God's injustice towards Adam and Eve

[Mister Agenda]

Since we know the origins are the word of man, not god, what do you think the original authors were trying to convey?

Partly it's a 'just so' story. Why is childbirth painful, life hard and temporary, and those creepy snakes, why don't they have any freaking legs? Like almost every other culture, the ancient Hebrews answered these questions with an entertaining, easy-to-remember story.

But it's also an interesting metaphor for the human condition of wanting to do good, recognizing what is good, yet so often doing evil instead.

There are also probably clues to bits of history in there, possibly including a reference to a prior serpent cult.

---

The pair immediately exhibit this knowledge upon eating the fruit. They are fearful of God and ashamed of their nudity. It is extremely obvious that they could not have understood it was wrong to disobey God until after doing it.

That's silly. If they were completely unaware of the concept of right and wrong as you suggest, they would have just eaten the fruit without the serpent's urging. One can have intellectual knowledge of a concept without having experiential knowledge of it.

One can also refrain from doing something because it hasn't occurred to you to do it. Not knowing good from evil doesn't mean you automatically seek to do evil, it means you are completely indifferent. They didn't immediately eat the fruit because they weren't tempted.

---

Presumably, until the serpent came along the only commands they received were from god. Thus, there isn't any reason to think that they needed to be able to discern right and wrong; god determines what is right and wrong. All they needed to do was obey.

The serpent didn't order them to do anything. This completely undermines your theory that they were just used to obeying and so obeyed the serpent.

Because people inured to obedience only obey sometone if they phrase their desire in the form of a command? Really?

Further, they were only given one command from God - not to eat from that tree. They weren't in the habit of obeying orders all the time, as they just weren't receiving orders, except for one.

Good point. Perhaps they merely lacked the slightest bit of sales resistance?