Saturday, January 13, 2024

Alice Wood on Genesis 3:22

  

The use of the plural in Gen 3:22 indicates that the knowledge of good and evil is a divine quality in general and not just a quality of Yahweh-Elohim. The use of Elohim rather than Yahweh-Elohim in the conversations of the serpent and Eve in Gen 3:1–5 also support this. The exact sense of “knowing good and evil” is uncertain but is likely to do with rational and ethical discrimination (see Barr 1992: 61–63). It must be something that was considered a quality of divinity that was shared by humanity after the fruit was eaten. Therefore, it must also be something that distinguishes humans from animals. Barr (1992: 65) argues that the acquisition of the knowledge of good and evil was “a coming of consciousness of lines that must not be crossed, of rules that must be obeyed.” (Alice Wood, Of Wings and Wheels: A Synthetic Study of the Biblical Cherubim [Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 385; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008], 58 n. 87)