Some years ago, I wrote my version of the Doubting Thomas story and of Paul's conversion. Another Bible story that continues to ignite my imagination is that of the two trees in the Garden of Eden. The full text of that story is found in Genesis 2:4-3:24. It is a deceptively simple story that explains human nature better than anything else I've ever heard. It raises a thousand questions and maybe the answers are in the questions.
The story begins with God making Adam from the dust of the ground and breathing the breath of life into him and putting him into the Garden of Eden, where God then made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground. In the very middle of that garden he planted the two proverbial trees- the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God told Adam he could eat from any tree in the garden except for the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and evil, "for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” Then God made Eve out of Adam's rib and brought her to Adam so that he would not be alone.
Eating the fruit of these two trees was mutually exclusive. Adam and Eve could eat from the Tree of Life and live forever or they could eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but they could not have both. Interestingly, eating from the Tree of Life did not preclude later eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil; but the inverse was not true. Eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil did preclude later eating from the Tree of Life. It was a show stopper. And for as long as Adam and Eve did as Adam was told, and lived out their lives in the Garden without eating the forbidden fruit, the Tree would remain there in the middle of their world, with its good looking fruit.
So later, the serpent questioned Eve about eating the forbidden fruit, saying, "You will not surely die...God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Eve took some of the fruit and ate it and gave some to Adam, and he ate it also. Their eyes were opened, and they realized they were naked.
When God discovered their disobedience, he cursed the snake, Adam, Eve, and the ground, and banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Because they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, he could no longer eat from the Tree of Life and live forever.
The idea of the two trees being positioned together in the middle of the Garden and pitting them against each other as mutually exclusive choices is interesting to me. Is eternal life really the opposite of the knowledge of good and evil? What is even meant by "the knowledge of good and evil?" In part, this is a rhetorical device called a merism, which is a figure of speech pointing out opposing qualities within a whole as a way of colorfully summarizing and referring to the nature of the whole. These types of sayings are often used in legal contexts (e.g., a "last will and testament" refers to the sum total of one's material legacy). They are also used throughout the Bible. In Genesis 1:1, God is said to have created the "heavens and the earth," meaning everything. So in this story, the idea of the forbidden fruit imparting the knowledge of good and evil likely refers to imparting to man the entire scope of moral knowledge, from good to evil, and everything in between-- the gray areas.
It's deeply interesting (and ultimately impossible) to imagine what it would be like to live in a world where we have no perception of either good or evil- where we have no morally qualitative judgments about anything. And it's not like Adam and Eve were incapable of making any kind of judgments prior to eating from that tree- Eve did tell the serpent before she at the fruit that it was "good for food and pleasing to the eye" -- so she was able to make other types of qualitative judgments already. Just not moral ones. What does that world look like? And how culpable were Adam and Eve really for falling prey to the serpent's deception if they could not yet perceive morality? God gave them a commandment to follow- do not eat from that tree- and they failed. But if they didn't know it was evil to fail, how did they even perceive that decision-making process? What kind of a choice did they think they were making?
It is also interesting to think about the fact that God made animals before making man, and that animals were not given this choice or this command. Animals, at least as far as we can tell, don't have any concept of good and evil. So in a way, perhaps Adam and Eve saw the world much more like animals do before eating the fruit. (But then again, what about that serpent? He seemed to have a pretty big clue about the nature of good and evil before Adam and Eve did. How did he get so crafty?)
Did God know, before putting man in the Garden, what choice he would make about eating the fruit? It's kind of dark to think God did know in advance; then it seems fairly cruel to go ahead with the plan anyway. But what if God didn't know? What if it was an experiment? What if God wanted, as he said earlier in Genesis, simply to make mankind in his image, and he wasn't sure what exactly he had created and what the implications were of this new creature? What if the two trees were a test of man's nature, a way of getting to know his creation? Or what if God didn't have any choice but to make those two trees just exactly as he did. What if that was simply the nature of the world he had created, to include those elements-- this propensity for an eternity that we feel in our bones alongside a bewildering knowledge of the whole scope of morality from good to evil-- elements that are both inherent in this world and yet somehow irreconcilable?
Or going beyond that, what if the two trees were a way of introducing humanity to the fractured nature of the world we live in? The Garden was humanity's nursery, where they could slowly become acquainted with the rest of the world from inside a relatively protected space, but they would always have had to leave at some point. And in order to know what awaited them in the world, perhaps they had to have an earth shattering experience of coming, by their own choice, and even as an act of disobedience, into an understanding of their own nature. And maybe there was nothing special or magical about the forbidden fruit at all, except that it was forbidden. Perhaps it was the act of disobedience, rather than the act of eating that particular fruit, which opened their eyes to their own evil nature and therefore, to all evil.
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