Texts in Conversation
In Genesis, Adam tells God that the woman gave him the fruit. In the Samaritan Pentateuch, the passage is difficult to translate and may instead describe her receiving it from the serpent, shifting responsibility toward the serpent.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Genesis 3:12
Hebrew Bible
10 The man replied, “I heard you moving about in the orchard, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.” 11 And the Lord God said, “Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave me, she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it.” 13 So the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman replied, “The serpent tricked me, and I ate.” 14 The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all the cattle and all the living creatures of the field! On your belly you will crawl and dust you will eat all the days of your life.
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Samaritan Genesis 3:12
Samaritan Penteteuch
Samaritan
10 And he said: “I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 And he said: “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” 12 And the man said: “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.” 13 And Shema God said to the woman: “What is this that you have done?” And the woman said: “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” 14 And Shema God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle and all animals of the field; you shall move on your belly, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life.
Date: 130–120 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Genesis 3:12: “Given to" = by the serpent. The word in the source is “netina” and not “natna" as in the Jewish Masoretic Text ..."
Benyamim Tsedaka and Sharon Sullivan, eds., The Israelite Samaritan Version of the Torah: First English Translation Compared with the Masoretic Version, trans. Benyamim Tsedaka (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 9.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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