What evidence supports the fall of humanity in Christianity and what changed in humanity at the fall?

Answer 1

A:

The 'fall' is found only in The Bible, as there is no archaeological or anthopological evidence that this event ever occurred. Thus, the Bible is the only evidence for the fall of humanity. In fact, to regard the legendary transgression of Adam and Eve as a fall of humanity is a particular interpretation of the Bible largely confined to western Christianity. Augustine identified 'original sin' as the consequence of the fall of man, but this was a view never accepted in the Greek-speaking east.

Some say that Adam was immortal before the fall, and that this transgression resulted in our mortality. However, a careful reading of the Hebrew text shows that the story is one in which Adam was mortal but unaware of his mortality until he ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. By doing so he became god-like: (Genesis 3:22) "now the man is become like one of us."

Leon R. Kass (The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis) says we can learn most from the story of Adam and Eve by regarding it as a mythical yet realistic portrait of permanent truths about our humanity, rather than as a historical yet idealised portrait of a blissful existence we once enjoyed but lost in the 'fall of man'.