As punishment for disobeying God, Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden. “THE EXPULSION FROM EDEN,” FRESCO BY MASACCIO, 1427, THE BRANCACCI CHAPEL OF S. MARIA DEL CARMINE, FLORENCE, ITALY, PHOTOGRAPH.
The Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions each have their own versions of the story of Adam and Eve as well as their own ideas about what it means. In Christian thought and belief, three important parts of the story are the serpent, the Fall, and the idea of original sin.
Christians believe the serpent was identified with Satan, a rebellious fallen angel and the force behind all evil. In the Christian tradition, it was Satan’s pride in thinking he could be the equal of God that caused him to be cast out of heaven. He then persuades Eve to commit the very same sin by telling her that she can be like God ifshe eats of the fruit of the tree of life. Pride, therefore, is a serious sin in the Christian tradition, for no one should think of himself as the equal of God.
The Fall refers to the expulsion, or the forcing out, of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden into the world of ordinary, imperfect human life, sometimes called the fallen world. Some people interpret the Fall to mean that in the original state of existence before the beginning of history, people lived in harmony with each other, God, and the natural world. Closely related to the idea of the Fall is the idea of original sin. This idea came from the writings of the Christian leader St. Paul, whose work appears in the New Testament of the Bible, and of later Christian thinkers whom he influenced. According to this idea, the sin that Adam and Eve committed when they ate the forbidden fruit marks every human being descended from them. As a result, no one is born completely innocent and free from sin.
Eve being made from Adam’s rib is sometimes used as a way to explain why men are more important than women. In this view, the original woman was just a rib made as a companion to Adam, and therefore not of equal
Status. However, this idea seems to have been based on a wrong translation of the Hebrew text. The word translated as “rib” is actually the Hebrew word for “side.” Some biblical scholars believe that Adam was androgynous—both male and female—and the story of the creation of Eve is about the separation of the female “side” of the first human from the male side. Ribs do not play any part in the story at all. The fact that Eve brings about Adam’s downfall by getting him to share the fruit has supported negative attitudes towards women as tempters of men.
World History
