Chris Heard at Higgaion a proposal which got me thinking. He suggests (in Divine sarcasm in the Eden story?) that we read God’s statement in Gen 3:22: “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil” as sarcasm.

So, are God’s words in Gen 3:22 to be taken at face value, as a sarcastic put down of uppity humans or as irony? I’ll argue for irony, and use Occam’s razor for the cutting…

NB: This podcast deals with a somewhat similar issue to that I covered in Signs of humour: especially in written texts across cultures my approach in this case is significantly different in style – you might want to think about how appropriate that difference is for the two cases, if you do please let me know your thoughts 🙂