I’m not impressed. The conclusion involves circular reasoning, e.g. the assumption that nakedness means sexual activity in that context.
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The original allows for “had known”, but doesn’t require it.
Without reading more than summaries, it seems to me that all that the use here can be said to do is say that the “knowing” took place before the conception.
I haven’t kept up on my Hebrew well since grad school. 
It also involves the assumption that sexual activity always results in conception.
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I’m just pointing out that the command to be fruitful and multiply does not need to be interpreted as happening before the fall. I see Genesis 1 as running concurrent with the garden of Eden.
It is God who noted that it is not good for man (mankind) to be alone. The first precursors to animals were asexual in nature and the first sex is between man (male) and woman (female). Adam (mankind) is the first created being and the woman (bone and flesh of mankind) is named Eve, the mother of All living.
The word for “living” is chay חַי 2416 (alive, living) and speaks of active life that moves around including both humans and animals. According to BDB it is “dubious” that this includes vegetation.
The timeline is not “darwinian”. I don’t think Darwin had the timeline as we have it now. He just saw the common decent of all life and this is not opposed to Eve being the mother of all living.
Yes, and so a question is asked about the importance of this and I don’t think it got a good answer:
I think every little detail is important in the garden story. It is concise and packed with information. So understanding one simple thing can lead to an Aha! moment somewhere else. So lets carry this through:
That’s not good enough.
This is better… but sometimes you are not convinced that it did happen until you see why it happened. You get an idea that it could happen this way, so its best to follow through and see where it really leads.
If Cain was conceived in the garden, could he also have been born in the garden? Notice that it is only Adam that is banished:
- Gen 3:22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. 24 So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.
God did not need to banish Eve because Adam, a type for Christ, took her sin upon himself.
- Gen 3:12 Then the man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.”
Adam knew that if he didn’t eat and take her sin upon himself, she alone would be banished. He knew what he was doing and this was a self sacrifice for his wife.
If Adam was the only one banished and Eve remained in the garden, she could have had Cain and Abel in the garden. But what about Seth? It could be that Eve had free movement to and from the garden. God says:
- Gen 3:16b Your desire shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you.”
So out of a desire for her husband, and to replace Abel whom Cain slew, she leaves her first abode to go to him.
- Gen 4:25 And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and named him Seth, “For God has appointed another seed for me instead of Abel, whom Cain killed.” 26 And as for Seth, to him also a son was born; and he named him Enosh. Then men began to call on the name of the Lord.
This line of Adam, of Seth called on the name of the Lord and lived and dwelt in the presence of God, in Eden, paradise which is where God dwells!
So did anyone besides Adam actually leave and stay out of the garden? If Cain was conceived, born and grew up in the garden, then he could have even slew Abel in the garden.
- Gen 4:9 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?”
This is almost like a repeat event, even to the same verse!
- Gen 3:9 Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?”
Cain did leave the garden, the presence of God, not banished but out of shame and fear, running for his life:
- Gen 4:16 Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden.
Nod means to wander, in exile, or as a fugitive.
So we have a line of Adam, the sons of God living in the garden, paradise, our first abode, and the line of Cain wandering and then settling in cities. They became arrogant, unruly:
- Gen 4:23 Then Lamech said to his wives: “Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; Wives of Lamech, listen to my speech! For I have killed a man for wounding me, Even a young man for hurting me. 24 If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, Then Lamech seventy-sevenfold.”
In other words, ‘I can do whatever I want, God will avenge me!’
- Gen 6:1 Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, 2 that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose.
men = the children of Cain?
sons of God = children of Adam beguiled by the daughters of Cain?
- Jude 1:5 But I want to remind you, though you once knew this, that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. 6 And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day;
Aha!
Indeed.
And the point was not to say it wasn’t important but ask WHY? It is certainly important if it means the conception of Cain is connected with the fall itself (not to imply that this made Cain inherently bad BTW).
Two separate creation stories. One about the species in general. And the other about two special individuals Adam and Eve separated from the rest. (golems of dust and bone created by necromancy? No.) Created from the stuff of the earth according to natural processes and given the inspiration of God to bring the human mind to life.
Oh brother… not in the text and I am not buying it. Instead I would say that the real sin is the habit of blaming others for our own mistakes and THAT started with ADAM not with Eve.
No. Cain and Abel lived by the sweat of their own brow – Cain as farmer and Abel as herdsman.
Interesting! I like it!
No. Don’t like it. There is no hint that there was something wrong with daughters of men. Genesis 6 is addressing the obvious question of who did Cain and Seth marry. No it was not sisters never mentioned. Instead it was the other people in the world mentioned in Genesis 1 and Genesis 4:14.
