Punishment and Self-Persuasion in Adam and Eve Essay

Dated back to the 10th century B.C., the story of Adam and Eve is told in Genesis chapters 2 and 3 of the Christian Bible. The creation is the main focus of chapter 2 and their fall and punishment is the main focus in chapter 3. God creates Adam in his image from mud, he blows to his face and gives him life. God presents all of the animals of the land to Adam and he is not satisfied, so God created Eve out of Adams rib as a companion and helper for him, and he is satisfied with Gods work. God commands Adam and Eve to not eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But, the serpent persuades Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, and she persuades Adam to do so as well. After they eat the forbidden fruit they realize they are naked

17. Give an example of a wrong interpretation of what “eating forbidden fruit” means? Why should this interpretation be rejected?

Recognition of a failure to follow God’s commands brings about new capabilities. In violating God’s commandments, Adam and Eve come to learn that they can choose to live

In Genesis the word of God leads humanity in the direction of self preservation, urging them to procreate, to ”Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 9:1), and to minimize hostility and violence among people. As Freud asserted, “Besides the instinct to preserve living substance and join it into ever larger units, there must exist another, contrary instinct seeking to dissolve those units and bring them back to their primeval, inorganic state” (Freud 77). Genesis exemplifies the struggle between the two opposing human instincts, with God acting as a moderator between them. Forms of justice are put into place in an attempt to control these drives, one example being the proclamation that “Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person’s blood be shed” (Genesis 9:6). The ethics and laws that develop throughout Genesis seek to “prevent the crudest excesses of brutal violence” but are unable to control “the more cautious and refined manifestations of human aggressiveness” (Freud 70). Since they cannot be completely eradicated, the scriptures instead play into the more negative aspects of human nature, especially narcissism, and manipulate them into a force for conservation rather than annihilation.

The book of Genesis records the creation of the world and everything in it, as well the early relationship between God and humanity. God creates man, Adam, “from the dust of the ground” (Genesis 2:7) and places him in a paradise on Earth called the garden of Eden, where he also places the tree of knowledge of good and evil. From the man, God creates a woman and tells them that they “may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil [they] shall not eat, for in the day that [they] eat of it [they] shall die (Genesis 2:16). Despite this warning, the woman, Eve, is eventually tempted to eat the fruit of the treat and convinces Adam to do the same, causing them to be cast out of the garden. Although Adam and Eve do have free will to do what they

In the Book of Genesis, the idea of knowledge emerges throughout punishment. This theme is most apparent when Adam and Eve deceive God by eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. When they do this, they are immediately given the ability to discern between right and wrong. The Old Testament states, "The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining knowledge" (Genesis 3:6). Promptly Adam and Eve gain knowledge and realize their nakedness as punishment from God. Likewise in Gilgamesh, Enkidu, was a wild man before he was seduced by a harlot from Uruk. After his encounter with harlot he notices his abilities have been greatly suppressed. "Enkidu was grown weak," the narrator tells us, "for wisdom was in him, and the thoughts of a man were in his heart." The woman says to him, "You are wise, Enkidu, and now you have become like a god. Why do you want to run wild with the beasts in the hills?" She tells him about "strong-walled Uruk" and "the blessed temple of Ishtar and of Anu, of love and of heaven," and about Gilgamesh himself. (Gilgamesh page 15). This suppression is from the gods for his acquisition of knowledge. Both Eve's nakedness and Enkidu's loss of strength demonstrate the gods' propensity to punish by

For the past two-thousand years, the Book of Genesis has served as work of literature to the western civilization. Whether people believed in the Bible or not, the Book of Genesis tell stories they talk about having good morals, teaching live-learned lessons and overall it gives a glimpse of how the first human being acted when the world was developing and how they handle problems and situations. However, even though the book of Genesis shows a tone of life long morals, Genesis also shows the different sides of humans. Genesis shows how human can be deceitful, evil, and disobedient to authority figures. But these traits with humans were rarely displayed by man, but mostly by woman. In

