Immediately after the pronouncement in Genesis that man and wife "shall be one flesh," the text launches into the narrative of what is inaccurately called the Fall. "The Fall" starts with Adam and Eve not being ashamed of their nakedness before each other, and it ends with them cast out of Eden, with the first recorded instance of sexual relations, and with Eve acknowledging the assistance of God (not so much Adam) in the bearing of Cain. (And we know how that turned out.)
Conventionally, the Fall is described in terms of man's alienation from God. Absent an agenda on the part of the interpreters, the "Fall" narrative is really a description of the growing alienation of Adam and Eve from each other. Just read it.
Conservative Christian commentators have read it, and have been only too willing to throw out notions such as "Why wasn't Adam tending to his husbandly duties to protect Eve when she was accosted by the serpent?" (tacitly admitting that Adam was sinning before The Sin, by the way) or "Why didn't Adam speak up for Eve when God was delivering the judgments at the end?" The commentators have not failed to note the dissonance between the first couple's behaviors in the garden, and the supposedly biblical notions of the divinely-inspired institution of the family. The story of the garden only makes sense, however, when it is recognized that the family was not the invention of God, but rather the outworking of the conceits of man.
We should all be in communion with God, not reckoning our stature by how we deal with our fellow humans. As Jesus will tell us, fundamentally there is no functional difference between how we should view our how fellow humans and how we should view God--we should submit to all as their being manifestations of the divine. Absent such considerations on our part, we as a species crumble into our contesting fragments--tribes, nations, families, estranged individuals--as was inevitably going to happen to Adam and Eve: "Fallen" long before the ; "the Fall."
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