The literary genre of the famous account of Genesis 2-3 is clearly mythical, and the interpretation of it is very complex. It narrates an error, a fault at the same time theological and anthropological, in which every sin finds its own origin. The article develops in a first part a narrative reading of God’s command in Gen 2,16-17 and its transgression in 3,1-6; in a second part, it proposes an theological interpretation of the datas that emerge from this narrative approach, seeing in the covetouseness (concupiscentia, the human desire developping without an appropriate limit), the root of human evil. This interpretation of the figure of the snake is already present in Rom 7:7-13 and James 1:13-15.
Wénin, A. (2007). Péché des origines ou origine du péché ? Le récit de Genèse 3 : approche narrative et interprétation. Estudios Biblicos. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/163083