<img src="https://img.lemde.fr/2023/06/28/0/0/3986/3346/664/0/75/0/6eabbca_1687947026243-hemis-2k962ga.jpg" srcset=" https://img.lemde.fr/2023/06/28/0/0/3986/3346/556/0/75/0/6eabbca_1687947026243-hemis-2k962ga.jpg 556w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/06/28/0/0/3986/3346/600/0/75/0/6eabbca_1687947026243-hemis-2k962ga.jpg 600w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/06/28/0/0/3986/3346/664/0/75/0/6eabbca_1687947026243-hemis-2k962ga.jpg 664w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/06/28/0/0/3986/3346/700/0/75/0/6eabbca_1687947026243-hemis-2k962ga.jpg 700w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/06/28/0/0/3986/3346/800/0/75/0/6eabbca_1687947026243-hemis-2k962ga.jpg 800w" sizes="(min-width: 1024px) 556px, 100vw" alt="" expulsion="" of="" adam="" and="" eve="" from="" the="" garden="" eden"="" by="" jacopo="" tintoretto="" (1550)."="" width="100%" height="auto">
According to the Bible, in the beginning, Adam and Eve were naked (aroummim) and not ashamed of it (Genesis 2:25). A serpent, "the most cunning (aroum) of all the beasts of the field" (Gen. 3:1), invited them to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and what they immediately experienced was precisely this nakedness. So they made themselves loincloths of fig leaves, before God clothed them in "tunics of [animal] skins" (Gen. 3:20).
God had settled the man in the Garden of Eden, warning him: "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die." (Gen. 2:16-17) He did not make it a prohibition but set a limit in the middle of Eden around which human life was organized. At the heart of this was the relationship with the Creator, the very origin and limit of man, who is not God.
Isn't crossing this boundary exactly what the serpent proposed? For man to be like God and, ultimately, to decide for himself what is good and what is evil? By arousing Adam and Eve's curiosity, it led them away from faith, that is, from trust in God: From obvious and natural faith (like shameless nakedness), they moved on to reasoning, seeking knowledge and listening to another, contradictory voice: "No, you will not die" (Gen. 3:5), explained the serpent.
Was it shame that then urged them to hide the sexual parts of their bodies, and gave meaning to this hitherto innocent nudity? Shame was born of the encounter with the other, whose nudity revealed all its otherness – and whose gaze sent us back to our own truth. Face to face rather than side by side, Adam and Eve saw themselves naked because they were now separated. Shame set in during this interval. Once clothed and concealed, they had to meet again, whereas, in the beginning, they were intensely close, given to one other.
The shameful parts of the body were now to be hidden from view; it was more a question of protecting the eyes, which had already been seduced: "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" (Gen. 3:6). What we see now is that there was something to hide about sexuality. A cause for shame, it became a moral issue, at the heart of the question of good and evil. Was it because they wanted to be "like gods" (Gen. 3:5-22) and generate life themselves that procreation was punished?
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