The Gravity of Eating the Apple of Eden

God directly commanded Adam and Eve not to eat fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They disobeyed That disobedience was a grave matter. It was bad enough for humanity to be banished from paradise. We had to struggle with choices of good and evil as a fallen race; always being by our own choices less than what we ought to be.

It is not my intention to develop an interpretation of the Adam and Eve myth. It is my intention to support my interpretation of “grave matter” as disobedience to the divine moral commander. My definition of “grave matter” is not idiosyncratic. In a fundamental myth of our civilization a physical and moral triviality has existential consequences for all of humanity. The only outstanding feature of eating the apple was its relation to God’s command. That relational property made an act of apple eating a grave matter.

The Adam and Eve myths are well worth taking seriously by all of us whether religious or irreligious, atheists or theists, educated or uneducated and young or old. The myths are clear and interesting shared stories for a wide variety of discussions of the human condition. Probably, the only uninteresting discussion of the myths is whether or not they report literally true facts of human history. To learn from a myth requires putting yourself, imaging yourself, in the story. One blessing we did not lose in the “fall” is our capacity to live vicariously in stories.

For uses of Adam and Eve myth see Moral Gravity and Forgiveness of Original Sin and the last paragraph of The Supernatural Origin of Humanity