Let me deal with the “circular reasoning” argument first. Scholars from Rashi to Sarna and Zevit all argue that intercourse was not a one time event. Now, let me spring a bit of midrash on you. The couple’s sexual behavior was of no consequence to YHWH. The were married after all. What brought His attention to the couple was Eve’s pregnancy (Hence the discourse dealing with pregnancy).
I’m lazy so I’ve lifted the explanation of nakedness directly from my book, “Genesis II: Recovering Its Original Meaning”
Naked: in this verse, the Hebrew word from which naked is translated is ꜥayrummim and is pronounced /ay·rum·mim/. The same word occurs in verse 2:25 but is vocalized differently. In verse 2:25, the word is vocalized ꜥarûmmim (/ah·room·mim/). Why is this important?
This is important because the pronunciation (ꜥayrummim) in verse 3:7 connotes a nakedness that is sexually provocative. On the other hand, the version of nakedness referred to in verse 2:25 (ꜥarûmmim) connotes nakedness in a non-erotic sense, for example, being naked while taking a shower or changing clothes.
In other words, before they ate the fruit they were not shy about their nakedness. After eating the fruit they became aware (yada) of each other’s sexuality whereupon they covered their naughty bits with leaves.
Cheers,
M
So true. That view treats ToE as a religion with Darwin as a prophet.
This seems like a slightly warped view of Augustine’s suggestion of Adam’s solidarity with Eve, but I don’t think the idea of Adam taking Eve’s sin on himself can be supported. Certainly of the church Fathers only Augustine has anything resembling i!
That’s quite a stretch!
No, it’s an ancient term for divine beings that are lesser than the deity who fathered/created them, e.g. in Sumerian a son of god is offspring of a chief god. The exact phrase is found in Canaanitic (Ugaritic) literature. In Egyptian literature, sons of gods are offspring of the various gods. It is parallel to “father of gods” in other ANE literature.
Those are the “sons of God” according to all literature until later rabbinic development (which was picked up on by Augustine).
Augustine is the first to mention something like this; I wish I could recall his terminology. He pinpointed the eating of the fruit as the initial sin, but referenced the blaming as showing that the real sin was pride – considering themselves capable of choosing their own path, and not accepting any guilt for doing so. That certainly is what propagates down the generations!
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Yes correct, Cain was not inherently bad but he was tilling the ground that was already cursed because of Adam’s sin. God says:
- Gen 4:7a If you do well, will you not be accepted?
So because of the knowledge of good and evil, doing well will lead to a good result but not doing well will lead to sin.
Created from earth via natural processes does not separate them from the species in general. The inspiration of God is what separates them. They are being made in God’s likeness from eating the tree of good and evil, and later in His image eating from the tree of life. So they can run concurrent with the progression of the garden story beginning on Day 1.
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On Day 1: Adam is formed outside the garden, of dust (microbes) using the light and the waters covering the entire earth with a shallow sea. (Gen 1:3-5, Gen 2:4-7)
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Day 2: Adam is placed in the garden. Garden means to “hedge about”, a separation of the heavens from the earth with the forming of the earths crust (firmament). (Gen 1:6-8, Gen 2:8,15)
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Day 3: God makes the trees grow (vegetation growing in water first) (Gen 1:11-13, Gen 2:9a) Makes the land (continents) appear and gathers the waters into rivers, oceans. (Gen 1:9-10, Gen 2:10-14)
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Day 4: the two trees in the midst grow and mature, tree of knowledge of good and evil opens the eyes to see the lights in the heavens and knowing times, seasons, and to give light on the earth, to enlighten us. (Gen 1:14:19, Gen 2:9b, 16-17)
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Days 5-6: Insects (oph 5775 עוֹף ; flying creatures) and animals (including birds) made from earth (from Adam) and named by Adam like he would his own children (Gen 1:20-25, Gen 2:18-20)
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Day 6: Man made in God’s likeness (Gen 1:26, Gen 2:21 - Gen 8) and Image (Jesus Christ), male and female (woman having direct connection to His Spirit, not saved through an earthly husband), to be fruitful and multiply (bear much fruit of the Spirit), fill the earth (spread the Gospel) and have dominion (over sinful flesh) (Gen 1:26-31, Gen 9 - Rev 20)
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Day 7: All of creation is finished, made new, and we enter His rest. (Gen 2:1-3, Rev 21-22)
When you finish making something, it is new!
