How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian: Struggling with Divine Violence from Genesis Through Revelation

by John Dominic Crossan

These are the only places in the entire Bible where the knowledge of good and evil or knowing about good and evil is mentioned. These are not simple opposites intended to mean all knowledge or knowledge about everything. If that were intended, it would have been very easy to balance the tree of life with the tree of knowledge. In other words, I take very seriously that it is not just the tree of knowledge but precisely and explicitly the tree of the knowledge of good and evil from which Adam and Eve have eaten—that is, the tree of ethical awareness, or the tree of moral integrity, or most simply, the tree of conscience. Our humanity, Genesis concludes, is not distinguished by being immortal, for that is an impossibility, but by being moral—and that is a responsibility. Alone among all the animals, we do not just have instinct to control us but also conscience to guide us. That is all we know on Earth, and all we need to know.