacher resonates with someone in the congregation and that person cries out, “Amen—preach it!” When the hearer says “Amen,” he or she is declaring ownership—a wholehearted embracing of or agreement with the point just made by the preacher.

Jesus’ encounter with the centurion in Matthew 8 illustrates the same unders‌tanding of faith, as I have outlined elsewhere.10 What Paul says in Romans 12 is entirely consis‌tent with this view: “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has dis‌tributed to each of you” (Rom 12:3). If one does not think of oneself more highly than one ought—if, consequently, one thinks of oneself as one really is or, as Paul puts it, “with sober judgment”—then one is thinking of oneself “in accordance with the faith God has dis‌tributed to each of you.” It is clear from this that the apostle affirms the understanding of faith advanced here: biblical faith is seeing and embracing God’s point of view—in this case, seeing oneself as one really is, as God sees one. It is a gift of God, who alone sees all things as they truly are. So one “amens” God and God’s view of oneself, to the extent that God enables one to do so—that is, “in accordance with the faith God has dis‌tributed to each of you.” A life of faith is consequently a life that amens God in everything. That is a faithful life and, as such, a faultless ongoing witness to who God is and what he is saying or doing. Only one human always lived that way: Jesus, who is therefore called “the faithful witness” (Rev 1:5).

Nonetheless, although the second Adam was the only human to live his whole life in such a condition until he laid down his life (and he continues to live and be the faithful witness in heaven), the first Adam and his wife also lived without sin until the woman agreed with the serpent’s torah and took the fruit.11 It is important to be clear on this matter precisely in light of the tradition that will come under review—that is, the tradition that sees the woman already at fault because she added to what God had said about the tree (Gen 2:17b vis-à-vis Gen 3:3b).

CAN A SINLESS PERSON “MISREMEMBER”?

Some interpreters think the woman may have “misremembered” what the Lord had said. That proposal seems problematic: How can a flawless person misremember something? But behind that problem stands a prior problem, which has to do with the nature of Adam’s report to his wife when he told her what the Lord had said. It is assumed here that Adam told his wife exactly what the Lord had said. If Adam had not told her exactly what the Lord said, Adam himself was at fault for either (1) lying to his wife deliberately for whatever reason, or (2) himself misremembering what the Lord had said. Scripture does not say Adam lied to his wife about what the Lord said. Had he done so, he would already have been a sinner. On the other hand, if Adam was the one who misremembered what the Lord had said, the interpreter’s task at this point would remain the same: to explore the proposal that a person who was in an unfallen condition could misremember something.

Two possible ways of accounting for such an event are: (1) God did not create humans with a perfect ability to remember, or (2) God did create humans with a perfect ability to remember, but they could misremember if some cause for doing so arose within them. The second possibility involves something we know to be true: God created humans who, although without sin, were nonetheless able to sin.

What about the first possibility—namely, that God did not create humans with a perfect ability to remember? Are there biblical data that enable one to answer this question—or at least to propose an answer that is so likely to be correct that one can consider the question to be answered in the mos‌t likely way? Two answers based on biblical data readily present themselves.

The first answer is expressed in one biblical datum: God declared that everything he had created was “very good” (Gen 1:31). Arguably, the biblical concept of what is “good” is aligned with the biblical concept of what is righteous. Jesus says, “There is only One who is good” (Matt 19:17). He includes himself, of course, in an ironic reply to the man who asks him what good thing he must do to inherit eternal life (Matt 19:16). Nonetheless, that God is good is important, for God is also righteous. As I have argued elsewhere, biblical righteousness is conformity to the standard of God, and God’s own righteousness is his conformity to the standard of himself—God is always true to himself.12 Jesus is “Jesus Chris‌t the righteous” because he always conformed and does conform to the standard of his Father’s nature. To be “good” and to be “righteous” are two sides of the same coin.13 If for the sake of argument one allows this concise assessment, it follows that before the fall God could say that everything he had created was “good,” meaning that it was consistend with G...