Within the Scriptures, two fundamental themes concerning the human race can be found: first, the fall of humankind, and second, the mission of Jesus. One is directly related to the other. Regarding the mission of Jesus in our world, the most important aspect of His ministry is not what is commonly believed, but rather what is often overlooked.
Jesus’ journey on our planet revealed to us the power of the spirit within us when it has been transformed by God. He manifested the characteristics and spirit–earth capacities of the new Adam. He allowed us to compare and contrast the fallen son of man with the one elevated in the Spirit—that is, the son of the earth and the son of the Spirit. In other words, the son of man and the Son of God.
In simple terms, Jesus showed us what we could eventually achieve and manifest in the spiritual state of humanity, not in the earthly state in which most of humanity currently exists. Between our present earthly state and the spiritual state we are meant to reach lies the ladder of transcendence and transformation. Its first rung is reconciliation with God.
The story of Adam and Eve is more than a simple account of disobedience; it is the explanation of how we came to be what we are today. It is also an exploration of the human condition, of humanity’s relationship with the divine, and of an understanding of how the knowledge of evil within us affected us destructively. The book of Genesis should be read together with the apocryphal Life of Adam and Eve in order to understand it as a whole.
The obstacle encountered by readers who are not accustomed to investigation and reflection is the primitive language used to convey very profound truths about humanity’s spiritual fall. These truths are not presented explicitly in Scripture within their full context. As a result, a crucial and invaluable element for spiritual growth and transformation is lost.
When we read the account of the lives of our first parents, Adam and Eve, in the book of Genesis, it is difficult not to notice that it seems almost like a story from an illustrated children’s book. The first time I encountered a Bible, I was twelve or thirteen years old. By that time, my relationship with God had already been broken for three or four years. I went to my grandmother’s bedroom because I followed her around often. She was not there, but I noticed a medium-sized book with black covers on her bed. I picked it up and began flipping through it.
When I reached the story of Adam and Eve, I read it quickly—and laughed in disbelief. At that age, I was already a fluent reader, an avid and capable one. My family was not religious in the sense of talking about God or the Bible. In fact, I did not even know exactly what it was. Nevertheless, I went through all the Catholic rites of communion and confirmation. I went to find my mother to tell her what I had discovered and said, “Look, Mom!” I opened the Bible to the story of Adam and Eve and read it to her. I asked her if she could believe that. She looked at me—but she did not answer. I know from personal experience that there are parts of the Bible, like this one, that seem like a sad fairy tale.
The Scriptures offer us essential information about the actions of our first progenitors, but they do not clearly present the full set of circumstances and factors surrounding those events. The Book of the Life of Adam and Eve fills in those gaps. The brevity of the biblical account can be understood through the oral nature of the transmission of the spiritual events that occurred in the beginning. However, after thousands of years of being passed down orally among the people of Israel and eventually reaching the written stage of civilizations—up to the present day—the sparse information we are given leaves us with the sense that certain pieces do not fully fit together, and that much more has not been said or understood about the beginning.
The transgression of our first parents revealed to us what was not meant for us. It handed us the seeds of the knowledge of evil so that we would plant them and allow them to grow without realizing it. It destroyed the innocence with which God had created us. Humanity’s poor decision, made within its own right of freedom, brought us everything opposite to what God had prepared for us to receive. The first created pair demonstrated, through their free will, that they did not know how to choose what was beneficial for them in spiritual matters.
In order to choose what truly benefits us, we must submit ourselves to the Voice of God—an act that requires humility. The humble obey the voice of God and find guidance; the arrogant, on the other hand, turn away from that voice and lose direction. This submission makes us one with God in His Spirit, and from that union flows all our spiritual potential.
A free being does not like to be subject to another. Yet this is the only form of submission—chosen by our own will and intelligence—that truly benefits us. The breaking of the covenant brought death, great pain, and hardship, because the first pair chose to taste the fruit of a knowledge that contained the seeds of death.
I understand the biblical passage in which the Creator warns Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as an analogy. From this perspective, the tree does not represent a literal object, but rather our power of decision and our freedom to choose obedience to the voice of God. Eve could have chosen the fruit of the knowledge of good, which is spiritual obedience, but she did not. Had she done so, God’s plan for humanity would have been carried out and fulfilled.
The idea of a tree that produces fruit of the knowledge of good and evil can only be fully understood when interpreted as an analogy.
This symbolic representation helps illuminate the complexity of the origin of evil, a subject that is difficult to unravel on its own. I do not believe this is merely an interpretation one chooses to make, since an interpretation is only a possible explanation. The analogy presented by God’s command not to eat the fruit signified a direct correspondence with the one who possessed the seeds of evil.
Furthermore, I believe this teaching cannot be fully grasped at first glance due to the simplicity of these ancient accounts—a simplicity that naturally arose from the limitations of early oral and written languages, as well as from the worldview of that time.
