In the Christian interpretation of Genesis, the Garden of Eden is where God's perfect plan went wrong, and Satan betrayed the human race. Satan (in the form of a snake) deceived Eve, the first woman, into eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which God had commanded them not to eat from, "for when you eat of it you will surely die." Satan led Eve to believe that when she would eat the food that grew from the tree "your eyes would be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." She ate after convincing Adam to eat too, and their eyes were opened, "and they realized they were naked; so they sowed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves." God found out about them disobeying him, and forever banished them from his garden paradise, after bestowing pain and suffering to haunt all humans as a reminder to not disobey God.
In E.A Speiser’s volume on Genesis in the Anchor Bible series, he refers to this section of Torah as the “Fall of Man”. Original sin is part of the Doctrine of the Fall, which is the belief that when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they 'fell' from perfection and brought evil into a perfect world.
For Christians, the fall is inseparable from redemption - the act by which Human souls are washed clean of the stain of original sin. Some Christians believe that the story of the fall and redemption is a story of two Adams, and sometimes refer to Christ as the "Second Adam". The first Adam sins and causes humanity to fall; the second Adam atones for that sin with his death and redeems humanity.
Christians believe that when Adam and Eve sinned in Eden and turned away from God they brought sin into the world and turned the whole human race away from God. The doctrine absolves God of responsibility for the evils that make our world imperfect by teaching that Adam and Eve introduced evil to a perfect world when they disobeyed him. Adam's sin not only brought sin into the world, but that it removed from humanity the gift that enabled people to be perfectly obedient to God.
In Genesis 3:5 and 3:6, sin enters the world. Along with sin, freewill enters the world. When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
After this event, however, man does acquire free will. The story continues as Adam and Eve realize their nakedness and choose to cover themselves. Adam and Eve feel shame, and they choose to hide themselves from God when He is in the garden. Man now has free will. He can act on his own desires and, in theory, not have to listen to God anymore. The serpent says in verse five that Adam and Eve will know good and evil and that they will be like God because of it.
The pseudo-Jewish historian, Philo, discusses how the trees in the Garden of Eden are representative of the virtues that God places within the soul of man (Peters 119-121). The four rivers dividing the Eden are also representative of virtues. The rivers stand out because these virtues are the most essential, and they are used to provide a notion of what is good. The last part of Philo’s passage discusses how God’s wisdom is the source of these virtues.
So this leads us to the next topic, if Christianity finds that the exile from the garden represents a fall, because we defied God’s commands, how does Judaism deal with the event, especially as it gives rise to the concept of free will which Maimonides so greatly advocated.
I quote from that great theologian of the modern era, Frank Zappa.
"The essence of Christianity is told us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the tree of knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just kept your fucking mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions."
So I looked in an old favorite tool of mine called the Hertz Pentateuch, a early form of the Plaut Torah commentary. In it we find this passage.
Chapter III in is one of the most beautiful in the Bible. It has been called the ‘pearl of Genesis’, and men read with wonder its profound psychology of temptation and conscience. With unsurpassable art, it shows the beginning, the progress and the culmination of temptation and the consequences of sin, It depicts the early tragedy in the life of each human soul—the loss of man’s happy, natural relation with God through deliberate disobedience of the voice of conscience, the voice of God. ‘Every man who knows his own heart, knows that the story is true; it is the story of his own fall. Adam [see * below] is man, and his story is ours’ (McFadyen).
Is the narrative literal or figurative, and is the Serpent an animal, a demon or merely the symbolic representation of Sin? Various have been the answers to these questions; and none of them are of cardinal importance to the Faith of the Jew. There is nothing in Judaism against the belief that the Bible attempts to convey deep truths of life and conduct by means of allegory. The Rabbis often taught by parable; and such method of instruction is, as is well known, the immemorial way among Oriental peoples. Eminent Jewish thinkers, like Maimonides and Nachmanides, have accordingly understood this chapter as a parable; and Saadyah regarded the Serpent as the personification of the sinful tendencies in man, the Yetzer hara, the Evil Imagination.
Two fundamental religious truths are reflected in this Chapter. One of them is the seriousness of sin. There is an everlasting distinction between right and wrong, between good and evil. There have always been voices—Serpent voices—deriding all moral do’s and dont’s, proclaiming instinct and inclination to be the truest guides to human happiness, and bluntly denying that any evil consequences follow defiance of God’s commands. This Chapter for all time warns mankind against these insidious and fateful voices. In the words of Isaiah it seems to say, ‘Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil: that put darkness for light, and light for darkness: that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes.’
The other vital teaching of this chapter is, Free will has been given to man, and it is in his power to work either with or against God. It is not the knowledge of evil, but the succumbing to it, which is deadly; man may see the forbidden fruit, he need not eat of it. Man himself can make or mar his destiny. In all ages and in all conditions, man has shown the power to resist the suggestions of sin and proved himself superior to the power of evil. And if a man stumbles and falls on the pathway of life, Judaism bids him rise again and seek the face of his Heavenly Father in humility, contrition and repentance. ‘If a man sin, what is his punishment?’ ask the Rabbis. The answer of the Prophet is, ‘The soul that sinned, it shall die’—the wages of sin is death. The answer of the Sage is, ‘Evil pursues the evil-doer—the wages of sin is sin. The answer of the Almighty is, ‘Let a man repent, and his sin will be forgiven him’—the wages of sin is repentance.
In my own approach to this story, I have found comfort in the thought that had God not wanted us to engage in the pursuit of knowledge, there would have been no need for the tree to exist. It has long been my feeling that the tree was there to inspire us to climb. So I called my brother, the attorney, who in looking in one of his law dictionary’s found the following definition of “attractive nuisance”.
Attractive Nuisance Doctrine. The doctrine is that person who has an instrumentality, agency, or condition upon his own premises, or who creates such condition on the premises of another, or in a public place, which may reasonably be apprehended to be a source of danger to children, is under a duty to take such precautions as a reasonably prudent man would take to prevent injury to children of tender years whom he knows to be accustomed to resort there, or who may, by reason of something there which may be expected to attract them, come there to play. (Black’s Law Dictionary)
So if God is indeed the owner of the garden and everything there is God’s creation and has a defined purpose according to the divine will, then the trees presence was either a taunt to humanity or an invitation. I, of course, believe the latter.
Why would God taunt humanity with such an enticing tree whose fruit was so fragrant and filled the garden with its scent? Such a view suggests the rabbinic view of the test, that God is constantly tempting and testing us to see how we respond. There is no trust, no commitment, no future in such a relationship. I feel that God knows what we will choose and gives us free will to define our relationship and through the challenges in our life, create the bonds that bring humanity and God closer to one another.
So the answer to the question; Fall or Leap, I think that it’s a leap towards a greater relationship that is only possible when we move beyond the wrote behaviors of the garden and into the fluid life of the world beyond the gates.
No comments:
Post a Comment