Adam & Eve – William Strang

The sermons I heard preached growing up about Adam, Eve and the fruit went something like, “While Eve & the serpent were chatting over the back fence, poor Adam was across Eden digging a trench to better water the citrus grove, only to discover upon arriving back at home what had gone on and when seduced he ate the fruit. 

This reading neatly gets males off the hook but doesn’t stand a close reading. The sense is that he was standing right there the whole time and in on the deal from the beginning.  So much for a self-serving point of view that has caused a lot of pain and mischief over centuries. JWS