"The Fall of Man" - An Analysis

I was thinking to myself today of what "real life lesson" if any could apply to that tired old tale of the Garden of Eden. In the story as handed down, a serpent generally considered of some dubious character or another, convinces Eve to eat a fruit that is "forbidden", she eats it, and gives it to Adam, who also eats it, and then God kicks them out of paradise for having eaten the forbidden fruit. I was thinking, what possible relevance could this story ever have for today's world. The very notion of "it is forbidden" is anathema to reason. As Plato said, "there is no limit set to thought". So the very concept that something is "forbidden" to look into is just b.s. to the modern mind, and rightfully so, in my opinion. Now, certainly, we can apply knowledge for good or for ill (i.e. electricity can be used for light bulbs - good - or electric chairs - bad - for instance). But knowledge in itself is neither good nor bad, it is how we apply that knowledge which counts.

Another "problem" with the "fall of man" tale, at least, how I heard it often related, is the misogynistic character of it. Eve eats the fruit, gives it to Adam, who also eats it, and then boy are they in trouble. A certain self-styled "reverend" whom I will not give credit to enough to mention by name, but at any rate, a self-styled "reverend" whom I happened to hear preach growing up as a child always used to say how the fall of man happened not when Eve ate the forbidden fruit, but only when Adam did, because, since after all the male is "superior" in this "reverend"'s mind, according to him, God did not care two whits what Eve did, but only cared about what Adam, her supposed "superior" did, and so when Adam ate the forbidden fruit, that was when they went amiss, because he should have (presumably according to this twisted way of thinking) beaten Eve into submission and shown her the error of her ways, and then all would have been cool, apparently).

So I have not liked the "fall of man" story as related traditionally, both because as a humanist, I value knowledge and think that knowledge itself is not good or bad, it is simply how we use that knowledge that becomes good or bad, be it electricity (light bulbs or electric chairs ), nuclear energy (cheap power vs. atom bombs), etc., and also because how the story was related to me anyway as a child by a certain self-styled "reverend", it always struck me as misogynistic. So just as an intellectual exercise, as a way of staving off the perpetual boredom which personally I seem to perennially struggle with, ha, I was thinking about whether there is some other way to understand this parable (and it was, needless to say, always a parable, historically, despite what contemporary "creationists" would like to believe, by the way) without its original anti-reason or anti-women connotations.

I then recalled a small detail about the story as traditionally related, and it is this small detail I should like to focus on, for often in the smallest details can the most meaning be had. After Eve has eaten the forbidden fruit, and gives it to Adam who also eats it, God comes along and basically confronts Adam with a loosely-translated message of, WTF. Adam, instead of taking responsibility for his actions, goes something like, "well, it was this woman here that you gave me, she gave the fruit to me, I am not to blame, etc.". In the parable God does not "buy" it, and basically kicks them out of the garden to live "east of Eden" which has since become a literary metaphor for less-than-idyllic places to reside. The detail here that emerged for me when thinking about this was that God came to talk to Adam about the "forbidden fruit" issue, and Adam gave an excuse, instead of "owning up" and in particular tries to "shift the blame". I think maybe one could think about this thusly to sort of re-interpret the parable: maybe God, or how about we spell that,
G-d, here, in deference to the Judeac tradition of not speaking or writing the name of G-d which is another discussion as to the reasons behind that beyond the scope of this discussion, suffice it to say it has to do with the traditions of Sumerian culture circa 2000 B.C.E. with divinities having "secret names", but I digress, at any rate, G-d seems to me to have gone down there to talk to Adam not necessarily to kick him and Eve out of the Garden of Eden but rather to make a determination as to whether this was really going to be necessary. Now, before this event, some traditions relate, Adam and G-d had a sort of "history" there, i.e., this was not the first time Adam had f'd something up. More on that later. I think G-d was trying to gauge the situation and see if he really had to kick Adam and Eve out, sort of like a high school principle who has to see if he really has to kick out a student - he does not want to, but he might need to in order that the school not be infected by the misdoings of that one student. I think it was Adam's pathetic, misogynistic, blame-shifting response that got him kicked out. I think if had simply owned up to what he had done, and not tried to blame Eve, I think all would have been cool, but, as it happened, he choose to blame-shift and be a generally spineless coward. Which leads me to a perhaps radical re-interpretation of this parable...

