probably knew: that their ancestors hunted. The story needed a fall
from perfection; it had to show that evil is the fault of humans and
not in God’s original plan. Evil comes from our disobedience. The fall is an act of eating: Eve eats the fruit, which may have
been a pomegranate because they probably didn’t have apples in
ancient Judea. Eves gives the fruit to Adam, and he eats it, too. As
a consequence of eating the fruit, Adam and Eve are kicked out
of Eden, and their punishment is labor. In other words, they have
experienced the agricultural revolution; they have gone from being
leisured, innocent gatherers to agriculturalists.
For the Hebrews, this story is a way to explain, justify, and reinforce
the settled way of life. It would be very dangerous to the survival of
this society if men wandered off into the brush. This keeps them at
home and teaches them their duty. It also explains to them why their
neighbors are sometimes not nice to them. There exists evil now,
and it’s our fault. Don’t blame God if something rotten happens.
Adam and Eve’s children, Cain and Abel, are a farmer and a
shepherd, respectively. Abel brings God some fat as an offering, and
Cain brings some produce of the soil—which, for some reason, God
rejects. This tells the Hebrews that you can’t bribe God. Sometimes
he favors what you do and sometimes not, but ultimately, what he
does is inscrutable to us lowly mortals.
Humans mess up again. Cain kills Abel. Signifi cantly, Cain’s
punishment is that the ground will not produce food for him
anymore, and he is made to wander the Earth and he is given a
strange mark so that people stay away from him and don’t kill him.
He’s a nomadic shepherd—someone different from the Hebrews,
who are settled agriculturalists. This explains why Hebrews are
different from those around them and why they have to keep apart
from them.