Adam then decides that he would not live without Eve, and also takes a bite of the fruit. One that happens the “Earth trembl'd from her entrails, as again In pangs, and Nature gave a second groan, skie lowr'd, and muttering Thunder, som sad drops Wept at compleating of the mortal sin” (Milton), indicating that man's first disobedience to God has taken

Like the temptation of Eve by the serpent in the Garden of Eden, consuming the delicious fruit grown from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, from which it caused Man to be inflicted with Original Sin, the FYC did not always keep their end of the bargain with the

When Eve eats the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, her decision to tell Adam of her disobedience turns on two suppositions. If her transgression is kept secret from God, Eve's augmented knowledge might increase Adam's love for her, and perhaps cause her to be more equal or even superior to Adam. Even though Eve was created comparable to Adam as his helper, she refers to Adam as her "Author and Disposer." Furthermore, she says that while God is Adam's law, Adam is her law. Apparently, Eve chafes under this arrangement, as she wraps up her evaluation of not telling Adam of her sin with, "for inferior who is free?" However, her death is assured if God has seen her wrongdoing. In this

One of the fundamental theories of criminal behavior is the classical theory. This theory dates to the 18th century with philosopher Cesare Beccaria, who stated that human behavior is driven by the choice (Bartol & Bartol, 2017). The process of making a choice is made through balancing the weight of pleasure to be gained, against the amount pain or punishment expected by the act. This concept can also be thought of as free will. Free will is found in the beginning of the Bible, in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were told they could not eat from the Tree of Good and Evil. Before eating of the tree Eve was presented with a choice, she could obey God or disobey him. Through disobedience she was promised by the serpent that she would gain knowledge. The serpent told her that if she ate of the tree that, “your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5, New Revised Standard Version). However, she knew that disobedience could result in death as she had been cautioned by God, “for in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (Genesis 2:17, NRSV). Before choosing to eat the fruit, similar to the classical theory of crime, Eve had to balance the pleasure to be gained versus the punishment. Despite being forbidden to eat from the tree, Eve made the choice to disobey God.

God intended for Adam and Eve, to choose His Spirit (tree of life) as the source of life and wisdom, rather than their own experience of good and evil. Fear, separation, mistrust, blame and a myriad of other emotions and attitudes were now a part of Adam and Eve's world. They scurried to cover themselves, to hide from the presence of God.

Just like how a child becomes fascinated after hearing stories of their babyhood, or how a family is eager to discover their genealogy, the book of Genesis is a very intriguing story to many Christians because it depicts how mankind and the world around them were formed. Genesis 1-3 allow a base knowledge for understanding the rest of the bible because it portrays the way that God created the world – how it was supposed to be and why the world is the way it is today. After God spends six days working on creating his idea of a perfect world, it says “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good,” (Genesis 1:31). However, as Eve disobeyed God’s word and listened to the deceitful serpent, God knew he needed to punish Adam and Eve in order

She didn’t know the outcome of her action. (27) Had she known what would be in-store, she would not have consented to eating the apple. Lanyer defends this notion by implying Eve’s “poor soul”  was deceived; her harmless heart [nature] wouldn’t have allowed her to inflict such harm on her lover. On top of that, Lanyer defends Eve to the point where she implies that while being tempted, Eve “...alleged God’s word, which he [the serpent] denies” (31). The serpent doesn’t believe in or accept God’s word, so he switched up God’s words- implying that God didn’t tell her specifically not to eat from the tree- which gave Eve the green light to eat of the

Both Adam and Eve were tricked into believing that the fruit will present them with a more fulfilling existence, but instead it proved lacking and disappointing. Furthermore, the narrator soon after says, “ Thousands of greedy individuals abandoned their sweet native hexagons and rushed upstairs and downstairs, spurred by their vain desire to find their Vindication.” (Borges 115) The “greedy individuals” the narrator speaks of are a symbol of humankind’s dissatisfaction with its existence, and its constant need to search for something more divine. Thus, the narrator describes Adam and Eve’s fall from Grace, which was “spurred by their vain desire to find their Vindication.”