Adam and Eve and Apple and Serpent

Great Debates
21

Personally, I just want to chime in as favoring the coconut idea. No basis for it but I really dig the image of Adam and Eve sitting there, no tools to mention, trying desperately to open this fruit.

Adam: Hmm. Certainly looks tasty.
Serpent: Boy, is it.
Eve: Well, let’s give it a go.
Adam: I’ll just open it grunt here gasp groan
Eve: What?
Adam: Dang thing won’t open.
Serpent: Oh f’cryin’ out loud!
Eve: Maybe a rock or something.
Adam: Dang it! I want to know good and evil! strain
Serpent: What a wimp!
Adam: argh
Eve: Jeez, some he man you are.

You get the idea…

22

Like a lot of Bible passages, the story seems simple and instructive until one begins to apply common sense. Then it becomes confusing, requiring centuries of theology to provide interpretations which seem to satisfy only the faithful.

What is the significance of a being without a moral sense failing a test of obedience? What kind of foolish god would create creatures with free will but no moral sense, and put them in an environment where they could harm themselves and others? I don’t see how the Author can expect one to be smart enough to draw a moral from the story, yet not smart enough not to ask these simple questions.

HenrySpencer’s comments seem to be going in a more plausible direction. Perhaps the distinction between having a “moral sense” and having a “knowledge of sin” is something that was lost in translation. I can almost accept the part about Adam and Eve suddenly developing an interest in clothing as symbolizing a separation from God - almost. I still think the most likely interpretation is that they gained a moral sense.

BTW, I did not mean to imply that I only wanted to hear from Christians, only that I figured they’d be the most likely to have a ready answer. I realize there are Jews in the world, and Buddhists. There are Hindus and Mormons, and then…There are those that follow Mohammed (but I’ve never been one of them.) I welcome all intelligent views.

23

Jonathan Chance:

Perhaps the African swallow could have helped him out?

24

Re: Lemur’s proposition that the Adam & Eve story is meant to explain the presence of sin among humans…

Strictly speaking, the word “sin” does not occur in the story, and there is no clear indication given that just knowing the difference between good and evil makes one more likely to commit evil deeds (indeed, it should by all indications make one more like God).

25

But his whole point was to see whether man, when presented with the oppurtunity, would obey him. If someone does good only because he does not have the oppurtunity to do evil, he is not choosing to do good. He is not exercising his free will.

Whenever I’ve read atheists’ explanations for why they are atheists, they always seem to mention the fact that there’s suffering in the world. They seem to think that a loving God wouldn’t allow that. But that seems to me to be the same as blaming the parents of a murderer rather than the murderer himself (or herself - let’s be fair). Their idea of God seems to be the same as a parent who never lets go of their child. Do you know what happens to children whose parents do that to them? They never grow up. They are emotionally crippled. God doesn’t want to do that to us. The main point of this life is free will - choosing to obey God when we have the oppurtunity to disobey him.

PS - I hope I haven’t offended any atheists - all I’m trying to say is that their idea of God is not the same as mine. And for what it’s worth, that kind of God obviously doesn’t exist, so I guess I can’t blame them for not believing.

26

Is that not what I said in my post? I also agree that it is what makes us human. According to the story we are closer to God after Adam and Eve ate the fruit than before. The difference is that we aren’t immortal, but of course that is where Christianity comes in.

27

Another interesting thing to note. According to the book Bloodline of the Grail Kings (I can’t remember the author’s name, unfortunately), the Old Testament was adapted from the ancient Babylonian polytheistic religion into the early Jewish monotheistic religion. The Babylonian version is quite different, but parallel. Instead of Eden, we have Mesopotamia. Instead of Adam being the first man on Earth, he is the first modern man (Homo Sapiens Sapiens) on Earth. There were other humans around, and they didn’t wear clothing; clothing was reserved for those of high social importance, like priests and the gods themselves. The being referred to as God in Genesis is the god Enlil (a god of storms not known for being a nice guy) in the Babylonian version, and the Serpent is Enki. Enki is credited as the god who created Adama (Adam) and many/most/all of the earlier humans; he is also often symbolized by a serpent. Enlil and Enki are brothers, and not on the best of terms. Enlil is also more (politically/physically/whatever) powerful than Enki.

