Remembering Eden: The Reception History of Genesis 3: 22-24

There are few texts as central to the mythology of Jewish and Christian literature as the Garden of Eden story of Genesis 2-3 and its attendant motifs. Yet the direct citation of this text within the biblical corpus is surprisingly rare. Even more conspicuous is the infrequent reference to creation, or to the archetypal first human pair. Though Early Jewish and Christian interpretations of Genesis 2-3 are numerous, there have been few analyses of the impact of the Eden account beyond the biblical canon. The few analyses that exist, moreover, often omit any discussion of Gen. 3: 22-24 dismissing this text as a late addition and therefore irrelevant. In Remembering Eden, Peter Thacher Lanfer argues that textual additions, interpretations, and translations are often the products of ideological and historically rooted decisions.