Interpreting the Adam & Eve story

A few weeks ago, I finally read (after hearing so much about it), the chapter in the Bible about Adam and Eve and their “fall”. It definitely raised more questions than it answered, and it’s been on my mind frequently ever since. I will share my questions in this post, along with a realisation I made recently and its intersection with the Adam and Eve story.

I will start with my interpretation of the fruit as the bearer of a few different qualities. First, wisdom (“the tree was to be desired to make one wise”). From my life experience, I would say that wisdom is generally required to be able to tell right from wrong, good from evil. It is therefore surprising to me that God would not want his creatures to have this wisdom? Does God want his creatures to be ignorant and stupid? This reminds me very much of criticisms I have heard about religion – that it serves to keep people ignorant while those higher up the hierarchy have all the power.

As I couldn’t quite understand why wisdom is not a value God would want Adam and Eve to have, this made me unsure why the serpent is described as “crafty”. In my opinion, it was God who was crafty when he told Eve that she would die from touching the fruit. It was the serpent who told the truth: that the fruit would only make the fruit-eater know good and evil. Unless we define death as the gain of wisdom/knowledge/power. Which is another kettle of fish altogether. It’s not quite clear what “death” really means in this chapter. Physical death or death of ignorance?

Now, it is possible that God preferred Adam and Eve to remain ignorant if God had the foresight that Man would use this knowledge for destructive purposes (this is not explicitly stated, it is merely my own reflection). In this scenario, the serpent is definitely to blame for leading Eve and Adam to a more flawed state of being, where they might succomb to evil intentions because now they know evil.

(Just a side-note here … I wonder if this story is at the very root of many peoples’ phobia of snakes? “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring“).

The second quality the fruit brings to Eve and Adam is that of self-awareness/self-consciousness. I will diverge a little with a short personal story (but trust me, it’s relevant to the point I wish to make).

A few years ago I was visiting the region where I was born and grew up during the first decade of my life. It was a very, very windy January day and I was out by the sea-side with the waves crashing against pink granite rocks. The wind was so strong that it blew my thoughts away. In hindsight, the moment during which I thought less made me feel like I was more a part of nature. To put it simply:

thought –> consciousness –> experiencing separatedness from nature

Once you feel yourself as a separate entity from nature, you realise you can control it, because you are not it, and it is not you, because you and nature are two separate things. Maybe this is why human beings are the only species to have evolved so much, and indeed, are continually evolving. Having eaten the apple and gained consciousness, we see ourselves as separate from nature. So we can shape nature, we can act on it.

Truly, is there another animal or plant species that has evolved so much in the last thousand years as has humans? To my knowledge, there is still no cat or dog or monkey that has built a house, or a computer, or a bomb. I wonder if this is because animals do not have the same consciousness we have – maybe they don’t have any consciousness at all. And so, they feel a part of nature. Nature is in them, they are in nature.

It’s suggested that Eve and Adam gained self-awareness/conciousness of their existence: “then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked”. Suddenly they were not a part of nature anymore, they were two separate beings, and they were naked.

I suppose the combination of this self-awareness and knowledge of good and evil creates a potent possibility of power and destruction. Could this passage also suggest that God is afraid of no longer being needed by Man because “man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil” (and is therefore as powerful as God)??

I would love to hear your thoughts on this post and what were your take-aways of this chapter?

the Billy bookcase.

It had taken her by surprise, how instantly a ball (of tears) had formed in her throat at the sight of a simple piece of furniture. And yet, here she stood in front of a plain white bookshelf, staring at its name tag, and remembering with piercing clarity an innocent conversation shared only some months prior.

“I buy more books than I can read,” he had confessed, “you know the Billy bookcase from Ikea? We must have a dozen of them …”

The bookshelf in front of her, bare of books, nevertheless bore the ability not only to remind her of someone (and even of a particular detail about them), but to make her realise she was not completely aware of how much she truly missed him.

{the silent manner}

She had been sitting cross-legged on the hard gymnasium floor amongst hundreds of others like her (students). The proximity of so many bodies in one single room made it feel like it was a much warmer day than it really was. So long had she been sitting there that her legs and bottom had gone completely numb. Everyone was quiet save for a speaker, who stood in front of the seated audience, and announced in a microphone the names of students who had achieved something remarkable. At the mention of one name, a few students in the audience inappropriately and loudly cheered. She had turned her head then, and, perhaps by chance or coincidence, had met the man’s gaze across the dozen students separating them – and in that moment it was as if they had communicated, and agreed, that the students’ cheer had been way too dramatic and uncalled for, for the occasion. She knew not how she knew that his thoughts in that moment matched hers; perhaps because they shrugged their shoulders and rolled their eyes. She wondered how many people he communicated with in this silent manner where a second or two of eye-contact made words seem unnecessary.

My first poetry book is on Amazon

Last year I signed up for an online poetry writing challenge during the month of April. The promise was that at the end of the challenge, my poems would be published in my very own poetry book. Well, I never heard from the publishing company after I revised the manuscript, so I thought nothing had come of it. Except I Googled myself this afternoon (this actually relates to the novel I am writing – shh) when the front cover of my book appeared, and I found out that way it had been published and is on sale on Amazon.

So if you would like to read a very short book of poetry and thoughts (it’s only 27 pages long) with poems I have not published on this blog, you can now order my book “Friend of My Heart” at this link:

My first poetry book!

I hope you order it, read it and like it!

Thank you for your support!

Eliza

imagination

She may not be able to see him all that often, but there was something she had – something powerful, endless and readily-available: imagination. In her imaginary world, the boundaries of reality ceased to exist: she could now see him every day if she chose to – perhaps even multiple times a day; she could speak to him as much as she genuinely wanted, and tell him things she would otherwise not say. How many conversations they had had in that imagination of hers! What a comfort to have something that nobody could take from her (not even him), and that offered her such a perfect solution to his physical absence. If he could not be there in real life, at least he could always exist in her mind.

mirror.

I watched as he behaved in a way that was entirely familiar to me. He took a seat on the couch, slightly behind the group who was seated at the table and engaged in a lively discussion over morning tea. His eyes moved from one person to the next, depending on who was speaking: he was evidently paying close attention to what was being said, despite not partaking in the conversation. I saw so much of myself in him then, as if I had been looking at my own reflection in a mirror; he was in this moment as I was: the quiet listener, the outside observer.

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