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Background
Background
In the first book, Genesis, directly following the first creation story is a second, completely different creation story, in which Adam and Eve are created from mud.
As mentioned in the last section, much of the Hebrew Bible is the family history of the Jewish people.
Adam and Eve are the first names on that family tree. The diagram below is the entire family tree described in the Hebrew Bible along with the line descendents leading to Jesus taken from the books that the Christians added. (Click on the picture to have a closer look.)
The story is set in the Garden of Eden - a wonderful place where human beings are happy and have everything that they want. One of the odd features of the story is that it mentions actual rivers that still exist: the Euphrates and the Tigris. They run from Turkey through Syria and Iraq:
There are lots of different places suggested for Eden. Some people think it was in Armenia, others Iran, some Jerusalem, and some associate it with one of the earliest cities - a Sumerian city called Eridu, which was in southern Iraq.
Summary
Summary
God created Adam and Eve and put them in the Garden of Eden, which was perfect and they had everything they needed and wanted and didn’t have to work for it.
They could do whatever they wanted except eat from the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil or the Tree of Life
However, a snake persuaded Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Eve persuaded her husband, Adam, to have some too.
Suddenly, they realised that they were naked and felt ashamed!
God found out what they’d done and punished the snake (by not having legs); Eve (by having pain in childbirth); and Adam (by having to work the land to get food).
Genesis 2
Adam and Eve
4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.
5 Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, 6 but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. 7 Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
8 Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
10 A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. 11 The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin[d] and onyx are also there.) 13 The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. 14 The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Ashur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”
19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.
But for Adam[f] no suitable helper was found. 21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs[g] and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib[h] he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
23 The man said,
“This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’
for she was taken out of man.”
24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.
25 Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
Genesis 3
The Fall
3 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 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. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realised they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”
10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring[a] and hers;
he will crush[b] your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
16 To the woman he said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labour you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side[e] of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
Discussion
Discussion
There are lots of stories from around the world which bear strong similarities to the story of Adam and Eve. One idea (or Mytheme, as anthropologists call it) that is common is the idea that human beings have knowledge as a result of it being stolen:
In a Sumerian myth, the goddess Inanna travels to the shrine of the god Enki in Eridu. While she is there, she gets Enki drunk, and steals the Me, which is all the knowledge of civilisation. This knowledge includes Priesthood, Kingship, Shepherding, Truth, Law and many other things.
In Greek mythology, the god Prometheus steals heavenly fire which enables progress and civilisation and gives it to humans. Prometheus was punished by having his liver pecked out and eaten by an eagle everyday. Zeus, the king of the gods, also took revenge on mankind by presenting Pandora to Prometheus' brother Epimetheus. Pandora opened a jar left in her care containing sickness, death and many other unspecified evils which were then released into the world.
The southern African San People tell a story of IKaggen, a trickster God, who turned into a Mantis and stole fire from the Ostrich.
Many similar stories feature some kind of trickster figure stealing fire and giving it to the humans. In the story in Genesis, the trickster figure is the snake. In the stories of the Native American Tribes of the Pacific Northwest and the First Nations, the trickster figure is Coyote, Beaver, or Dog. In the Algonquin myth it is a Rabbit. In the Cherokee Myth it is a spider. In the Polynesian myth the trickster god who steals the knowledge is Maui. The Akan of west Africa have a Trickster God - Anansi - who is the God of stories, wisdom, and knowledge.
In all of these stories, there is an element of trickery, or a trickster, or a sense that the humans have gotten hold of something that they shouldn’t. In the Genesis story, it certainly seems as if God doesn’t want Adam and Eve to know the difference between Good and Evil. Why do you think this theme is so common all around the world? Why should knowledge be something that humans perhaps shouldn’t have?
Tasks
Tasks
Briefly retell the story of Adam and Eve in your own words.
Why do you think all these stories suggest that humankind has knowledge that it shouldn’t?
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