And as always, the rabbis of old had some fascinating ideas.

The verse from Job (14:20) sets the stage: “You grant him power forever, and he is gone; You alter his countenance and send him away.” The Rabbis in Bereshit Rabbah 21 see this as a reflection on Adam, the first human. He was granted eternal power, but then… things changed. He turned away from God's mindset, embraced the serpent's, and was banished.

And then, God laments, “The Lord God said: Behold, the man was as one of us.” So, what does that mean?

Rabbi Papus offered one interpretation: "Behold, the man has become as one of us – like one of the ministering angels." But Rabbi Akiva wasn't buying it. "Enough, Papus!" he retorted, essentially. If that were the case, the text would have said, "Has become as one of you." So, what was Rabbi Akiva's take? He suggested that God presented Adam with two paths: life and death. Adam chose a third path, a path of death, on his own. He chose “one” path, mimenu – “from him,” by himself.

Rabbi Yehuda bar Simon offered another perspective. Adam was like the "Unique One of the world," echoing the Shema: “Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God the Lord is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4). There’s a certain… majesty to that idea, isn't there?

Then we have the Rabbis offering yet another comparison: Adam was like Gavriel (Gabriel), the angel, as it is stated: “And behold, one man dressed in linen” (Daniel 10:5) – like a grasshopper whose garment is part of it. This, they say, aligns with the idea that before the sin, Adam and Eve were covered with a fingernail-like covering – a kind of inherent, divine garment. Before the fall, they were so close to the divine that they didn't need anything else.

Reish Lakish throws another figure into the mix: Jonah. Just as Jonah fled from his mission, so too did Adam flee from fulfilling God’s command. And just as Jonah lost his prophetic spirit, Adam lost his glory. We find this in the book of Jonah (1:3) which says, "Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from before the Lord."

And finally, Rabbi Berekhya, in the name of Rabbi Ḥanina, draws a parallel to Elijah. Just as Elijah never tasted death, Adam wasn't supposed to taste death either. As long as he was Adam—whole and undivided—he was "as one" with the divine. But once his side was taken to form Eve, he entered the realm of “to know good and evil.”

What's so powerful here is that each interpretation, while different, grapples with the same fundamental question: what did we lose? What did Adam lose? And what does it mean for us, his descendants? Each of these rabbinic interpretations offers a piece of the puzzle, inviting us to reflect on our own choices, our own paths, and our own potential to be “as one of us." It's a question, perhaps, we'll always be wrestling with.