Expulsion from Eden

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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