The book of Genesis in the Bible is something of a touchstone in the culture wars that continue to rage in this country. There are 66 books in the Protestant Bible, but this one contains many of the stories that have become emblematic of particular values. This one book has Noah and his ark, Abraham and Isaac, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. But if you say, "Genesis," most people are going to think of Adam and Eve.
In our day, the story is connected to what people think about the origins of life. To the conservative evangelical who takes the passage literally, the Genesis creation story tells us that everything there is was created in a span of six days, and that each form of life was created separately. To many, the story represents all that is wrong with religion, especially a denial of science and what we have come to learn about our own world.
For me, there is a third way to read this story.
But first, a brief re-telling:
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
And the earth was formless and void, but God's spirit moved about the water.
Then God said, "Let there be light!" and there was light. And God saw that it was good.
So He called the light day and the darkness night, and that was the first day.
On the second day, God separated the heavens from the watery earth. Then He called forth dry land and separated the seas, and made all sorts of plants and trees to grow. This was the third day, and He saw it was good. On the fourth and fifth day, God called forth creatures of all sorts in the water and on the land, and made them to fill the earth. And He saw that this was good, too.
Then on the sixth day, God said, "Let us make man in our own image." So he formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed His own breath into him, giving him life. So God made man after His own likeness and gave him the abundance of the earth and made him above the other creatures, and gave all the plants for his food. And He told him to be fruitful and multiply. God named the man Adam.
On the seventh day, God rested from all His labors. And He saw that all He had created was good.
Then God made a garden in a place called Eden and put Adam there. A river ran through the garden and became the head of four rivers: Pishon, Gihon, Hiddekel, and the Euphrates.
God filled the garden with trees that were beautiful and full of fruit for the man. In the midst of these were the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. "Do not eat of the Tree of Knowledge," God told Adam, "or you will surely die."
God saw that though the garden was filled with creatures the man had named, Adam was still alone. So He put him into a deep sleep and took a rib from his side and made the first woman. Then Adam said: "This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. She will be called 'woman.'"
The woman, who was named Eve, went walking one day in the garden, when she came across a serpent, the most cunning of all of God's creatures. The serpent said, "Why has God not let you eat of every tree of the garden?"
And Eve answered, "He has, only we are not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, or we will surely die."
Then the serpent said, "You will not die, but God knows that if you eat of the Tree of Knowledge, you will become like a god, knowing good from evil."
So Eve took the fruit, which was very pleasing, and ate it. Then she gave it to Adam. After eating it, they looked and saw that they were naked, so they took leaves from a fig tree and sewed them and made clothes.
Then God went walking in the garden, in the cool of the day, and the two hid themselves. So God called out, "Where are you?"
Adam answered, "We hid ourselves when we heard you coming, because we were naked."
God said, "Who told you you were naked? Did you eat of the Tree of Knowledge?"
So Adam answered, "The woman you gave me gave me the fruit and I ate it."
"What have you done?" God asked Eve.
Eve answered, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."
Then God said, "Because you've done this thing, Eve, you will labor greatly when the time comes to give birth. And you, Adam, will only have food by the sweat of your brow."
Then God killed an animal and covered the pair in animal skins.
Then God said to Himself, "They have eaten of the Tree and become like Us, knowing good from evil. Now, lest they take of the Tree of Life and live forever . . ." So God drove them from the garden to a place east of Eden, putting a cherubim as guard at the garden gate with a flaming sword that turned every direction.
Reading it again (and if you have not read the entire story from the Bible, I would encourage you to do so) it seems strange that anyone living in 2015 would obsess about the portions of the story having to do with the literal creation. The ancient culture whose story this was simply had no way of ascertaining how all things came into being. And they are spoken of in the most poetic and ambiguous terms. There is light and dark before there is a sun. The animals all reproduce in a single day, filling the oceans and land. It seems impossible to imagine that this was meant literally.
Even so, such an emphasis would seem to miss the point.
As I read this narrative, two ideas seem to come off the page.
The first is that there is something of the divine in us.
The narrative is very specific that these first parents of ours were made to resemble God (Or is it "the gods"? Who is He talking to anyway?), that God breathed life into them, and that knowledge made them more like God. I'd like to unpack that a bit.
The idea that man (i.e., humanity) is made in the image of God is central to Hebrew and Christian faith. Medieval theologians called this the imago Dei (the "image of God") that is stamped upon every man, woman, and child. The implications of this are rather obvious, though one might not guess so based upon the actions of the church throughout the ages. Everyone you meet, this passage is saying, carries divinity within them.
Breath is associated directly with life in this scripture and again, the message seems rather clear: life is sacred. While anti-abortion groups might rally around that motto, that would seem to muddy the waters. Life is sacred, it is like the breath of the gods, and we should live every moment as if that were true. For those of us who have seen that breath leave someone we love, that understanding is even clearer.
When one comes to the passage where God admits that he lied (Oh — did you miss that?), it is startling. Adam and Eve will not die after eating from the Tree of Knowledge. No, sir. The serpent was right. They will become like gods. God says so Himself. How is it that I heard dozens of sermons on this passage but no one ever pointed that out?! When God acknowledges this, He does something particularly cruel: he drives them from their garden home, condemning them to mortality. They will now die — not because the fruit has killed them, but because God keeps them from eating of the Tree of Life.
Which brings me to the second big thing that jumps off the page: all of us are fallen and mortal.
This awareness, one that we slowly come to realize as children, can be overwhelming at times. I'm not sure which was worse for me — learning of my parents' fallibility or learning of their mortality. I remember crying bitterly about both.
Closely tied to this idea is that this knowledge leads to a loss of innocence. It certainly did for me. There is a price to be paid for wisdom. "If ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise," someone said, but a later Biblical author answered, "Wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness."
We might all imagine living in a garden, blissfully, eternally, without a care in the world. But we have lost our innocence. "When I became a man, I put away childish things," the Apostle Paul wrote, and we must all come to terms with our own mortality in this sometimes very dark world.
Yet knowledge is not to be shunned. To learn and to grow is to become more divine — whatever the cost. We now know more than we once did. We know our world and our universe are much older than imagined and that it took much more than six days for them to come into being. We know that we are all headed to a dark oblivion trillions of years from now. We cannot return to the garden of innocence and ignorance. But we should live here, east of Eden, with our fellow mortals, cherishing every sacred breath we take.
I do not believe there was a literal Adam and Eve and I would be lying if I told you I believed in God either. I do believe in the timeless truths of this story though. And I believe you and I are both made in a divine image. I can live with that.
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