What is the climax of the story of Adam and Eve?

Answer 1

A:Most Christians focus on the story of the talking serpent getting Eve to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Adam following suit, then God sending the first sinners out of the Garden of Eden. They see the story in terms of the 'fall of man'. However the story of Adam and Eve is far more than that. It is really a story about man's longing for immortality.

The Bible says that in the Garden of Eden there were two trees from which God did not wish Adam and Eve to eat. Leon R. Kass (The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis) says that when Genesis 2:17 explicitly forbids Adam to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but does not forbid him to eat of the Tree of Life, this is because Adam would not have been aware of his own mortality and would therefore not have been interested in eating from the Tree of Life.

After Adam had eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, he then knew that one day he would die. He also knew that the fruit of the Tree of Life would give him immortality. God drove Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and placed cherubim and a flaming sword at the entrance to keep or block the path to the Tree of Life (Genesis 3:24). The climax of the story was God's fear that Adam and Eve would achieve immortality by eating the fruit of the Tree of Life.