The real sin started with disobedience. While I can see how it can be interpreted as blaming others, I see it as Adam taking ownership of her sin (she gave it to me and I did eat). Her sin came first and Adam is explaining to God a catch-22 situation… God said don’t eat the fruit, but also made her to be with him (not good for him to be alone). Adam had previously said she is bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, so he is following through on that promise and taking ownership of her sin, just as Jesus is with us even as we are yet sinners. He takes all our sins upon himself and condemns sin to death on the cross, in the flesh.
So there is no work to do in the garden? God put Adam there to dress and keep it.
Sweet!
As you mentioned previously, Cain is not inherently bad, so it is the same with his daughters… same with all of us. We have run from God because of our sin… all our guilt and shame separate us from God. He does not leave us but we leave Him. We just need to lay it all at the foot of the cross, and then can enter, re-enter into His presence.
The garden is not a physical place made after creation (an 8th day creation of Adam?) somewhere on earth, but is within us… we are the garden of God, covering the entire earth. As we have naturally evolved and matured as a species, the garden has matured… the tree of life now grows on both sides of the river (a big heart), bearing twelve manner of fruit, the fruit of the Spirit. The river of life is the street we walk on.
They already had His attention and came looking for them to walk with them in the cool of the day. It was their odd behavior in hiding, not her pregnancy. The pain in childbearing is a consequence of eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil (a big brain), and her children are going to have bigger and bigger heads (both literally and figuratively).
As you have mentioned before, an angel is a title for a messenger. Adam is a son of God, as are his children on down the line to Jesus who is both the first and the last Adam. A son of God may have a message. Not keeping their proper domain, is not physically staying away from certain places. God might send them into a bar… but is it for a drink or is it to minister?
Correct.
No. That is the superficial temptation. It is appearance only – having the position and authority to say what is good and evil without real understanding. Wisdom and becoming like God in truth comes from a relationship with God (IOW from the other tree identified with eternal life as spoken of by Jesus).
Rejected. Nothing is more natural for children. And nothing is more convenient for turning religion into a tool of power than identifying “sin” with disobedience.
I only see value in Christianity when sin is understood to be self-destructive habits.
There have been many places like this on the earth – warm and food so plentiful you can just reach out and pick it.
But they had to learn that blaming others for your mistake doesn’t work and this is something you learn when you have work for your living. “In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread.”
That’s a wild and crazy claim. Where are you seeing the two Trees in the first Creation story?!?
Sheer speculation.
Science fiction.
There is no Garden in day 4.
Mitchell happens to be right – he’s referring to Genesis 3; “sweat of the brow” is part of the curse.
Interesting allegory, but then allegory is a great way to get things wrong.
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Thank you. An excellent catch. Yes. He came looking for them and was bent of confrontation.
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I think being in the likeness of God is in appearance only, and ‘eating the fruit’ is learning the law from the brain tree. Our parents taught us what is right and wrong from an early age. They look at us and see their likeness.
This is where the image of God comes in, not just in appearance, knowing good and evil but also in doing the works. Jesus is the image of God, as He is doing what He sees the Father doing. An image like you reflection in the mirror or shadow on the ground not only has your appearance, shape, but also does what you do, i.e. you lift your arm and your image lifts their arm. Jesus is the image of God and we are made in the image of God through Him… by eating from the heart tree.
Eating from the tree was sin, and remember - sin is not imputed when there is no law. Children are sinful but do not have to account for it until they learn right and wrong. So, when they ate the fruit, they realize that they have already had a sinful nature before that. That’s what I think naked and unashamed means. God never had a problem with it before, asking, “Who told you that you were naked?”
Disobedience is self-destructive.
Oh!.. tell me more! 
No more free lunches, you dont get to continue sinning with out accounting for it. You need to weed your garden, remove sin out of the way so the garden can can grow properly.
Its the same creation story. The second one just adds more detail.
You see, in inspiring the Genesis account, God had the mind of Moses to work through. Moses couldn’t write about something at a microscopic level that he couldn’t see. Instead God has him think of the smallest thing he could think of and write that down, and that was dust. Someone would come along later and realize what was really meant.
No, for example:
There is a garden watered and tilled on Day 1; planted on Day 2; It sprouts and grows on Day 3, and becomes mature on Day 4. The first tree is eaten from on Day 4 resulting in death… three days later, on Day 7 the last tree is eaten from resulting in life!
incorrect. They even contradict each other. …but this only means you are looking at the wrong details and using them to say something the writers never intended.
Neither of these are some “creation for dummies book” explaining to us how God created the universe. That is not what either of these are about.
Incorrect. It is the basic instinct of the child to try everything in order to learn. It only gets self-destructive when you refuse to learn.
Only when the free lunches do more harm than good.
