1 Bernhard Lang, “The Forbidden Fruit: An Ancient Myth and Its Transformation in Genesis 2–3,” in: Hebrew Life and Literature: Selected Essays of Bernhard Lang (Society for Old Testament Study Monographs; Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2008), 111–126. The Forbidden Fruit An Ancient Myth and Its Transformation in Genesis 2–3 And the woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ Genesis 3:2–3 (English Standard Version) /p. 111:/ The myth of the creation of human beings – of Adam and Eve – their sin and their banishment from the garden of Eden explains the human condition in terms of a series of transformations. Most of these transformations are indicated in God’s speech to the serpent and to the first human couple: Yahweh Elohim said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.’ To the woman he said, ‘I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.’ And to Adam he said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, “You shall not eat of it”, cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’ The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. And Yahweh Elohim made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. Then Yahweh Elohim said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever’ – therefore Yahweh Elohim sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 3:14–24, English Standard Version) The story serves to describe the world as we actually experience it: the snake is a creeping creature without limbs; the Woman has to submit to patriarchal authority and to months of child-bearing, culminating often painfully in giving birth; the /p. 112:/ Man has to do the hard labour of cultivating the soil; men and women wear clothes – in this case, these are imagined to have been made from furs (a fine example of how an ancient people imagined the life of their remote ancestors); no one has access to the abode of God which is thought of as a pleasant garden (garden of Eden translates as garden of Pleasure). This is how the world is – how our world is. However, how different it must have been at an earlier stage, ‘in the beginning’! Men and women did not wear clothes, but were naked; the snake was no bad animal and not poisonous; the simple gathering of food was not hard and tiresome, and so on.