Clearing Up Myths And Misconceptions About Adam and Eve

The narrative of Adam and Eve, in the first few chapters of Genesis, is one of the most commonly misunderstood parts of the Bible. For such a pivotal point in the Bible and human history, people make mistakes about it quite frequently.

In this context, I am not even talking about disagreements about the broader elements of the narrative. Was the earth and the life on it created in six literal days or longer? Are Adam and Eve literal humans who were actually the first humans to exist or are they allegorical? What broad and controversial issues in systematic theology apply (e.g. God's sovereignty, man's immortality, etc.). That is a whole different discussion.

I am simply talking about people missing key elements of the text, or coming to conclusions that are not hard to disprove from the text. Some of these mistakes are made by non-Christians who simply haven't read the actual text. But many mistakes are made by Christians who miss a verse here or there that refutes their belief, fills in a gap they believe exists, etc.

So let us dive in and clear these things up.

Clear-Cut and Unambiguous Myths and Misunderstandings

Eve Was Deceived Because She Didn’t Know It Was A Sin To Eat The Fruit

From time to time, I hear people say that Adam intentionally sinned by eating the forbidden fruit, knowing that God commanded him not to, but that Eve did not know it was forbidden and the devil tricked her into doing it by making her think it wasn't forbidden.

But it wasn’t an honest mistake or simply an act of negligence for Eve to eat the fruit. Rather, in Genesis 3:2-3, she tells the serpent that God forbade her and Adam from eating the fruit:

The woman said to the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’”

The serpent then deceived her by telling her that she would not die if she ate from the tree, and that God was a liar (Genesis 3:4-5). That is why she then ate the fruit. But he didn't deceive her by making her think it wasn't forbidden. She knew it was forbidden and knowingly disobeyed God, same as Adam.

Adam and Even Only Had Two Sons and No Daughters

I see this one on Twitter and the internet a lot, but it is objectively false and simply shows unawareness of the biblical text.

Genesis 5:4 specifically says, “Then the days of Adam after he fathered Seth were eight hundred years, and he fathered other sons and daughters."

Technically the verse doesn't mention Eve, but we can presume she was the mother, given no statement to the contrary. 

Beside that, the text names three sons, not two: Cain (Genesis 4:1), Abel (4:2), and Seth (5:3).

The Bible Teaches That Adam and Eve Ate An Apple

It is hard to prove a negative, but if you read the text of scripture, it never tells us what kind of fruit was on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The belief that it was an apple is like the belief that there were three wise men who went to see baby Jesus when the Gospels never specify the number: it is simply a cultural belief, not a biblical teaching.

Interpretations I Strongly Believe to Be False

In addition to the matters above, which are easily refuted by just reading the text, there are several interpretations of events that, while not quite as clear-cut as those above, I believe are false and can be rejected quite confidently when the actual biblical narrative is taken into account.

The Forbidden Fruit Was Sex and Adam and Eve Didn’t Have Sex Until the Fall.

It is not unheard of for people, especially outside of the church, to refer to sex as “the original sin.” But nothing in the text indicates that eating the fruit was a metaphor for sex. The closest things are vague suppositions which are not compelling even if we ignore the positive reasons for thinking that marriage and sex preceded the fall.

Poor Reasons To Support This View

The closest thing to any sort of reason for this at all is that we don’t see Eve conceiving Cain until after the fall (Genesis 4:1).

This, however, reads too much into the text. It is no secret that a woman doesn’t always get pregnant every time she has sex.

Some also counter that Adam and Eve did not know that they were naked until after they sinned (Genesis 3:7), so they couldn't have had sex before that point. But this is not so.

First of all, they were naked before the fall (Genesis 2:25). Whether or not they were cognizant of that fact doesn't change the fact that they were actually naked, and therefore, capable of sex.

