Eve was the hero. Never forget that.

I think we got the whole Eve and fall-of-humankind story all wrong. In the Genesis story, commonly referred to as "the Fall," I see it much differently from the traditional Christian interpretation. Firstly, I believe the story was meant to be taken figuratively or allegorically, not literally.

The story contains several themes worth considering.

In my view, Eve is the daring and courageous one. God said don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She did it anyway. Why?

Let's digress momentarily to consider the context here. If the Bible was a carefully crafted and plotted propagandist document to perpetuate a positive theism, it failed miserably. The picture it presents of God is one who is complicated, contradictory, capricious, and at times, evil.

Why would God put the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden, knowing full well that Adam and Eve would do the very thing he told them not to? Put a bunch of people in a room with two windows and say to them, whatever you do just don't look through the window on the right. What do you think they will all do? They will do exactly that.

Why would God risk the well-being of his entire created order by telling Adam and Eve not to do something he knew they would? The way the story is framed, regardless of the role of the serpent, God is ultimately responsible and the one to blame for "the Fall." You can't set a building on fire and deny culpability when it burns to the ground.

In my mind, Eve is the hero in the story. God said don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She did. The world often makes its greatest advances by disobedient people who break the rules. Oscar Wilde wrote, "Disobedience is man's original virtue." Except it was a woman and it was Eve. She was the was first rule-breaker, and we should honor her for this.

In the story, God tells Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit. However, they never promise they won't. Should they have been obedient? How obedient do you want your children to be? Or course you want them to operate with prudence and integrity. However, you also want them to be disobedient enough to go into the world and act with conviction and even defiance. Some rules are meant to be and should be broken.

Little girls are often told they should be proper, accommodating and nice. Historian, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich wrote, "Well-behaved women seldom make history." In Eve's case, she did humankind an epic favor by risking disobedience.

Eve's decision made complete sense. According to the text, Eve chose to eat the fruit from the forbidden tree because:

(1) It was necessary for sustenance - it was "good for food"

(2) It resonated with her aesthetic sensibilities - it was "pleasing to the eye"

(3) It would contribute to her growth and maturity - "desirable for gaining wisdom."

If I came to you and said, "I want to offer you something - it's necessary to live, pleasing and satisfying, and will transform your entire way of being in the world. Are you interested?" My guess is that you would say, "Yes!" In addition to all that, Eve didn't selfishly claim it all for herself. She shared the fruit with her sidekick, Adam.

Meanwhile, notice that even though Adam didn't have the moxie to break the rules and risk taking the fruit himself, he had no problem gladly accepting it from Eve. And yet, Adam blames both God and Eve for the whole ordeal. Adam says, “The woman YOU PUT HERE with me—SHE gave me some fruit from the tree..." Adam plays the victim card and throws his partner under the bus to save his ass, which is quite unbecoming and disgracing.

Eve also played the blame-game by telling God, "The (serpent) made me do it." She has a point though; that serpent was quite crafty.

This is the only thing I wish Eve had done differently. I would have much preferred she have said to God:

"Okay, God. Here's the deal. Yes, I did it. I know you said not to eat from that tree. You also gave me a brain to use and I used it. I never promised I wouldn't. I was feeling it. So, I went for it. I put on my big-girl panties and ate the fruit. I didn't mean any disrespect to you. I was doing me. Actions have consequences. I get that now. Lesson learned."

Taking this account metaphorically, I think the idea was to construct a story that sets up the complexities of properly executing our freedom and agency in the world. God's command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is depicted as a safeguard to protect Adam and Eve from shouldering too heavy a burden of understanding the world and life in its most transparent terms. In other words, to know the world, particularly in its most frightening potentialities and possibilities, in which only God was capable of seeing. After eating the fruit we are told their eyes were opened, which means God initially had blinders on them so they were not capable of seeing the whole deal.

The knowledge of good and evil can be seen in the story in two ways. On the one hand, you might say that ignorance is bliss. Not having this knowledge was a feature of the paradise and harmony that was depicted prior to eating the forbidden fruit/knowledge. On the other hand, Eve saw that eating the fruit would be "gaining wisdom." In other words, it's best to know what the reality truly is so you know how to respond accordingly. In this sense, it should be noted that Eve was the one who chose to gain the knowledge of what the deal of existence actually was, through and through.

The story of Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit is not about the coming of sin into the world, but the emergence of self-consciousness, and confronting the realities of the human situation. With knowledge comes responsibility.

Eve took all the risks in this story. It cost her - she lost something, she gained something. It's not easy living responsibly with the things we know. What we learn from Eve is that any paradise based upon ignorance or half the truth, is fool's gold.

Eve's disobedience is not what corrupted the human species, but is an invitation and challenge to lean into the totality of the lived human experience... even if it requires defiance against the voices that tell us what we can or cannot do. Speaking of defiant and heroic women, it was Simone de Beauvoir wrote, "It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for living."

Jim Palmer