The Fall of Man (Genesis narrative)

According to Christian understanding, the term "fall of man" originated in the late Jewish 4th book of Ezra. Already Paul had derived death from the first sin in the Epistle to the Romans: "Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin death, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned." (Rom 5:12 EU) Ezra makes the same derivation, sighing, "Oh, Adam, what have you done! When you sinned, your fall came not only upon you, but upon us, your descendants!" (4 Ezra 7:118)

Gen 3 EU forms the first of the four prehistoric failure stories of fratricide (Gen 4:1-16 EU), of relationships between angels and humans (Gen 6:1-4 EU), and of the Tower of Babel (Gen 11:1-9 EU). They express fundamental biblical statements about the nature of man and humanity. The first transgression, however, is fundamental in that with it the paradisiacal "Garden of Eden" as the epitome of unity with God or access to the eternal fullness of life in the "Tree of Life" (Gen 3:22 EU) is lost and man now begins the history of mortals between birth and death with the animalistic "coat of fur" (Gen 3:21 EU).

In this respect the fall of man in the "disobedience" of the first Adam is causal for death, while in the "obedience" of the second Adam "unto death on the cross" life is created anew with the resurrection (Rom 5:12-21 EU; Phil 2:8 EU). Augustine of Hippo developed the doctrine of original sin from Paul's interpretation.

While the new Adam voluntarily descends from his heavenly "height" and "humbly" puts on the "slave garment" of the human-earthly "flesh" (Phil 2,7 EU; Joh 1,14 EU; Mt 11,29 EU), so that the "fallen" man regains his original "light garment" of glory and immortality (cf. Eph 4,24 EU; 1 Cor 15,53f. EU; Col 3,10 EU), the old Adam falls through his arrogance. In this sense, the often handed down word of Jesus also deals with the fall of man: "Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted" (Mt 23:12 EU; Lk 14:11 EU; 18:14 EU; cf. 1:48, 52 EU).

In exegesis today the concept of the Fall is rather avoided. According to the exegetical commentary of Andreas Schüle, the meaning of the two trees in the one center of the garden, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, "is an ultimately unsolvable riddle." In the Church Fathers and in medieval mysticism, both trees stand for the two sides of reality: heaven and the world, the invisible and the visible (cf. Col 1:15-16 EU), the "male" and the "female", also grace and sacramental "matter" as well as spiritual and "literal" exegesis.

Thus, Bonaventure explains in the Hexaemeron (XIX,8) from the miracle of transformation at the wedding at Cana (Jn 2,1-11 EU): "The letter [of Scripture] alone is merely water, which only in spiritual understanding is transformed into wine; it is stone, which must first become bread"; and: it is only the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; "only in spiritual understanding does Scripture become the tree of life". It is decisive to connect the literal understanding of Scripture with the inner understanding in the Holy Spirit, whereby the Bible is only the living Word of God (= tree of life) or "as it were a zither": "the deep string [= literal sense] only produces the melodious sound together with the other [three spiritual senses of Scripture]."

What applies to the Bible as "creation in the Word" (Friedrich Weinreb) also applies to creation through the Word (cf. Jn 1:3-4 EU; Heb 1:3 EU; 11:3 EU): Only when the visible and the invisible are one in the "nuptial" covenant does man live in the paradisiacal reality or "heaven" created by the divine Word (cf. Col 1:13-20 EU; 3:1-2 EU; Eph 2:6 EU). The breaking of this "nuptial" covenant between the "male" and the "female" or "being one flesh" (cf. Gen 2:24 EU; Eph 5:30-31 EU) by man and woman, on the other hand, leads to the loss of paradise or the fullness of life. In the celebration of the seven sacramental signs of salvation of the Catholic and Orthodox Church, especially in baptism and the Eucharist as well as in marriage as the "primordial sacrament" (John Paul II), tradition saw the means of salvation to return to the lost paradise (cf. already Lk 23:43 EU). Added to this is spiritual discipline: "This is the meaning of all asceticism: to renew again the paradisiacal order in Christ."

