original sin

If Adam and Eve did not know good from evil before eating the fruit, how could they have committed a sin?

Adam and Eve sinned by disobeying God, in placing their will above His.

For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes,
and the pride of life—is not from the Father but from the world. 1 John 2:16

They would have understood that doing so was against the command:

Gen 2:16-17 And Jehovah God layeth a charge on the man, saying, 'Of every tree of the garden eating thou dost eat and of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou dost not eat of it, for in the day of thine eating of it -- dying thou dost die.'

Simply by disobeying God.

but if they did know good from evil how did they know that disobedience was wrong?

They did not need to know anything beyond the fact that God must be obeyed, since He also lovingly gave them everything their hearts could desire. It was a matter of loving God or loving themselves more than God.

It's more than possible they understood good and evil even without eating of the tree.

Eve, in her answer to the serpent, reported that a restriction was upon them by "God". Eve would not have witnessed what happened before she was made from Adam's rib, but she would have known that Adam was made by God, that she was made by God, and that God was God, Maker and Owner of all. Adam and Eve, before the fall, would have possessed a much higher intelligence and appreciation of God, seeing as they had regular fellowship with Him and were not darkened by sin. An instruction of any sort would have been understood, and God authority not questioned. What Eve did is what many of us do, especially when certain things are refused to us by God. She doubted His GOODNESS.

Adam and Eve sinned in four areas;

1. They did not eat of the Tree of Life as "commanded"
2. They disobeyed God Who was their Maker and Master
3. They thought evil of God
4. They ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

That a person must not be fallen to be tempted is shown by our Lord Jesus. In Gethsemane He asked three times to circumvent what lay before Him even though He knew the will of God.

The devil twisted the truth, as though it were a second opinion.

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It isn't necessary for somebody to know that a particular act is wrong in
order for it to count against them as evil, i.e. a sin. Those kinds of
transgressions fall into the category of so-called sins of ignorance. For
example Numbers 15:24-28.

Sins of ignorance are a serious problem because they accumulate against
people without their knowing it; so that when they're summoned to stand
before the Judge at the great white throne event depicted at Rev 20:11-15,
people will be required to answer for things they did in life that they had no
clue at the time were sinful.
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Eve transgressed the law by disobedience to God's word.....(you shall not eat of it.)
Adam chose to trust the serpent rather than God. ....you shall not surly die.

Adam and Eve disobeyed a direct instrution from their Crator. They believe another, one so evil we are still deceived by the same at times.

They did not need to know good and evil to distinguish them, one from another, but they did know their Father and they disobeyed Him.

So are we in the same condition until we realize we have a Father Who loves us, and became just like us as His Only Begotten in order to save us.

This theme of truth could be elaborated upon much, even unti His return, but faith saves us misusing our to to discuss and not believe. Believing by faith is so much easier than using our mere minds to explain what God has don and is doing for us every instant.

Have faith, and believe, and all will be just fine. Love and blessings in Jesus-Yeshua . j

All they knew was good. This knowledge is ontological. They knew good because of being good. What they didn't know was being evil. They knew that eating the forbidden fruit would mean death and was an act God forbid. They became familiar with being evil and being dead. Not informed by their intellects through which they communicated with angels and God. It was their bodies that informed them of their changed state. It was their bodies gtom which a new law erupted. The law that accompanies bodies that die. The law of survival. Great for the other animals that death is natural. not so good for us who end in eternity. This is the evil they didn't know. We are born in it.

With a free will comes responsibility in making choices. God had told them the consequence of disobeying, but they wanted to be like God. They thought it was something that should be desired and so they chose to disobey. This tendency to obey one's own will and not God's is handed down to all descendants of Adam and Eve. That is why we are all born in sin (sin nature).

You must be thinking of Romans 7: 7 to 12 where scripture is saying that when the commandments came it became possible to know what was sin.

Romans 7:9 I was once alive apart from the Law; but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died;

I think Romans was written by Paul, and Paul was such a brain that he is difficult to follow.

Certainly, Adam and Eve were told that they may not eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. They had been given that law.

I think the truths you are bringing out point to the need to study the sacrificial system because it was a shadow of Christ. A shadow is always a dim outline that is a truth, it outlines what it shadows. In this system aimed at the forgiveness of sin, they were to ask forgiveness of sins they were not aware of. We need to do that.

As we study and pray the Lord opens up our eyes to our sins and teaches us to live with more harmony with the Lord.

The sin they committed was eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Irrespective of the debate over the taking of the knowledge of good and evil.. The fact is that Adam and Eve became sinners once they obtained the knowledge of good and evil.. And this knowledge now comes to all people past the age of innocence and thus we all sin and are in need of the Atonement of the LORD Jesus Christ..

Until a person is made aware that he has sinned in an action or thought, that person is not accountable for that sin.

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By the time most kids reach an age of reason they will ask the question:
Why do we have to die?

Well; the answer to that is explained in the fifth chapter of Romans:
everyone has to die, not because of any one particular mistake they make on
their own, rather, because of a mistake somebody else made for them back
at the very beginning.

• Rom 5:12a . . Sin entered the world through one man, and death through
sin, and in this way death came to all men.

• Rom 5:17 . . By the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that
one man

The Bible also says: "for all sinned" (Rom 5:12b)

In other words: way back there in the beginning, even before producing his
first child, God reckoned Adam's sin to be his entire posterity's sin; and
because it is reckoned their sin as well as his, then they are forced to accept
the consequence for that sin the same as he was forced to accept it.

• Gen 2:16-17 . . And the Lord God commanded the man, saying: From any
tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall
surely die.

Adam didn't pass away the very day he tasted the forbidden fruit. In point of
fact, his demise wouldn't come for another 800 years after the birth of his
son Seth (Gen 5:4). The death that came to Adam on the very day that he
tasted the forbidden fruit was mortality; which is a walking death that
gradually tore down Adam's body to the point where it could not continue.

• Gen 3:19 . . For dust thou are, and unto dust you shall return.

And that's why none of us live forever. Our bodies are infected with
mortality; a condition that, left untreated, is always 100% fatal.

FAQ: God himself decreed that a man's children are not responsible for his
mistakes (Ezek 18:20). How then was it right for God to sentence Adam's
posterity to death for something he did?

A: The laws of God do not have ex post facto jurisdiction, i.e. they aren't
retroactive. (Deut 5:2-4 & Gal 3:17)
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