The Fall of Humanity

Genesis 3: 1-24

“Take the snake, the fruit-tree and the woman from the tableau, and we have no fall, no frowning Judge, no Inferno, no everlasting punishment—hence no need of a Savior. Thus the bottom falls out of the whole Christian theology.” - Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Original sin. The belief that sin and death entered the world for the first time when Eve (and later, Adam), ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Growing up, I was taught to believe that we sin every minute of every day, no matter how young or old we are, because of original sin. I remember likening it to breathing. Breathe in, sin. Breathe out, sin. And it all went back to Eve eating the damn apple. I could never understand why God would let the entire human race—for all eternity—be cursed due to the actions of one person. And of course it had to be a woman. I never liked that part. I also wondered what all those carnivorous animals ate before there was death. A lion nibbling on lettuce….couldn’t picture it.

I stopped believing in the concept of Original Sin years ago, but was still surprised when I learned that my Jewish husband had learned about this chapter in Genesis in a completely different way. It is only then that I realized how crucial and fundamental the story of the Fall of Humanity is to Christianity. It sets the scene for future salvation.

Belief in original sin is common amongst Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Roman Catholics. Judaism, Islam, and of course atheists, agnostics, and other secularists reject the concept. My husband says he was raised to believe that we enter the world free of sin, with a soul pure and innocent. We are not inherently sinful.

Genesis 3:16

“To the woman he said, I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

If there was ever any doubt about the gender of the author of Genesis 3, that should clear it right up. Definitely not a woman. How quickly Eve goes from being a helper to a slave.

Genesis 3:22

“And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.”

Who, exactly, is god referring to when he says “us”?

I also find it interesting to note that the serpent was not referred to as the Devil, yet it is commonly represented as the Devil in Christian teachings. Nowhere in the Old Testament, that I have found, is a connection made between the serpent and a Satan-type being. In fact, the serpent doesn’t show up again until Revelations (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong…I am very dusty in Bible lore), written much, much later and in a completely different historical period than that in which Genesis was written.