Utvisandet ur Eden i Genesis 3, en myt om synd, straff och fall? : En komparativ analys med feministiska förtecken av tolkningen av det s.k. ”syndafallet” i ett urval moderna judiska och kristna bibelkommentarer

Sammanfattning: Examining biblical texts is a constant work of interpretation and there is no doubt that there are different layers of filters. The person who writes and the person who reads the written text are affected by a filter of some kind. Being aware of one's own filter and having an understanding of the context of the text when it was edited as well as its development over time is necessary in the work of interpretation. Problems arise, however, when the exegete who interprets the text wears an unconscious and unspoken filter that colours the interpretation in an unreflective way. If the exegete has a great influence, these unconscious filters can be passed on without being examined or reflected on.The story in Genesis 2-3 about the Garden of Eden and the expulsion from it is one of the most reinterpreted texts in the entire Hebrew Bible. During early Judaism and early Christianity, however, most Rabbis and Church Fathers interpreted the myth from a patriarchal view on women where sin, guilt and death were at the centre of what the myth was about. Therefore, it was refreshing to come across the Jewish feminist researcher Lyn Bechtel's interpretation of the myth in her article “Rethinking the interpretation of Genesis 2.4B-3.24” in the anthology A Feminist Companion to Genesis edited by Athalya Brenner in 1997 with its absence of the theme of the Fall. Instead, according to her interpretation, the myth is about an entirely positive transition from being a child to becoming an adult, about the natural phase when children free themselves from their parents and then manage in the world on their own.This essay aims to compare four modern Jewish and Christian Bible commentaries with Lyn Bechtel ́s contrasting view of what the myth might be about. Through this comparison, the essay aims to discover possible filters which the exegete can be assumed to be coloured by in an unspoken way. The essay is a reception historical comparative analysis in which the biblical commentaries way of dealing with selected interpretive problems, from the essay's feminist perspective, is compared with how the Jewish feminist researcher Lyn Bechtel does the same in her contrasting view of the myth. The interpretation problems specifically studied are the theme of the Fall, the role of the serpent and the view on the man and woman's relationship to each other. The aim is to disclose unspoken filters and thereby start a process of awareness that hopefully opens up to a theology liberated from old traditional patriarchal Judeo-Christian filters.