The story of Adam and Eve is certainly an arresting tale. Brilliant. All the adjectives I might summon up to congratulate the author / inventor of such a tale. Creatures emerging from the ground, from the dust, breathing, soulful. Every one of them, human and beast alike.
You knew that didn't you? Qohelet (chapter 3 towards the end) is somewhat mocking in its tone about up being up and down being down, but the preacher doesn't use words defining the living 'soul' as such.
The words defining life and 'soul' occur together without a pause or a preposition separating them in these places: Genesis 1-9 - 10 times referring to all sorts of life. They occur together in Leviticus 11 (twice), in Ezekiel (twice) - once about turning from individual wickedness and once referring to all life of every sort.
Nothing is special about the prototype earthling - except to say that it became a living being, alive to self, a living soul if you like that phrasing, just like the rest of the other creatures. We arrogate to ourselves too much importance.
When the earthing and the mother of all learned the knowledge of their nakedness in the garden, they did not 'fall'. Any suggestion of such is an imposition to support some idea or other that needs to support his or her theology or anthropology.
The word for sin is not used until Genesis 4 where it refers to what's going on in Cain, that second archetypal story. The word for transgression and its relationship to sin is not used to describe an action until the word about Joseph in the 50th chapter of Genesis.
What we have in the Adam and Eve story is their emotions and thoughts writ plain. We see in them and in the story of their offspring, our own emotions based on desire, envy, and the other things that consciousness is plagued with. To be conscious allows us to be good and also makes us aware of what is not good. The opening of eyes that we might reach out and touch and grasp and see and know. These all have the potential for both good and evil, the knowledge that the tree afforded to those who ate of its fruit.
We have all these thoughts, so we are in a position equivalent to having eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Evil occurs 4 times in the story. It is accurately called so. But the act of eating is not considered evil, nor is it ever called sin or transgression in Tanach. It is not even called disobedience. Yahweh God asks - have you eaten of the tree which I commanded you not to eat?
Is Yahweh God disappointed in them? The text does not say. The God protects them by expulsion from the garden. The blazing sword that guards the way - that's maybe a metaphor worth pursuing.
Adam and Eve were blind, naïve, innocent, and ignorant. Not a desirable status. Responsible, righteous, knowing what is not good for ourselves or others, love, willing the good of another even if we don't like them - these are the marks of maturity. In the garden, there was no such option.
What about the NT? Paul certainly makes use of the story of the sin of the one man and calls it transgression, sin, and disobedience - but he makes use of it to engage our spirit in the work of righteousness - to engage those things in us that lead to maturity: responsibility, knowing what is not good for ourselves or others, love, willing the good of another even if we don't like them.
Nowhere is the word Fall used to describe this archetypal reaching back to our origins.
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