ABSTRACT
In Genesis 3, verse 10, Adam responds to God’s question “Where art thou?” with telltale proof of his disobedience: “I heard Thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.” God then demands, as the medieval scholar Rashi explains, with “astonishment”: “Who told thee that thou wast naked? From the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou should not eat of it, hast thou eaten?” (Gen. 3:11).1 These several questions-Where are you? Who told you? Did you eat?—may well generate astonishment in the reader. God’s questions raise the implicit but resonant question: why does He need to ask in the fi rst place? And then: if the All-Knowing does not know all, where does that leave us? The exchange between God and Adam may be construed as a sign of a fundamental fl aw in a cosmological system created by an imperfect divinity.
