A man, a woman, a serpent and an apple: a reinterpretation of the founding myth of the Hebrew people from the perspective of Renaissance Protestantism

The article resumes some fundamental elements of the myth of the creation of the human being according to the Old Testament text in Genesis 1-3, in which myth is not understood as something invented, falsehood, deceit or fiction, but as a way of speaking, seeing, feeling and believe, although the purpose of the article is not to enter into the exegetical textual merit of the narrative. This mode of representation can be changed over the centuries and re-edited for new theological conceptions, as was the case in Renaissance Protestantism. The analysis of the work of Lucas Cranach, the Elder, "Painter of the Protestant Reformation", namely the work Adam and Eve (1533) in three segments: A man - a woman; The serpent myth - a metaphor for sacred sexuality; The myth of the forbidden fruit - a metaphor for the acquisition of human knowledge. In its contents, the concepts of law and grace, so important and decisive in the theological rearticulation of Renaissance Protestantism, appear.