Medieval Philosophy II: Maimonides and Nachmanides

Nahmanides' comments on the nature of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in his Commentary on the Torah.  He writes that commentators say that the tree produced sexual desire.  He, however, disagrees.  He believes that before Adam and Eve ate the fruit they and all the rest of creation did everything that should be done naturally.  For example, Adam and Eve only had sex wot beget children.  After eating the fruit, the tree gave them a will and desire to chose between a thing and its opposite, whether to do for good or evil.  In other words,  the knowledge of good and evil is a will to pick between doing a good thing or a bad thing.  He notes that in Hebrew 'knowledge' is equivalent to 'will', and so this makes sense.  After eating the fruit, the choice to have sex or not was available and it depended on the will to do good or evil. 

Maimonides sees it differently.  Like Nahmanides, he looks back at the original Hebrew, but much more so than Nahmanides.  According to Maimonides' The Guide for the Perplexed, Elohim can mean not only God, but also angels, judges, or rulers.  And so, he believe that Gen 3:5 "ye shall be like Elohim" really means "ye shall be like princes".  He writes that an objector would say that man's sin of attaining knowledge good and evil was of benefit to him because discerning between good and evil is one of man's best faculties.  However, this does not follow logically.  Why would a punishment for disobeying be something which would make men glorious?  

Maimonides argues that man was made in God's image and had rational thought, as he was given commands by God to follow and no brute can understand commands.  Adam could distinguish true and false perfectly and completely, not right and wrong because they are under the category of moral truths.  Adam was innocent, guided only by reflection and reason.  He was not able to follow or understand the principles of apparent truth like impropriety.  He did not have the 'knowledge' of right and wrong (aka good and evil).  After disobeying God he began to give way to his 'desires'.  When he attained knowledge of apparent truth he was absorbed in the study of what is and isn't proper.  Maimonides notes that Genesis say that "their eyes were opened and they KNEW that they were naked", not 'saw'.  Once he could understand and decide what was wrong, his 'aim' or 'face' turned from God and reason.  He altered his intentions and sought what was forbidden and so he was exiled.  And in this way, the punishment fits the crime.  He sought after forbidden food and now to attain farmed food (which he had never had before) he had to work very hard for it.  He understood what he lost (his reason which had ruled him before).  In Maimonides, the knowledge of good and evil is the knowledge of morality, the realization that there is more to do in existence then what nature commands and that there is a choice between the two.

I have been assuming that the knowledge of good and evil is the understanding that humans can do evil.  I will illustrate with this example.  When a little child realizes that you don't always have to be honest, that you can lie and get away with it, they may not have started with bad intentions, but they have learned to do something which most people would consider wrong.  They learn later that lying is wrong.  If I took the story for what it is without tying it into a religious context, I would say that knowledge of good and evil is the realization that some things are wrong and some are right.  Who knows that Adam and Eve did in the garden? Maybe they did things that would be considered right, wrong or neither to us today.  The text doesn't say.  But after eating the fruit, they did realize that there is a right and wrong.  Perhaps they were ashamed that they had done things in the garden that they afterwards considered wrong.  If I approach the text in a sacral setting, I would agree with Maimonides.  I would say that Adam and Eve acted as nature dictated in the garden.  Doing nothing that was "good" or "evil" because they had no idea what that meant.  After eating the fruit, they did, they understood morality and that there is a choice to act morally or not.  

I am not sure how to approach the question "what indications are given in Gen 2-3?" because I don't know if that refers to my view or Maimonides' and Nahmanides'.  So I will say this:The text  gives no indication that Adam and Eve were 'innocent' or that they did anything at all between Eve's creation and her encounter with the snake.  What we know of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is this: God says it causes death and forbid it, and he also says that he has the knowledge so now man is on his level. "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever."  The tree was also in the middle of the garden and Eve thought it looked pleasing to the eye and good for food.  Beside this and the comments made of it by Eve and snake, the texts mentions nothing else about the tree's power.  And so, we know just know that it gives 'the knowledge of good and evil', whatever that means.  Is it the knowledge of what actions are right and wrong or that there are concepts known as good and evil?