We've already discovered, in our exploration of "Solomon's Judgment" and the first two chapters of Genesis, that biblical literature can take far different forms than we might remember it taking, that it can work through ambiguities and unanswered questions as much as through simple statement. The story of the Expulsion from the Garden has immense importance for the Western Judeo-Christian tradition, since it has been taken as the origin of humanity's sinfulness; but it also is more unusual than most accounts of it. The following exercise asks you to think as a group about what features of Genesis Chapter 3 require the active interpretive effort of a careful reader.

1. Introduce yourselves to the other members of the group. Choose someone as the recorder of the group's findings (I may call on any member to report the group's findings to the class at large). Please write down the names of the group members on the sheet of findings.

2. While one person reads Chapter 3 aloud, the others should write down any immediate questions or ideas about the passage.

3. Discuss as a group how you have understood this story in the past, either as part of your general cultural heritage or in a religious context. What parts of the story support this understanding? What parts raise questions about that understanding?

4. What questions does the story leave unanswered? Where is it ambiguous or unclear? Come up with at least three questions which the story raises for you as a group.

5. Given the importance of this story for the Western tradition, think about what kind of social order might emerge from such a primal story. If we do take the story as an origin story for the human condition, what is the nature of that condition?

Revised September 4, 2006