Knowledge of Good and Bad

Over the years, I have worked on trying to understand how Adam and 
Chava made choices and decisions prior to eating from the Tree of 
Knowledge of Good and Evil (or, if you prefer, "of Good and Bad").

If they had no knowledge of these concepts, how did they make 
choices? When I choose between doing Thing A or Thing B, it is based 
on which I need more, which will have beneficial results, and similar 
considerations. But if "good" and "not good" are foreign concepts, 
how can one move foward?

Last year, my good friend and mechuton, Rabbi Yossi Abrams, currently 
of Passaic, gave me the answer to this question, and I'd like to 
share it with the chevra.

He pointed out that my whole premise is flawed. Adam and Chava DID 
understand the concept of "good", even prior to eating from the tree. 
This is easily proven from Bereishis 3:6, which clearly says 
that "the woman saw that the tree was 'tov' for food." This concept 
was something that she WAS familiar with. Thus, they did have a basis 
for decision-making.

But if this is so, don't we have a contradiction? How can it be that 
they understood "tov" even before eating from "the tree of knowledge 
of tov"?

The answer must be that these two uses of the word "tov" refer to two 
different concepts. They did indeed understand that some things are 
good as food and others are bad as food. Some ways of walking or 
sitting are more efficient, and others are less efficient. One name 
for this animal is fitting, and others are not fitting. They DID 
understand this sort of "tov".

Then they ate from the tree, and gained a new knowledge. A new 
meaning was added to the word "tov". Not only did they understand the 
difference between good and bad, between tasty and putrid, between 
beautiful and ugly. But now they also understood the difference 
between right and wrong.

And that's my mechuton's chidush that I want to share. A great deal 
of understanding of this story was lost simply because of the 
translator's choice of words. If we had called it "the tree of 
knowledge of right and wrong" from the beginning, we would have 
understood it from the start.

Akiva Miller

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