part0031

The Myth: But 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. (Gen. 2:17)

The Reality: The purpose of this story is to condemn the Egyptian idea that knowledge of moral order would lead to Eternal Life, which conflicted with Hebrew monotheistic teachings.

In the previous myth, we saw that Egyptian ideas about the relationship between moral order and eternal life lay behind the biblical story about the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life. Yet, despite the close parallels between the two descriptions, there is one glaring conflict. In the Egyptian text, Nun (the personification of the Great flood) urged Atum (the Heliopolitan Creator) to eat of his daughter Tefnut, giving him access to knowledge of moral order. In Genesis, God forbade Adam to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, denying him access to moral knowledge.

This inconsistency appears in the face of a moral conundrum in the biblical account. It would seem that God lied and the serpent told the truth. Initially, God ordered Adam not to eat from The Tree of Knowledge, telling him that he would die on the very day that he did so. Yet, later, after eating from the fruit of this tree, Adam not only lived (for about another nine hundred years), but God feared that he would obtain eternal life if he ate from the Tree of Life and it became necessary to expel him from the Garden.

If Genesis draws upon the Egyptian doctrine, why does the biblical story take such a radical turn when it comes to eating from the Tree of Knowledge? The divergence in the two stories results from fundamental differences between Egyptian and Hebrew beliefs about the afterlife.

The Egyptians believed that if you lived a life of moral order, the god Osiris, who ruled over the afterlife, would award you eternal life. That was the philosophical link between these two fundamental principles of Life and Moral Order, and that is why Egyptians depicted them as the children of the Creator. In effect, knowledge of moral behavior was a step towards immortality and godhood. That is precisely the issue framed in Genesis.

When Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, God declared that if Adam also ate from the Tree of Life he would become like God himself. But Hebrews were monotheists. The idea that humans could become god-like flew in the face of the basic theological concept of biblical religion, that there was and could be only one god. Humans can’t become god-like.

The Hebrew story is actually a sophisticated attack on the Egyptian doctrine of moral order leading to eternal life. It begins by transforming Life and Moral Order from deities into trees, eliminating the cannibalistic imagery suggested by Atum eating of his daughter. Then, Adam was specifically forbidden to eat the fruit of Moral Order. Next, Adam was told that not only wouldn’t he achieve eternal life if he ate of Moral Order but that he would actually die if he did eat it. Finally, Adam was expelled from the Garden before he could eat from the Tree of Life and live for eternity.

Note here that the biblical emphasis is on knowledge of moral order and not eternal life. The biblical message is that you cannot achieve eternal life through knowledge of moral order. God will tell you what you need to know and how you should behave and you will do it because God tells you to do it, not because you will live forever.

When God told Adam that he would surely die the very day he ate from the Tree of Knowledge, the threat should be understood to mean that humans should not try to become like a deity. God didn’t mean that Adam would literally drop dead the day he ate the forbidden fruit; he meant that the day Adam violated the commandment he would lose access to eternal life. Remember that God did not initially prohibit Adam from eating from the Tree of Life. (Presumably, one bite of that tree’s fruit did not confer immortality. One needed to continuously eat from it and replenish one’s life.) Once he violated the commandment, he lost access to the Tree of Life and could no longer eat the fruit that prevented death.