What if Eve ate the forbidden fruit but Adam didn’t?

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What if Eve ate the forbidden fruit but Adam didn’t? Oh my!
That would be a complicated family situation. Serious
family drama. Imagine the nakedness situation. Eve would
say she wants to go to the tailor, Adam would wonder why.
He CAN’T get it. He has no consciousness of something
called “nakedness.” Which would of course lead to money
issues, Adam accusing Eve of wasting money. Why the
need for clothes in the first place! Eve would of course label
Adam a nudist. Going out together would prove tricky. Why
won’t he just put on some clothes! And any time God
showed up Eve would be uncomfortable. Sinful man has
not been known to exhibit a desire to talk to a holy God. It
began in the Garden. Consciousness of sin makes us run
away from God.
It will get more complicated when the kids arrive. According
to Romans 5:12, sin entered the world through Adam and
death through sin. It follows therefore that the children will
be genetically inoculated against sin and death since Adam
didn’t eat the forbidden fruit. The children will not have a
sin nature. Which will make them wonder about some of
mum’s behavior.
The fact that sin was genetically transmitted through Adam
raises another implication, albeit a troubling one. If Adam
didn’t eat the fruit no other human would have the sin
nature. Eve would then be the only person in the entire
world with a sin nature. She’d be unique for all the wrong
reasons. Everyone will steer clear of her of course. Some
of her behavior will be considered unreasonable and
erratic. They’ll probably declare her needful of psychiatric
evaluation at some point. Even she will be under
psychological pressure. Her psychological state would be
considered requiring scrutiny.
Adam would definitely end up a widow, and a relatively
early one at that. Death came through the fall. Eve would
probably live into her 900s. (Cf. Genesis 9:9) But the notion
of her death would be something Adam has to grapple with.
He had a theoretical knowledge of death. God mentioned it
at his induction. (Genesis 2:16-17) The reality of death
would be a culture shock to him.
They should never have touched that tree. There are things
in life best left untouched. The Bible didn’t say it was apple
by the way. Couldn’t be. There’s no transformative power
in apple. So that explanation about Adam’s apple can’t
hold. The forbidden fruit wasn’t sex either. Adam wasn’t
barred from sex. (Genesis 1:28, 4:1) But let’s dive a little bit
deeper. Let’s do some dendrology. Dendrology is the study
of trees.
There were all sorts of trees planted in the Garden but there
were those two special trees. They were in a class of their
own. The first was the Tree of Life, the second the Tree of
Knowledge of Good and Evil. Both trees were spatially
located at the center of the garden but the tree of
Knowledge of Good and Evil would end up at the center of a
controversy – the Eden Crisis. Note however that the
Garden was not the totality of Eden, it was just a part of
Eden. And the Garden wasn’t a front yard thing either. To
give you some sense of the size a river flowed from Eden to
water the Garden. From there it divided into four rivers –
Pishon, Gihon, Hiddekel (Tigris) and Euphrates. Using the
modern coordinates of these rivers some have speculated
Eden must have been located in either Iraq (Southern
Mesopotamia) or the Persian Gulf. But archeologists can’t
agree. The earth after all has altered significantly since
prehistoric era. And then there was Noah’s flood. Perhaps
the reason we can’t locate the Garden is because of the
cherubim and the axial revolutionist flaming sword
positioned at the Garden. (Genesis 3:24) That sword was
some sort of firewall. It prevented access to the Tree of
Life. Note that the cherubim had capacity to transform
himself into a flame of fire too. (Hebrews 1:7) So there was
a double firewall – one wall to guard entrance to the
garden, the other to guard access to the Tree of Life. And
for all we know the trees might have been transplanted!
Let’s look at the Tree of Life. We tend to talk more about
the other tree.
Much of the information about the Tree of Life is extra-
Genesis. In the Book of Proverbs it is associated with
wisdom (Proverb 3:18), righteousness (Proverb 11:30),
hope and fulfillment of dreams (Proverb 13:12), as well as
healing (Proverb 15:4). The Book of Revelation gives us its
idiosyncratic characteristics. We know for example that it
has twelve varieties of fruits! (Revelation 22:2) We also
know it has economic and political properties. We’re told its
leaves are for restoration of nations. (Revelation 22:2) It’s
also a political patrimony. (Revelation 22:19, 2:7) And so
we see the applications and macro dimensions of the Tree
of Life. It foreshadowed the political evolution of Adam into
a national community yet offers the citizens wisdom for
living, hope and fulfillment of dreams, inalienable
constitutional rights (righteousness) and health. This was
no ordinary tree. Indeed outside the Garden the variety is
only found in Heaven. (Revelation 22:2) But according to
Revelation 22:14 it’s a righteous diet. Only the righteous
can partake of it. Which is why it was okay for Adam to eat
from the Tree of Life before the fall. But after the fall he
needed assigned righteousness through the blood of the
Lamb (Jesus) to partake of the Tree of Life. (Revelation
22:14-15) Salvation is thus the partaking of the Tree of
Life. What Adam didn’t do we now do. (Cf. John 11:25-26).
And the Tree of Life is also a portal to Heaven. (Revelation
22:14-15)
The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was no ordinary
horticultural totem either. Not much is written about it in
Genesis but we can discern it from its effects on Adam and
Eve and from God’s warning about it. The fruit of this tree
was more or less a program. Contained code. The program
code had the ability to alter consciousness and the indicator
of altered state was false spiritual “enlightenment” – “the
opening of eyes,” what we now call New Age. (Genesis 3:7)
There’s nothing new about it. Man became afraid to face
his Maker because of the consciousness of sin. (Genesis
3:9-10) We know the tree altered human behavior, created
a complex. It turned man’s nature into a dualism. Man
became defensive and accusatory at the same time. He
was cognizant with both good and evil in equal measure,
developed capacity to manipulate both. And so the same
Adam that waxed lyrical at introduction to Eve and died for
love threw her under the bus when trial came. Must have
been a shock to Eve. She never said a word about it. This
fruit made man capable of the noblest of virtues and the
heinousness of evil in equal measure. Man became
bipolarized. The psychological damage soon manifested.
Cain in a fit of jealousy murdered his own brother and then
implausibly demanded constitutional immunity from the
consequences of criminal trial and judgment. That’s the
equivalence of demanding sovereign protection not to pay
the penalty for sin against the state. The tree also brought
death to humanity – not just physical death, spiritual death
as well. (Gen. 2:17) There is a time lapse between spiritual
and physical deaths however, which means Adam was a
walking spiritual cadaver.
We can thus better imagine what Adam’s family would be
like if Adam didn’t partake of the fruit of Tree of Knowledge
of Good and Evil. There can’t be harmony in that
household. In a crisis Eve would throw Adam under the bus
just as Adam threw her under the bus. When things don’t
go well in that marriage Eve will put the blame on God, for
making her set eyes on Adam. (Cf. Genesis 3:12) With
opposing worldviews, psychological dramas, different
realities, cultural differences, there’s no way the Adam
marriage would have held together. The concept of
marriage in the Garden of Eden was predicated on unity. It
still is.
If you will like to give your life to Christ, please pray this
prayer: Father I acknowledge that I am a sinner, that Jesus
Christ died for me, that you raised him from the dead.
Please forgive me. I accept Jesus today as my Lord and my
Saviour. Amen
If you have a What if…scenario you’ll like me to tackle
email to talk2me@lekealder.com
Next week, What if Jesus had turned stone into bread?
© #Illuminare Leke Alder | talk2me@lekealder.com