We tend to read Chapters 2 and 3 of Genesis through a lens of suspicion. When I asked a member of the congregation, Deborah, to read it on Sunday, she wasn’t keen. Urgh, we think – apparently it’s all the woman’s fault that the apple was eaten. This is where, according to Augustine, sin originated. Perhaps it’s best quietly to ignore the whole passage.

Except we can’t do that, because the story of the eating of the apple is right at the heart of Western Christian theology, whether we like it or not. But it may be that the lens through which we have been reading the story is not one which enables all its colours to be seen. Maybe there’s another way of looking at it.

There are two creation accounts at the beginning of Genesis, loosely stitched together by the editors some time in the fifth century BCE. This second one originated in Babylon during the exile of the Jewish people from Jerusalem. It is, at heart, an attempt to explain where evil comes from, in the context of a creation which, according to chapter 1, is very good. ‘And God saw, and it was good …. And God saw, and it was good…’ – but if it’s all good, how come there is so much pain in the world? If God is wholly good and created the cosmos, how can badness have originated?

The Genesis accounts of creation differ from other creation myths current in Mesopotamia at the time.  For example, the Enuma Elish, a Babylonian creation myth, focuses on a battle between gods and the ultimate supremacy of the god Marduk. The Genesis accounts both tell a story of  relationship between human beings and one God – ‘In the image of God created he them.’  ‘It is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper as his partner.’

The two creation stories dovetail: chapter 1.1 – 2.3 recounts how the cosmos, the natural world, animals and humans came into being. Genesis 2.4 – 3.24 recounts how the relationship between humanity and God changed. In Western theology, following Augustine, this is the story of the Fall and of the origin of sin.

But there is another way of looking at it.

I have often wondered about the depiction of the relationship between Adam, Eve and God before the apple was eaten. It doesn’t feel very mutual! Adam is commanded to till and keep the garden; he is given, without making a choice, a woman to accompany him. He appears to have no agency.  It feels more like the relationship between a pet and its owner than a relationship of equals. So I wonder if it was entirely satisfying to God? Whether, perhaps, God became bored with Adam’s dull obedience and wanted to shake things up a bit? I’m reminded of the truism that, if you want a child to do something, the best way to make it happen is to tell them not to: you may not open that cupboard, you may not eat of the fruit of that tree. So off they go and do it.

Regardless of God’s motive in issuing that command, what happened? A different relationship emerged. A real relationship – not like the relationship between a pet and a human, but a relationship of friends. They knew that they were naked; they covered themselves. Isn’t nakedness often a manifestation of subservience – pictures of naked prisoners, humiliation through enforced nakedness – so in covering themselves, were Adam and Eve not taking agency to themselves?

And it’s the woman who did it. ‘She gave me the apple and I did eat.’ But, reading the passage carefully, it’s clear that her motive was not as straightforwardly disobedient as many theologians have inferred: and, indeed, I wonder too whether the serpent was quite as malevolent as he is traditionally understood to have been.

‘6So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.’

The wisdom tradition is one of the most important strands of the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament). Ecclesiastes is also known as the Book of Wisdom. The Book of Proverbs is a collection of sayings about wisdom, and it contains one of my favourite verses in the Bible:

The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever else you get, get insight. (Prov. 4.7)

Was it so very wrong that Eve should seek wisdom? Quite apart from the fact that the fruit was good to eat, and was a delight to the eyes.  What, she may have thought, was God doing when he forbade them to eat of the tree? Was he deliberately trying to keep them subservient? Where is the goodnesss in that? There are gnostic traditions which take this interpretation – that in the story, God is the character who comes out worst, punishing Adam and Eve and the serpent for actions which, in the end, were entirely understandable.

So is the act of eating the apple really an action of original sin or a manifestation of what Matthew Fox, the Dominican priest and theologian, termed ‘original blessing?’

The relationship changes, fundamentally. In a sense, Adam  and Eve have indeed died, in the way in which baptism theology speaks of death: they died to their old selves and were born anew.

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

A final point: Eve, up to this point in the story, has been entirely passive. She was created out of the man and left to be doubly subordinate, as his helpmeet. Through the act of choosing to eat and then offering the apple to Adam, she takes agency: she leapfrogs out of her subordinate status into equality.

On the First Sunday of Lent, this reading is set alongside the account of the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness. There are many parallels between the temptations story and the eating of the apple – but that will have to wait for my next blog.

The fact that choice exists – that humans are not automata – opens up the potential for a relationship with the God of love which is meaningful and real. It does not mean that God created evil: as humans, we have the potential to choose the loving or the unloving. But without that choice we would not have agency, and without agency we would not be fully human.

The more I reflect on chapters 2 and 3 of Genesis, the happier I am that Eve chose to eat the apple. Yes, there is great darkness and great wickedness and great pain in the world, most of which comes from human pride and greed. But there is also transcendent beauty, love and hope, there is self-giving love and transformative delight, and if that came from eating an apple in Eden, then I am glad of Eve’s act and grateful to her for it!