Reading Blindly: Literature, Otherness, and the Possibility of an ...

of the tree in the middle of the garden God said, ‘You must not eat it, nor touch it, under pain of death’” ⁸ —and there is no reason to do otherwise—the question of whether this was really what God said remains. After all, a prohibition almost always gives rise to a temptation to defy. In this sense, one can question whether it is the serpent that tempted, or whether it was really God who set the scene in the first place. In fact, the serpent is telling the truth when it utters, “No! You will not die! God knows in fact that on the day you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods knowing good and evil,” ⁹ which is precisely what happened. ¹⁰ After eating the fruit, “the eyes of both of them were opened,” ¹¹ the result of which is that Yahweh God acknowledges that “man has become like one of us, with his knowledge of good and evil.” ¹² In order for woman and man to become like God(s), they had to first turn a blind eye to Yahweh's order to not eat from that tree.

One might also consider the exchange that is needed in order to obtain the knowledge of good and evil. Yahweh God's admonition to man is, “You may eat indeed of all the trees in the garden. Nevertheless of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you are not to eat, for on the day you eat of it you shall most surely die.” ¹³ In this sense, one can take it that both woman and man consume the fruit in the full knowledge that they are sacrificing their lives in exchange for the “knowledge of good and evil”: it is their gift of death that was required in order for them to become “like one of us.” ¹⁴ More than just the fact that they had to ignore Yahweh God's command, in order to become like the God(s), they had to listen to the question and decide for themselves: to gain the knowledge of good and evil, they first had to choose. This is a choice that is made in blindness, for they knew not what they were choosing: after all, one can hardly claim that they, before knowing what good and evil were, were making a cognitive choice about good and evil. ¹⁵