This page was originally written in December 2016. To navigate back to the Genesis index, see index-genesis.
And Yahweh God made to grow up from the ground every tree fair to see and good to eat. And the tree of life was in the middle of the garden, as well as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Dillmann (1897), in his note on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, says that this tree is “peculiar to the biblical narrative,” that is, there is no parallel in nearby cultures to it.
This appears to still be the case. In a course available online through the generosity of Yale, Christine Hayes says, “But by contrast, [Nahum] Sarna says, we haven’t as yet uncovered a parallel in Ancient Near Eastern literature to the biblical tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” I don’t know exactly what book by Sarna is being referred to here — it looks to me like the “syllabus” now online for the course must not be the same syllabus to which Prof. Hayes refers in her lecture.
I’ve heard, though I don’t remember exactly where, various opinions about the nature of this forbidden knowledge. One opinion is that mankind is innocent of morality in some general sense, and that the offense of the humans is seeking experiential knowledge of right and wrong. Another opinion is that the phrase knowledge of good and evil refers to God’s judicial function which mankind ceases to usurp. Another opinion is that good and evil, or good and bad (the Hebrew word involved might be translated as evil or bad in English) is a merism for everything, and that the offense of the humans is to seek omniscience.
Unfortunately, the story of the garden of Eden does not explicitly lay out much about the meaning of the story, but simply moves briskly along through the events of Genesis 2-3, leaving later commentators to try to sort out what’s going on.
As to the possibility that there was just one tree in the garden in the original text of this verse, compare the wording of 3:3.