The tree of knowledge of good and evil stands in the middle of the Garden of Eden, and the whole story of the fall turns on its fruit. On this site I read it through Genesis itself, the Gnostic texts from Nag Hammadi, the Oahspe and later interpreters, and they do not agree on who forbade the fruit or why. These are the pages where I followed the tree.
The tree in Genesis
Genesis 2 places two trees in the garden. I quote the verse on The Pyramid, the cross and the Garden of Eden:
And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Genesis 2:9 (KJV)
Genesis 2 – Enclosed gardens reads the chapter verse by verse, including the warning of Genesis 2:17 that the man would die on the day he ate of it. On Genesis 3 – The birth chamber I find it curious that they ate from the tree of knowledge rather than the tree of life, and I note Lyssa Royal Holt’s reading that the tree symbolizes the knowledge of polarity. Satan, a fallen angel or the devil? looks at the serpent’s promise that eating would open Eve’s eyes and make her like God, knowing good and evil.
The Gnostic reversal
The Nag Hammadi texts turn the story around. In The Origin of the World and The third Adam is earthly, it is the rulers, not the true God, who forbid the tree. They see Adam and Eve living in ignorance, frighten them with the threat of death, and withdraw. Eating from the tree is what wakes them up. Seth covers the texts where Sophia’s spirit escapes the chief ruler by transplanting itself into the Tree of Knowledge, and in Adam in Yaldabaoth’s Paradise, from the Secret Book of John, the speaker appears as an eagle perched on the Tree of Knowledge.
The Oahspe’s tree
The Oahspe also has a forbidden tree. In the Book of Set’hantes, Son of Jehovih. the archangel Sethantes tells the angels in Hored that Jehovih let them enjoy all the fruits of the new earth except the tree of knowledge, which he calls the fountain of life. The Book of Cosmogony and Prophecy links the tree to the senses:
Hence the first organs of sense created in any animal were the eyes; whereof it hath been said, the eye is the seed of the tree of knowledge.
Oahspe, Book of Cosmogony and Prophecy
The apple
The forbidden fruit is never named in Genesis, but it became an apple in art. The video KEYS 43: The Apple explores that symbol.
Related pages
- Genesis 2 – Enclosed gardens
- Genesis 3 – The birth chamber
- The Pyramid, the cross and the Garden of Eden
- Satan, a fallen angel or the devil?
- The Origin of the World
- The third Adam is earthly
- Seth
- Adam in Yaldabaoth’s Paradise
- Book of Set’hantes, Son of Jehovih.
For every page I tagged with Tree of Knowledge, see the Tree of Knowledge tag archive.
