ArcaMax

Q: Could the identity of the unknown forbidden fruit in the world's oldest and greatest mystery story have something to do with procreation and the family Adam and Eve do not have until their eviction from Eden at the end of Genesis 3?

Adam and Eve disobey the Genesis 1:28 commandment – the first commandment – to "be fruitful and multiply (in the Garden). It is interesting that half of Eve's punishment in Genesis 3:16 is painful childbirth – because she chooses to not have children in the Garden of Eden and God wants to remind her of her decision? – (From R in Berkeley, CA)

A: One of the reasons there are two religions from the same text is that there are two ways to read the same biblical text. Christianity reads the story of the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden as an original sin whose consequences stain every succeeding generation of human beings. Jesus’ death on the cross was an atonement and purification of that sin for all believers. For the other two Abrahamic faiths, Judaism and Islam, the story of Eden is read in a very different way. For these faiths Eden was a story of the first sin, not an original sin. The sin was violating God’s command to not eat from the fruit of the forbidden tree. That fruit brought with it the knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve were then expelled from the Garden of Eden and given specific punishments: Adam would toil for his existence and Eve would have pain in childbirth. They were expelled, however, not for eating the fruit of knowledge but because God feared that they would eat a second fruit that was either from the tree or wrapped around the tree and that was the fruit of immortality from the tree of life. (Genesis 3:22).

My view of all this is that the Garden was like the womb and outside the Garden was like the world. The Garden provided all nourishment without labor and offered no moral dilemmas. The Garden was us before we were truly human. The fundamental humanizing trait is the knowledge that some choices are good and others are destructive; some are healing and others are hell.

Making those choices between good and evil defines our lives here on planet earth. God’s role is to point out the path of life. Our role is to walk it. Whether or not we succeed and are saved by our own efforts or whether we need the salvific role of Jesus as the Christ is the difference between the faiths, but the main point is clear. We could never have become fully human in the Garden.

I love your curiosity, dear R, about the Garden narrative, but I do not agree that procreation had a role to play in the expulsion. Eve could have given birth in the Garden without pain. Pain was just a punishment for disobedience not a judgment against procreation. The first commandment (to Adam) remains becoming fruitful and multiplying and filling the earth.

RIP Charles Dolan

The man who created the God Squad died last week at the age of 98. Charles Dolan was a great man who created HBO, the foundations of the cable industry, local cable news and a host of other major institutions that shape the way we communicate with each other. He was my friend and I shall miss him greatly. I offer my deepest condolences publicly to his family as I have privately.

A story: Chuck knew Father Tom Hartman and he knew me and he knew that we did not know each other so he set out to change that. In 1987, when Passover and Easter fell on the same day, Chuck thought the two of us should meet and talk on air about the differences and similarities of Passover and Easter. When asked by the anchor person at News 12 Long Island that very question I blurted out,“Well, it comes down to this: There are no chocolate bunnies in Passover and there is no horseradish in Easter!”

Tommy kicked me under the table. We spent the next two hours talking in the parking lot and lighting up the most important friendship in our lives. I will be eternally indebted to Chuck for birthing our unconventional interfaith friendship and (along with Mike Pascucci) nurturing it and supporting it for more than three decades. The mission of the God Squad was a foundational belief of Chuck’s faith and life. Like us, Chuck believed that we know enough about how we are all different but not enough yet about how we are all the same.

I pray that Tommy is showing Chuck around heaven now.

(Send ALL QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS to The God Squad via email at godsquadquestion@aol.com. Rabbi Gellman is the author of several books, including “Religion for Dummies,” co-written with Fr. Tom Hartman. Also, the new God Squad podcast is now available.)

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