I want to explore the Garden of Eden story to ask these three questions: 1) Why do we believe ancient stories that in any other context would be immediately recognized as creative or fanciful or even crazy? 2) Is religion afraid of knowledge and education? 3) Did Adam and Eve make the right choice?
First, I want to take this opportunity as a doctor to thank the women of the world. For one thing, in medical school we had women who volunteered to be the first pelvic exam of us medical students. There was more than one pinched cervix that day, believe me! Thank you, volunteers! And in residency I had the opportunity to deliver about a hundred babies. It is nerve-wracking enough to handle the delivery as a doctor; I can’t imagine being the one pushing that baby out! I swear, some of those babies must have had both hands wrapped around the umbilical cord and legs stretched out, trying to stay inside. That’s why we sometimes have to use the medical equivalent of plumbers’ plungers and oversized salad tongs. If men were the ones having babies I do not think humanity would survive. Thank you, mothers of the world! On to Genesis…
In chapter 3 of Genesis we find the story of Pandora and her box. I mean, the story of Eve and her apple. (I know – it never says apple.) I once read a book that claimed that the Bible was different from other ancient religious texts because it does not contain any mythology. Apparently that author never read Genesis 3.
In the second chapter of Genesis it mentioned that along with all of the other trees Yahweh planted two special (magical?) trees: one gave life and the other gave knowledge. The phrase used is “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” and people assume that use of the word “evil” implies coming to know sin. In fact the phrase is an idiom, a merism in which two contrasting concepts are used to define the whole. In other words, it is the knowledge of everything: all that is good, all that is not good – just everything. Later in the story we find out that this does indeed impart to them the kind of knowledge God has (3:22), but presumably God has this knowledge without being sinful, so sin is not necessary to have such complete knowledge. Yahweh specifically tells Adam (this is before Eve): “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die” (Genesis 2:16, 17).
Chapter 3 opens with a serpent (aka snake) talking to Eve. Eve does not appear to be shaken by this, and in fact, people today who take the Bible literally are not shaken by it either. Like it is a normal thing for a snake to talk. Mind you, it says “serpent,” not some other creature that walks and talks. It is the same word used when Moses’s staff turns into a serpent before the burning bush (Exodus 4:3), so we’re clearly talking about a snake-like creature although initially it seems to have legs because it will later be cursed to crawl on its belly. Maybe they were thinking of something like a lizard, which looks like a snake with legs? And it talks.
If a neighbor dropped by and said, “I was out in my garden and a lizard started talking to me” most people would probably think she was joking and wait for a punchline. And if no punchline was forthcoming maybe they would suggest, “You shouldn’t be out gardening in this heat!” If she insisted that there really was a talking lizard you might consider urging her to see her doctor or psychiatrist, because you would recognize that is not something a rational person would think or believe. When a person perceives something that is not real, like a talking lizard, that is called a hallucination. When one continues in a belief that is objectively false or impossible that is called a delusion. Both are indicative of some form of psychosis, a break from reality. We would be rightly concerned if our friend persisted with this story of a talking lizard.
So why is it that people can read this ancient story of a talking serpent and accept without hesitation that it is a factual account, rather than a fable, myth or allegory? In any other context one would recognize this as a fanciful story rather than real history. Or a sign of mental illness, or at least delirium. Suppose a Christian who believes this story was told by a friend that Muhammad rode a flying horse from Mecca to Jerusalem and back in one night, with a stopover in heaven. He would dismiss it without a thought; that is too silly to even consider! But it is perfectly rational for him to believe that a serpent talked to Eve. Oh, really? Isn’t it odd how we allow ourselves to believe irrational things in our religion even though we would immediately recognize them as silly in any other context? In fact, doctors are taught that as long as someone is professing beliefs held by their religion or culture that is not an indication of mental illness. For example, if certain Christians claim that when caught up by the Holy Spirit they can begin speaking in a new language that is not evidence for mental illness. (In such cases you have to look for other clues, like pressured speech, tangential thoughts, paranoia, etc.) Oddly enough, I agree with this: it seems people have this amazing capacity for sectioning off parts of their brains so that they can hold strange views in one part while functioning entirely rationally in other areas. This explains why highly intelligent people can believe things in their religion that they dismiss anywhere else in this world or in other religions. That’s in the religion part of the brain, not the science part. I am not saying there really are separate parts of the brain for these different belief systems (or are there?), just that it seems that way. History is full of people who demonstrated great intelligence while holding to ideas others found very peculiar or even ridiculous. For example, the great scientist Isaac Newton dabbled in alchemy and the occult.
