More Original Sin

More Original Sin

“And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die."

Nowhere in the book of Genesis does it state that the fruit if the Tree of Knowledge is an apple. It is merely described as a fruit. Yet the apple has become such a common image associated with the story.

One has to ask, what made it such a common image? Did it come from all of those medieval paintings? And if so, where did these artists get this idea from? The apple has always figured prominently in Greek mythology. Although not red, the apples in Greek stories are golden. In one story, it is Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love who claims one of the golden apples. Keeping in mind the Goddess of Love and that a red apple symbolizes sexual desire, could the red apple of the Tree of Knowledge represent blood, or menstruation as well? Red is a passionate color, often associated with love or sex.

And what is this business of realizing one is suddenly naked?

“And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.”

This line suggests that prior to the serpents help (“But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”), Adam and Eve were completely unaware of their own nakedness. Unaware that differences existed in their form and thereby unaware of the duality of the world.

“Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.”

This is the pivotal moment of seeing duality in everything. I have observed my daughter who being so young, is like Adam and Eve prior to this eye-opening event. A child is incapable of judgement and is unaware of their own nakedness. I have seen my daughter stumble out of the bathroom into a room full of people still pulling up her pants. Nowhere is there a sign of embarrassment or self-consciousness, or thankfully, no sign of guilt. Now at the age of five, her mind is beginning to question and assuredly will shortly begin acting a little more “modestly” around people.


Surely in her mind and in the mind of all children, comes a point when they begin to see and wonder at why adults are always covered up, even if it is only to answer the phone in a bath towel. Something clicks. The begin to know. To know that there is something different between adults and children. Between man and woman. This is the beginning of a long quest toward understanding. And from there, perhaps a few years further down the road, they begin to realize that not only are girl and boy parts are different, they have to wonder what are these parts for?



Much like our Adam and Eve. In Eden they were children. The saw no differences. And considering they were given the command to “go forth and multiply”, surely they began to wonder, as children do, what purpose do these different parts have? Perhaps the voice of the snake is our own inner voice. Not a voice of temptation, but a voice of wisdom and experience. The voice of growth (for does not the snake shed its skin in order to grow?).



To be aware of one’s own nakedness is to be aware of one’s own self. To be aware of one’s own sex and the purpose of sex. The sewing of fig leaves together to cover these vital parts is a physical representation of the sudden understanding of the physical world’s duality. The snake is also a symbol of fertility and so it stands to reason that Eve, the symbol of life, would be the first to partake of this fruit. How long have we pulled her down and stoned her for the downfall of mankind? She is the hero, the one who offered man the chance to partake in life. And Adam is a hero in his own right for having the courage to accept this quest. The world's first knight.

By removing Eden out of a geographical area and into the realm of metaphor one can see the beginning of understanding the workings of nakedness and sexual desire. What eventually follows is the realization that if birth can occur, so than must its dual counterpart, its “better half” - death. If female exists, so must male. This is why we are all “condemned to die”. This is not a judgement or a sentence, but a logical progression of life.

Often I turn to the wisdom of my daughter. When she was perhaps three years old we were watching (for the nth time) Disney’s The Little Mermaid. During the climax of the film the sea-witch, Ursula, is impaled by a derelict ship, thrust by the very whirlpool she began. She sinks to the bottom of the sea and presumably to her death. At this point my daughter turned to me and said: “Where’s the octopus-lady?” (meaning Ursula).

This questions was one of those pivotal moments for me, a realization. Here, in this simple question, is the perfected innocence of childhood (before eating the apple, still walking with God in the garden as an equal). At this age my daughter was incapable of judgement and condemnation. She made no distinction between Good (Ariel and Eric) or Evil (Ursula). The sea-witch was simply another character who went somewhere else. Forget the fact that she had just spent the entire movie trying to kill our hero’s, had been plotting Neptune’s downfall because of her own bruised ego. All my daughter saw was that this character was at one point there and the next gone. To her beautiful mind there was no difference, no designation between Ariel and Ursula. No judgement on Good and Evil. In that moment, my daughter was equal to God.

Clearly this is the beginning of the process of understanding death. Prior to the question, death did not exist in her mind. And the point of this “original sin” is that we are all born into learning this.

Joseph Campbell has a wonderful interpretation of these events. Both woman and snake are symbols of new life. The woman is the giver of life, which is Eve’s very purpose. Similarly, the snake sheds it’s skin (sheds the old ways) and is born again with a fresh new skin, still soft. Both woman and snake are symbols of rebirth, of cycles. Campbell further explains that this is why the Moon is always given female attributes because of its different phases. The moon, like the snake, is a symbol of something shedding as it is continually reborn. By contrast the Sun is given male attributes (no coincidence that Jesus is the Son of God). The Sun, or the Son, is the light.

So both figures, woman and snake are hero’s. They free themselves of this static state, this limited life of so-called perfection in the garden, into a life of duality. Original sin is not God’s punishment. It is life’s requirement.