"The two chapters which refer to this (i. e., the Garden, the Tree, and the Serpent), as indeed the whole of the first eight of Genesis, are now generally admitted by scholars to be made up of fragments of earlier books or earlier traditions, belonging, properly speaking, to Mesopotamia rather than to Jewish history, the exact meaning of which the writers of the Pentateuch seem hardly to have appreciated when they transcribed them in the form in which they are now found."[99:2]
John Fiske says:
"The story of the Serpent in Eden is an Aryan story in every particular. The notion of Satan as the author of evil appears only in the later books, composed after the Jews had come into close contact with Persian ideas."[99:3]
Prof. John W. Draper says:
"In the old legends of dualism, the evil spirit was said to have sent a serpent to ruin Paradise. These legends became known to the Jews during their Babylonian captivity."[99:4]
Professor Goldziher also shows, in his "Mythology Among the Hebrews,"[99:5] that the story of the creation was borrowed by the Hebrews from the Babylonians. He also informs us that the notion of the bôrê and yôsêr, "Creator" (the term used in the cosmogony in Genesis) as an integral part of the idea of God, are first brought into use by the prophets of the captivity. "Thus also the story of the Garden of Eden, as a supplement to the history of the Creation, was written down at Babylon."
Strange as it may appear, after the Genesis account, we may pass through the whole Pentateuch, and other books of the Old Testament, clear to the end, and will find that the story of the "Garden of Eden" and "Fall of Man," is hardly alluded to, if at all. Lengkerke says: "One single certain trace of the employment of the story of Adam's fall is entirely wanting in the Hebrew Canon (after the Genesis account). Adam, Eve, the Serpent, the woman's seduction of her husband, &c., are all images, to which the remaining words of the Israelites never again recur."[100:1]
This circumstance can only be explained by the fact that the first chapters of Genesis were not written until after the other portions had been written.
It is worthy of notice, that this story of the Fall of Man, upon which the whole orthodox scheme of a divine Saviour or Redeemer is based, was not considered by the learned Israelites as fact. They simply looked upon it as a story which satisfied the ignorant, but which should be considered as allegory by the learned.[100:2]
Rabbi Maimonides (Moses Ben Maimon), one of the most celebrated of the Rabbis, says on this subject:—