ABSTRACT
God’s plan when He forbids Adam to eat from the Tree of Knowledge is that Adam disobey the prohibition. All the same, Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit for their own reasons. Their freely defying God is part of a process designed to groom them into their full–grown state. This reading of the story–as a “Bildungsroman”–differs from a traditional view of the story as etiological in nature.
In tempting Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, the serpent brought about a sin which, it seems, would not otherwise have taken place. Holding God responsible for the serpent’s actions sharpens the moral perplexities this raises. When deemed necessary and worthwhile, law officers today sometimes “entrap” a suspicious agent, seduce or deceive him, to commit a crime which he had no intention of committing. Adam and Eve are “entrapped” into sinning and then punished. The point of this is to teach them that in the world they are entering they will suffer the constraints imposed upon them by their creaturehood and by their being agents of God’s plan, and yet they will be held accountable for their conduct.