I think G-d kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden NOT because of the "forbidden fruit" but rather because of the dysfunctional and quite possibly abusive relationship that Adam and Eve had. Let's let that sink in for a moment. We are all told in Sunday School, etc., that some stupid "forbidden fruit" was eaten and Adam and Eve get expelled as a result of that. Well, yeah, pretty stupid to the rational mind for reasons outlined above. Now, THAT would be stupid. But what if, this was not the case at all? What if, instead, the "forbidden fruit" was a test, a test to see if Adam was going to treat Eve properly or just try and blame shift upon her?

OK, now please bear in mind this my personal "story", that is, I am not saying my "reading" of the parable is the "correct" one, it is simply my own "reading" and that is part of what I love about art - painting, poetry, parables, etc. - is the viewer or the reader can develop their own "take" on it. But here is my version of what is happening here. I think Adam and Eve are kicked out not because of some dumb ass forbidden fruit issue, but because of a much more real issue, and that is that Adam was abusing Eve and Eve did not have the self-respect to say "enough". OK, that is my thesis, and so let us look at the preceding events, and see if we can come up with a "what really happened" type of thing, the same way a detective works.

I think this whole "forbidden fruit" thing was a set-up. Bear with me. I think G-d and the snake (whom we will get to momentarily) were in a sort of "collusion". It was a "sting operation", not upon Eve, but upon Adam. It was a last-ditch effort to get Adam to be less of a dick, excuse the language, but that is I think what it was. I think G-d and the snake were trying to help Eve because they both knew she was in bad situation, but they are both limited in their ability to help because they both believe in free will, they cannot force either Adam or Eve to do anything, they can only try and help but they cannot violate free will (as the comedy film "Bruce Almighty" starring Morgan Freeman as G-d very poignantly pointed out that however powerful G-d is perceived as being the one thing he - or she - cannot do, is violate free will). In any event, I think it went like this. G-d basically told the snake (whose identity we shall get to) something like this: "look, Eve is being abused by Adam, and we have been down this road before with Adam in a previous relationship, and you, Ms. Snake, have done what you could do try and get Eve to get out of the situation but have been rebuffed. Tell you what we will do. I will tell Adam and Eve they cannot eat a particular fruit, and then you will come in and convince Eve to eat that fruit, and give the fruit to Adam to also eat. Then I will come in and confront Adam. If he can grow a pair and take some responsibility, then I know he can still be salvaged. If he does not and instead tries to blame Eve, then I will know the situation is currently hopeless, and we will have to eject Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, because this Garden is a place of peace and not of rancor, and we will have done all we could, but we cannot allow rancor in this Garden which is supposed to be a "safe zone" of peace and tranquility." So they put this plan into action, and we all know the result, Adam blames Eve and they both get ejected from the Garden, not out of animosity but because their dysfunction - Adam abusing Eve and Eve just taking it - could not stand in a place that was sort of a "safe zone" for peace - rancorous folks had to take their shit elsewhere, essentially. That is how I think that went down, but let me back it up with more evidence.

