§391Behind the disobedient choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice, opposed to God, which makes them fall into death out of envy.266 Scripture and the Church's Tradition see in this being a fallen angel, called "Satan" or the "devil".267 The Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: "The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally go…

§397Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God's command. This is what man's first sin consisted of.278 All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness.

The devil is well practised in falsehood, by which Adam having been led astray, sinned on the sixth day of the creation, in which day also he has been renewed by Christ. 1. He had indeed been already accustomed to lie against God, for the purpose of leading men astray. For at the beginning, when God had given to man a variety of things for food, while He commanded him not to ea…

Now the serpent was more subtle. Moses does not speak of the serpent as it was in itself, but as the instrument of Satan. The fall of man was not a light or trivial transgression but a dreadful abomination. By one man sin entered into the world: Adam, being the head and root of the human race, corrupted and ruined all his posterity. Yet in the very curse God gives the first gle…

The earth is one of the four elements, dry, cold, heavy, motionless, brought into being by God, out of nothing on the first day. For in the beginning, he said, God created the heaven and the earth Genesis 1:1: but the seat and foundation of the earth no man has been able to declare. Some, indeed, hold that its seat is the waters: thus the divine David says, To Him Who establish…

We believe all things, both visible and invisible, to be governed by the Providence of God; though God is not the author of evil. But evil cometh to pass by reason of the malice of men or of demons, that is, when rational creatures, having received free-will from God, voluntarily turn aside from good. For it is the doctrine of the Church that God, who is the creator of all thin…

Josephus retells the Genesis narrative: creation, the fall of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the genealogy from Adam to Noah, the flood, the tower of Babel, and the lives of Abraham and Isaac. He follows the biblical account closely but adds rationalizing explanations and draws on extra-biblical traditions.

The first man enjoyed a life of virtue and communion with God, but through pleasure and desire — represented by the serpent — he fell from his original state. The fall is not merely historical but an allegory of how every soul descends from contemplation of the divine into enslavement to the passions. Philo reads the expulsion from Eden as the loss of the philosophic life.

The serpent is pleasure (hedone), the most dangerous enemy of the rational soul. The serpent attacks through the senses — represented by Eve — to corrupt the mind — represented by Adam. Philo argues that pleasure does not approach the mind directly but works through sense-perception, which is why the serpent speaks first to the woman. The fall is the universal human story of re…