(BA) Genesis 3, the tree

...

1 August 2022 Navigate 'up to the Genesis index: index-genesis.

But of the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God said, You must not eat of it, and you must not touch it, lest you die.

Eve says "the tree which is in the middle of the garden", as if it will be obvious to the snake, who apparently does not know God's command, which tree she is referring to. So which is the tree in the middle of the garden?

Turn to Genesis 2:9. Here we read, and the tree of life was in the middle of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Now there are two trees in the middle of the garden. Perhaps we are looking, here, at one of the traces of the editing process that gave us the Pentateuch.

One suggestion, which Dillmann rejects,^[1] is that the story originally just included the tree of knowledge, and that the tree of life was added later. Kittel, on the other hand, held that the story probably originally included just one tree.

But where the Masoretic Text reads, the tree that is in the midst, the Samaritan Pentateuch reads this tree that is in the midst. Which reading one adopts may impact where Eve is standing during the conversation, and whether the conversation implies a single tree in the midst of the garden.