Chapter Three - The Fall

The story of creation is about time and holy time, the story of Adam and Eve and the Fall is about space and holy space.
There are a similarities between details of this narrative and aspects of temples/sanctuaries as follows:

• Association with river imagery (e.g. Water flowing from the Temple Ezekiel 47:1) and entered from the east - I find this questionable, the text says that the garden is located in the East and previously (chapter 2) Turner has said that the garden is exited Eastward by the rivers Tigris and Euphrates.
• The man's vocation to till is the same word used elsewhere (Num.3: 7-8; 8:26; 18:5-6) to describe priestly duties.
• The garden is protected by cherubim (which guard the Ark of the Covenant in Exodus 25:18-22; the tabernacle 26: 1; and Solomon's Temple 1 Kings 6:23-29)

This section uses paronomosia - a rhetorical device exploiting confusion/similarity between words - to link this chapter with the previous chapter: There is pointed similarity between the Hebrew word for the 'naked' state of the humans (described in 2:25), (rummim from arom) and the statement in 3:1 that the serpent was 'crafty' (arum). The latter word is ambiguous as it can mean prudent/clever (e.g. proverbs 14:8, 15, 18) but it can also mean 'crafty'.

• By the end of the chapter the serpent has gone from being 'arum' (crafty) to 'arur' (cursed)

To 'know good and evil' may be 'an idiomatic way of saying you will experience everything' in the same way that 'the heavens and the earth' includes everything inbetween, and Adam's 'knowing' of Eve cannot be purely intellectual since she becomes pregnant!

• It is ironic that produce of a tree is both an agent of their shame at being naked and is then used in an attempt to cover it up.
• It is also ironic that an animal is instrumental in their awareness of their nakedness which is from then on covered by animal skins.
• Turner treats the serpent as emblematic of all animals, claiming that the outcome of the narrative is that man's dominion over animals is intensified to emnity.

In the recriminations between Adam and Eve the 'one flesh' disintegrates.

The serpent remains enigmatic in that: we do not know where he derives his knowledge or what his motivation is.

The serpent is shown to be a seducer more than a liar, since he is economical with the truth in what he says to the woman.

Both the man and the woman are cursed in terms of their origins - the man will contend with the ground to survive and will then return to it as dust, the woman will be ruled by her husband and her desire for him will cause her to carry out the commision to multiply in great pain.

The curses also relate closely to the threefold commission of 1:28, the man will struggle to subdue the earth and the woman will give birth in pain.

This episode can also be seen in terms of a challenge to and a failure of the 3rd aspect of their commision (to have dominion over all living creatures) since the serpent is one of these creatures and by persuading the man to eat the fruit the woman fails 'lamentably' as man's helper in this regard.

Despite all this the man names the woman 'Eve' meaning the mother of all that lived. This is, according to Taylor indicative of the optimism of the man, to me this seems to be just another case of the backward looking nature of some story telling.