The story of the Garden of Eden is so entrenched in Western culture that even those who have never read it are familiar with its central elements and its interpretation as “the Fall.” Yet in this engaging, entertaining, and thought-provoking book, Ziony Zevit contends that many of the ideas we commonly associate with the Garden story in Genesis 2:4–3:24, including its interpretation as the Fall, are not to be found in the original story. Rather, most of what people believe they know about the story is based on mistranslations and misinterpretations of the sequence and meaning of the events it depicts.

In the first part of the book, Zevit lays the groundwork for his study, addressing a variety of issues, including the authorship of the Garden story and the probable date of its composition. He provides some background regarding the story's history of interpretation, focusing on how it came to be understood and interpreted as the story of the Fall. He argues that there is no evidence of such a conception in texts from the Hebrew Bible. If the ancient Israelites had this understanding of the story, surely there would be at least one allusion to Adam, Eve, or what happened in the Garden among the prophetic texts, the Psalmody, or the lists of the people's collective sins found in Nehemiah 9:16–31 and Psalms 78. While an argument from silence is not foolproof, it does suggest that such a conception was foreign to the population of ancient Israel.

Zevit contends that the interpretation of the Garden story as the Fall can be traced to Jewish and Christian writings from the late first and early second centuries CE, and that the idea arose out of the Jewish-Hellenistic cultural and ethical milieu. While this interpretation of the Garden story began to fade from Jewish writings from the second century on, it was expanded and further developed in Christian writings, largely as a result of Paul's promulgation of the idea of original sin, Zevit maintains. Then, because of the heavy influence of Christian thought on Western civilization, this interpretation of the story (and its understanding as a myth, which Zevit argues was also an outcome of this interpretation) became ubiquitous throughout Western culture. What Zevit challenges his readers to do is to approach the story as it was understood in its original, Iron Age Israelite context, before it came to be interpreted as the Fall.

The bulk of the book is taken up by the second part, an in-depth commentary on the Garden story. Zevit considers matters related to vocabulary, grammar, and syntax, as well as a wide variety of questions and issues that the text raises. He employs a reader response approach to deduce how the story was understood, responded to, and interpreted by its original audience (namely, in his view, the social elite living in Iron Age Judea), within its literary, intellectual, and cultural context. In order to elucidate the cultural climate and worldview of the story's original audience, Zevit integrates evidence from a myriad of different sources, including other biblical texts, comparative evidence from Israel's ancient Near Eastern neighbors, and findings from a wide array of disciplines, including linguistics, literary theory, archeology, geography, anthropology, mythology, biology, and law.

Through his careful, detailed analysis and creative use of all available sources, Zevit teases out an impressive amount of material about how the story was likely understood within its original context. Many of his interpretations, bolstered by substantial evidence, are quite compelling. However, sometimes Zevit's enthusiasm for a particular translation or interpretation leads him to deviate from his usually balanced approach. The result is that he advocates options that, while possible, seem highly unlikely. For example, he contends that the ancient Israelite audience understood the term ṣela‘ in Genesis 2:21–22 as a euphemism for the baculum (penis bone), based on the following (141–150): (a) men have a visible seam on their external genitalia, (b) the basic sense of the root ṣ-l-‘, based on evidence from cognate languages, “expresses a two-dimensional, geometric relationship between something vertical or horizontal but lateral to the main axis” (143), (c) one third-century CE rabbinic commentator made a similar suggestion, (d) many of the euphemisms for penis attested in biblical Hebrew texts refer to limbs or body parts that are attached or protrude from the trunk, (e) human male skeletons lack a baculum while most other mammals (including primates) have one, and (f) the term Adam uses in verse 23, bāśār (“flesh”) is sometimes used as a euphemism for the penis in biblical texts. While quite intriguing and admirable in its creativity, this interpretation is not particularly convincing. In his philological discussion Zevit mentions that while the term ṣela‘ doesn't mean rib anywhere else in the Hebrew Bible, the Akkadian cognate ṣēlû means rib (among other things), and an Arabic cognate, ḍila‘ also means rib; thus the traditional understanding of ṣela‘ as rib would seem a more likely option.

In the third, concluding section Zevit provides a revised plot and translation of the Garden story based on his analysis. Even if one doesn't agree with all of Zevit's choices regarding translation and interpretation, the revised plot, based on how the original audience would have heard and understood the story, is eye opening. Zevit succeeds in demonstrating that the Garden story is not in fact about a fall from divine grace, that it contains no concept of original sin, and that many other elements we have come to associate with it are not actually present in the story. He then discusses allusions to the story in the rest of the Hebrew Bible, in order to demonstrate that a wide range of biblical authors knew the story and viewed it positively. He certainly demonstrates that the Garden story was well known in ancient Israel, citing allusions to it in a variety of different biblical texts, including several prophetic passages in which Eden appears to be viewed as a paradise that will someday be regained. Less convincing is Zevit's argument that various positive allusions in Wisdom texts to the “Tree of Life” (see Proverbs 3:18; 11:30; 13:12; 15:4) and the likening of righteous men who trust in God to a verdant tree in Psalm 1:3 and Jeremiah 17:8 demonstrate that the eating of the fruit and its consequences were viewed positively in biblical texts. While it is true, as the author notes, that there are many wise female characters in biblical texts and that the theme of wisdom is embedded in the Garden story, this does not constitute particularly convincing evidence that the story in its entirety was viewed positively. Rather, passages such as Isaiah 11:3–8 (which alludes in v. 8 to the enmity between humans and serpents in its description of a coming golden age when harmony will exist among all creatures) and Isaiah 65:23–25 (in which Zevit observes there are allusions to “Adam's labor, Hawwa's giving birth, Hebel's meaningless death, and the serpent” [p. 252]) seem to reflect a certain ambivalence about some aspects of the story on the part of the biblical authors and their audience.

Yet this is a minor point. Zevit succeeds in supporting his central contention, that many elements of the common interpretation of the Garden story have no foundation in, and are not supported by, the original text. The Garden story, when looked at within its original context, is not about sin or rebellion, nor is it a story about death or redemption. It is rather, as Zevit demonstrates, about the origins of humanity and human nature, and the acquisition of knowledge, consciousness, and human self-awareness. Zevit's study is an important piece of scholarship with far-reaching implications, presenting a significant challenge to both the traditional interpretation and the traditional theological understanding of this text.