That is the traditional interpretation. But you have to ask yourself, did the Yahwist (the person who set the ancient myth into writing in ca. 915 B.C.E.) agree with St. Augustine’s interpretation of “Original Sin”? (No.) Did any of the other authors of the Hebrew Bible? (No.) Why does no one in the Bible, not even Paul (not even pseudo-Paul!), offer the interpretation of "Original Sin" that little Augie the (partially reformed) Manichee came up with in ca. 400 C.E.?

Look at it this way: According to the myth, Godde invents ha'adam (pronounced “ah-DAHM,” Hebrew for "the person") in Godde's image, and sets the person into a garden containing the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life, a symbol of the goddess Asherah. Godde tells the infant not to eat from the TKGE, or that same day (2:17) blorp will happen — a concept totally unfamiliar not just to the person, but to the entire Universe!!!!

There was no law that said that Godde had to put the TKGE into the Garden; no one tells GOD what Godde can and cannot do. The babies could have stayed babies forever, innocent and sweet. (And incidentally, they could have had millions of children in the meanwhile — when the man sees the woman for the first time, he says to Godde, in the original Hebrew, "Well, you finally got around to creating me a suitable partner — as close to me as my bones and the delicate flesh that's under the foreskin of my penis" [2:23].)

A fairly short span of time goes by, and Godde separates the person into ha'ish, the man, and ha'ish-shah, the woman. The woman gets into a conversation with the serpent, another symbol of the Goddess. The first theologian is told by the symbol of the Goddess that Godde misled her when she was ha'adam; that she would not in fact blorp, but instead would become more like Godde — nurturing, beautiful, and wise (3:6).

Well, let's see — on the one hand, nurturing, beautiful, and wise; on the other hand, blorpitude. Wow, there's a difficult choice! Particularly since, in the end, the woman and the man did NOT blorp, but did become more like Godde — who then ensured that they would die, more than nine hundred years later (5:5), by separating them forever from the Goddess's Tree of Life. (And, cleverly, Yahweh imposed enmity between women and the symbol of the Goddess, so that they would remain under male domination without too much complaining for another 4,500 years or so.)

There is an ancient myth that has Asherah telling the two children what happens after they disregarded Godde's warning. As translated by Jenny Bien, Ph.D., the Goddess says,

“Women, I give you the gift of desire.
You will desire your lover and be desired in return.
You shall be life-givers,
and your creation shall be great —
your bearing of children hard work,
for new life is a well-won achievement.

Men, I charge the Earth
to provide for you all the days of your life.
So great shall be her life-giving
that the pines and the myrtles will sprout for you,
and she will give you plants of the field to eat —
your making of bread hard work,
the food that you eat a well-won achievement.

And this all the days of your life
until you return to the Earth whence you came,
for you are of the earth
and so to her you will return."

Frankly, I find the ancient myth about the Goddess a heck of a lot more plausible than little Augie's interpretation — that a tiny baby was told that if she disobeyed Godde, blorp would happen; the woman and the man both disobeyed Godde; blorp did NOT happen; and so the entire Universe was cruelly punished for all eternity, especially women. . . . Except, of course, for a small percentage of those who believe that Jesus of Nazareth was Godde in disguise, come to save a few of the man's descendants from blorpitude — that small percentage (the ones who swear they unthinkingly believe their denomination’s dogma and who jump through certain denominationally imposed hoops) will live forever. Everyone else, like horses, dogs, fish, Muslims, Taoists, the inhabitants of Alpha Centauri 4, remains condemned to death — because of the innocent mistake of a week-old baby who didn't know what blorping was. Gee, there's a Godde of love and compassion for you!

But say you don't care whether Genesis 2-3 was based on an even more ancient myth about a much more ancient Canaanite deity than Yahweh, you only care what the Bible says. You might consider this old folk tale: A mother had to go out to work and leave her children home alone. Naturally she was desperately afraid they would play with fire, run with knives, open the door to strangers, etc. So she said to her children, "You can do whatever you want, except one thing: Don't climb up onto the countertop, open the cupboard door, take the beans off the top shelf, and stuff the beans up your nose."

You can guess what happened next: The mother came home to a house full of crying children who had not played with fire, run with knives, trusted strangers, etc. Instead, the children learned an important lesson (once the beans had been extracted from their noses): Children don't know as much about the workings of the world as adults do, and so should obey adults even when they don't understand why. When Yahweh went back to the Garden in the cool, cool, cool of the evening, the children had not played with fire, run with knives, or trusted strangers. Someone they had known all their lives had told them that Yahweh had misled them — which is perfectly fair, considering that Yahweh HAD misled them!

There's a theory that says that the principal distinctions between humans and other animals are: (a) memory/imagination; (b) consciousness of Self; (c) conscience; (d) free will. I can think of a few others, but think about how these four fit into Genesis 2-3: the infants in the Garden were told not to stick beans up their noses or they'd blorp. By sticking beans up their noses, they learned the significance of memory and imagination; they learned consciousness of Self ("I'm naked!"); they learned the difference between right and wrong; and they learned they had free will. And they learned that they should trust Godde to know what Godde was doing, even if they, the children, did not. In short, by ignoring a warning about a concept they had no way of understanding, they were transformed from children to adult, fully human beings before they had to face the real world of wild animals, evil strangers, natural disasters, and temptations and trials of every description.

Our choice is this: On the one hand, a myth that’s probably more than 5,000 years old, explaining how humanity was created in Godde’s image and came to know that it had free will, conscience, self-awareness, and memory and imagination — and incidentally, the only ancient origin story in Western civilization that specifically accounts for the creation of women.

On the other hand, we have a pseudo-myth approximately 1,600 years old, invented by a man who had only been a Christian for a few years and was unfamiliar with ancient Hebrew thinking, that says that the entire Universe was condemned to death because of the innocent mistake of an infant who didn’t know what blorping was, and that God was required to become human to correct the infant’s “sin,” so that a tiny fraction of God’s good creation would be saved from the flames of eternal damnation.

I know which version of the story I prefer!

So, Carol, go ahead — be curious. Little Augie was not Godde — he wasn't even Yahweh!!!