In the world according to Genesis, man and woman existed together in perfect harmony. Before their exile they lived in the paradise which God had created for them: Eden. They had no knowledge of good or evil, no roles in society to act out, and apparently no understanding of sex and procreation. They were close to God in this state, and indeed had a potential to attain immortality. They were truly innocent, living in the perfect order which god had formed out of the chaos of the universe. It has been pointed out that at this point the two were without consciousness, having no understanding of their surrounding and no desire to question their existence. But after their fall from grace, though they had found a higher sense of what it was to be alive and human, they lived in a world of suffering and want. But what was the significance of this separation from Eden? And more importantly, what does it say about the people who wrote it? What does the creation story of the Judeo-Christian religion teach us about their culture? For while Genesis is an explanation of how the universe was originally created, it is also a guide to how the Judeo-Christians perceived the world in which they lived.
To answer these questions one must understand that when the authors of the bible wrote of their mythical ancestors they used them as moralistic figures. These events and characters are the teaching tools of the Judeo Christian world. Thus, their first purpose was to rationalize the behavior of the culture that followed its tenets.
To further explain, let us examine the circumstances of Adam and Eve's fall from grace and subsequent expulsion from the Garden of Eden. After eating the fruit of knowledge, and their punishment by God, they lived under what we understand to be the reality of the world in ancient times. They had become wise, comprehending what was good and what was evil, aware of the differences between them. Adam became the laborer to procure food, while Eve dealt with children. They knew of how a man and woman might bear children, and there was an understanding that in return for Eve's "greater sin" she would be the lesser of the two. A level of authority, with man in control, had come to be. They were mortal, could die, and were greatly separated from their parental figure (God) just as we all are.
While all of this might explain why these things came about one can look deeper into the issue. If we see Adam and Eve as children in the beginning we can compare their journey to the archetypical process of growing that we all go through. In our unborn state we are as much without consciousness and untroubled by the ways of the world as Adam and Eve were. Our forced exile separates us from our parents, and throws us into a world of cold and pain. Joseph Campbell, in his acclaimed book The Power Of Myth, explains that in the first stage of birth we experience terror when we realize ourselves as living individuals. We have achieved the first state of division from our parents, the most important one by far. And as childhood continues we exist in another version of Eden, the innocent life of a youngster our normal environment. Throughout life we experience further hurts, further separation from our parents, greater understanding of the world around us. Eventually we have reached adulthood, and live in what people think of as the real world.
Despite the rudimentary nature of this occurrence, it displays that when we achieve higher levels of experience and knowledge it usually comes about through a change of our surroundings and through pain. This perhaps is the other main lesson of the story of The Fall, that it is our search for that which is beyond what ourselves that hurts us. It is the desire for more than what has been allotted to us that makes us unhappy. We do not suffer because we are denied televisions or sex- we suffer because we desire them. Thus, what kept Adam and Eve from maintaining happiness in Eden was desire.
Eve also experiences yet another stage of separation. Not only is she punished by God, but seemingly by Adam who willingly accepts his role as master. It is Genesis's teachings which are fundamental to why women have been treated as the lesser partner between the sexes. In their duality Adam and Eve have been unequally placed. We certainly know that in the ancient world a womanís place was a lesser one than that of man, and Genesis is a justification for this state of being.
Perhaps the tale of Genesis is an allegorical tale of how women fell from their formerly high status in ancient society. Larry Gonick is his Cartoon History Of The Universe explains how, before primitive men understood that sex and procreation were linked, women held important positions as clan leaders. This was because: "clan membership passed through the women. That is, the children belonged to their mother's clan- NOT their father's." But after having becoming herdsmen men could not help (through their close association with the animals) notice that sexual intercourse and reproduction were tied together. Thus, a man saw his children as his own property, and had to be more careful of being sure who his son's were. A woman thus became a prisoner under a man to ensure her faithfulness, more a piece of property than a partner from that point on.
If return to the fall of mankind, we can extrapolate that this event was the first blemish of God's perfect Order. During God's punishment of the guilty trio of snake, Eve, and Adam he states (To Adam): "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, 'you shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you." God has not only punished mankind but the Earth itself. Why? Joseph Campbell offers his own explanation: "...(T)he biblical tradition is a socially oriented mythology. Nature is condemned . . . when nature is thought of as evil, you don't put yourself into accord with it, you control it, or try to, and hence the tension, the anxiety, the cutting down of forests, the annihilation of native people."