So, why do we believe ancient stories that in any other context would be immediately recognized as creative or fanciful or even crazy? Probably it starts with conditioning, often from childhood on, but even adults can be conditioned to believe wild things. Witness the members of the Heaven’s Gate cult who came to believe that aliens were tagging along with the comet Hale-Bopp, ready to take their souls after they all committed suicide. This seems so crazy to us – and rightly so – but 39 people believed it unto death. The power of an idea and the feeling of belonging can be so strong that it overrides our rationality, sometimes with disastrous results.
Perhaps no one has died from believing that a snake talked to Eve, but it is nonetheless a dangerous principle to accept ancient religious teachings without question. Consider how many people have been killed over the centuries because people believed that their religious tenets were absolutely correct and that other beliefs were absolutely wrong, even with no objective evidence that either side was correct. Sorry, I do not believe that ancient stories passed down two to three millennia ago by people with a rather limited understanding of the world constitute objective evidence. But others do, so we have seen pagan-on-Christian violence, Christian-on-pagan, Christian-on-Christian, Christian-on-Muslim, Muslim-on-Muslim, Hindu-on-Muslim… and every other combination of religious conflict you can think of. And not just in ancient times. Consider in modern times Northern Ireland, war in the Balkans, the Middle East, terrorism like 9-11, and more. We humans value our religious stories more than human life, and that seems rather sad and tragic to me. Frankly, if your religion motivates you to kill other people you need to rethink your religion and your reasons for holding to it.
To condense the story, Eve eats of the forbidden fruit, shares it with Adam, and they suddenly realize they are naked and have to cover themselves. Why this new knowledge causes them to react this way is a bit puzzling. They should know that there are no other humans around to see them, and Yahweh certainly knows their bodies, having formed them both. I suspect this is just the typical prudishness of religion finding its way into this story of two naked people.
Then “in the cool of the evening” Yahweh is walking in the garden and they hide themselves. Yahweh has to call out to find them. Once again we see that down-to-earth Yahweh is different from the Elohim: He is almost humanlike, literally walking in the garden, preferring the coolness of the evening, and having to call out to find them. They explain they were hiding because they are naked, and Yahweh immediately knows where that knowledge came from. The jig is up. Adam has a beautiful excuse: “It was the woman whom You gave me!” In one fell swoop he throws his wife under the bus and blames Yahweh, since He made Eve. That excuse falls on deaf ears. But where should the blame fall?
Here I go supposing again: suppose a parent had some young children and as he went out one day he put a loaded gun on the table and told the kids not to play with the gun. To make matters worse he lets the teen delinquent next door babysit. While he is out the teen encourages the children to play with the gun and one picks up the gun and shoots the other. Who is to blame in this situation? It is true that the child pulled the trigger, but is a young child expected to understand the consequences of shooting a gun? But the parent certainly should. We would also expect the parent to give them better supervision than letting a delinquent into the house. We would rightly put most of the blame on the parent in this situation. Is this really different from the situation in the garden with the forbidden fruit? Why did Yahweh leave a “loaded gun” right in the middle of the garden, knowing that Adam and Eve did not yet have “the knowledge of good and evil?” I know people will try to rationalize that the situation in Genesis 3 is somehow different, but is it really? I think it is just an ancient Hebrew equivalent of Pandora’s box: a clumsy and shallow attempt to explain why there is evil and suffering in the world. And the naïve humans get the blame rather than the poor parenting skills of their creator.
A curious side note about this situation: after this story the rest of the Old Testament, i.e. the Jewish Scriptures, basically ignores Adam and Eve and their sin. Nowhere are they blamed for introducing sin into the world. The Book of Job is a long dissertation on the nature of suffering in the world and yet not once does it mention Adam and Eve’s disobedience as being the root cause. Contrast that with later Christianity. Paul mentions Adam in Romans 5:12-14 and says sin entered the world through him, although he adds that “death spread to all mankind because all sinned.” Again in 1 Corinthians 15:21, 22 Paul credits Adam with introducing death into mankind. It seems that Paul thought Adam brought sin into mankind and therefore all sin and all die, but that idea is never expressed in the Old Testament. In the Pastoral Epistles, which most scholars believe to have been written in Paul’s name by later disciples, it points out that Eve was created second but deceived first and became a sinner, which is why women have to be subservient to men (1st Timothy 2:11-15). This is also a minor point for thinking that this is not Paul writing: Paul puts the responsibility for sin on Adam, whereas this writer puts it on Eve. Today it is common to hear Christian preachers and theologians blame Adam and Eve for sin and for all of mankind’s problems. One of the common answers to the question of undeserved suffering in the world is: it’s Adam and Eve’s fault! Their sin created this fallen world! But you never hear that from the Old Testament Jewish authors. To their credit they seem to hold people accountable for their own sins (as in Ezekiel 18:20), whereas Christians want to pass the blame on to Adam and Eve. We’re kind of like Adam: “Lord, it was those first two humans that You made!”
