Anti-Intellectualism and the Biblical Fall of Man
By- Casper Rigsby
Examining“ The Fall” If you have read the Bible you should then know the story of the fall of man. If not, the quick version is this: Eve was tempted by a serpent to eat the forbidden fruit from The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; by doing so, she disobeyed God. God thus cursed mankind with pain and toil and death.
This narrative is crucial to Christian theology, because it establishes the necessity for a redeemer in the form of Christ. Without this narrative, there is no basis for Christian theology. For this reason, many evangelicals and fundamentalists insist this narrative is packed with credible historicity-- otherwise Christ would serve no real purpose. The idea the narrative could be translated literally-- as it so often is-- given our understanding of the universe, evolution, and DNA-- is preposterous and anachronistic. However, there is an allegorical lesson found in the narrative: that is what I will now discuss. In order to examine this allegorically, we have to accept the following: Firstly, contrary to what biblical literalists have to say on the matter, the narrative is not a recounting of an actual historical event; Secondly, we have to accept what we are talking about is a biblical version of an Aesop’ s Fable. After we accept this, we can retell the story as such: " Once upon a time there was a woman named Eve, who lived in a wonderful paradise. She and her husband, Adam, had everything they needed, and wanted nothing. One day, as Eve was walking through the garden, she was approached by a serpent, who said,“ If you eat this fruit, you will have knowledge and be able to become greater than you are.” Eve is intrigued by this; although she has all she needs, she can now feel there is more that could be gained. She eats the fruit.
As the serpent promised, once Eve ate the fruit she did gain knowledge. But she found that what that knowledge offered was the ability to understand the world around her--and, with that, the emotion of suffering. The more we know, the more we have to fear.”
Drawing Parallels
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