Reading from the Bible -- Genesis 2-3. My Heart Goes out to Eve

Hans Baldung Grien -
Eve, Serpent & Death (1512)

On this Sunday in Fiji my heart goes out to Eve -- she made a hapless choice.  Now, I’m not about to condemn her in the traditional manner, blaming her for the Fall of Man with the same misogynistic bloodlust that at the height of the Christian Era lit the fires beneath the feet of countless unfortunate women.  Indeed, I honor Eve’s courage – it is only because she swallowed her fear of God and reached out her hand to pluck the fateful fruit from the Tree of Knowledge that we’re all not still as dumb as bricks.  But there were two trees in the center of the Garden: the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. (Genesis 2: 9)  Eve’s mistake was that she did not eat from the Tree of Life first.

That, at any rate, is the conclusion I’ve drawn after studying the pertinent biblical texts.  A careful reading of Genesis, Chapters 2-3, yields results that are surprisingly at odds with traditional Judeo-Christian teachings about the critical exchanges that took place so very long ago in the Garden of Eden, revealing among other things the honesty of the serpent and the mendacity of God.

Let’s start by considering the scene in which the Lord appoints Adam as the divine gardener:

Then the Lord placed the man in the center of the Garden of Eden to tend and care for it.  But the Lord gave him this warning: ‘You may freely eat any fruit in the garden except fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  If you eat of its fruit, you will surely die.’ (Genesis 2: 15-17)

Before going any further, it is worth pointing out that the formulation “knowledge of good and evil” is a merism – a figure of speech, common in the bible, that makes use of a pair of opposites to express the notion of "all" or “everything,” as in the creation of "heaven and earth",  "searching high and low", and "creatures great and small."  Thus the “Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil” concerns not only moral understanding, but understanding in general.  Back to the main point, however: a reasonable assumption based on the Lord’s warning is that the fruit is poisonous.  Moreover, since it is difficult to understand why a beneficent God would like to consign men and women to perpetual ignorance, one might even go so far as to believe that the fruit is unfortunately poisonous – that is, a God that really cared about Adam (Eve has not yet been created) might have meant: it would be nice if you could eat it, since it would enlighten you, but you can’t because it’s poisonous and will kill you (although then you’d have to inquire as to why God made the fruit poisonous in the first place, but Adam is still dumb as a brick and might not think to ask).  It becomes clear a little later, that the last thing God wants is for people to know anything, but at this juncture in the narrative there is no reason for Adam to reach that conclusion.  If God had been honest, he might have said: don’t eat that fruit or I will kill you, thus making it perfectly clear that the fruit isn’t poisonous and that the whole issue is really a question of obedience and tyrannical power.  But had God revealed his true personality so early in the game, Adam might have balked at the idea of serving such a mean-spirited master and sought gainful employment elsewhere.  God would then have been truly out of luck, because, as one might expect so early in the history of the world, labor was especially scarce.

In any event, when Eve chats with the serpent a few verses later, it is obvious that she believes the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge to be incredibly toxic:

Now the serpent was the shrewdest of all the creatures the Lord God had made.  ‘Really?’ he asked the woman.  ‘Did God really say you must not eat any of the fruit in the garden?’
‘Of course we may eat it,’ the woman told him.  ‘It’s only the fruit from the tree at the center of the garden that we are not allowed to eat.  God says we must not eat or even touch it, or we will die.”
‘You won’t die!’ the serpent hissed.  ‘God knows that your eyes will be opened when you eat it.  You will become just like God, knowing everything, both good and evil’ [the use of the word 'both' makes the merism more forceful].  (Genesis 3: 1)

Despite the fact that Judeo-Christians have roundly condemned the serpent as the Great Deceiver, he is actually telling the truth.  Certainly, he has nothing to gain from misleading Eve, and in the end he even suffers for his efforts when God destroys his relationship with Eve and her decedents.  I suspect that the reason the serpent is so shrewd is that he has already eaten some of the fruit without telling anyone, but that’s mere speculation.  But we know this for sure: Eve eats the fruit, and she does not die but is enlightened; she brings the fruit for Adam to eat, who likewise does not die but is enlightened.  And when God strolls back into the Garden (I imagine him in a crisp white shirt, argyle sweater-vest, cleats, plaid knickers and a matching cap, looking for Adam to caddy his clubs) , he knows that Adam and Eve have eaten the fruit not because he sees their bloated corpses lying on the manicured lawn, but because he discerns the light of understanding in their eyes.

