Transgression

 Last week we went to the temple and did an endowment session.  In the endowment, there is symbolic portrayal of the plan of redemption that depicts the fall of Adam and Eve and their eventual return to the presence of God. In the final scene, Eve quotes Moses 5:11 "Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient."  

I kept wondering why Adam and Eve's partaking of the forbidden fruit is always called a "transgression" in Latter-Day Saint theology instead of the "original sin" as in other Christian theologies. As a Latin reader, when I see the word "transgression" I break it down into its roots; trans=across, gression=travel or move. So in my mind transgression means to move across something.  The modern dictionary has the same definition that most people think of when they read "transgress" i.e. a sin or breaking a law, but could it here refer to the latin meaning? David suggested I look in a dictionary contemporary with Brigham Young who wrote down the temple ceremony.  I looked up the Webster's 1828 dictionary, and the first definition is "The act of passing over or beyond any law or rule of moral duty; the violation of a law or known principle of rectitude; breach of command."  So it does have more of the sense of crossing a boundary than our modern usage. 

So why is this important to me? I have long seen the story of Adam and Eve, and particularly of Eve's choice to partake of the fruit, as symbolic of our choice to leave pre-earth life and come into mortality.  To me the fall is not from Eden to the "Lone and dreary world" but from pre-Earth life into mortality. We all had to make Eve's choice to suffer the pains of mortality and eventual death in order to have "seed" and learn to distinguish between good and evil.  By making that choice, we all experienced spiritual death by leaving God's presence and have to rely on messengers to receive God's word. In this context, to say the Adam and Eve "transgressed" just means they traveled across the line from immortality to mortality, from "heaven" to earth.  

Another support for this symbolic interpretation is that Adam's name means "earth," and Eve's name means "life."  Eve decided that in order to bring human "life" to the "earth" they would need to transgress (cross over) and become mortal.  In other words, in order to begin procreation you have to have a physical body. The story is telling us the purpose of mortality and the reason why there is death and suffering. It is also giving us hope that, at the end of this life there is hope through obedience and faith in the Savior, our older brother and the creator of the world, Jesus Christ. People who spend too much time trying to interpret this story literally are missing the whole beautiful message. 

Anyway, to circle back around, I think this is why they call Eve's and Adam's partaking of the fruit a "transgression."  It symbolizes the spirit moving across the boundary from pre-earth life into mortality.