Consider it now. Enlil forbids Adama from partaking of the Fruit (totally metaphorical) which will enlighten him. Enlil lies to Adama about the Fruit, and says it will kill Adama if he eats it. Enki, wanting to improve his latest project, sets Adama straight; he tells him that the Fruit is safe and will bring enlightenment. Adama believes Enki, and eats the Fruit. He becomes enlightened, and decides he deserves clothing. When Enlil finds out Adama ate the Fruit, he demands to know why. Adama says, “Enki told me to.”. Enlil is furious, and he punishes Adama (and denies him immortality) and punishes his brother Enki.

Eve was incorporated into the Jewish version as a means to subjugate women.

Enlil is also credited by the Babylonians as the one who caused the great Flood, and the one who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.

Enki and Ahura Mazda (the Zoroastrian god) are based upon the same legends.

Just thought I’d share a few fun facts with the class…

28

<< They cover themselves and hide. Along comes God (taking an afternoon stroll) and he calls out asking where they are. Now this isn’t the same God from the rest of the bible, especially the OT. >>

On the contrary, God of the Old Testament often asks rhetorical questions or questions to which He clearly knows the answer. It’s all about free will, and God giving humans the right to make their own choices. One of the ways that God “tests” people is posing questions that helps them see the errors of their ways. This happens quite frequently in the Old Testament.

BTW, it’s a very effective literary device as well as a metaphor. It’s the Parent asking a question of the erring child – “Billy, who took the cookies out of the cookie jar?” You think Mommy doesn’t KNOW, from the chocolate smudges on your hands? But Mommy asks rather than scolds, to help Billy come to correct conclusions and correct acts of atonement on his own.

29

But think of it from the other perspective: if the Adam of the OT was the first man, then all other similar stories are actually corruptions of his experience. Or even dropping God out of the equation, what if the Jews had their story, but just didn’t write it down until Moses (or whoever you believe wrote down Genesis) came along and put it to paper. Just because something was written down first doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the original version. NOTE: I’m not asking anyone to believe that this was the case, but it’s interesting to see things from a different perspective every once in a while.

30

While it is interesting to note the similarities between the Biblical version and the Mesopotamian (Sumerian?) version, it is also interesting to note the differences.

  • The Israelite version includes male and female alike. Max says this is “as a means to subjugate women.” I disagree profoundly. The role of woman as primary cause of sin is thanks to the Christian interpretation, many many centuries later. The Hebrew Bible assigns men and women equal but different roles – the woman being predominate at home, the man in the market place. That’s a long topic, too long to go here, but the plain reading of the Bible text in question shows Adam and Eve as equally culpable (Adam tries to foist the blame off on Eve, but that attitude is soundly rejected by the text. The moral prinicple is thus established that you are equally guilty for being the instigator or the participant.) The Israelite version of the text makes male and female EQUAL partners; it is the Mesopotamian version in which females are so subjugated that the female doesn’t even play a role in the story.

  • The Mesopotamina notion that there were other people who were “not worthy” and who remained naked. The Israelite version posits that all humankind are equal, all brothers/sisters, descended from the same first family; there is no distinction based on “social importance.” In fact, the Hebrew Bible consistently overturns the classic notion of social importance – the important people in the Hebrew Bible are the slaves, not the overlords; the shepherds, not the kings; the youngest child, not the firstborn.

  • The nakedness is also an interesting contrast. Adam and Eve first hide behind leaves, but then God makes clothes for them from animal skins. Yes, God punishes sin, but God also clothes the naked and feeds the hungry. This is a very different deity from the Mesopotamian version, and a very different attitude towards good and evil.

That’s what occurs to me off the top of my head.

{i}Just as a footnote:* The comparisons above are relevant, regardless of whether you think the Israelite version was “borrowed” from the Mesopotamian or was unique. There is way too much criticism nowadays that X was “borrowed” from Y, implying that X is somehow inferior. Shakespeare borrowed almost all of his plots from other sources, and no one would think that his work is inferior. Similarly, even if stories in the Hebrew Bible were borrowed from prior cultures, they were transformed into something far, far greater (far more lasting, too) and far more relevant to morality and ethics.

31

I still say God set them up. I mean, why make Adam and Eve inquisitive, give them free will, toss in a tempting object, and then freak out when the obvious happens?

