Reflections on the Garden of Eden

I have had a long-time interest in mythology, and one of my many personal favorites is the Garden of Eden myth. There's just so much going on in those couple of pages that lends itself to a deep dive into the lore. Folks who've followed our Facebook page for a while may have noticed that I've made several rather lengthy posts about it over the past few years one of which was even converted to a blog post about 2 years ago. Well, today I've decided that there should be a proper home for my research into the story, complete with links to sources cited.

Before we dive in, I want to acknowledge up front that I will largely be discussing the Garden of Eden story as it exists in Christian mythology. Bearing that in mind, I think it is important to note that this is originally a Jewish myth and so I will also be referencing some rabbinic literature, as I think that details about how the myth was understood by its original culture can be enlightening. However, my writings should not be taken as a complete and unabridged compendium of rabbinic thought on the Garden of Eden myth, as that is quite beyond the scope of this post, and my abilities as an author. 

In order to avoid restating the entirety of the story verbatim, I will summarize Genesis 2:4-3:24, pausing throughout to provide commentary on specific verses of phrases. Afterwards, I'll have additional commentary to offer on the story as a whole.

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In Gen 2:4-14, Yahweh creates the first man from dust, and breathes life in through his nostrils. Yahweh goes on to create the Garden of Eden, and places two trees in the middle of the garden: The Tree of Life, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

I should note that there is some amount of debate surrounding what exactly "the Knowledge of Good and Evil" means in this context.

The author of the Wikipedia article on the Garden of Eden story states that it is a "merism", a rhetorical device (or figure of speech) in which a combination of two contrasting parts refer to the whole. (For instance, we might say "I looked high and low" to mean "I looked everywhere".) In this case, "the Knowledge of Good and Evil" can be taken to mean "the Knowledge of Everything". I take issue with this however, as it would imply that eating the fruit should've imparted omniscience, when it clearly did not.

It has also been argued that "the Knowledge of Good and Evil" meant "sexual desire" noting that Adam and Eve did not craft coverings for their genitalia until after eating the fruit, and that they did not have any children until after leaving the Garden. However, Rabbi Moses ben Nachman argues against this, noting that the Serpent states "And ye shall be as ‘Elohim,’ knowing good and evil", and noting that Yahweh confirms this stating: "Behold man has become like one of us knowing good and evil". Nachman notes that, if "Good and Evil" is a euphemism for sexual desire, this would mean that Yahweh has sexual desire, which certainly cannot be correct.

Instead, Nachman argues that "the Knowledge of Good and Evil" means "desire" more generally, claiming that - prior to eating the fruit - Adam and Eve had no self-interests or desires, and existed solely to serve Yahweh. The problem that I see with this interpretation is that Adam and Eve were successfully tempted to eat the fruit. If they had no self-interest, and no desires, what could one ever possibly offer them to convince them to do what they had been told not to do? Temptation, by its nature, involves offering a party something that they want. If they have no wants, then temptation should not be possible.

All things considered, I find the common interpretation of "the Knowledge of Good and Evil" as meaning what it appears to mean at face value (that Adam and Eve were granted knowledge of what good is and what evil is, and were generally imparted with the knowledge of morality) to be the most compelling. Moving forward, all further mentions of "the Knowledge of Good and Evil" will be using this interpretation.

Returning now to the summarization: In Gen 2:15-17, Yahweh places Adam in the garden, and advises him in verses 16 and 17 “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Yahweh decides in Gen 2:18 that it is not good for Adam to be alone, and decides to make him a "helper", before spending verses 19-24 making the entirety of the animal kingdom, deciding none of them were correct, and eventually making Eve from Adam's rib.

This passage is uniquely awkward for Christians and especially Christian women. Firstly, it states that Yahweh tried and failed tens of thousands (if not millions) of times to create a suitable helper for Adam before finally getting it right, thus dealing a fairly devastating blow to claims of Yahweh's omniscience. Secondly, the world "helper" in this passage paints a fairly ugly picture of the purpose of women. This passage indicates that Adam (or men) was what Yahweh set out to create, that the entirety of the animal kingdom was created as a part of Yahweh's efforts to create an assistant that could have "being an assistant to men" as the focal point of their existence, and then he created women when it didn't work out with the animals. The creation of women was literally the last thing on Yahweh's mind, and he presumably wouldn't have created women if even one of his thousands of other attempts had worked out.

