THE PRIMÆVAL HISTORY. (continued 4)

¹ In Old Testament usage, knowledge of good and evil marks the difference between adulthood and childhood (Deuteronomy 1³⁹, Isaiah 7^{15 f.}), or second childhood (2 Samuel 19³⁶); it also denotes (with different verbs) judicial discernment of right and wrong (2 Samuel 14¹⁷, 1 Kings 3⁹), which is an intellectual function, quite distinct from the working of the conscience. The antithesis of good and evil may, of course, be ethical (Amos 5^{14 f.}, Isaiah 5²⁰ etc.); but it may also be merely the contrast of pleasant and painful, or wholesome and hurtful (2 Samuel 19³⁶). Hence the phrase comes to stand for the whole range of experience,—“a comprehensive designation of things by their two polar attributes, according to which they interest man for his weal or hurt”: compare 2 Samuel 14¹⁷ with ²⁰ ‘all things that are in earth’ (Genesis 24⁵⁰ 31²⁴). Wellhausen maintains that the non-ethical sense is fundamental, the expressions being transferred to virtue and vice only in so far as their consequences are advantageous or the reverse. Knowledge of good and evil may thus mean knowledge in general,—knowing one thing from another.

(3) The next point that claims attention is the author’s conception of sin. Formally, sin is represented as an act of disobedience to a positive command, imposed as a test of fidelity; an act, therefore, which implies disloyalty to God, and a want of the trust and confidence due from man to his Maker. But the essence of the transgression lies deeper: God had a reason for imposing the command, and man had a motive for disobeying it; and the reason and motive are unambiguously indicated. Man was tempted by the desire to be as God, and Yahwe does not will that man should be as God. Sin is thus in the last instance presumption,—an overstepping of the limits of creaturehood, and an encroachment on the prerogatives of Deity. It is true that the offence is invested with every circumstance of extenuation,—inexperience, the absence of evil intention, the suddenness of the temptation, and the superior subtlety of the serpent; but sin it was nevertheless, and was justly followed by punishment.—How far the passage foreshadows a doctrine of hereditary sin, it is impossible to say. The consequences of the transgression, both privative and positive, are undoubtedly transmitted from the first pair to their posterity; but whether the sinful tendency itself is regarded as having become hereditary in the race, there is not evidence to show.

(4) Lastly, what view of God does the narrative present? It has already been pointed out that 3²² borders hard on the pagan notion of the ‘envy’ of the godhead, a notion difficult to reconcile with the conceptions of Old Testament religion. But of that idea there is no trace in the main narrative of the temptation and the Fall, except in the lying insinuation of the serpent: the writer himself does not thus ‘charge God foolishly.’ His religious attitude is one of reverent submission to the limitations imposed on human life by a sovereign Will, which is determined to maintain inviolate the distinction between the divine and the human. The attribute most conspicuously displayed is closely akin to what the prophets called the ‘holiness’ of God, as illustrated, e.g., in Isaiah 2^{12 ff.}. After all, the world is God’s world and not man’s, and the Almighty is just, as well as holy, when He frustrates the impious aspiration of humanity after an independent footing and sphere of action in the universe. The God of Genesis 3 is no arbitrary heathen deity, dreading lest the sceptre of the universe should be snatched from his hand by the soaring ambition of the race of men; but a Being infinitely exalted above the world, stern in His displeasure at sin, and terrible in His justice; yet benignant and compassionate, slow to anger, and ‘repenting Him of the evil.’ Through an intensely anthropomorphic medium we discern the features of the God of the prophets and the Old Testament; nay, in the analogy of human fatherhood which underlies the description, we can trace the lineaments of the God and Father of Jesus Christ. That is the real Protevangelium which lies in the passage: the fact that God tempers judgment with mercy, the faith that man, though he has forfeited innocence and happiness, is not cut off from fellowship with his Creator.