Circular and unhelpful when we are discussing what the word “sin” means in the first place. And it is particularly bizarre to make one broken commandment into weeds overrunning the garden as if there were some large set of laws all being disobeyed. But that is because disobedience has nothing to do with it. Instead, one bad habit of blaming your mistakes on others is repeated over and over until it distorts everything… until today where prisons are filled with people blaming all their problems on other people.
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Speculation again – you’re butchering the text. Moses meant exactly what he wrote; “made of dust” is an ANE idiom for “mortal” – that’s “what was really meant”.
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I don’t think it is a stretch and speculation to say made of dust means made of the stuff of the earth. So when our understanding changed enough that stuff of the earth came to mean matter, then it can be said to pretty much means the same thing. But the idea of us being made of microbes or cells is definitely a big stretch, because not even the Greeks thought anything like that. That first came about in 1665 when Robert Hooke saw them in a microscope – building through 1858 with Rudolf Virchow’s assertion that all cells come from cells.
Of course this meaning mortal is definitely there also with the often repeated assertion that we will return to dust. This is not really so far from the modern understanding which sees our mortality as a consequence of having our being in the laws of nature.
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Excellent. A lot of people miss this. If I may add just a bit. The author of the second creation story used this metaphor beautifully.
- God created ha’adam from dust (i.e., ha’adam was initially made mortal).
- When ha’adam was placed in the Garden, he (and his wife) had access to the tree of life and so long as he ate from the tree of life he would not die.
- When ha’adam was expelled from the garden he no longer had access to the tree of life and so reverted to the state in which he as initially made - mortal.
This parallels the epic of Gilgamesh who found a plant (seaweed, I seem to remember) that would protect him from death. But a serpent stole it and he was denied immortality.
Blessings,
M
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That would be a valid extension of understanding: “dust” is just particles of earth/ground, which we now know is made of an array of different minerals, and minerals are made of crystals and particles, which in turn are made of atoms. So if someone wanted to render the text as:
Then the LORD God formed a man from atoms from the dirt . . .
It would be acceptable, though it loses some flavor from the original.
From atoms you were made, and to atoms you shall return . . . .
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Your saying that they contradict each other? Or they appear to contradict each other because someone is looking at the wrong details? The details I am presenting show that they don’t contradict each other. Many look at it and read Adam being made after the animals in Genesis 1 and before the animals in Genesis 2. They scoff and put the book down. It is a favorite past time for atheists to point out but they are not looking at the details.
There are 2 creations of Adam, the first on Day 1 and the last on Day 6. See the added details here:
- 1 Cor 15:45 And so it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual. 47 The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven. 48 As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust; and as is the heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly. 49 And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man. 50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption.
The image of the heavenly Man is the image of God that we are made into on Day 6 through Jesus.
You make a valid point but there are two ways to learn; the easy way (through instruction) and the hard way (through self destructive behavior).
This reminds me of the 250 million year old bacterium:
So if you can read atoms into the text, why not microbes? Its the dirt, the earth that represents mortality not the dust (see above reference in 1 Cor 15). Dust represents the smallest particles of earth. With the forming from smallest particles, we can say atoms (even quarks if you wish), those atoms formed into microbes, formed into clonal organisms, formed into multicellular organisms, and eventually to man.
- 1 Cor 15:52b …and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. 54 So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”
Wrong.
- WHEN there is instruction there are two ways to learn: easy way and hard way. But most of the time there is only the one way to learn – by trying things out for yourself.
- Many times we learn that this so called “easy way” is actually the hardest way for many reasons. For example, sometimes the way we get to the truth is more important than the truth itself. And of course, sometimes the instruction is just wrong with regards to what we are really trying to discover.
- It is absolutely WRONG to equate learning the hard way with self destructive behavior. I repeat my assertion above: it is only self destructive when we refuse to learn.
Equating sin with obedience is the way religion is turned into a tool of power and into something evil – a way to get good people to do evil things.
1 Corinthians 15 is about the resurrection, not about the days in the 1st creation account or about anything in the second creation account. There is a reference to how Paul in another place puts Jesus in the role of 2nd Adam. It might be taken as a contrast between wrong way and right way… but mostly it is a contrast between man fallen and man redeemed. And thus a connection to creation before the fall makes no sense at all.
True… We may have been instructed, but in order to really know the truth, that what we were instructed is correct, the easy way becomes the hard way. After learning the hard way, we learn to trust that what we were told at the start was true.
Well if breaking your arm when you fall off the top rung of the ladder before reading the instructions is not self destructive…
Sin is disobedience to God, not people. It is bad people that get people to do bad things.
It is the man redeemed (made in God’s image) that is “good” at the completion of creation. That is after the fall.