It is at this point that God flies into a rage, unleashing curses left and right (this is a merism, too).  He condemns the serpent first:

Because you have done this, you will be punished.  You are singled out from all the domestic and wild animals of the whole earth to be cursed.  You will grovel in the dust as long as you live, crawling along on your belly. (Genesis 3: 14)

Hugo van der Goes -
Original Sin (1467/8)

The odd thing about this particular curse is that the serpent (being a serpent) must have been groveling in the dust and crawling on his belly all along, whether cursed or not.  Admittedly, I’ve come across a Christian commentator who insists that, prior to the curse, the serpent must have had legs, or else the curse makes little sense.  But this commentator has never managed to convince me.  Neither would he have convinced very many painters of the Renaissance and Baroque, most of whom were quite devout Christians, and whose depictions of the serpent for the most part don't show any sign of serpent legs, vestigial or otherwise.  I say 'for the most part' because, in the interests of full disclosure, I have encountered a painting by Hugo van der Goes that depicts the serpent with legs and a human-like head (the creature looks a little like Steve Buscemi, who has played some nasty characters yet is by all accounts a very nice man).  But Van der Goes' is an exception; the paintings by Duerer, Baldung, Michelangelo and others generally show the serpent in a manner that is more or less anatomically correct.

Next God directs his rage at Eve, telling her: ‘you will bear children with intense pain and suffering.’ (Genesis 3: 16)  Eve is still a prepubescent at this point and has not yet borne any children, so she is in no position to argue with God, at least not on the basis of experience.  But given that God curses the serpent to be what the serpent already is, I suspect that Eve would have suffered in childbirth anyway.  Similarly, God tells Adam:

I have placed a curse on the ground.  All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it.  …  All your life you will sweat to produce food, until your dying day.  Then you will return to ground from which you came.  For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return. (Genesis 3:17-29)

Once again, I think Adam would have found himself scratching, sweating, and dying with or without the curse.

Now, the reader might object, insisting that I have no reason other than my own wishful thinking to believe that these divine curses are empty and that they merely reflect a reality already in place.  But I base my conclusions largely on what happens after God has unleashed his curses, passed judgment, condemned Adam and Eve to death, and all is pretty much said and done.  It is a candid moment when God is talking to himself, apparently unaware that his words are being recorded (one wonders how the omniscient being could be so oblivious):

Then the Lord God said, ‘The people have become as we are, knowing everything, both good and evil.  What happens if they eat the fruit of the tree of life?  Then they will live forever!’  So the Lord God banished Adam and his wife from the Garden of Eden. …  [and] stationed mighty angelic beings to the east of Eden.  And a flaming sword flashed back and forth, guarding the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 3: 22-24)

It suddenly becomes obvious that God has been lying all along.  Clearly, eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge does not inevitably result in death.  Even after the fruit has been consumed and the curses have been leveled, human immortality remains a distinct and threatening possibility.  And, one might add, it seems that prior to the curses and to the consumption of the fruit, Adam and Eve would have died unless by chance they ate from the Tree of Life, which again reveals the emptiness of the curse.  Only by banishing Adam and Eve does God mitigate the threat of human immortality.  I say, ‘mitigate’ because there’s always the chance that they can sneak past that flaming sword.

Ultimately, what I see here is that God is very much afraid – afraid that people will become like him; afraid, perhaps, that having attained the knowledge of good and evil, they will identify the weakness and malignancy of his spirit.

And I wonder how different things might have been, had Eve reached not first for the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, but for the fruit of the Tree of Life.  Of course, even without human immortality, many feel that there are far more people living on our planet than the environment can sustain, so I’m not suggesting that things would have been any better.  But surely they would have been different.