The Literal Meaning of Genesis
had planted nothing evil in Paradise), but the evil for man was his transgression of God's command.*' It was proper that man, placed in a state of dependence upon the Lord God, should be given some prohibition, so that obedience would be the virtue by which he would please his Lord. I can truthfully say that this is the only virtue of every rational creature who lives his life under God's rule, and that the fundamental and greatest vice is the overweening pride by which one wishes to have independence to his own ruin, and the name of this vice is disobedience. There would not, therefore, be any way for a man to realize and feel that he was subject to the Lord unless he was given some command.
The tree, then, was not evil, but it was called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because, on the supposition that man would eat of its fruit after the prohibition, there was within it the future violation of the command, and because of this transgression man would learn by undergoing punishment the difference between the good of obedience and the evil of disobedience. Scripture, therefore, has not spoken figuratively about this tree: we must understand that it has described a real tree. And this tree was named not from the apples or fruit that grew on it but from what had followed after it had been touched against God's command.°§
CHAPTER 7
The four rivers of Paradise. The literal meaning (Gen. 2.10-14).
13. And a river which watered Paradise went out of Eden, and from there it was divided into four parts. The name of the one is Phison; this 1s the one that flows around all the land of Evilat, where there is gold; and the gold of that land 1s good, and carbuncle and emerald are found there. And the name of the second river is Geon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of the third river is Tigris, which flows by the land of the Assyrians. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.3°