Let's look at today's Lesson by examining its four characters: the serpent, the woman, the man, and the god. But first, a recap.
William Blake, The Temptation and Fall of Eve, 1808 (illustration of Milton's Paradise Lost) (Wikipedia)
The Story
(See the full text below.)
A serpent convinces a woman that a god had lied when he said she and her husband would die from eating a certain fruit, the one from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The woman eats it, and when she offers it to her husband, he eats it, too. Just like in millions of bad dreams since then, the woman and the man suddenly realize they're naked, and try to cover up with whatever's on hand.
Sure enough, the god shows up and interrogates them about their actions. He asks and pretty much answers his own questions, but nevertheless, the man passes the buck to the woman, and the woman passes it to the snake.
So the god curses the serpent, and tells him everyone will hate him, and he'll have to crawl on his belly (presumably he stood upright until now), and--probably from all of that crawling--will have to eat dirt. Also, his offspring and those of the man and woman will be WEF: Worst Enemies Forever. (I doubt this initialism is going to catch on.) People will step on his descendants, and his descendants will bite the people's heels.
Meanwhile, the woman will have to bear children "in sorrow," and love the man, who will rule over her. As for the man, he will have to work hard for his bread (get it?) and return to the earth he was made of when he dies--a delayed fulfillment of the warning about dying from eating the fruit. The man finally gives a name to "Eve," and the god then becomes the first tailor and initiates the garment business by making clothes for them.
Now the god seems to realize that the man (and presumably the woman) have become like them... er, him... in that they know the difference between Good and Evil. And he also realizes that as long as they live near that other tree, which apparently grants eternal life, they will match him in longevity, too. So out they go, into the wide world, and the god places "Cherubims, and a flaming sword" (note: not Cherubims with a flaming sword) to prevent their re-entry.
Can you spot the error? Expulsion from Paradise by James Tissot (Wikipedia)
Character 1: The Serpent
As with some film credits, let's take the characters in "order of appearance."
The first is the serpent, who is described as "subtle." Some commentators have taken this to mean he was "beautiful." Dr. C. I. Scofield, editor of the study Bible I carried in my twenties, says in a footnote, "The creature which lent itself to Satan [we'll get to that in a minute] may well have been the most beautiful as it was the most 'subtle' of creatures less than man." He goes on to say "Every movement of a serpent is graceful, and many species are beautifully colored."
Yeah, I can see that. But Genesis doesn't say he is beautiful; it says he is "subtle," which means crafty, cunning--sneaky. And when we see the way he speaks--"C'mon, surely you won't die"--we get the picture. And he offers her the one thing she doesn't have in that actual Eden: knowledge.
And then apparently leaves the scene until the god catches up with him.
After the passage above, Dr. Scofield then leaps to the gigantor conclusion that "In the serpent, Satan first appeared as 'an angel of light.'" Hang on a sec, Doc! Where'd you get this? There is nothing--NOTHING--in the Bible that says so.
Those who claim that the Bible does say that serpent=Satan have to squint and cross their eyes a little to see it--and it still doesn't add up. Halley's Bible Handbook combines two verses, 2 Corinthians 11:3 and 14: "But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ" and "And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light." The intervening verses talk about being fooled by false teachers. No linkage. And again, late in Revelation--the absolute last book in the Bible, and thus about as far as you can get from Genesis--we read, in 20:2: "And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years..." Nope. Calling the Devil "that old serpent" doesn't change the story in Genesis as I read it.
This is an egregious case of reading in what one wishes, as when Christians say that Noah's flood was meant to foreshadow baptism. It can certainly be taken as a symbol of "cleansing from sin," as can baptism, but it could hardly be telling us something about a practice that hadn't been invented yet. I'm too rational to believe in anything specifically "Christian" before Christ!
So why does this story feature a serpent? Here are some ideas, one of them original.
It's widely understood that the snake's ability to shed its skin gave people the idea that, barring mayhem, it was essentially immortal. Wikipedia puts it nicely: "As snakes shed their skin through sloughing, they are symbols of rebirth, transformation, immortality, and healing."
The Brazen Serpent by James Tissot (Wikipedia)
Now, to many cultures, this is a good thing. One thinks of Native Americans, and (East) Indian religions. But to people who believe that one must depend on God for everything, such self-sufficiency is suspect, to say the least. (On the contrary, however, Jesus compared a copper [or brass] serpent "lifted up" by Moses to his own "lifting up" on the cross--go figure.)
