Spinozablue: An Eclectic Journal of the Arts

The Expul­sion From Eden, by Thomas Cole. 1828

Philip Pullman’s usage of the myth of Adam and Eve had me revis­it­ing the metaphors, sym­bols, and sce­nar­ios in that ancient gar­den. While there are many dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tions of the myth, and a wide range of dis­agree­ments between Jew­ish and Chris­t­ian exe­ge­sis, I thought Pull­man was really onto some­thing fun­da­men­tally important.

Con­trary to much of the received wis­dom about that story, Adam and Eve did the right thing. They sought knowl­edge. In effect, con­scious­ness. Had they stayed in the gar­den, they would have remained unfree, igno­rant, and stunted. The god of the story wanted them that way, appar­ently. Much of Pullman’s tril­ogy builds from that metaphor — keep­ing humans in the dark about the world. The Mag­is­terium is, in effect, the earthly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of that view. Keep humans in the dark as much as pos­si­ble. Keep them bliss­fully igno­rant, and all will be well.

Keep them like sheep.

We humans may well be the only species capa­ble of sens­ing our own mor­tal­ity. In a sense, the Adam and Eve of myth are not fully human until they both eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowl­edge. They become human after the fog is lifted. They know death. They know they will die. In a way, the story is about human evo­lu­tion itself, which is all the more ironic in light of cur­rent and past bat­tles between cre­ation­ists and those who believe in the sci­ence of evo­lu­tion. I read the story as a metaphor for human evo­lu­tion, for an awak­en­ing into the real­ity of the human con­di­tion with its com­plex­ity, strug­gle and pain. Implicit in the story of the fall is a cri­tique of reli­gious dogma, a warn­ing against the blind accep­tance of author­ity, the con­se­quences of igno­rance. Though it is not read­ily apparent …

The ser­pent was Socrates before Socrates existed. He was actu­ally the far bet­ter choice for men­tor for the first humans. Rather than tempt­ing them into sin, he was tempt­ing them into con­scious­ness. An unex­am­ined life is not worth living!

The sever­ity of the pun­ish­ment is also an indi­ca­tion of the right­ness, even the right­eous­ness of the deci­sion to eat the apple, or the grape, or the pome­gran­ate. Not only does the god of Gen­e­sis kick them out of the gar­den, he also makes claims after the fact that were facts to begin with: death and immense pain dur­ing child­birth. He also warned them that they would die imme­di­ately upon eat­ing the fruit of the Tree of Knowl­edge. Luck­ily for Yah­weh, there was no way for Adam and Eve to know that those claims were false, that Yah­weh was bluff­ing. They had never expe­ri­enced death, and Eve was not yet with child, and they knew of no one else in sim­i­lar straits. In effect, the god of Gen­e­sis pun­ished them with real­ity, and couldn’t fol­low through on his orig­i­nal threat.

Of course, some might argue that death and sin and evil and the like were brought into the world as a result of their dis­obe­di­ence. This has some sim­i­lar­i­ties with the Greek Myth of Pan­dora. If Adam and Eve had not dis­obeyed their god, they never would have died. They would have lived for­ever. My answer to that is, of course, that such a thing is impos­si­ble. Before, dur­ing and after the events depicted in Gen­e­sis, it was always impos­si­ble to live for­ever. It was always impos­si­ble for a woman to give birth with­out pain. Which means, again, the god of Gen­e­sis merely threat­ened the first two human beings with real­ity. And, if eat­ing from the Tree of Life granted them immor­tal­ity, and they were banned from doing so by Yah­weh, death was on the menu for them whether they stayed in the gar­den or escaped.

As I see it, the story can only be use­ful or instruc­tive if it is seen as a story, not as lit­er­ally true. If we try to see it as lit­er­ally true, the events depicted are so obvi­ously impos­si­ble, that they defeat the pur­pose or any chance at instruc­tion. So, we’re left with inter­pre­ta­tions of myth, alle­gory, metaphor and the like. In the sim­plest terms, is it a story warn­ing us against dis­obe­di­ence, or against blind accep­tance of author­ity? For this rebel with­out a cause, the lat­ter is the way to go.

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