In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and he said it was good.

He created man, Adam and woman and placed them in the garden and their job was to be his

image, to carry on his creative force and to rule the world expanding the garden.

All of this goodness, all of this potential, but there's still something missing.

For humans to rule the world well as God's partners, they need wisdom to discern between

good and evil.

But the question is how, how are they going to get that wisdom?

And so the humans are faced with a choice.

They can either take from the tree of knowing good and evil, the tree that God told them

not to take from.

Or, they can trust God's command and live by His wisdom.

That decision is the core decision for every human, every day.

And this scene here in the first pages of the Bible is crucial to understanding a whole

section of books in the Bible that are often called the wisdom books.

Proverbs, ecclesiastes, song of songs and joke.

Each of these books explores from a different perspective what it means to be a human sitting

in front of the tree of knowing good and evil.

And how do I navigate knowing good and evil in a way that leads to life and not to exile

like that?

I'm John Collins and this is the Bible Project Podcast.

Today, we start a new series talking about the wisdom literature.

There are a handful of books in the Bible all about man's quest for wisdom.

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