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  • The Paris Review

    The Tree of Knowledge, Good, and Evil

    by Stephen Greenblatt Sep 13, 2017 3 minutes

    Over the centuries, there have been innumerable interpretations of the story of Adam and Eve. This week on the Daily, Stephen Greenblatt, the author of The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve, retells some of these legends in modern idiom, and invents a few of his own.

    William Blake, Raphael Warns Adam and Eve (detail), 1808.

    The newly created humans were not only physically beautiful but also supremely wise. They

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