The Fall? (Child, The Progress of Religious Ideas, 3 vols., 1855, vol. 1)

Type: a quote
Sub-type: mythology (< 1855)
Relevance: Genesis - the Beginning
Text: "Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. ... And he said, ... Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. ...  And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. ... Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken." Genesis 3:1-24

  The first man is called by the Chinese Tai Wang, and the first woman Pao See. In one of The Five Volumes, called Chi King, it is said: “Tien placed man upon a high mountain, which Tai Wang rendered fruitless by his own fault. He filled the earth with thorns and briars, and said, I am not guilty, for I could not do otherwise. Why did he plunge us into so much misery? All was subjected to man at first, but a woman threw us into slavery. The wise husband raised up a bulwark of walls; but the woman, by an ambitious desire of knowledge, demolished them. Our misery did not come from Heaven, but from a woman. She lost the human race. Ah, unhappy Pao See! thou kindled the fire that consumes us, and which is every day augmenting. Our misery has lasted many ages. The world is lost. Vice overflows all things, like a mortal poison.” [...]
Child, Lydia Maria, The Progress of Religious Ideas, through Successive Ages, 3 vols.,
New York: C. S. Francis & Co.; London: S. Low, Son & Co., 1855, vol. 1, pp. 208-209.


Online Source: https://archive.org/details/progressofreli01chil



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