In the book “The Story of Original Sin” by John Toews (2013), we read:
“. . . the term “the fall” was first used with certainty . . . by the Greek church father Methodius of Olympus, late third or early fourth century (d. 311), as a reaction to Origen’s [typo corrected!] teaching of a pre-natal fall in the transcendent world. . . . . Why is it profoundly significant that this much later Christian and Greek “fall” construal is not stated or even suggested in the [Hebrew] text? Because that means the story of salvation history, which is a fairly normative interpretive framework for a Christian reading the whole Bible does not begin with “the fall.” Rather, it begins with broken relationships and exile, which is a very Jewish way of reading the text. And lest we forget, it was Jewish people who wrote this text originally for Jewish people, probably for Jewish people living in exile trying to understand the profound tragedy of the destruction . . . “ of their paradise on earth.
Footnote 29 “. . . the word used by Methodius and the later Latin Fathers was ‘Lapsus’ not the ‘Casus’ of IV Ezra. The Latin translation of the 9th century would appear to reflect the dominant understanding which ‘fall’ language achieved in the Western Church. . . .”
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The Fall is hardly the concept that the Hebrew intentionally transmitted; for the Hebrew it was an EXILE . . . not a fall.
The Exile interpretation seems obvious when you read the text on it’s own merits. But when the text is read TO you by a person who mainly goes into Paul’s commentary ABOUT it … You get a different impression.
Even after Adam and Eve’s exile the theme gets repeated again in Cain’s exile from the earth and into the land of Nod. There’s a lot of parallels in both those stories if you stop and stare at them long enough.
Ezekiel in his “bones vision”, the prophet makes it pretty clear how he envisions Exile as a form of death. He talks about the “bones of Israel” who have been taken captive by the Babylonians “growing sinews and muscles and coming alive yet again.”
Even the “curse” that gets elaborated on in YEC circles isn’t as clear cut as they make it out to be to me.
It starts in Adam — “Cursed be the ground for thy sake…”
Gets continued in Cain — “When thou tillest the ground it shall not henceforth yield her strength…”
Is lamented by Noah’s father Lamech — “This same shall comfort us for the ground The Lord God has cursed…”
And then finally reaches it’s conclusion in Noah — “And The Lord said, No more shall I curse the ground for man’s sake for he is wicked from his youth…”
The Curse is man’s relationship with the earth (something that doesn’t even seem to continue past Noah) … Not the law of entropy, or the introduction of Every Form of Death — nor volcanoes or tsunamis.
It’s also in association with sin … Not with something that has ripple effects through the cosmos, and it doesn’t seem to affect the animals and plants — only man’s relationship to them.