While some Christians try to get around this by claiming that "helper" doesn't mean "a servant" or "an inferior" but would be better understood as having connotations of mutual aid and helping one another (and that's why the animals weren't good enough). However, according to Strong's Bible Concordance, the word translated as "helper" is ʻêzer, which translates back to "helper" in the common meaning of the word. The additional connotations of mutual aid isn't a part of the word itself. The more egalitarian interpretation is further undercut by the Tenth Commandment, in which Yahweh commands that one should not covet his neighbor's house, wife, servant, ox, donkey, or anything else that belongs to one's neighbor (in that order). This commandment firmly places "wife" in the category of "property owned by a man", on the same level as a building, or livestock. It should also be noted that Strong's Bible Concordance is quite clear that the term "wife" in this context refers explicitly to women. It would not be accurate to translate it by using a gender neutral term such as "spouse".

There remains, of course, one passage that I have not yet addressed. This passage is a staple of Christian thought in some circles and, seems to refute everything that I have said about the Bible's position on women:

“The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.”

Surely this is a wonderfully egalitarian passage that makes the story of the creation of women seem absolutely heartwarming! Unfortunately, you will search for it in vain in the Bible. The passage in question has its origins in "Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible", which was written by British minister Matthew Henry in 1706 CE. While Henry's beliefs regarding women are comparatively admirable (especially given that the U.K. would not give women the right to vote for another 222 years), actual Biblical support for his position is sorely lacking.

Returning once more to the summarization: Gen 2:25 tells us  that Adam and Eve were both naked and "felt no shame". (I will have more to say on this point later.)

Now that the stage has been set for the story, Gen Chapter 3 gives us the actual plot:

In verse 1 the Serpent approaches Eve asking if it's true that Yahweh said that they could not eat the fruit of any tree in the garden.

Eve corrects the serpent, saying that the fruit of most of the trees is fair game, it's just Yahweh has forbidden them from eating or touching the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, or else they will die.

To make just a small digression, I think it interesting to note that the Talmudic-era text, the Bereishit Rabbah here accuses Eve of lying, as Yahweh did not forbid them from touching the fruit, and Proverbs 30:6 forbids adding to Yahweh's words.

The Bereishit Rabbah goes on to claim that the Serpent noticed Eve's exaggeration, and pushed her into the tree, to prove that she wouldn't die from touching the fruit (thus suggesting that perhaps she would not die from eating ot either). However, the Bible makes no mention of Eve being shoved into a tree, and instead continues on in Gen 3:4-5 in which the serpent replies to Eve that she will not die, instead insisting that "God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.”

In verses 3:6-8, Eve ate the fruit, and also gave some to Adam, the knowledge of good and evil was imparted to them. They realized that they were naked and were suddenly ashamed of their nakedness, so they made clothes from leaves and then hid from Yahweh in the trees.

Shortly thereafter, Yahweh is walking through the Garden, and calls out to Adam, leading to the confrontation in the story, described in Gen 3:9-13:

9 Then the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

10 He replied, “I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.”

11 “Who told you that you were naked?” the Lord God asked. “Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?”

12 The man replied, “It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it.”

13 Then the Lord God asked the woman, “What have you done?”

“The serpent deceived me,” she replied. “That’s why I ate it.”

Gen 3:9 is a fairly popular "gotcha" verse for many atheists, as they interpret Yawheh asking "where are you?" to mean that Yahweh - far from being all-knowing - was unable to find two humans in a garden he made for them. I've heard many Christians counter that Yahweh surely knew where they were, but was simply giving them an opportunity to come clean. I think that this is somewhat questionable, given that there's no indication that "coming clean" impacted their punishment. However, insofar as I think that the "opportunity to come clean" explanation is plausible, Gen 3:9 isn't really the slam dunk that many atheists seem to think it is. 

We now move into the closing verses of the story. In verses 14-19, Yahweh condemns the serpent to lose its legs, and causes humans and snakes to not like each other, condemns women to have painful childbirth and to be ruled over by their husbands (another verse that is quite devastating for Matthew Henry's case), and for men to have to work the fields to grow food to eat.

Finally, in Gen 3:20-24, Adam finally gives Eve a name, Yahweh makes clothes for Adam and Eve out of animal skins, reflects to himself “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever” and casts them out of the Garden of Eden.