In my mind, the whole story is roughly analgous to a mother who keeps her beautiful crystal wineglasses on a low, open shelf, and then freaks out because the todder’s found them and smashed them into pretty pieces. The smart parent would have moved the fragile wineglasses to a higher shelf to begin with. Maybe God needed parenting lessons from June Cleaver… :slight_smile:

(Yes, yes, I know, it’s all fictional allegory.)

You don’t read a lot of atheists’ explainations, do you? :slight_smile:

32

rjung:

If they have free will, then the existence of temptation does not make sinning “the obvious.”

Chaim Mattis Keller

33

Yes, that is what you said in your post; I didn’t mean to be redundant. I was just trying to point out that I believe Lemur is jumping the gun a bit by claiming that “[T]he sinfulness is a given. The story explains the sinfulness.” The sinfulness is a given only if you come to the story believing mankind to be inherently sinful. But there’s nothing in the story even referencing “sin” per se, to say nothing of a “sinful nature.”

As for the “mother, child and cookie jar/precious crystal” line of debate, it should be noted that any such hypothetical child has probably already experienced the negative consequences of disobeying his/her mother’s instructions. Indeed, is that not precisely HOW we learn that it is in our best interests to obey? So it’s a bit strange to posit, as jalopeura does, that God’s “whole point was to see whether man, when presented with the oppurtunity, would obey him.”

This isn’t just a kid with a cookie jar; this is a kid who’s never experienced obedience and disobedience before, who doesn’t even know that disobedience is “evil” (The only perceived consequence of eating the fruit being death, which isn’t exactly the same as being punished–think of a mother’s admonition not to stick your finger in an electrical socket as opposed to not to stick your hand in the cookie jar. We’re talking self-preservation versus moral wrongs here). cmkeller rightly points out that “If they have free will, then the existence of temptation does not make sinning ‘the obvious,’” but like many, seems to forget that a free will without knowledge of right and wrong is just an accident waiting to happen. How could it not be?

In other words, this was a child who had no reason to think they were doing anything bad when he/she took the cookies out of the jar (although in this case they were magic cookies that, immediately upon consumption, let the child know that an evil deed had been performed). This is far different from a child who knows eating the cookies is a bad deed but does it anyway hoping not to get caught…

34

I think Max explains the confusing parts of the text. The contradictions can’t be resolved in the text itself, but can be explained by the history of the text.

The story still has some of the older elements in it: God walks in the garden, in many stories it isn’t clear wether God is singular or plural, the Serpent seems to have some independent existance indicating that he started as another god in a polytheistic mythos, etc.

But CK Dexter Haven is also correct about the “evil female” part. There is nothing in the text that states that Eve was more culpable than Adam. Also note that in the first Genesis narrative males and females are explicitly created equal, at the same time. So the second story is a borrowed story, changed to fit the monotheistic Hebrew religion. And then it makes sense, because “God” isn’t omnipotent, omniscient, or omnibenevolent. He is rather more like Zeus and the Serpent is more like Prometheus, simply a powerful being who created humans for whatever reason.

It is only when we graft on “God” to the “gods” of the original story that it becomes contradictory.

35

In my mind, it’s more like a mother who, judging her child to be old enough to make his/her own decisions, allows the child to play in the front yard, telling him/her not to go into the street because it’s dangerous. The only difference is that God was consciously testing his children. Just a different perspective, I guess.

Acutally, my sister has a lot of atheist friends - in fact, she used live with her atheist boyfriend. Whenever I would visit her, they would try to convince me that I was foolish to believe in God. The main argument was always the existence of suffering in the world, both in their conversation and in the literature. I don’t know a lot of atheists myself, so maybe it’s just the ‘proseletyzing’ atheists who feel this way.

36

<< It is only when we graft on “God” to the “gods” of the original story that it becomes contradictory. >>

An interesting perspective. Bear with me:

If a Greek myth or Grimm fairy tale or Aesop fable has “contradictory” elements in it, we think it is flawed story-telling. This is because Greek myths or Aesop’s fables are simple, straight-forward, stories-to-be-told-to-children. We do not expect depth beyond a simple moral (“Don’t say that you are more beautiful than Hera, not out loud” or “Trust Kodak and someday your prints will come.”) (ASIDE: Actually, any such stories that DO have internal contradictions have probably not survived, for exactly that reason.)

