Did
you notice that word ‘first’, which Milton slipped in there [in the opening
lines of Paradise Lost], ‘man’s first disobedience’? It is terribly
misleading. Since Adam had no knowledge of good or evil before tasting the
fruit, his ‘disobedience’ in tasting it could not be sinful or wrong, because sin
implies prior knowledge of good and evil. Sin was not the cause of the
[expulsion from Eden]—that is illogical and self-contradictory—it was the result
or concomitant of the [expulsion]. . . . [S]in was the result or concomitant of
the acquisition of self-consciousness, whereby man was separated from the rest
of creation to share with God in the knowledge of good and evil.
R.
Enoch, The Forbidden Tree, in Wrestling
with the Angel 122, 124 (London, Sheldon Press 1977).
Seth Barrett Tillman, An Example of How to Write With Perfect Clarity on a Difficult Subject, New Reform Club (Apr. 3, 2020, 10:12 AM), <https://reformclub.blogspot.com/2020/04/an-example-of-how-to-write-with-perfect.html>.