The next lesson of Genesis, the fable of Cain and Abel, concerns the two sons which Adam and Eve conceive after their exile from Eden. Cain and Abel represent the two ways of life that have often clashed throughout the history of human civilization. Cain is a farmer, who must settle down in one place to survive, one who must live hand in hand with nature. Abel is a herdsman, a nomad who moves with his flock, one who is not tied to the land. When they both offer a sacrifice of the fruits of their labor it is Abel who is favored. The reason? Campbell says that the Judeo Christian belief is one that is centered around the group in which you exist, a nomadic way of thinking. The Judeo-Christian religion was one of a wandering people without a homeland, it is natural that their God should lean towards that particular lifestyle. In this sense we can see that Judeo-Christians believed themselves separated from nature itself.
Coexistence between these two groups of people has always been troubled, and the result of Cain's jealousy is violence. The bible's first death, it is the fundamental lesson that killing your fellow man is inherently wrong. However, it also displays the initial separation between these two ways of life which remained a problem throughout history.
At this point we may sit back and notice that Genesis has been mainly composed of two basic dualities. In the beginning there is a pure formless chaos, followed by the perfect order which God creates. Then the smallest inkling of a return to chaos with The Fall, followed by another reordering of the world once again. There is another shake up with Abel's death, and God's intervention once again makes things right. Yet, which each subsequent event, we watch as the presence of God is slowly removed from the lives of his creations. God, once a passing visitor in the Garden of Eden, now is a mere distant figure who appears to have slowly faded. It is not surprising that after many generations had lived and died that man might have forgotten about their creator, and that he might feel compelled to act.
The story of the deluge is not only a warning to mankind about what might occur if God's laws are not properly respected, but also of a reunification with that lost parental figure. Noah and his family will be saved for he alone has not succumbed to the evils that walk hand in hand with culture and society. Not wishing to completely destroy his work, God commands Noah to build an ark with which he save enough of the animals of the world to repopulate it when the coming flood recedes. The flood is a return to the primal chaos which existed before the world was created, blemished only by Noah's ark. The cycle of Order and Chaos continues.
Shortly after the biblical flood waters disappeared from the face of the Earth, and life flourished on its face once more, God reflected on what he had done. "I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done." The union between God and man is once again renewed as Noah and his descendants face another ordered world in which man is the flawed master. Forever carrying the burden of Adam and Eve's Fall they finally seem to enter a world in which a reality without God's intervention is possible. Man is, as God says, evil inherently. Because of his removal from Godís presence, his separation from nature, his connection to the chaos which God made into order, mankind is now flawed by his own doing.
And God himself somewhat removes himself from the lives of men. He acts in an indirect manner from this point on, letting his will be known through signs, miracles, disasters and dreams. Man is slowly becoming independent of their Lord, having to rely on their own actions to carry out God's will. This independence of man even leads to occasional acts against God, such as the construction of the Tower Of Babel in defiance of the Lordís mightiness.
The parental figures of the bible shift towards the patriarchs such as Noah and Abraham. These men now hand out the curses which separate mankind from each other. Ham's punishment, for example, for having seen Noah naked in his tent once again shakes up the new order into another chaos in which the sons of Noah spread out across the ancient world. The authors of Genesis at this point seem to pick up on specific details of the lives of Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph. We are concerned less with the acts of God than we are with the actions of these men and their families.
The question which we might ask ourselves at this point is: Why do we continue to separate ourselves from our parents, from those who showed us the way into the real world? Is it because there is some force in human nature that instills in us a wanderlust which drags us away from our families and home? Or is it because we choose to give up the simpler pleasures of life in exchange for the knowledge we receive from living in the "real world?" The ancient writers of the old testament would seem to argue that man basically has no choice in the matter, that it was merely the whim of God that they might one day exist as we do now. They would say that we were destined to be separated from God and one another. I on the other hand, would disagree. To stay with my parents in my comfortable home would be to forever remain a child in the Garden of Eden. The outside world, despite its many hurts, will also enrich my experience of life. If Genesis teaches us anything it is that to be human is to constantly strive for something beyond that which we know, to reach beyond ourselves.
In Frank Herbert's Dune, the Duke Leto Atrietes warns that: "Without change something sleeps inside, and seldom awakens."
"The sleeper must awaken."