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Now that we've recapped the story, I'd like to offer some additional commentary on the story as a whole:

The Serpent Told The Truth

Genesis 3:4-5 presents a major problem for the Christian belief in Yahweh's moral perfection, because the Serpent apparently catches Yahweh in a lie. To reiterate: Eve told the Serpent that they would die if they ate the fruit. The Serpent responded that they would not die and they would become like Yahweh, knowing good and evil. They eat the fruit, and the results are exactly as the Serpent said. Yahweh acknowledges in Gen. 3:22 that humanity had become like him, knowing good and evil. Meanwhile Genesis 5:3-5 tells us that - after having his third son, Adam lived another 800 years after that! So clearly Yahweh's threat that "in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die" was not true, just as the Serpent said.

Many Christians and Christian organizations, including Answers In Genesis, argue that "in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die" does not actually mean what it appears to mean at face value, arguing that it essentially means that they had their immortality revoked. They claim that humans were originally immortal, and that eating the fruit essentially caused the beginning of the aging process, which would culminate in death. There's some support for this as Gen 3:19 - while levying his punishment for disobedience - Yahweh says "By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return." This could be interpreted as saying that death is a part of the punishment. However, it should be noted that this is stated specifically in the part of the punishment directed at Adam, just as the pain in childbirth is directed specifically toward Eve. So if "returning to the ground" was part of the punishment, it should only be men who die.

Other Christians argue that it was a metaphorical death, arguing the idea of a "spiritual death" via separation from Yahweh, citing verses such as Ephesians 2:1 and Isaiah 59:2 in support. However, Dr. Robert Alter, American professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, notes in his book The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary, that the phrasing used when Yahweh says "in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die" is written in the same pattern as death sentences in several other places in the Bible. Insofar as every other time that Yahweh sentences someone to death, he means it quite literally (I've yet to hear about the metaphorical destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, or the "spiritual death" of the firstborn of Egypt, etc. etc.) there's no reason to believe that this was the exception to the rule.

I must stress that - in addition to his Ph.D. from Yale - Dr. Alter's book The Art of Biblical Narrative won the National Jewish Book Award for Jewish Thought, and he is also the holder of an Honorary Doctorate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. This is someone who is a) intimately familiar with the books of the Old Testament, and familiar with them in their original Hebrew, no less, and b) has been lauded for his work by the Jewish people. If I were looking for someone to try to twist the words of the Genesis story into something that was clearly never intended, I wouldn't be looking at him.

Still others argue that Psalm 90:4 states that 1,000 years is like a day to Yahweh, and Adam only lived to be 930, so he died in the same "day" since he didn't live to be 1,000. Of course, this claim suffers from the same issue as the claim of a metaphorical death: Nowhere else does Yahweh indicate that he actually meant "at some point in the next 1,000 years. In Numbers 16:28-50 Yahweh kills 250 people as soon as Moses is done speaking. The next day, when the people are upset that their friends and family were killed, Yahweh kills another 14,700 of them in a matter of minutes. Everywhere else that Yahweh lays down the death penalty, it is swift. There's no reason to believe that this one time should be the exception.

In fact, it is apparently not an uncommon belief in Judaism that the serpent was entirely honest. As Rabbi Moses ben Nachman writes "And the Rabbis have already said: 'Three stated the truth and perished from the world, and these are: the serpent, the spies [from Numbers, Chapters 13-14], and Doeg the Edomite [from 1 Samuel 22:9-10].'" So there is at least some portion of Judaism that acknowledges that the Serpent told the truth.

A Prometheus Story

I think it is also worth noting that the Garden of Eden story bears a striking resemblance to the Greek myth of Prometheus. For those who may be unfamiliar, Prometheus is said to have molded humanity from clay. Later, Prometheus tricked Zeus into declaring animal bones and fat as an appropriate sacrifice (instead of the meat of the animal). Zeus was upset at being tricked and took fire away from humanity. Prometheus stole fire back for humanity, and was subsequently chained to a rock, where an eagle would eat his liver each day, and the liver would grow back each night.

In both stories the reigning deity withholds something that is essential for human flourishing (either fire, or the knowledge of good and evil). In both stories the "trickster" character (the serpent/Prometheus) defies the reigning deity to ensure that humanity gains access to the thing that it has been denied. And in both stories, humanity gains access to what it needs, and the trickster is punished for defying the divine. The details are different but at their core, the stories are the same. 

