Joint Faculty-Student Research

    Heather Schmidt, '01

At the 2000 Elkin R. Isaac Research Symposium, Heather presented the results of her work on:

"Research Genesis: A Comparative Approach to the Fall of Man"

Heather describes her project (which was done under the supervision of Frank S. Frick), in the following way:

Look at me.  I did it.  I took that step.  I walked up to that tree, glimmering with morning dew.  I gazed at the ripe fresh orb.  I took a bite.  The juice dribbled over my skin; the world grew brighter and a breeze tousled my hair.  I wondered where the wind went when it blew away.  Perhaps it stopped at the edge of the garden?  Was there an edge to the garden?  An end to it?  What was beyond the garden?  Funny, I never questioned that before . . ..

If it is true that religion exists to answer questions of meaning, it can be asserted that one of the essential inquisitions rests in man's cry of "Who am I?"  For cultures of biblical derivation, no text serves as a better mirror, illuminating man's sense of himself and his relationship to the world, than Genesis 3.  In fact, it is in the womb of this scriptural passage that Islamic/Judaeo/Christian cultures find the birth of humanity, mortality, and the nature of man.  With the reach for the fruity of Knowledge, there is a third creation (beyond that of the universe and the body), a catalyst that has as its products sexuality, pride, temptation, will, good, and evil.  In this single act, Man find himself at odds with God.  It is in these folds that one can find the thread of social struggle between Fruit and Faith, and the attempt of an extended culture to characterize Reason as it can be applied to the human-divinity dichotomy.