The Fall of Man in the Book of Genesis

It has been emphasized by J. G. Frazer that most myths contained in Genesis do not derive from Israelitioc origins; nor even do all of them betray a specific oriental extraction. Disseminated all over the world, they rather give the impression of myths that have to be marked human in a universal sense and such an ubiquitous dissemination is among others also characteristic of the myth of the Fall of Man in Paradise and the Golden Age lost because of man's eating from the fruits of the Tree which stood “in the midst of the Garden ((Eden)”. The myth was retold in the Bible after its original version had been adequately adapted by the biblical author.

Frazer (1) has made the attempt to carve out the common primordial pattern at the bottom of all the available versions of the myth delineated by him: The “Perverted Message”. Such myths were found to be still alive and even extant in the mythical treasures of many primitive peoples: The Creator, making the Serpent to serve as his messenger, commanded the first human couple to avoid the fruits of the Tree of Death and, instead, to eat from those of the Tree of Life. The treacherous Serpent, however, reversed this command and gave it to the foolish woman, with the intention of corrupting Man and of acquiring himself the right of immortality. The symbolic meaning of this pristine version of the myth of the Fall of Man is evident enough: Man, too weak to resist the enticements of sexual desire, made his choice of the latter instead of an eternal blissful life in Paradise (the Golden Age). For this he was doomed to pay with