Difference between revisions of "Fall of Man"

Latest revision as of 10:19, 23 February 2015

The Fall of Man, or more simply The Fall, is one of the central events in the mythology of the Abrahamic faiths, but particularly in Christianity. The story is told in the third chapter of the Book of Genesis (following the accounts of The Creation in ch. 1 & 2), ending with Adam being placed in the Garden of Eden, with one command being given him: "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: "Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." According to the second version of The Creation (Gen. ch. 2), God created Eve to be a companion to Adam at this point - i.e. the female is secondary to the male. This is not implied in chapter 1, where "male and female created he them": women and men were created simultaneously, and should, it appears, be equal.

The serpent, "more subtle than any beast of the field" (and usually equated with Satan, for example by Milton), though not in Genesis, came to Eve and advised ('tempted', in the Christian tradition) her to eat of 'the Forbidden Tree' - the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The serpent says "Ye shall not surely die... your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Eve is persuaded, and eats the 'forbidden fruit', persuading Adam to do the same. (The tree has been widely held in Christianity since the fifth century to be the apple; the 'Adam's apple' is the common name for the visible signs, the thyroid cartilage, of the voice-box or larynx in the human neck. It was believed that a piece of the forbidden fruit stuck in Adam's throat, and has been handed down to his descendants. In Jewish tradition, it is said to be wheat, or figs, or grapes.) The first knowledge they have is of the fact that they are naked: they take fig leaves as aprons. (In some traditions, the Knowledge conveyed by the Tree is that of sex.) When they hear God walking in the Garden "in the cool of the day", they hide their nakedness from him - whereupon He knows that they have eaten the forbidden fruit. He curses the Serpent, "above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." Eve He makes subject to her husband, and curses with the troubles of childbirth ("the curse of Eve", or shortened, 'the curse', is a euphemism for menstruation). Adam's punishment is to have to labour for his food, in a world suddenly grown imperfect - weeds will infest the soil; and "dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." Then He expelled the pair from Eden, "lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever."

This myth is a powerful attempt to explain many things: how The Creation (assumed to be perfect) is not perfect (and how Man has marred it); the problem of evil in the world, and human suffering; the power of sexual attraction, and the phenomenon of human shame and embarrassment about their sexual organs; the near divine nature of human knowledge ("in apprehension how like an angel", Shakespeare, Hamlet); and the difference between women and men, amongst others. But Genesis does not explicitly say that women are more guilty than men; nor that God condemned all humanity to inherit the punishment of Adam and Eve: indeed, neither Jewish nor Islamic tradition has ever held the doctrine of Original Sin developed by the Christian Fathers.

There is even an adjective postlapsarian meaning '[occurring] after the Fall of Man'.