Fall, The

Fall, The, the first transgression of divine law on the part of man, conceived of as involving the whole human race in the guilt of it, and represented as consisting in the wilful partaking of the fruit of the forbidden tree of the knowledge of both good and evil. The story of the Fall in Genesis has in later times been regarded as a spiritual allegory, and simply the Hebrew attempt, one amongst many, to explain the origin of evil. It is worthy of note that a narrative, similar even to detail, exists in the ancient religious writings of the Hindus and Persians.

Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)