As part of their punishment Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden, and “at the east of the Garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life” (Genesis 3:24). When most people hear the word “cherubim” that think of chubby little angels flying around like Cupid. Cherubim in ancient times were actually fierce man-animal hybrids often functioning as guardians of the gods; there are ancient engravings depicting such creatures. Read Ezekiel 10: these were fearsome creatures with animal features. Yahweh also places a flaming sword that rotates around, apparently autonomously, for additional protection.
Two magical trees, a talking snake, warrior creatures and a flaming sword. And some people say there is no mythology in the Bible? Please, don’t treat us like idiots.
But here is the worst part of the story (in my view): what is its moral? Its lesson?
Yahweh appears to give Adam and Eve a choice: live forever as my dumb obedient pets in the terrarium I made for you, or have knowledge like I do and take your chances in the world with a finite life span. This attitude continues in religion today. Many conservative theists teach their followers to be suspicious of knowledge and education and science. In some settings you can be ostracized or even killed for daring to question religious teachings. They form their own schools to shield their children from the mind-broadening effects of secular education and to reinforce their myths as reality. I once heard a preacher in an adult Bible class warn us all about a man who recently “studied himself right out of the church!” Really? Can studying the Bible (or Qur’an, etc.) and/or the history of religion lead someone to leave the church? Does studying science cause someone to leave? How can that be? If the church’s teachings represent truth then seeking truth should always lead one into the church, not out of it, right? A prominent female evangelical preacher warned her followers to be on guard because Satan will try to lead their children into various sins including “reasoning.” Televangelist Joyce Meyer wrote an essay called Set Free From Excessive Reasoning which included among other warnings about reason: “I had some major strongholds of wrong thinking that needed to be changed—reasoning being one of the worst.” It is hard for me to understand conservatives who listen to female preachers like her in light of 1st Timothy 2:11-15, the passage where Eve’s sin is used to justify keeping women quiet. I guess they reason away what the passage says! I also don’t understand how using our (supposedly) God-given intellect is a bad thing. But perhaps she reads this story and comes to the conclusion that God did not give us our intellect: it is the result of eating the forbidden fruit and the only good thing is blindly obeying God so that we can live forever. Who needs to exercise their intellect for that? Let’s just be vacuous pets for a god who breeds people to worship Him.
As I write this there is a war going on in Ukraine, and people there are dying for the right to stay independent from Russia. Americans applaud this; we fought our own war to be independent from England. We generally recognize that it is worth sacrificing one’s life for the sake of being free from oppression by others. No one wants to live as a slave. Yet when American Christians read the story of the Garden of Eden they criticize the choice Adam and Eve made. They believe it would be better to live in ignorant submission forever than to have knowledge and with it free choice and accept the consequence of dying. Really? Then shouldn’t the Ukrainians stop fighting and just submit to Russia? Wouldn’t they live longer if they did that? Isn’t a long life in submission better than risking death for independence? I believe most of us would say no. Except when we read Genesis and criticize Adam and Eve for refusing to live as God’s ignorant pets.
We recognize that there are some principles that are more important than life itself. If the lesson of the Garden of Eden is that it is better to live forever as an obedient subject rather than to seek one’s own way, even in the face of death, then I object. I stand with Adam and Eve and believe they chose wisely.
Thinking exercises:
1. Why do you think Yahweh specifically tested Adam and Eve with a tree of “knowledge?” Why not something else like the Tree of Tutti Frutti Ice Cream? Does this story reflect religion’s fear of knowledge and education?
2. Think of an incredible story from another religion or from ancient mythology. Explain how you find it easy to dismiss that story but easy to accept equally incredible stories from your own religion.
3. Why is it wrong for a cult to brainwash its members to believe strange things but not for mainstream religion to do likewise?
4. Does God deserve some of the blame for Adam and Eve’s fall? Would that explain why He became Jesus and punished Himself by dying on the cross?