But a problem seems to exist, one that confronted me in the early days of my research into what was then a larger examination of the themes of Genesis 1–3 in Paul’s letters. I began to notice a wide swath of interpretations of the phrase and no solidly substantiating arguments for any of them. Within both popular Christianity and academic New Testament studies, there is little agreement as to what Paul means by the arcane or, at a minimum, ambiguous phrase. This lack of agreement is due in part to