This is the type of information to which I refer when I say that certain pieces do not quite fit within our understanding. In this context, “fruit” does not refer to a literal piece of fruit, but to that which contains the seeds of good or evil actions—seeds that will germinate and shape what we manifest in life. For example, within the fruit of a peach tree lies the seed that will develop into what we call the peach fruit. One can eat the flesh surrounding the pit when the fruit is ripe, but not the pit itself, where the seed is contained.
The Lord told Adam, “If you do this, you will die.” What the Lord said was directly related to obedience to the covenant of submission to His voice. If Adam ate the fruit—equivalent to disobedience—the seeds of evil would germinate and grow like a tree of death within humanity, destroying everything it touched.
The fact that the first pair ate from the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil also meant that they took for themselves an attribute that belonged only to God: the authority to know and judge what is good and what is evil. Eve took upon herself a divine prerogative without possessing the capacity to discern, by herself and with justice, what was truly good or evil.
That is why the serpent told Eve, “You will be like God, knowing good and evil.” This was only a partial truth about that attribute of the Source. God alone, possessing perfect justice, defines and judges what is good and what is evil. Unlike us—who define good and evil according to cultural or personal contexts—God defines them according to His immutable and unblemished nature. Only God, being absolutely just and pure, can determine the moral purpose of His creation and judge with complete equity.
Adam and Eve, as created beings, could only have governed and judged evil if they remained subject to God—but never independently or apart from the Source. By choosing to break the covenant of unity and protection with God, they fell under the power of evil.
To understand the analogy of God’s command not to eat the fruit, we must understand what a fruit is. God did not tell Adam not to eat “the fruit flesh,” but the “fruit.” The fruit gives rise to the flesh, but they are not the same. It is also important to note that, according to Scripture, the woman had not yet been created when the Creator gave the command to the man. I believe this is why the transgressing angel targeted Eve rather than Adam. In the scene of temptation, it appears that all Eve knew was that they were not to eat from the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden.
In botany, the fruit is the organ of flowering plants that protects the seeds and helps them disperse. In the Genesis account, by analogy, the seeds of evil were contained within the fruit, ready for dispersion, because the origin of evil had already arisen in the transgressing angel.
This fallen entity possessed the knowledge of the science of evil. All that was needed was an agent for its propagation. One synonym for “organ” is “core” or “inner part,” which can be understood as the most essential and intimate aspect of something. Obedience—refraining from eating the fruit—was the essential matter. Had they not eaten the fruit, the seeds of evil would not have spread, and the seeds of the knowledge of good would have been dispersed through humanity by the decision to obey.
Humankind was not created to determine what is spiritually good or evil. This is an attribute exclusive to God. That is why the only thing God asks of humanity is obedience to His moral or spiritual commandments. There is no other requirement in the covenant we voluntarily enter into with God.
By accepting the serpent’s suggestion and giving the fruit to her partner, Eve and Adam broke the covenant of obedience to God’s voice. Without realizing it, they submitted themselves to the voice that deceived them, deciding that they were capable of defining good and evil without submission to God’s voice.
The term “fruit” refers to the structure developed from the ovary of a flower. The fruit derives from the fertilized and developed ovary and contains within it the seeds that will later germinate and give rise to a new plant. Evil and its seeds had already been conceived and formed through the disobedience of the fallen angel and were contained in the fruit of the tree, waiting for someone or something to disperse them.
Evil was conceived and manifested through disobedience. This could only occur because angels are free beings. That is why we were taught that the type of spiritual choice we make leads either to life or to death.
Because Eve did not know the full command of God, the angel targeted the weakest link in the chain, and Adam—who was meant to protect her—did not do so. Proverbs teach that the downfall of a free created being is arrogance. Arrogance is the belief that one can become spiritually independent from God. This is impossible, because the being is created.
We possess physical freedom only until the limit of bodily life tells us, “Here your autonomy ends.” Death places a limit on arrogance. This weakness was one of the reasons for the spiritual fall.
Adam and Eve experienced a form of spiritual self-sufficiency by choosing to act independently of the divine command. They sought absolute autonomy, as if they could govern themselves and define good and evil without dependence on God. This act can be interpreted as an attempt to achieve total freedom—detaching themselves from all spiritual authority and dependence, and surrendering to the illusion of being like God in wisdom and discernment.
This impulse toward self-rule reflects, in biblical terms, a pride that led them to seek an independence which paradoxically separated them from spiritual harmony and communion with God.
When Adam and Eve chose to disregard God’s warning and broke the covenant of obedience to His word, a power struggle between humanity and God was born—rooted in arrogance. They believed they could be like God without submission to His word, rejecting the reality that they were created beings without access to divine knowledge unless it was granted to them. Until the moment of transgression, that knowledge had not been given.
Thus, they stopped trusting God and placed their faith in another voice—a deceptive one. They trusted their own opinion, freedom, and capacity to choose, believing these were sufficient to handle the knowledge of good and evil as God does, without submission to His word. They sought independence from their Creator in order to control this knowledge themselves, without considering their inherent limitations.
This reveals a fundamental paradox: in attempting to rise beyond its own design, humanity falls. True freedom and fulfillment are not found in independence from God, but in harmony with the Source of existence.