Adam and Eve Were NOT Cursed:
The New Post-Eden Reality
It is a common misconception that the Bible relates of God
cursing Adam and Eve. However as a look at the text will show, this is
simply not so. Immediately prior to the expulsion of Adam and Eve from
Eden, when speaking to the snake and the earth the Bible explicitly
states that God cursed them, but the text does NOT say that God cursed
Adam and Eve. Of course God tells them harsh-seeming things about their
new status that they are probably not happy to hear, but as oppsoed to
the wording of what was told to the snake and to the earth, there is no
mention of a curse.
One can therefore interpret the expulsion from Eden as
neither punishment nor exile. Instead it was a necessary change in the
metaphysical status of mankind and of the universe he inhabited, from a
spiritual reality to an environment ruled by 'natural law', an
environment which allowed for the freedom of choice necessary for moral
drama.
In this new reality - which in the context of the
traditional understanding of Genesis took place at the close of the
sixth day of creation - the heretofore spiritual universe became a
physical entity, self-consistent and operating harmoniously on the
level of physicality, ecology, mathematics, logic, in accordance with a
set of 'natural law'.
God wished for mankind to choose the burden of moral
responsibility - symbolized by 'eating of the tree of knowledge' - but
left this decision to man himself. When man chose moral responsibility,
there was therefore no punishment involved - even the curses at the end
of the Eden account apply only to the earth and snake, not to Adam and
Eve.
Instead, it was necessary that man's reality be
transformed from a God-manifest one to a universe in which God was at
least one step removed, where God's actions in the universe would be
perceived by man as the operation of a set of 'natural law', and where
it would be up to the choice of the individual to consider this
'natural law' as deriving from God or not. Indeed, Adam was catapulted
into a state in which it was necessary to work for one's food, there
was pain and misunderstanding, and where God was not manifest directly
- and in fact after the exit from the reality-state of Eden, there is
no mention of Adam perceiving a communication from the God he spoke to
so freely while 'in Eden'.
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