When Shakespeare’s characters behave in ways that are seemingly contradictory – like, say, Hamlet – we don’t even call it “contradictory”, we use words like “contrast” and “psychological.” We mumble about masterful characterization, profound depths of meaning, and we discuss it in classes for generations, never reaching definitive finality of interpretation.

So, let’s look at Genesis, and at the Adam/Eve/Serpent story. For those who believe the Genesis stories are simple, straight-forward, stories-for-children, then God’s actions and humanity’s responses are contradictory. This is flawed story-telling. It should be simpler, more direct, more readily understandable. There should be a single very clear moral (“Don’t Disobey.”) If they have no knowledge of good and evil, they can’t be tested against a standard of good/obedience and evil/disobedience. Etc etc.

For those who believe the Genesis stories contain profundity, depth, and enormous levels of meaning in terms of morality/ethics, these contrasting elements are what makes it interesting. We try to reconcile the seeming contradictions, sometimes in straight-forward ways (“good and evil” means everything, like “A to Z” or “soup to nuts”; they already have knowledge of what is “good” and what is “evil.”). Sometimes in very profound ways (“Are we responsible for evil deeds if we didn’t know that the consequences would be evil?” – the story seems to say yes, we SHOULD have known.)

If you want to disbelieve, then the story is inherently improbable (talking snakes?), and God is immoral (He sets Adam and Eve up for a fall), ignorant (Didn’t He know how they would behave?), dim-witted (He didn’t know what they had done), vengeful, nasty, and tempramental.

If you want to believe (at least, to believe that the story has profound depth of meaning, then the story is a parable, a metaphor, that describes the human condition, the nature of obedience/sin, and the nature of God, in profound terms. Example: It’s not that God “set” them up, it’s that God wanted people to have free will, and the best way to do that is to show them, right at the start, that they can disobey, they can disbelieve. God is not as simple a being as the gods of Sumerian myth, or a fairy-tale king: the nature of God (and mankind) is far, far more complex than that, and pretty much incomprehensible to our minds except through parable, poetry, and anthropomorphism.

37

I liked Max the Immortal’s bringing in the Babylonian version of the story, but I want to bring more attention to the Greek version. Prometheus bringing fire to humans, who then suffer the wrath of Zeus, maps pretty nicely onto the Serpent bringing the fruit to humans, who then suffer the wrath of God.

The essential differences are that Prometheus is a hero in the Greek version, and that humans are viewed as capable and worthy. As adults, in a word.

The Judeo-Christian version (as commonly interpreted by today’s Christian sects, anyway) seems dedicated to the proposition that humans are children, to be coddled or punished as necessary, and not to be trusted to make the best choices for themselves.

A prime example, in other words, of the inherent anti-humanism of Judaism and Christianity, especially Catholicism (since this story is the basis for Original Sin).

38

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…

And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden to be His own. And God said, Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness.

And the Lord God formed man and woman of the dust of the ground, and breathed into their nostrils the breath of life; and man and woman became living souls. And He put the man and woman whom he had formed into the Garden to tend it.

And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

And the Lord God commanded the man and woman, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

And the man and woman tended the garden, and there was life in them, but no wisdom; they were as the beasts of the fields; and God saw them, and thought it good.

And the Goddess, Whose name is Sophia, looked on the garden; She saw the man and the woman, and saw that it was not good; and She wept for the man and woman, who were in the form of gods but who were no better than beasts. So She sent her messenger, the serpent, to the garden, to speak with the woman.

Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: for I am of the Lady Sophia, that is to say, Wisdom; for behold, in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.

And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.

And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.

And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

And the Lord God said, Behold, the man and woman are become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest they put forth their hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: therefore the Lord God sent them forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence they were taken.

And in their shame, the man and woman turned their eyes upward, and cursed the name of Sophia, which is to say, Wisdom;

But the Lady said unto them, behold why your God is angry with you;

Being innocent, He controlled you; ye were His slaves, and were as the beasts of the fields; but knowing good and evil, thou art wise, and can no longer be slaves. And he has lost his slaves that tend his garden, and is angry withal.

If ye will, weep that ye suffer, but curse not the name of wisdom; for behold, although ye know evil, and suffer for it, also ye know good.