Good day to all!
I suggest we need to distinguish between what is the implicit difference between the idea of Adam and Eve being an archetype and being individuals (which I see as being necessary)
(I am sure my observations have already been posted about a million times here, so forgive me if this is out of place.)
My Question to the discussion Adam & Eve and the Tree is Morality before Mortality?
We have been discussing archetyping at length which is easily debated concerning morality. However, mortality is more appropriate to an individual than an archetype.
The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is illustrated in Adam and Eve’s response to having eaten. They cover themselves because the feel naked.
What do we feel if we are caught naked? Embarrassed! Yet we often fail to see the obvious in the word itself em(my)-bare-ass! This is humorous at least, but the thought I get to is actually buried under that first laugh.
The Knowledge of Being Mortal
Having eaten, they suddenly understand that they are going to die! They now have a fear of death, which is perhaps not fully cognizant to the other living human outside the garden.
Their first action is to cover themselves. They feel threatened. The first response of anybody who feels threatened is to cower and cover!
Two actual humans are introduced to another being who is (presumably teaching them as he walks with them in the garden). The time was “ripe” for Elohim to introduce his purpose in creating the world in the first place. So he gives them a question via the tree. I am presuming at this point Elohim has awakening in them something not experienced previously. So when that knowledge is suddenly introduced, they cower and cover in both embarrassment and fear of death.
Yes, this could be archetypal, but I defer to scholarship on the “particularity” required for some points of theology in the Genesis account.
Notice in Revelation that the final thing thrown into the Lake of Fire is Death. The Scriptures are carefully crafted and reading Genesis and Revelation together (reading the last chapter of Rev in conjunction with the first chapter of Genesis) shows the recovery of Eden that was lost. If Death is the Final thing into the Lake of Fire (after Satan) then we should read Genesis looking for Mortality as the thing to be addressed before Morality (Evil). Obviously it is “Death” by the very proscription for the tree.
The Tree of Life, then would have enabled them to understand or experience life without mortality in some way we cannot at this juncture understand.
So the discussion of morality is fine for an archetype, but the discussion of mortality, both implicit in the Tree of Good and Evil, requires individuals.
I am new here and enjoying the discussion.
Ray