Dr. Dylan Johnson

It's at once mythical, but it's also a real place.

It's Lebanon area.

Yeah, it's Lebanon area.

So I think to the biblical writers, they would have known the association.

But the point is, it's a way to describe the totality of the known world

which is all connected together by this original source that is the garden.

So I think that's the important point.

So we have these rivers, we have these two trees, and we have paradise, essentially.

This garden is idyllic.

The trees bear fruit, and this is how humanity survives.

And the man and the woman are more or less presented as purely innocent, almost childlike in their outlook.

They're instructed to eat of all the trees, but never these two, specifically the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

And more or less, everything's going fine.

They are tending the garden.

They are fulfilling the purpose for which they were created, which is to work.

And things are fine until something arrives, what's known as a room in Hebrew, which we translate as a snake.

And a snake shows up, and the snake entices the woman.

And this is where we'll get into this idea of the original sin.

The snake explains to the woman, is it true that God said to you, do not eat from this tree of knowledge of good and evil, or else you will surely die?

Which is especially what God had told the woman.