What Tree Was Forbidden?

It is frequently heard that the tree in the midst of the Garden of Eden, around which all the trees from which Adam was meant to eat were planted, was the tree of knowledge. When this is said, it is usually said then that the Creator wanted Adam to remain innocent through ignorance, like a little child. The truth is that God created Adam knowing vastly more than even what people know today and desired for them to think and learn more and more.

For example, Adam was created with a deep knowledge of animals and angels and was instructed to think about all of that knowledge, which was about the character of all the animals and angels and about all their different roles together in heaven and earth, and then to name all of the animals. In doing this, in naming all of the animals, according to their unique characters and roles in the ecology of earth, Adam would be, in effect, naming the different species of angels also, after which, in its kind, every species of animal was created. This is just one example of the knowledge Adam had upon creation and the knowledge and understanding they were told to pursue.

The fruit of the tree forbidden to them was not the fruit of knowledge, not the tree of knowledge. It was of a certain kind of knowledge. In English the way this kind of knowledge has been translated has come to have less and less meaning. What does it mean to say today, "the knowledge of good and evil"? In an era of moral relativism what does it mean to say that it was God's purpose for Adam to remain morally innocent, to trust God alone for moral guidance? In a day when a nuclear annihilation of the earth has been made possible, we can move directly to one conclusive aspect of what it means to say that Adam was forbidden the knowledge of good and evil. It means Adam was forbidden from partaking of the knowledge of creation and existential destruction, the ultimate good and the ultimate evil.

All those who would attempt to use the Torah against itself by saying that it teaches that our problems began with the pursuit of knowledge or science are lying about what the Torah says. The Torah does not say that God desired Adam to remain ignorant, that God did not want Adam to have or pursue knowledge. It does say that there is a difference between knowledge that supports life and creation and knowledge that harms life and destroys creation. It also says that God desired Adam to be free to love and to choose between these. Those who choose not to know God and to love God choose death. There is no reason to be proud of doing this in the name of science.