Another angle: the Canaanites, those people displaced by the Hebrews when they returned from Egypt, had snake cults. It's not uncommon for an object worshiped by conquered peoples to be seen as "evil" by the conquerors. Joseph Campbell put it something like this: the god of the old religion becomes the devil of the new. (The Bible nowhere ascribed horns, hoofs, or a pitchfork to Satan; the first two are attributes of Cernunnos, the "Horned God" of the Celts, and the trident, of course, belongs to Poseidon/Neptune.)
Here's something that Wikipedia would label "original research" (meaning I made it up, and it's not to be trusted): I picture the tribe sitting around a campfire and someone saying, "Hey, I noticed that the skeleton of a dead snake has these tiny vestigial legs. What's up with that?" And an elder saying, "Let me tell you a story. Ya see, snakes used to walk around, as upright as you and me..."
Okay, one more story. Like the Canaanites, many other Middle Eastern cultures also had snake myths. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, by far the world's oldest-known long work of literature, the hero, Gilgamesh, obtains a plant (like the Tree of Life? See below) that grants immortality. On his way home, he stops to take a bath and, while he's splashing away, a snake steals the plant--leaving Gilgamesh and his people to live out their days as mortals. Plant, snake, death--sounds familiar!
Character 2: Eve
The Woman, the Man, and the Serpent by Byam Shaw (Wikipedia)
Let's face it: Women have taken a lot of sh*t in this culture, and not a little of it has been based on the idea that they brought sin into the world. And I'm not just talking about Pandora.
St. Augustine, for instance, an early Christian influencer, spent time writing about "original sin." (This phrase always reminds me of musical satirist Tom Lehrer's delightfully irreverent "Vatican Rag," in which he sings: "Get in line in that processional, Step into that small confessional. There the guy who's got religion'll Tell you if your sin's original..." Anyway...)
Original sin is the idea that all human beings are born sinful because of what Adam did, and he only did what he did because Eve suggested it. And she, of course, said, "The devil made me do it!" I mean, the serpent...
Bummer! I can't be "good without God" because 6,000 years ago (heh heh) some woman fell for a line from a snake?! Unfair!
And even unfairer when we throw in the old question of free will versus predestination. The argument is simple: If God is omniscient, as "they" claim, then he must know what we're going to do. If he's omniscient, as "they" also claim, he could stop us. But he doesn't. So are we really choosing freely, or are we doing what he foreordained?
Specifically, did Adam and Eve really have a choice?
I'm not going to try to settle this one. But I will tell you something I read once (I think in St. Augustine): Eve was deceived by a pro, the serpent, who was "more subtle" than any other beast--he "beguiled" her. Who could blame her? But Adam? He was deceived by his wife--peer pressure, as it were! All she did was give it to him! So who's really to blame here?
Now, what, exactly, lay behind Eve (and Adam's) disobedience? Many have read into the story something sexual--I think they got distracted by all that nakedness. Instead, it seems that what the serpent was appealing to was Eve's pride. (This is NOT original research.) If she ate the fruit, she would "be like God," and who could pass that up?
Adam's motive is less clear; it seems like he just fell for "Here, honey, try this." Men. Sheesh.
Character 3: Adam
Adam and Eve depicted in a mural in Abreha wa Atsbeha Church, Ethiopia (Wikipedia)
The man has a surprisingly small part in this story. He enters the scene somewhat late; eats what his wife offers him; hides from the god, and admits he was "afraid, because [he] was naked"; gets cursed to become a farmer (a fate worse than death?); and is evicted for his actions. Almost everything he does is passive
And, oh yeah: he gives the woman a name, like he did for the animals in the last Lesson. See the Footnote to 3:20 below.
Character 4: God
Have you noticed? As indicated by the length of my sections above, it seems the serpent and Eve are the most interesting characters in the story: even the god doesn't carry much of the action, coming in as he does after the crucial moment.
I hope the True Believers will forgive me, but there are so many things in this story that smack of "the primitive." Not just a talking animal (which happens only one other place in the Bible), but the idea that the god has a stroll in the garden, and chit-chats with Adam, and so on.
The god chit-chats with the man and the woman in this detail from Jacob de Backer's The Garden of Eden (Wikipedia)
And those questions! "Where are you?" Really? Like he doesn't know? This has been explained away as a rhetorical question, but it still smacks of chicanery. What if Adam hadn't answered? And then he asks, "Who told you that you were naked?" and "Have you eaten of the tree...?" Again, where's the omniscience? Is he just baiting the poor guy?
And then: BOOM! He gets all judge-y, and throws the book at the couple. Was anyone ever more severely punished for nabbing a piece of fruit? For the woman, sorrow and subjection; for the man, sweat, toil, thorns and thistles (the whole earth is cursed. Sheesh!), and death (for both of them).
But here's a fur coat as a consolation prize! ("To Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.")
