Textual Exegesis. Nietzsche on Genesis 2-3.  

A text about debt
A mysterious text
And yet, paradoxically, a very familiar one for Christians.


Here the link between literary interpretation and historical analysis is clear. 


4 puzzling features
	puzzling on its own level - , i. e. for a believer.

Look at chapter and verse in detail. 

l. (2,17) Why is a tree of knowledge fatal?
	Why this connection, knowledge and fatality?

2. (3,5) Why are Adam and Eve becoming like gods, knowing good and evil
	What would it mean, in this Christian context, to become godlike?
		(Man is made in the image of God.)

3. (3,7 ) Why the consequence awareness of nakedness, and shame
	(3,22) man become as one of us
	Why shame in particular? How does that relate to God?
	Why is sexuality so central a concern here? 

4. Punishments (3,16): suffering in childbirth, and (3,19) work
	One punishment for women, another for men. 
But why these particular punishments for our expulsion from paradise?

This all is very strange. it seems deeply irrational. 

Nietzsche's interpretation. See pp. 91-2 (sec 21) of the text. 

 
Since this text is puzzling on its face, Nietzsche wants to interpret ingeniously
 
1' We become godlike , we are making promises

2'. We learn about good and evil
	i.e. we create morality

3'. We have a sense of shame

4'. We suffer from constraints of civilization

	At each point the story has a meaning
Not its literal meaning, but a way it can make sense