Analyzing the Garden of Eden

Recently, my spouse and I were discussing the Garden of Eden story, and we made a few interesting observations that I think are work sharing.

In Genesis 2:16-17, Yahweh speaks to Adam for the very first time, saying: “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” Different translations say "in the day that you eat of it" instead of "when you eat from it" but all of them give a sense that death is the immediate consequence of eating from the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil". Then in Genesis 3:2-5 the snake (whom many Christians take to be Satan) tells Eve that she will not die, and will gain knowledge of good and evil. As a result Adam and Eve both eat the fruit.

Interestingly enough, in Genesis 3:16-24 the punishment for eating from the tree is:

1. No more legs for snakes, and people and snakes will never get along. (This is a very curious punishment to say the least. For starters we have to explain how and why people like Steve Irwin, who are/were enamored with snakes, are somehow exempted from this mandate of heaven. Similarly, if it was actually Satan impersonating - or even possessing - a snake, then why did Yhwh punish all of the real snakes instead of punishing Satan? On the other hand, if it really was just an ordinary snake (like Genesis 3:1 says) then how was it speaking? Even if the snake could talk, how did it know what would happen if Adam and Eve at the fruit?)
2. Childbirth is extremely painful for women, and women are to be ruled by men (one of the many times that women are essentially reduced to the role of property by Yahweh.)
3. It will be substantially more difficult for men to grow crops (easily the most mild punishment that was assigned, since technology has since essentially nullified Yhwh's curse).
4. Everyone is kicked out of the Garden of Eden.

Curiously absent from this list of punishments, is "death". Yhwh threatened humanity with death as punishment for eating from this tree, and yet when Adam and Eve actually did eat the fruit from the tree, he didn't sentence them to death. On the other hand, the snake told Eve that they would not die, and that their eyes would be opened and they would know the difference between good and evil, and verse 22 tells us that that was indeed what happened.

This puts Yahweh's followers in a very strange place. According to their own holy text, the very first time that Yahweh ever spoke to humanity, he lied to us; and conversely the first time that the snake/Satan spoke to humanity, he told us the truth. This is a very strange position that Christians must find themselves in, to believe in an all-good deity who chose to use his first words to humanity to lie to us, and in a wicked, deceitful tempter who, from the very start, told us the truth.

As a result many Christians like to argue that "death" means "humankind got its immortality revoked" and cite the "dust to dust" passage in verse 19 to justify their claim. There are a few problems with this explanation though. First of all, Yahweh never said that people would have lived forever. He states that men will toil to farm the land until they return to the ground, but it is not at all clear that "returning to the ground" is a part of the punishment. Next, Yahweh only tells Adam that he will return to the ground. So if this "death" is the revocation of immortality, then why do women die? After all, only snakes lose their legs, only women have painful childbirth (at least in the Biblical conception of gender), so shouldn't only men return to the ground? The fact that women die disproves the idea that "death" means "revocation of immortality".  Lastly even if we accept the idea of "revoked immortality" this "death sentence" seems disingenuous at best. In fact, it is very difficult to escape the conclusion that humanity called Yahweh's bluff. When Yahweh made his threat, he said "If you eat the fruit you will die", but as Genesis 5:3-5 tells us, when humanity actually ate the fruit, Yahweh apparently backpedaled and decided that they would die… 800+ years later. That strikes me as being little more than Yahweh paying lip service to his own threat.

The other way that Christians typically try to get around the problem is to say that the "death" was a "spiritual" death or even a metaphorical death such as "being dead in sin". The problem of course is that this is not even implied anywhere in the Old Testament. Yahweh pretty explicitly says "you will die". Nowhere is it even implied that this is some kind of spiritual or metaphorical death. The idea of a spiritual death doesn't show up until the writings of Paul, when Paul is trying to explain the gospel of Jesus in several of his letters. Paul, in this instance is actually susceptible to the same criticism that could be offered to any other Christian: Nowhere in the Old Testament does Yahweh even hint at the idea of a spiritual death. The Old Testament is all that would've been available to Paul (or whomever was writing under Paul's name) at the time that he was writing these letters.

In short: There is not any scriptural support for the idea that Yahweh meant to say "spiritual death". On the contrary, it would be devastating to Christian theology if Yahweh had meant "physical death", so Christian apologists tried to "correct" their deity by trying to make him mean something other than what he clearly said.

In addition to the idea that Yawheh is the liar in the story, and the serpent saved humanity from Yahweh's deception, consider the following:

As Mark Twain's observed, the tree in the center of the garden was "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil". If Adam and Eve had no knowledge of good and evil prior to eating from the tree, then they would have no ability to discern between good and evil. As such, they could not have possibly known that disobeying Yahweh was evil. (Conversely, if they knew that disobeying Yhwh was evil, then they must have had knowledge of good and evil, and therefore forbidding them to eat from the tree would have been pointless.) So it was hardly fair for Yahweh to punish humanity for disobeying, after having denied humanity the ability to know that it was wrong. But from there it gets even more interesting:

What is the first thing that happened after Adam and Eve ate the fruit? They noticed that they were naked, and made coverings for themselves. Given the fairly standard Judeo-Christian belief that immodesty is wicked and shameful, this passage can be taken to mean "they realized that they were doing something evil, and immediately set about correcting it". This is interesting for a couple of reasons:

1) It flies in the face of the Christian notion that humans are inherently evil. It instead portrays humans as inherently good creatures who will cease doing evil as soon as they are made aware that a thing is evil.

2) It tells us that humans were doing evil things in the Garden of Eden well before they ever ate the fruit, it's just that they did not know that what they were doing was evil.

This latter point is made all the more interesting when we notice Yahweh's reaction to learning that the humans had noticed that they were naked and had covered themselves. One might think that a morally good deity, upon noticing that his favored creatures had learned that they were doing something wrong, and had immediately fixed it, would be congratulatory. One might think that Yahweh's reaction would be to pat Adam and Eve on the backs and say "well done, I am proud of you." But this is not the case at all. Instead, Yahweh's first reaction is to ask “Who told you that you were naked?" and to become upset that the humans learned that they were doing something wrong.

This bears a striking resemblance to a man who has been cheating on his wife, and - upon being confronted by his wife - demands to know "who told you?" As though someone else has committed the "real" wrongdoing by telling his wife about his cheating. It portrays Yahweh as someone who has been caught in his own deception and is seeing to paint the person who brought the deception to light as being the "true" villain.

Considering the whole story of Genesis 2-3, this story paints a picture of Yahweh as a deity who created humanity with the intention that they should do evil, and not know it. And whose first law was intended to prevent them from learning of his deception. It portrays him as being livid, not at humanity's first evil act, but at their discovery that they had been doing evil and their decision to immediately cease - humanity's first truly good act.

Taken in context, this story makes it quite difficult to make it through the first few pages of the Bible without realizing that Yahweh is the villain.