Then it suddenly dawns on him: If they get to the Tree of Life, they really will be like us! Uh, me! Knowledgeable and immortal! So he evicts them from the garden, and sets up Cherubim (which sound fiercesome until you realize it's just the plural of "cherub"), and what appears to be a self-wielding "flaming sword, which turned every way." Da-a-a-ng! Now that's fiercesome!
More Motifs
I want to make some folklorical comments on a few more things.
The world tree Yggdrasil. (Wikipedia)
One is the idea of a "Tree of Life." It's found not only in other Middle Eastern cultures, but in Buddhism (the Bodhi tree); the Norse religion's Yggdrasil ("the world tree"); the four world trees of the Mesoamericans; and even in Christianity: Pope Benedict XVI said "the Cross is the true tree of life." This is a naive version of the axis mundi, a "world navel" around which everything revolves, and which connects heaven and earth.
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Another motif is the one about the "One Forbidden Thing." This is a universal idea: there's one place the hero mustn't go, or a forbidden word that must not be spoken. Don't open that box (or jar), Pandora; don't open Bluebeard's door!
And naturally, in every such story, the hero must violate the prohibition, or there's no story at all! If Adam and Eve hadn't eaten the fruit, where would we be? Like the snake sloughing off its skin, we experience the cycle of death and rebirth only because of their action.
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And that brings me to yet another motif: what is the serpent's motivation in all this? What's in it for him? What does he care if they eat or don't? (The arguments for snake-as-Satan derives from this question, as "Satan" means "adversary"--he is God and mankind's eternal enemy, and he's just playing out his role.)
A quick look at the idea of the Trickster character in myth and folklore helps clear this up. It's the Trickster's job to upset the order of things, and to create chaos (which often leads to a new order). Tricksters are almost always extremely intelligent--even subtle, you might say--and either do the One Forbidden Thing themselves, or trick others into doing it.
There is no good story without a bad guy. Imagine Genesis--or the whole Bible, or the world itself, for that matter--without the serpent:
And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
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, 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 did not eat of it, neither did the woman.
The End.
Theologians speak of the felix culpa, the "happy fault" or "Fortunate Fall." Without it, they say, there could have been no redemption in Christ.
Maybe. But for me, it means no Us. And no chance for us to participate in art, music, literature, travel, cheesy TV shows, or Facebook. Nothing.
O Fortunate Fall!
Two Readings
Let's wrap this up with two ways of reading this story, one psychological, the other sociological.
Many cultures have determined that at a certain age--usually around puberty--their young people reach a point at which they are capable of being responsible for their actions. Moral and legal definitions may not match. In the United States, the minimum age of criminal responsibility for federal crimes is 11; while states vary, the lowest age of criminal responsibility for non-federal crimes is 6 (North Carolina) and the oldest 12 (Massachusetts). Note that this is indicative of moral responsibility, not the legal responsibility that comes at 18. A child above the age of criminal responsibility but below that of legal responsibility will usually go through the juvenile justice system, though in some cases a court may determine that they will be "tried as an adult."
The essence of the question is, at what age do children know that their actions are wrong? In other words, when do they develop a "Knowledge of Good and Evil"?
The story of The Fall gives us a psychological handle on this process. The primordial couple, like children everywhere, were innocent until they gained that knowledge. Suddenly, they knew they were naked, and they felt guilt (hiding from the god). We, too, went through this process. Jung speaks of "individuation," the process of becoming a full-fledged person, freestanding, self-directed, no longer an appendage of the family. This is like that.
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A second reading is more simply told. It has to do with what have been called the "three great social revolutions," in which modern societies seem to have gone from being hunter/gatherers to practicing agriculture (that's one revolution), then to industry (two), and now to a post-industrial or service-based economy (three).
Adam and Eve were clearly gatherers (if not hunters), and after The Fall they were just as clearly agriculturalists--as far as society had evolved when these texts were written. So this is the story of the One Great Revolution that had happened to date.
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And with that, let's move to the Text and the Footnotes, in four sections.
The Text: The Crime
3:1 Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, "Yea, has God said, 'You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?'"
3:2 And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:
3:3 "But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, or you will die.'"
3:4 And the serpent said to the woman, "You shall not surely die:
3:5 "For God knows that in the day you eat of it, then your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as God, knowing good and evil."
3:6 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 its fruit, and ate, and gave it also to her husband with her; and he ate.
3:7 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.
3:1 subtle: See above, under Character 1: The Serpent
3:2 And the woman said…: Eve's statement here and in 3:3 shows that she clearly knew the rules, and the consequences.
3:3 fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden: It's not an apple, and never was. The identification may be due to a pun in Latin, where malum can mean both "evil" and "apple."
