‘He Gave to Adam Knowledge’: A Competing Creation Tradition in Early Judaism and Early Christianity

The Eden narrative in Genesis recounts the story of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from God’s paradise because they consumed fruit from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil. While the creation account in Genesis 2–3 is well known to modern readers of the Bible, this paper demonstrates that a competing creation tradition existed in Second Temple Judaism. According to this tradition, which circulated at least as early as the Persian period, God intentionally gave knowledge or wisdom to the primordial human(s) as a benevolent gift, and it was this knowledge that set the primordial human(s) apart from other earthly creatures. During the late Second Temple period, the creation account in Genesis 2–3 and the tradition that God gave knowledge to the primordial human(s) came into direct conflict. Consequently, many Jewish writers attempted to accommodate both creation traditions, often by suppressing certain elements of the Eden narrative such as the specific details of Adam’s transgression or the negative portrayal of the tree of knowledge.