Beyond that, it is not as though Adam and Eve were unaware of their nudity to the point that they mistakenly thought they were wearing clothes and that their private areas were covered. It's not like they were having a dream where they got to school and suddenly they looked down and realized the clothes they thought they were wearing were gone.

When it says they realized they were naked, it just means that they became ashamed of their nudity. They realized it in the sense that they became like postpubescent humans today, who typically don't want to show their naked bodies to just anyone and feel very vulnerable when they do even with those they trust. They probably didn't even have a concept of nakedness before, since to them that was just the normal state of being. They had nothing to compare it to. Before the fall, they were naked and not ashamed (Genesis 2:25). After the fall, they were ashamed and felt the need to cover themselves. That doesn't mean they weren't having marital relations before the fall.

Sex And Marriage Were God's Design From the Beginning

Beyond this, there are reasons to believe that marriage, sex, and procreation were God’s design from the beginning.

For starters, in Genesis 1:28, we have the famous command of God for Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply. 

Apart from God's direct intervention, there is only one natural way that humans multiply.

This verse does not come in a vacuum, nor does it come after the fall. Rather, it takes place before. I do understand that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are not presented linearly, but rather, Chapter 1 gives an overview of creation and Chapter 2 then elaborates on the creation of humans mentioned in Chapter 1. Nevertheless, this “be fruitful and multiply” command comes in the narrative of the creation process, and before God looks at all of creation and declares it to be very good (Verse 30).

One need only look at the surrounding verses of Genesis 1:28 to see that it was not a command for after the fall, but part of God’s design along with everything else in that chapter. Even in that very verse, it is part of man’s original design to fill and subdue the earth. Was man only supposed to fill and subdue the earth after the fall too? That must be the case, if one is consistent. But most would reject such an idea, as they should, since Verse 28 is part of the narrative that is wrapped up under the summation in Verse 30:

And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

The command to be fruitful and multiply was part of God's original created order. 

Furthermore, Genesis 2:23-24 views sex and marriage positively and attributes it to creation. In the preceding verses, God has created a suitable partner and helper for Adam, being the first woman. When Adam sees her, we are told the following:

Then the man said,

“At last this is bone of my bones,

And flesh of my flesh;

She shall be called ‘woman,’

Because she was taken out of man" (Verse 23).

It is in response to this that the narrator immediately gives the following commentary (commentary that, for good measure, Jesus attributes directly to God in Matthew 19:4-5):

For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh (Verse 24).

It's no secret what the euphemism "become one flesh" means (especially because Paul appeals to this passage when commanding against having sex with prostitutes in 1 Corinthians 6:17).

We see here that Genesis 2:24 is given as commentary about when Adam first sees and meets Eve. He sees her, is enamored with her, and "...for this reason..." there is sex and marriage. And this happens before the fall.

Jesus likewise refers to Genesis 2:24 this way in Matthew 19:4-6, when addressing marriage and divorce:

And He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no person is to separate.”

Jesus confirms that this is what the creator did from the beginning. Jesus appeals to this as why marriage is supposed to be a lifetime commitment. That would seem odd, at the very least, if marriage and sex was a post-fall contingency plan.

Furthermore, Jesus even contrasts "the beginning" with the current state of affairs, where God now grudgingly allows for divorce because of sin.

He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way" (Verse 8).

Jesus’s talk of the beginning goes back to creation itself. In one breath, he equates the content of Genesis 2:24 with “He created them male and female,” the very creation of humans.

Genesis 2:24, man and woman becoming one flesh, was not part of the fall. It was God’s intention from the beginning.

The Forbidden Fruit Was Sex and Adam and Eve Had Sex with the Devil

For the reasons above, it is seems pretty clear that sex itself was not the forbidden fruit but part of God’s created order. That would be the bulk of a rebuttal to this idea,

As for Adam and Eve specifically having sex with the devil, it is hard to prove a negative, but there simply is nothing in the text at all to indicate such a thing. 

