Lectionary 10, Second Sunday after Pentecost, Year B
Adam and Eve. History and archeology can be useful to understanding the scriptures. There are two related things we know from history and archeology of the ancient Near East.
- Female deities or goddesses were worshiped and were believed to have the power of fertility and life. They were sometimes depicted holding tree branches, such as an olive branch.
- Snakes were also included in statues of goddesses and were revered as symbols of divine wisdom.
The worship of goddesses in the ancient world centered around fertility and wisdom. There were other gods like “Seth” in Egypt who was the god of the desert. There is a famous carving from Egypt that shows Seth standing next to a goddess who is holding a tree branch, and another man worshiping her. This is recorded as the famous figure 129 in James Pritchard’s book, “The Ancient Near East.” In this account of things the woman is not at fault for committing a sin, nor is she even a human being. She is divine.
The fact that these ancient artifacts existed within the same cultural milieu of ancient Hebrew people, suggests that there is more to the story of Adam and Eve than we have been led to believe. Some have claimed that the serpent in the story from Genesis was the devil. But there is at least one major problem with this interpretation. Nowhere in the story does it say that the snake is evil or the devil. It doesn’t. It does say that it was the most clever of the created things.
What the story does make clear is the frailty, temerity, and foolishness of human beings from the very get go. Right away they stumble. Right away they fight. The symbolism of tree and snake with a man and women may have been used by God to question the reality of gods and goddesses that people held to with superstitious beliefs.
Who told you that you were naked? God asks Adam and Eve, almost teasing them for the slowness on their part to realize their condition. The figures once revered to be gods by such powerful and noteworthy subjects as the Egyptians are now portrayed quivering and shivering in the bushes. God commands consequences to ensue. To save the relationship between Adam and Even, God punishes the snake. It gets bruised on the head, which is far worse than the also very bad condition of being bruised on the heel for Eve and the terrible pain of childbirth. Notice the centrality of birth and new life. If Adam and Eve are not to be gods then they are mortal and will die. The pain of childbirth is offset by the tremendous and ineffable gift of life!
But what of Adam. What is his punishment? He blames Eve for his actions and doesn’t seem to yield very bad consequences. This has led many a reader of the sacred scriptures to ask if there isn’t some gender bias, or patriarchy woven into the story. One professor of mine in seminary went so far as to say that the superiority of the Hebrew God is elevated in Genesis over ancient near eastern gods at the expense or on the back of Eve.
Feminist theologians have argued that maybe we’ve had the story wrong all along. What if Eve made history? She was the civilizing force that lifted the first primate into a higher state of consciousness! If it wasn’t for Eve eating the apple we would all still be animals, never having evolved beyond a limited mammalian awareness of ourselves and others. The expulsion from the garden of Eden was really just an expulsion of ignorance. You could think of it that all other living beings who are not self aware with consciousness still live in the garden of Eden because they do not have the knowledge of good and evil. Not even the snake, who may be cunning, never actually ate the fruit himself.
I think that each of the interpretations holds value. Put it simply: we sin, and do the exact opposite of what is good for us a lot of the time. Additionally we waste a lot of time striving after things that we don’t really need at all. Worshipping false idols or false gods with the hope of garnering favor is a waste of time. God gives us everything that we need freely. God didn’t require Adam and Eve to worship, but to just not eat one certain tree.
What would you do if you were in that situation? Would you eat the fruit? I don’t think that I would. When I watched the Matrix for the first time I thought that Neo was saw stupid for taking the red pill. I was like, “Don’t do it!” What if the cessation of idol worship is a step in our own development both individually and as a species. What if learning to not waste time and resources on imaginary forces that do not exist gives us an advantage for long term survival and the advancement of our species.
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