Eve was not Adam's first girlfriend. He had had another, named Lilith. Lilith was also a Sumerian deity round about the time these Judeac tales were being generated so was a well-known mythological "diva" already but that is neither here nor there for this tale, but just for historical reference. There was also a brief period in which in some Jewish tales at the time - circa 2000 BCE - Lilith was the wife of the Jewish God Yahweh who later became known as just G-d - another story there - so if we are being creative we could say that perhaps out of love for Adam G-d imparted to him his own wife as an ultimate act of self-sacrificial love, but that is just sort of an historical footnote there. But, hey, let's just have some fun with that one because it imparts a certain poetry to the story that follows. Let's say Lilith was originally the wife of G-d, and that she later agreed to be the wife of Adam, as a symbol of G-d's unconditional love for Adam. Because such a supposition makes the following even more poetic or tragic. Adam had it pretty good. He was in this beatific Shangrela-esque Garden of peace and tranquility and he also has a beautiful companion with whom to spend the days with, communing with his fellow animals, nature etc. Not a bad deal there. But Adam wanted more. He wanted power. He wanted domination. He missed the point of G-d that the goal of life is not power or domination but it is about Love. (We could side-track into the theories of Jacques Lacan if you want me to back that up, but shoot me an email on that for more, ha.) So, Adam was not content at the "sweet deal" he had, but rather he wanted more, and he wanted "domination" over Lilith. Not to get into "too much information" or "TMI" territory here, but by way of giving the full story as handed down in Jewish tradition, essentially Adam demanded to be "on top" if one follows me here in terms of "bedroom" stuff, in order assert his "dominance" and Lilith wanted a "side-by-side" arrangement in said "bedroom" stuff because they were supposed to be equal. Please note obviously the take-away from this is not about what positions are more optimal than others in the bedroom, it is rather the motivation behind that - Adam wanted the "on top" position in order to feel "superior" and that is the point there, so it is the motivation he had, not the actual physical activity involved which is the problem there. So, at any rate, needless to say, Lilith is upset and "storms off" from her and Adam's cave or whatever, and walks through the Garden of Eden. She happens to run into G-d. Now, to give cultural background here, in the Fertile Crescent mythology of circa 2000 B.C.E., deities, be they the Egyptian god Ra or whomever, sometimes will have secret names, and if one can get the secret name of a deity, one will get special magical powers to visit vengeance upon one's enemies. So, Lilith, naturally pissed off, asks G-d for his secret name, presumably because she wants to get back at Adam for his "frat boy" ways. G-d, in a certain moment of ironic humor in this tale, gives Lilith his secret name. That secret name in the Sumerian is "Arammu". In English this is translated as Love. Now, why is this funny? Because in the culture of the time, one gets special powers when learning a Deity's secret name, usually powers to visit upon one's enemies. And in this case, Lilith indeed got special powers - she sprouted wings a la an archangel or something like that. And what did she do? She flew away from the Garden of Eden, and settled in her own "safe place" or her own "Garden" near the Red Sea, protected by a consort of seraphim angels, and, essentially, establishing "her own life" if one wills away from the abusive Adam. This is funny or ironic because Lilith did not use her new-found powers to seek vengeance upon Adam as most tradition would insinuate - if one has the secret name of a deity, one uses that for one's own purposes - rather, because the "secret name" of G-d in this tale was Love, she had the "maturity" to just let Adam be, and not kill him or otherwise seek revenge, but just "get out of Dodge" and have her own life. Lilith, the first girlfriend Adam had sought to dominate, was mature and created her own "Garden of Eden" near the Red Sea, because she understood G-d in a way Adam did not - she knew G-d was all about Love, and not about trying to control or abuse anyone.

Now, back to the original issue of what went on with the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden. My thesis here, is this was a "set up". G-d and the snake decided to give Adam one more chance to not be a dick, to be blunt, and Adam failed that, and the rest is history - Lilith made the right choice, to get out of the abusive situation but also not to seek revenge and thusly to this day one might imagine, she has a nice set-up going surrounded by seraphim - and owls, the symbols of wisdom or "maturity" one might think - upon the shores of the Red Sea. In Jewish tradition, snakes, like owls are also a symbol of wisdom - the reason the medical field often has a logo showing a snake on a pole is a throw-back to a story in the Torah in which the people of Israel were plagued by an illness, and Moses (or somebody - my memory is vague) got a snake on a stick and somehow or other that helped to heal everyone - again I am fuzzy on the details there, but the point is, snakes were sometimes a symbol of wisdom (in contrast to the darker metaphor of snakes being a symbol of danger or evil which has I think evolutionary roots but I won't go there just now). There is a line of thought in which Lilith, having had some bad experiences with Adam, tried to rescue Eve, by re-entering the Garden disguised as a snake and trying to convince her to leave but these good-intentioned implorings were rebuffed and Lilith disguised as a snake was unable to rescue Eve, again, being limited, along with G-d, by people's free will.

We come to the conclusion, then, that the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden was the result of a last-ditch effort upon the part of G-d and Lilith to "fix" things. I think G-d had Lilith go into the Garden one last time, and get Eve to do something he had told Eve not to do, just so he could get Adam's reaction. Had Adam taken responsibility, the G-d would have revealed the bluff and have been thankful that Adam had matured in his ways since the time when Adam and Lilith were together. Unfortunately, this was not to be the case. Lilith disguised as a snake got Eve to eat a "forbidden" fruit, and Eve gave it to Adam, who also ate it, and was confronted about it by G-d, and failed the test by remaining in his old ways and blaming Eve. At this point, there was no choice. The Garden was a place of peace and not of conflict and abuse, and Adam choose to be his usual charming self, and Eve had not the gumption to do as Lilith did, and get out of the situation, and so, in order to preserve the Garden, G-d had no choice but to banish both of them from the Garden, in hopes that they or their descendants could learn the same lesson Lilith had learned earlier: that we are all equal, that abuse or de-humanizing others is unacceptable, and that, in the face of such things, the right thing to do is to save oneself and repair to friendlier territory, as did Lilith, rather than seeking vengeance, which, again, would have been the "norm" according to the mythologies of this time period of 2000 B.C.E.

