This
week we begin our annual cycle of reading the Torah with the familiar story of
Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The story centers on the woman and the man
eating the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.
What
resulted from the man and woman eating the fruit? Before they ate the fruit the
Torah calls them man and woman. They do not have names. They do not need names.
They were the only man and the only woman. They were immortal and alone. They
lived in the Garden of Eden where they did no work.
Before
they ate the forbidden fruit nothing ever changed. Every day was like the day
before. The man and the woman living in the garden had
no sense of time. There was no calendar, no future and no past.
Everything
was as it always was and always would be.
After
they ate the forbidden fruit God banishes them from the garden. God tells them
that they will die. God explains that the woman will give birth.
They
will no longer be the only man and the only woman. They will be two among many.
They can no longer be called the man and the woman. They need names. The text
tells us that they will be called, Adam and Eve.
They
have to eat the fruit to propel the story forward. The curiosity that moved the
woman and the man to eat transformed them into people with the names. They
became people with a sense of time. They
became people with memories of the past and hopes for the future. This is not
the story of the fall of Adam and Eve it
is the story of the beginning of the ascent of human beings.
