Knowledge in the Past

Why does the account emphasize knowledge?According to Legaspi, what sort of knowledge is communicated by eating of “the tree of the knowledge of good and bad”? And should it be eating? Why not touching or looking at some special object? Why a tree from which you eat? Yes, it is an act of disobedience, but how else can we describe the failure of Eve and Adam? Does this act make Adam and Eve more god-like? Less? Both? Why might it be merciful that God banishes them from the Garden?

The passage assigned for our lecture demonstrates what happened at the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve when they were put to test. The tree of knowledge was the only thing that God had warned Adam and Eve about, and yet, was the biggest temptation that they encountered in the Garden of Eden in the place that God gave them as their home. Adam and Eve were not only tempted by the tree, rather by the snake that appeared by the tree. Overall this reading talked about about treason and about how the entire part of Genesis (2-3) referred indirectly to the idea of knowledge. The tree of Knowledge the one that had the fruit of enlightenment, which made Adam and Eve betray the unconditional God that they had. The tree basically was a way to prove how obedient and loyal these two people really were, and how the tree of Knowledge of good and evil gave them the capacity to make independent judgements that go together with human beings’ best interests and opinions. Moreover, after of giving a bite from the apple that was on the tree, sins appeared in the world and innocence started to face. An example of this was when, right after giving the apple a bite, Eve started to realize that both her and Adam were going around the world without anything to cover their private parts with. Further, and given to this, she started to cover herself with plants and this is when the world and intentions really shifted. Michael Legaspi gives an explanation of all of this in his writings, and further emphasizes how knowledge of the world and some type of free will came about.