Week 7 - Cobb 7

I liked this Chapter on sin. Certainly there is a pattern in our culture and others of the covenant/jeremiad narrative. The sense is that we have lost paradise and that the Divine calls us to own up to our sins. Cobb goes at length to discuss the various myths in the world's cultures of paradises lost by human transgression. However, I am shocked by the misreading of the Garden of Eden allegory by the Church. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil simply revealed Adam and Eve's true created condition, nude/sinful. Their nudity represented their sinfulness. This important fact is revealed by their shame for their nudity after the Fall. Notice, the text says they were in fact made nude (2:25) but did not know it until after they consumed the fruit (3:5-7). If their nudity represented something good (like intimacy, freedom or openness between each other and God) then why would they be ashamed of it when they realized it? The truth that Adam and Eve did not know they were naked before the Fall is further revealed by God's question. "Who told you that you were naked?" Why would God ask this if they had knowledge of it before the Fall? The tree of the knowledge of good and evil did not make humans sinful. The tree did what it was named for, it revealed what was good or evil about the consumers of the fruit. The tree revealed to humanity that they were naked and had been made so all along.