Shared story · 5 min
Adam and Eve
A garden, a tree, a mistake, and what came after.
Shared Stories · Adam and Eve
Three traditions remember a first couple in a garden, one forbidden tree, temptation, shame and leaving the garden. What each draws from it is different.
In the Torah and the rabbis
Genesis 2–3: a serpent; Eve eats first and gives to Adam; God's words to the serpent, the woman and the ground (3:14–19). Jewish tradition has no doctrine of original sin; it speaks of the yetzer ha-ra, the inclination to do wrong, that each person can master.
In the Gospels and Christian tradition
Paul writes that sin and death came into the world through one man, and life through Christ (Romans 5:12–21). Western Christians speak of original sin (after Augustine); Orthodox Christians of “ancestral sin”.
Same and different
All three tell of human dignity and a real choice. They differ on what the mistake left behind: a struggle within each of us, a fallen nature needing redemption, or a mistake forgiven at once. We say what each holds, not what it rejects.
We never picture any prophet or Mary. Each panel is checked by a reader from that tradition before this page goes public.
