Genesis and all that baggage...

It's impossible to read anything without having your interpretation of it affected by your own biases, prejudices, and life experiences. Oftentimes, our personal spin is pretty trivial. Sometimes we change the meaning completely. 

But sometimes we miss the point entirely.

And I don't know of anything that gives a better example of that than the story of Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis. One of the biggest problems is the insistence on taking the story literally. This can, ironically enough, come from both the fundamentalist and skeptical points of view. In the case of the fundamentalists, that relies on completely ignoring any contradictions and what we have learned about the natural world over the past few thousand years. In the case of the skeptics, that view relies on the notion that the author(s) must have been of low intelligence and unable to see any of the contradictions within the text or with the natural world.

Setting all of that aside, we have the problem of the Christian tradition and dogma, which affects the understanding of both believers and nonbelievers alike. And whether they take the story literally or not, they seem to leave out some pretty important details when it comes to considering what the story means.

Generally speaking, the Christian tradition holds it that the significance of the story is man's disobedience, as Adam and Eve took from the one tree that was forbidden from them (after some prompting from a serpent). This sets us up as a species with original sin and the need for redemption, which comes in the form of Jesus Christ. In other words, the story sets up the rest of The Bible.

Here are just a few problems with that:

1. The Bible is not *a* book. It's a collection of books from various authors. Some of the books have multiple authors as well (like Genesis, where the Adam and Eve story can be found). Not only that, but some of the books are separated by centuries. 

2. The story stood on its own for centuries before there was any kind of interpretation about how it was all setting up the arrival of Jesus. The Jewish tradition still doesn't view it that way, for obvious reasons. 

3. The text doesn't say that the serpent was Satan/the devil. It's a serpent, and a serpent gets punished. When God tells him that he'll have to crawl on his belly, he doesn't say, "Oh, Satan, you old rapscallion you! Disguising yourself as one of my creations! Why, I oughtta..." (And I'm pretty sure that Jewish tradition does not associate the serpent with their concept of Satan - which is a very different concept than what Christians have.) I know that there are references in the New Testament that connects the serpent to Satan, but again, that didn't come around for several centuries later.

4. It's not just a forbidden tree. It's the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. That's a pretty important detail.

5. There is another significant tree - the Tree of Life. This always gets left out, and in my mind, it's a pretty big deal to just ignore.

So, what exactly is going on here with the Adam and Eve story? I'm not going to be so foolish as to say that I have THE interpretation. Just like pretty much every story, there's a lot going on here, and it's easy to be reductive. What I have here is A thing that is happening in the story, which I think gets overlooked by those who want to take it literally and/or retcon it into Christian theology.

The story of Adam and Eve explains why human beings are different from the animals but still lower than God. Here's my case for this interpretation:

1. The first thing that Adam and Eve notice once they take from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is that they're naked, so they cover up. (I love it when God asks them, "Who told you that you were naked?" This sounds funny out of context, but it also shows that the God of Genesis isn't the omnipresent, omniscient being that people describe today. What, he doesn't know what just happened? Was he taking a nap?) 

So, they get some knowledge and suddenly realize that their bits are just flinging in the breeze. Do you know what goes around naked all the time and doesn't notice a problem with it? Animals. In other words, Adam and Eve were just a slight step above all of the other animals until they took that fruit. Then they realized what shameless exhibitionists they had been this whole time.

2. The serpent represents death, among other things. This is the thing with this story. If the two contradictory orders of creation don't signal "THIS IS NOT MEANT TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY" then a talking snake is slapping you across the face for your ridiculous insistence on textual literalism. 

Generally speaking, people don't like snakes. Our prehistoric ancestors learned not to get too close to them, because by the time you figured out whether it was harmless or not, you'd get bitten and be on the road to death. This is why they are such a common symbol in mythology, often representing death and destruction.

It's probably not a coincidence that in The Epic of Gilgamesh, the thing that robs Gilgamesh of the plant that would give him eternal life is a serpent. (It's not a coincidence because that story obviously shares a common ancestor with the narrative found in Genesis.)

3. What is God's big concern that makes him toss those two leaf-wearing doofuses out of the Garden? "Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever..."

Let's set aside the "us" (Who is he talking to?) for today and realize that man has become like God (or the gods even) in the sense that he has knowledge that he did not have before and which the animals do not. But God doesn't want them joining some kind of Hebrew pantheon (maybe Zeus with all of his travails advised him about this) so he kicks them outta town before they can get from the Tree of Life.

That's right. Fruit of Knowledge + The Fruit of Life = godhood.

We've got one of them, which puts us in a different category from the animals. We didn't get the other, which makes us lesser than deities.

I always say that myths are true stories of things that didn't happen. One of the profound things going on with this story is humanity's struggle to make sense of their place in this world. They had their gods in the sky that had human personalities but were somehow not subject to the same problems that we are. There were the animals who are alike us in so many ways, yet there is so much that sets us apart. This story is the way that some ancient people made sense of that.