3:4 "You shall not surely die..." The serpent lies, and follows it up with a tempting truth (with a lie mixed in): that they would have knowledge (true) and be like God (only sorta--they'll be mortal).
3:6 pleasant to the eyes...: If God didn't want us to sin, why did he make it so darned attractive?
3:7 fig leaves: Oddly, the fig is the first real tree to be mentioned in the Bible. "Fig leaf" has become proverbial for trying to cover something up.
The Text: The Trial
3:8 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.
3:9 And the LORD God called to Adam, and said to him, "Where are you?"
3:10 And he said, "I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself."
3:11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree, of which I commanded you that you should not eat?"
3:12 And the man said, "The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me [the fruit] of the tree, and I ate."
3:13 And the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this that you have done?" And the woman said, "The serpent beguiled me, and I ate."
Most of the verses here are covered while discussing the "Characters" above.
The Text: The Sentencing
3:14 And the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, you are cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon your belly shall you go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life:
3:15 "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; it shall bruise your head, and you shalt bruise his heel."
3:16 To the woman he said, "I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in sorrow you shall bring forth children; and your desire shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you."
3:17 And to Adam he said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten [the fruit] of the tree, of which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat of it': cursed is the ground for your sake; in sorrow shall you eat of it all the days of your life;
3:18 "Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to you; and you shall eat the herb of the field;
3:19 "By the sweat of your face shalt you eat bread, till you return to the ground; for out of it were you taken: for dust you are, and to dust shall you return."
3:20 And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.
3:21 To Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.
3:14 And the LORD God said: In the last Lesson, at 2:16-17, I mentioned the Edenic Covenant, which included being fruitful--and not touching that fruit! Here we have the Adamic Covenant, which sets the conditions for a post-Edenic world (and seriously messes up the lives of two people and a snake--and their offspring!).
3:15 your seed and her seed: True Believers see in this a foreshadowing of the eventual triumph of Christ over Satan--once again throwing a Christian interpretation on a pre-Christian thing.
3:16 in sorrow you shall bring forth children: I'm not sure if the residents of Eden had the power to procreate before The Fall; would she have been bringing forth children without sorrow? We'll never know, but it's an interesting question.
3:19 you return to the ground: So here's the death that the god promised in retaliation for disobedience--delayed, but not canceled (unless you believe all that Eternal Life stuff).
3:20 Eve; because she was the mother of all living: Folk etymology says the name, "Eve," means "Life Giver," after she's been told that she will bear children. The situation with the earliest names is complex; some of them seem to have been adapted from other languages, and the Jewish scribes, not knowing the original meanings, made up meanings based on similar words. For example, the name of Eve is chavah (pronounce the ch as in German ach); the verb "to live" is chayah (conjugated here as chay). So what we get is "Adam called his wife's name Chavah; because she was the mother of all chaya." Close enough?
The Text: The Punishment
3:22 And the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us, [able] to know good and evil: and now, [in case] he puts out his hand, and also takes fruit from the tree of life, and eats it, and lives for ever..."
3:23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground out of which he was taken.
3:24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way of the tree of life.
3:22 the man has become like one of us: For the god using plural pronouns, see Lesson 1, especially the Footnote to 1:1.
3:22 the tree of life: See under "More Motifs" above
3:23 Therefore the LORD God...: Also in the Footnote to 2:16-17 I mentioned progressive dispensations. Genesis 1 presented the "Dispensation of Innocence"; here we have the second one, the "Dispensation of Conscience," in which humans are to be guided by--you guessed it--conscience. This ends after Noah's flood (after we had screwed up again) when the "Dispensation of Human Government" begins.
3:24 Cherubims: These are the most common kind of angel which, following the Biblical Book of Ezekiel, are often depicted with two pairs of wings, and four faces: a lion, an ox (though the King James Version has "a cherub"), a human, and an eagle. The three-animals-plus-human were later adapted to fit the four gospels. Although this shifts between early Christian theologians, the common version is that of "Saint" Jerome:
Matthew is the man (it starts with Jesus' human descent);
Mark is the lion (roaring in the desert with prophetic power)
Luke is the ox (associated with temple sacrifice); and
John is the eagle (it gives a soaring interpretation of the life of Jesus).
Gospel window representing John as an eagle, Ascension Church, Sierra Madre, CA (author photo)
3:24: Cherubims, and a flaming sword: Incidentally, you will often hear this line misquoted, "an angel with a flaming sword." Nuh-uh; the two appear to be separate, redundant security measures.
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Had enough? Come back next time for a juicy murder mystery! (Well, maybe not that much of a mystery, but it was the first murder!)
The next lesson: Genesis 4: Cain Slays Abel
'Til soon!