Transgression and the loss of innocence in Myth

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Transgression and the Loss of Innocence in Myth
What would have happened if Adam did not eat of the forbidden apple? Or if Cain did not slay his brother Abel? Or if Psyche did not try to look at the face of her secret lover Eros/Cupid? Many would have easily answered that we would have eternal bliss if those things did not happen. This paper would argue the opposite. Arguing from the point of view of the myths themselves, transgression and the loss of innocence are deeply interconnected and are actually archetypes of the journey of man. Transgression and the corresponding loss of innocence are actually triggers that initiated the quest of man. This quest would become a journey of discovery, of accumulation of life experiences and the corresponding gift of wisdom which would eventually lead to the return to the proverbial paradise. The thesis of this paper is: Transgression and the loss of innocence start a journey into experience and wisdom which would eventually culminate into a return to paradise.
In the story of Adam and Eve, the forbidden tree was called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and as the serpent told Eve, once you eat the fruit of this tree, your eyes will be opened and will be able to see as God sees ADDIN CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "container-title" : "The Holy Bible", "edition" : "Revised St", "id" : "ITEM-1", "issued" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2000" ] ] }, "title" : "Genesis", "type" : "chapter" }, "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=4b833239-2529-49eb-a01f-75f193e40038" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "previouslyFormattedCitation" : "(\u201cGenesis\u201d)" }, "properties" : { "noteIndex" : 0 }, "schema" : "https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json" }("Genesis"). True enough, when Adam and Eve ate of the apple, they were able to recognize their nakedness and they were banished from the Garden of Eden to work on the soil in order to live and then they will grow old and die. Adam and Eve`s transgression was that they disobeyed God`s rule which was not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. They have lost the innocence of their nakedness and came to actually know good and evil. And because of this, human beings were given the power of choice. The power of choice is actually a gift where human beings are able to choose whether they would want to stay in harmony with God by choosing good or out of harmony with God by choosing evil. Thus human beings were given the power to create history-for good or for ill depending upon his choosing. In Genesis another story is told about human beings choosing evil by creating the Tower of Babel and to eventually rebel against God. Thus the punishment in this story is that human beings can no longer live long and would eventually be overtaken by death and that men would have different languages so they could not understand each otherADDIN CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "container-title" : "The Holy Bible", "edition" : "Revised St", "id" : "ITEM-1", "issued" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2000" ] ] }, "title" : "Genesis", "type" : "chapter" }, "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=4b833239-2529-49eb-a01f-75f193e40038" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "previouslyFormattedCitation" : "(\u201cGenesis\u201d)" }, "properties" : { "noteIndex" : 0 }, "schema" : "https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json" }("Genesis").
Adam and Eve`s banishment from the Garden of Eden is actually symbolic of the discovery of agriculture wherein the Garden of Eden was a life of primitive forms of foraging and gathering. Note that one of Adam and Eve`s punishment is to till the soil and make it bear fruit which actually refers to farming. As we all well know, the discovery of agriculture in history is what started the rise of ancient civilizations, the settlement into cities the moving away from the methods of hunting and gathering. Thus this loss of innocence from the Garden of Eden is actually the founding of new knowledge that would start the great adventure of human history.
Another biblical story that would support this argument is the story of Cain and Abel. According to biblical accounts, Abel was a herder and Cain was a farmer ADDIN CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "container-title" : "The Holy Bible", "edition" : "Revised St", "id" : "ITEM-1", "issued" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2000" ] ] }, "title" : "Genesis", "type" : "chapter" }, "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=4b833239-2529-49eb-a01f-75f193e40038" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "previouslyFormattedCitation" : "(\u201cGenesis\u201d)" }, "properties" : { "noteIndex" : 0 }, "schema" : "https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json" }("Genesis"). This was actually archetypal of the story of the ancient conflict between the pastoralists and the farmers. In ancient civilizati...