Just in case you didn’t know, there was a big cache of gnostic texts found in Nag Hammadi but the discovery got overshadowed by the dead sea scrolls. They were very cool to look into and shed a lot of light on pre-romanized Christianity.

Exactly. In keeping with my other comments, that’s why some early christian sects actually viewed Eve as a hero in the story, because she freed them from ignorance… You know, back when christianity was driven by women and wasn’t just roman ideology wearing a Jesus skin mask.

I think thats a pretty solid interpretation. The gnostics have other points too though, like the vast difference in personality between the vengeful old testament god (which they claim is a separate entity) and the loving new testament god.

I wrote an essay about that once. Adam and Eve were meant to chill in the garden for literally all of eternity but were still created as curious, fallible beings with no knowledge of evil. Ergo it was logically impossible that they wouldn’t have eaten the fruit eventually, whether that was in 3 days or 3 million years.

Only kinda related but one of the reasons the early christian gnostics gave for questioning the identity of the old testament god is this exact thing. God is supposed to be omniscient but for some reason is confused about what happened with the apple and doesn’t know where Adam is hiding… Interesting to think about… Maybe. Idk.