The Patterns of Patristic Exegesis of Genesis 3. 22 Fragment "Behold, the Man is Become as One of Us"

Abstract

The study covers patristic (primarily Greek) comments on the fragment of Gen 3. 22 “And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil”, which can be grouped in three main patterns. The first and the most widespread one (from Justin Martyr to Maximus the Confessor) suggests reading Gen 3. 22 as an example of God’s irony employed to show Adam that the serpent’s promise to “be as gods” was false and to urge him to repentance. Armenian and Antiochian versions of this pattern are described with some of its features indicating possible dependence on Pseudo-Clementine tradition. The second pattern was elaborated by the Alexandrian exegetes (Origen and Didymus the Blind) and interprets “one of us” as the “one of” the primordial unity of God and intelligible beings, i.e. the devil, who fell away from God and who was followed by Adam. The third pattern was developed in the context of the 4th and 6th Ecumenical councils’ Christological theology (Cyril of Alexandria and Anastasius of Sinai) and is based on Christological analogy: “one of us” is God’s Word as the second Hypostasis of Holy Trinity, and Adam’s likeness to God is understood using the fundamental analogy between Christ as the second Adam and the fi rst, old Adam. The reasoning of each of these three patterns was examined to show their internal logic consistency and the difficulties arising when they are externally compared one with another.

Keywords

• exegesis
• patrology
• Old Testament
• the Genesis
• Adam
• the Fall
• irony
• Christology
• Origen
• Didymus the Blind
• John Chrysostom
• Cyril of Alexandria
• Maximus the Confessor
• Anastasius of Sinai