I am re-posting this episode with a FULL transcript, thanks to the efforts of the wonderful Mariana Gil Hammer.

Welcome to my new podcast series: Understanding Sin and Evil.

In this series, I will be discussing ideas of sin and evil in the Bible and in the ancient world, in particular Jewish texts of the Second Temple period. For each idea, I will begin with the biblical source texts and then move on to the interpretation of these biblical texts of the Second Temple period (for the purposes of this series, about 400 BCE to 100 CE shortly after the destruction).

In my first podcast, I introduce the series and then discuss the story of Adam and Eve in its biblical context, and explain why it explains something quite different from we remember. What is this story actually telling us?

If you would like to follow along, all you need is a Bible opened to Bereishit / Genesis 2:15-3:24 . The translation I read in this podcast is the NJPS version.

— TRANSCRIPT, COURTESY OF MARIANA GIL HAMMER —

You’re listening to Understanding Sin and Evil, Dr. Miryam Brand on the Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Ancient World. Learn more at UnderstandingSin.com.

Hi! This is Dr. Miryam Brand, and I’d like to introduce my new podcast series. In this podcast series I’m going to be talking about ideas of sin and evil in the Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls and the Ancient World. This is really my expertise; I once wrote a book about how the source of sin was perceived in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the ancient world in general, really the Jewish ancient world. That is my book called Evil Within and Without. It was what my dissertation was about. 

A little bit about myself. I did my PhD at New York University, I have taught courses at Brown University, New York University and Stern College. I have spoken at Cambridge University, Kiel University, and Hebrew University among others. But the important thing is that this is a topic that I’m really interested in and I would love to share with you.

 A little bit about this podcast, just as an introduction. In this podcast, what I’ll be doing is, I want to take ideas starting with the biblical passages, that are kind of the key texts for these ideas, and then trace them through early interpretation. By early interpretation, I mean interpretation during the Second Temple period, when the Second Temple was standing, and really concentrating on the years of about 300 BCE, or BC, to about 100 CE, or AD. The temple was destroyed around 70 of the Common Era. However, there are a couple of very important books that react to that destruction that I will also be discussing. 

So, our first part of this series is going to start with simply looking at the Adam and Eve story in the Bible, looking at the plain meaning of the text, saying what is this actually telling us. Then I’m going to go to the next podcast that will be the Cain and Abel story, after doing a review of those stories in terms of the plain text of the Bible, keeping later interpretation to a minimum, then I’m going to start looking at how these texts are interpreted in terms of talking about sin during the Second Temple period and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and some later works, even some earlier works, and then each time we can go back to the Bible text that started all. 

So, after we talk about Adam and Eve and how that story becomes an approved text about sin and evil, we’re going to be talking about texts that were actually considered much more important in the Second Temple period, if you can believe that, which are the stories of the Watchers, that is Genesis 6, so we’re going to be talking about that story in detail, and that is going to explain some of the demonic explanations of sin, where sin comes as somehow caused by demons or demonic entities. And we’re going to be looking at the Noah story, where that is the source of ideas about evil, the evil inclination, even though what the evil inclination becomes by the time we get to rabbinical literature is different from the way evil inclination is portrayed in the Bible, and also to a certain extent, from the way it is portrayed in Second Temple Literature, in the Dead Sea Scrolls and other works. But we will be talking about that in more detail. 

Besides these central podcasts I’m recording, as podcasts, I’m also going to be including recordings of lectures that I do on way, which aren’t necessarily going to be about Sin and Evil, they will usually concentrate on either Dead Sea Scrolls or works written during that period, so for example I have a couple of lectures coming up on the books of the Maccabees. That’ll be included in this podcast in case you want to listen to it. But I’m really happy that you’re joining me. If you have any question on this podcast, please feel free to post in my blog: UnderstandingSin.com. And that’s also where you can find any source sheets that I might use on my podcast. So, I’m going to direct you to those when necessary, though on the most part you will not need a source sheet to follow the podcast. The source sheet will really be for your information. 

So, let’s start our first episode with the story of Adam and Eve. Now, I call this episode The Origin of Sin That Wasn’t. And that is because the story of Adam and Eve is so frequently thought to encapsulate the reason that people sin. Everyone thinks that this is the biblical explanation of why people sin. 

Now, if we go back and read the biblical story with what we call the plain meaning of the text, or in Hebrew the peshat. I’m going to try and read the story without the many layers of interpretation that have been added to it over the years. Now I do admit I will every now and then mention some interpretation because some of the especially early interpretation are just too good and can kind of give us an insight into how the story was interpreted later. But as we learn the story from the beginning, I would like you to keep in mind: What is the story really explaining, what is the story really about? So let’s try and distance ourselves from what we think the story is about and really read the plain text.

Now I’m going to begin the story, actually before the sin because it is important for the story itself. These biblical stories are frequently built on parallelism. We can’t take them completely out of context. Because in order to understand what they are trying to teach us, we have to see what the parallels are. 

Let’s begin by reading from chapter 2, from right before the making of woman, the creation of Eve. So, the question is of course what is the impetus for the creation of Eve? It says, and I’m reading from chapter 2, verse 15.

The LORD God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden, to till it and tend it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you are free to eat; but as for the tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad, you must not eat of it; for as soon as you eat of it, you shall die.”

Ok, he can eat every single fruit, he simply cannot eat the fruit of this one tree, the Knowledge of Good and Evil, ok?

The LORD God said, “It is not good for man to be alone; I will make a fitting helper for him.” And the LORD God formed out of the earth all the wild beasts and all the birds of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that would be its name.

Now, just a second…what was the last thing we heard? The last thing we heard was that God was going to find a helpmeet for man. And now God has made all the animals and all the birds. And he says let’s see what man calls them.  So, what exactly is going on here? We have to remember what knowledge is. What is knowledge in the ancient world, one basic factor, one basic aspect of knowledge in the ancient world was knowing the names of things. There are lists and lists and lists of names in ancient texts in Akkadian. For example, here is a list of all the bird names, here’s a list of all the different types of wooden objects. There’s an idea that knowledge, naming something, means knowing it. So, let’s actually introduce man to these animals, let’s have him get to know the animals, and let’s find a fitting helpmeet for him. And we already know how the story is going to end. But the story is creating this kind of “mmm… let’s see what man does” and the answer is, he does know them.

“And the man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to all the wild beasts; but for Adam no fitting helper was found.”

So he names all the animals and yet none of them are quite his mate. So, he knows what they are, but they are not for him. 

“So, the LORD God cast a deep sleep upon the man; and, while he slept, He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that spot. And the LORD God fashioned the rib that He had taken from the man into a woman; and He brought her to the