Based on a text by Nietzsche, the text also lends itself to a psycho-historical interpretation apart from theologically or spiritually intended interpretations of the "Fall of Man". In Friedrich Nietzsche's 1874 work "On the Usefulness and Disadvantage of History for Life", man is contrasted with the animal in a parable. Here, Nietzsche seemingly casually recalls the expulsion from paradise when he writes: "Man is seized, as if he thought of a lost paradise, to see the grazing herd or the child that has nothing yet past to deny and plays between the fences of the past and the future in supernatural blindness." In his choice of words, Nietzsche implicitly places the historical nature of man, that is, the time reference of his life's consummation, in a context to the expulsion from paradise. Assuming this trait of man's nature, eating from the tree of knowledge can be understood as an image for the specifically humanly acquired ability to recognize temporality and thus finitude. In the parable of the Fall of Man, the serpent had predicted to man that he would not die, but that he would be able to distinguish good from evil if he ate from this tree. Contrary to God's announcement, however, and in accordance with the serpent's announcement, man does not die after eating the food either, but begins to discern. The announcement, however, was not that he would die immediately after eating. But in order to come to that realization, he had to be able to see cause and effect, that is, the temporality (and thus finitude) of all life. Shame - symbolized in hiding from God - sets in as man from his hitherto purely present state becomes aware of the consequences of his own - also of his previous - actions. And also the fear of man - likewise condensed in the hiding from the divine power - begins in the consciousness of one's own temporality: Until the food from the tree of knowledge he did not know of the certainty and inevitability of death. But now he is the only being who, torn from the paradisiacal state of reduction to a present life, knows of the certain death of all living things - and thus also of his own death. So man is also the only living being that has been driven out of paradise. He lives in "fear of God". But man cannot give away the ability to know again, it is passed on from generation to generation: He is condemned to knowledge, to becoming aware of what he does - and therefore in his human limitations also to "sinning". Although in the concept of "original sin" this experiences a theologically intended exaggeration, man experiences here as well as in his limited power the unconditional differences to what constitutes the Abrahamic image of God. Every rebellion against his limitation, for instance by further intensifying his efforts to understand worldly contexts and by increasing his self-empowerment, seems, however, against the background of the "Fall of Man" not to be the redemption from his burden but his progressive ruin. In this interpretation, the biblical story becomes a parable about the nature of man who, in love with the God-like capacity for knowledge, tries his luck at it again and again and yet also fails. If man can thus be understood in his essence as "sinful", namely erring, this interpretation comes close to the understanding in the Reformed churches in that they refer the concept of sin less to the individual wrong action than to the essence of man. It is true that the interpretations of the Fall in the various Christian traditions sometimes differ greatly from this interpretation (and from each other). But since the described understanding of the Fall can also clarify that in man's self-image his insurmountable separation and distance from God becomes clear, this interpretation, despite its rather worldly intention, is nevertheless again close to a basic Christian understanding of the parable. But just in the question of separation or distance from God the problem of the concept of God becomes clear, which is symbolized in the very different understandings of the Abrahamitic religions and denominations. In this interpretation the parable of the Fall of Man represents also for the agnostic reader a central Bible passage, if in it a symbol for the impossibility of a more comprehensive human knowledge of God becomes just as clear as the longing for his existence.

Evolutionary biological interpretation

In 2016, orangutan researcher Carel van Schaik and historian Kai Michel interpret the Bible as a diary of the evolutionary biology of human development. In doing so, they ascribe fundamental importance to the Neolithic Revolution: this transition from nomadic hunter-gatherer groups to sedentarism, combined with the beginnings of agriculture and animal husbandry, gave rise to the property principle (compare property theories). Van Schaik and Michel describe the Fall as the first property crime: "God had given only one commandment in Paradise: 'You may eat of all the trees of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat.' It is significant, after all, that it is precisely an offense against property that is presented as original sin. Among the hunter-gatherers a tree belonged to him who ate of it. Property is a consequence of sedentariness."

According to this interpretation of the Bible, the actual fall of man consisted in his settling down. But because this was an evolutionary-biological developmental step, "all interpretations that bring morality into play would be invalid".