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The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, on the face of it a deliberate and decisive breaking of the links between The Adam and his creators, was not that final after all. Were it to be final, the records of Divine Encounters would have ended right then and there. Instead, the Expulsion was only the start of a new phase in that relationship that can be characterized as hide-and-seek, in which direct encounters become rare and visions or dreams become divine devices. The beginning of this post-Paradise relationship was far from auspicious; it was, in fact, a most tragic one. Uninten- tionally it brought about the emergence of new humans, Homo sapiens sapiens. And as it turned out, both the tragedy and its unexpected consequence planted the seeds of divine disillusionment with Humankind. It was not the Expulsion from Paradise, such a cherished topic for preachings on the "Fall of Man," that was at me root of the plan to let the Deluge wipe Humankind off the face of the Earth. Rather, it was the incredible act of fratri- cide: When all of humanity consisted of four (Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel), one brother killed the other! And what was it all about? It was about Divine Encoun- ters ... The story as told in the Bible begins almost as an idyll: And the Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived and gave birth to Cain; and she said: "Alongside Yahweh a man I brought to be." an 29 WHEN PARADISE WAS LOST