To summarize: the "fall of man" perhaps had nothing to do with a "forbidden fruit" but rather had everything to do with the way we treat one another, seeing our fellows a human beings, or seeing our fellows as subjects of abuse or domination. Maybe G-d and Lilith did the best damn job the could, but ultimately could not override human free-will, and had to eject Adam and Eve from the Garden not out of punitive motivation but out of needing to protect a paradise wherein injustice was not allowed.

To shift away from mythological stuff, I have long felt that the well-documented conflicts - killing and cannibalism and taking of teeth and so forth as trophies - that occurred in real life circa 30,000 years ago, between modern-day hummans and their cousins, the Neanderthals, who were close enough genetically to be able to interbreed with humans (and that, incidentally is why some folks even today have red hair because that comes from Neanderthal genes) is perhaps why we have parables like "the fall of man" because somewhere, deep within our genes, deep within out collective subconscious, we know we have "lost our way". Biologically, we need only look to the fact that we have wisdom teeth to demonstrate the point - modern humans (i.e. apes having the same brain-size as us here in the 21st century have existed perhaps as far back as 250,000 years ago) - up until a certain point in our forgotten evolutionary past, we were vegetarians and the wisdom teeth enabled us to be able to chew certain leaves which we could not today, and, some theories say, our appendix which today is useless, used to be an organ to process certain leaves which we no longer eat. Somewhere along the way humans turned from being peaceful vegetarians into blood-thirsty carnivores, and I personally think that because our brains have largely remained the same over the years that this shift has instilled within us a certain sense of a "fall from paradise", somehow, deep within our genetic code, we have a "feeling" that we were once "better" than we are today. And this is why I think various "fall of man" parables have cropped up over the years, whether the Jewish Garden of Eden parable or the ancient Greek's lost "golden age" tradition. I think somewhere, deep within our subconscious, we know we are better than what we sometimes can be, and we want to go back to that better state of being.


In conclusion, I have come to feel that the "fall of man" as traditionally related, had nothing to do with childish issues like "eating a forbidden fruit" or "the woman made me do it", etc., but everything to do with how we - today - choose to view our fellows, whether as human beings worthy of respect and of love, or as simply objects to support our own selfish desires. To end on an optimistic note, however, we do not have to see ourselves as inevitably "living in a fallen world" as the saying goes. We do not have to be like Adam and persist in our own self-serving desires which can only end in alienation from our fellows, nor, do we have to be like Eve and just accept the world as it is. We can instead be like Lilith, and resist injustice wherever and whenever it is found but in this resistance still retain our humanity, that is, we are not resisting against the folks who commit injustice, in its multivariate forms - mysogony, racism, xenophobia (hatred of foreigners or immigrants), transphobia (hatred of transgendered or "gender-queer" folks), homophobia, greysphobia (OK, I made that one up - hatred of "grey aliens", ha), etc., etc., but rather, we are resisting against that hate in each one of us that leads to various phobias. Like Adam, we have a choice. We can remain in our own state of self-serving bigotry or not. Like Eve, we also have a choice. We can choose to not stand up to this bigotry, or not. And, like Lilith, we have a choice. We can choose to not tolerate intolerance but at the same time not become motivated by hate inasmuch as our enemies are, or not. The "fall of man" is not I think either an interesting parable or something related to the war between humans and Neanderthals. It is I think both of these and neither of these. It is here, and it is now. When we choose to abuse or dominate other people, we choose the way of Adam. When we choose to allow this to happen we choose the way of Eve. When we choose to fight against this in such a manner as to become as bad as the people we contend against we choose the way of Sumerian and Egyptian culture circa 2000 B.C.E. But when we choose to respect one another, regardless of differences, and choose to resist those who do not, but also peacefully resist them, and not fall into the "Captain Ahab" spiral of revenge, we choose the way of Lilith, and, indeed, of G-d. And of course, by "G-d" I mean, "Arammu". :-)

As my favorite TV character Wiccan practitioner, Prudence Halliwell, might say, "Blessed Be." (Or, as T.S. Eliot might say, "Shantih", but you get the idea...)