I mean, I can say that eating the forbidden fruit is a metaphor for Adam and Eve covering themselves in yak feces and doing the hokey pokey, but that would be dismissed by most interpreters because when you say something in the Bible is a metaphor for something else, there usually has to be some actual reason for it.

Certainly nothing in the text gives any such indication, and I am unaware of anything from outside that would even be taken seriously as cause for us to consider this idea, other than speculation.

 Eve Added to God’s Command in Genesis 3:2?

I have heard more than a few times that Eve added to God’s command in Genesis 3:3, and in doing so, she was at least heading for trouble if not already outright sinning.

In Genesis 2:16-17, Adam is told not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But in Genesis 3:3, Eve tells the serpent that God said not to eat from it or even touch it.

This latter part, the command to not touch it, is not what God told Adam in Genesis 2:17, and therefore, Eve is chastised by interpreters for putting words in God's mouth.

The problem is, this interpretation makes assumptions about events that the scripture does not discuss.

This is because we do not know how Eve found out about tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We do not know how she knew it was forbidden.

Ostensibly, Eve did not even exist when God commanded Adam to not eat from the tree (Genesis 2:16-17). That certainly is the case if the narrative in Chapter 2 is in chronological order. And at the very least, there is no mention of her being present.

To say that she is adding to God's word is an assumption because we don't know what she was told or by whom.

We know that at some point, someone had to have told her not to eat from the tree. Was it God? Was it Adam? Was it an angel? We do not know.

But since we do not know what happened, we cannot say that she was only told not to eat from the tree. Perhaps God Himself added the command to not even touch it when He spoke to her about it in order to really drive home the importance of staying away from it, and perhaps the narrator made sure to include the second part of the command in Genesis 3:3 to emphasize how forbidden the tree was.

We simply do not know. Therefore, to say that Eve was in the wrong for adding to God's word requires us to, ironically, add to God's word.

Addressing Additional Theories/Questions

Did Adam Originally Have One More Rib Than Humans Do Today?

Sometimes, people theorize (or even take for granted) that Adam must have had one more rib than humans today. This is because, in Genesis 2:21-22, a rib is taken from Adam and God then uses that as the base for creating Eve.

However, assuming that this is a literal account, why would God removing a rib from Adam mean that all of his offspring now have one less rib?

You don't need to know the intricacies of DNA and genetics to know that if you amputate a limb or otherwise make a permanent alteration to a person's body, it almost never affects their progeny in the same way. Someone who loses a leg in war doesn't then conceive children with missing legs. Someone who has a tooth pulled doesn't then have kids who end up missing that same tooth. That isn't how reproduction works.

So if God did remove a rib from Adam, why would we think that his progeny would likewise be missing a rib? We would normally just think that Adam had one less rib than Eve or their children.

Was The Rib That God Took From Adam Really A Bone In His Penis?

Sometimes I think theologians, modern and ancient, feel the need to come up with wild ideas to keep their jobs and remain relevant...

Whatever the case, even if "rib" is a misunderstanding of the Hebrew or is meant as a euphemism, this idea has the same problem as anything else involving Adam having more bones than the rest of us. If Adam had a literal bone in his penis, and it was removed and therefore his male sex organ had no literal bone in it, why would that be the case for all men going forward? That's not how genetics and reproduction work.

Conclusion

If there is one thing to take away from this, it is that when studying the Bible, it is important to pay close attention to the text itself because there are so many widespread beliefs, both within overtly Christian circles and within culture at large, that simply are not true. The fact that widespread beliefs, like Adam and Eve only having two kids, can be refuted with a single verse or brief passage should drive home how important it is to be skeptical of popular beliefs about the Bible, and to weigh them against scripture and not simply our own assumptions.

Works Cited

Unless otherwise noted, all scripture is quoted from the New American Standard Bible (NASB). Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960,1962,1963,1968,1971,1972,1973,1975,1977,1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.