Yet, while most people who read the Prometheus story come away thinking that Zeus was the bad guy and Prometheus the hero, most people are so socially conditioned to believe that the serpent is the bad guy, that they fail to notice that there's nothing to justify that belief. Unless we go into that story already under the assumption that the serpent had some nefarious intent, there's nothing in the story itself that gives us any reason to believe that the serpent is the villain. He told Eve exactly what would happen if she ate the fruit, and caught Yahweh in a lie at the same time. He is Prometheus stealing fire back from an unjust god.

But more than that, while Prometheus may have acted out of a fatherly love for his creation, the serpent has no attachment to humanity. No reason to stick his neck out for them. He saw a pair of humans being denied that which was necessary to flourish, and - despite having no reason to do so - put himself in harm's way to try to aid them. The serpent may be the most morally upright character in the entire Bible.

Yahweh is Still More Villainous than Previously Established

Given that I just compared Yahweh to Zeus in the Prometheus story, it may not be much of a surprise to learn that I believe Yahweh to be the villain of the entire Garden of Eden story. That said, I think it would be a mistake to leave the matter of Yahweh's villainy at that, when I would argue that the Garden of Eden story presents us with a truly dystopian horror story.

Consider: a common feature of Christian thought is that Yahweh's law is universal in a very robust sense of the word. It applies here and everywhere, now and always, across cultures and across time and space. It is eternal and unchanging in the utmost.

If you ask the vast majority of Christians, they will rightly say that the Bible states that lying is sinful, and will have many verses to support them. Most Christians - if asked - would also state that immodesty is sinful, and may quote 1 Timothy 2:9 in support. I would go so far as to say that most any woman who grew up Christian has long-since lost count of the number of times she was advised to dress modestly so that she does not become "a stumbling block".

Bearing this in mind, let us consider the story of Genesis 3 once more.  Let us first note that - as it was "the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil" - humanity could not have had knowledge that disobeying Yahweh was evil. They would have had no way of knowing that such a thing was evil or wrong. Such knowledge would've been beyond their grasp until they actually ate the fruit.

However, immediately upon eating the fruit, according to Genesis 3:6-7 they noticed that they were naked, and made coverings for themselves. Given the previously established belief that immodesty is sinful, 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 common Christian belief 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. An example of this has already been mentioned when Eve added to Yahweh's words by saying they weren't allowed to touch the fruit, which meets the Proverbs 30:6 definition of lying.

This second point is made all the more interesting when we take note of 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?" Possibly the most common question asked by someone who has been caught cheating on their partner, and now wants to shift blame to the informant and to keep the focus off of their own wrongdoing. Yahweh then proceeds to become upset that the humans learned that they were doing something wrong, curses the serpent for telling them that they were doing wrong, and even curses them for learning that they were doing wrong and discontinuing their sinning. As Mark Twain wrote: "[Yahweh] requires his children to deal justly -- and gently -- with offenders, and forgive them seventy-and-seven times; whereas he deals neither justly nor gently with anyone, and he did not forgive the ignorant and thoughtless first pair of juveniles even their first small offense and say, 'You may go free this time, and I will give you another chance.'  On the contrary! He elected to punish their children, all through the ages to the end of time, for a trifling offense committed by others before they were born." And worse still, Yahweh elected to punish humanity for disobeying him, after having denied humanity the ability to know that it was wrong to do so. 

In short, Yahweh had no qualms about Eve "lying", nor about their constant sin of immodesty, and even denied them the ability to know that such things were sinful. Yet he became outraged when they learned that what they were doing was sinful. This paints a picture of Yahweh as a deity who created humanity with the intention that they should do evil and not know it. It portrays him as not being upset at humanity's first evil act, but at their first truly good act. The eating of the fruit was not "original sin" as that title rightly belongs to Yahweh's lie that Adam and Eve would die if they ate it. In fact, the eating of the fruit would more correctly be called "original virtue".

The truly tragic part of the story is that Adam and Eve were able to realize that they were doing wrong, but seemingly never put the dots together and realized that they had been doing wrong because Yahweh had knowingly set them up to fail.

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I'd like to thank you all for coming with me on this deep dive into the Garden of Eden story. This was much longer than I intended it to be when I sat down this morning, but I hope you found it interesting and informative.