And what could be the sense of representing Adam and Eve as so intent to know what was sin and what was virtue?  No one is curious about that, and sin never came into existence in the way of ethical experiment, by men’s desiring to know what it is.  And it is manifestly assumed that men knew in paradise that obedience to Jehovah was good and disobedience evil.  And finally, it conflicts with the common tradition of all peoples to represent the first man as a sort of beast; he is regarded as undeveloped only in point of outward culture.  The knowledge which is here forbidden is rather knowledge as such, general knowledge, or getting the eyes opened, as it is afterwards called.  This is what transcends, in the writer’s view, the limits of our nature; prying out the secret of things, the secret of the world, and overlooking, as it were, God’s hand to see how He goes to work in His living activity, so as, perhaps, to learn His secret and imitate Him.  For knowledge is to the ancient world also power, and no mere metaphysic.  This knowing in the highest sense is the attribute of God alone, who stands in the creative centre of things and penetrates and surveys the whole; it is sealed to man, who has to labour and weary himself at little things.  And yet the forbidden good has the most powerful attraction for him; he burns to possess it, and instead of resigning himself in trust and reverence he seeks to steal the jewel which is jealously guarded from him, and so to become like God—­to his own sorrow.

This explanation is not new; it is the old and popular one, for which reason also Goethe adopted it in Faust.  One objection certainly may be taken to it; the words are not merely knowledge, but knowledge of good and evil.  But good and evil in Hebrew mean primarily nothing more than salutary and hurtful; the application of the words to virtue and sin is a secondary one, these being regarded as serviceable or hurtful in their effects.  Good and evil as spoken of in Genesis ii. iii. point to no contrast of some actions with others according to their moral distinctions:  the phrase is only a comprehensive one for things generally, according to the contradictory attributes which constitute their interest to man, as they help or injure him:  for, as said, he desires to know not what things are metaphysically, but what is the use of them. 1 Besides the

*************************************** I Sur. 20, 91.  Hudh. 22, 10 (Agh. xv. 105, 12).  Hamasa, 292, 8 seq.  Tabari i. 847, 18 ***************************************

lengthier expression we have the shorter one, knowledge, simply (iii. 6); and it must also be remarked that the phrase is not:  know the good and the evil, but know good and evil.