We covered the second episode of the 2nd Creation Story.
The entire 2nd Creation Story is found in Genesis 2:4 – 3:24. The second episode of the story – the focus of this session – is found in Genesis 2:25 – 3:7.
Our examination of the 2nd Creation Story is informed by, and closely follows, the work of Phyllis Trible. An outline of her reading of the story – which has withstood 30 years of critical examination – can be found here. You can find the notes from previous class sessions, covering the first episode, called Eros Created, in the Pages column on the home page of this blog.
This second episode is called Eros Contaminated.
Frame
The story of the contamination involves every relationship: the relationship between the man and woman, between humankind and God, between humankind and creation, and between God and God’s creation. It involves the question asked by the Serpent, “Has God truly said…?”, and the response made by the man and woman. At its heart, the story of the contamination of Creation involves the question: who determines what is good and what is evil – humankind, or God?
The episode, Eros Contaminated, is framed by two parallel verses. In Verse 2:25, immediately after we learn that the man “clings to his wife, and they become one flesh,” we are told, “the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.” That phrase marks the beginning of this episode.
The end of the episode (3:7) is marked by the news that, immediately after eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, “the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked,” and “made loincloths for themselves” out of leaves. Apparently, they did not know they were naked before eating from the tree, and therefore were innocently naked. After eating, they were no longer innocent and, discovering nakedness, immediately hid themselves.
Who were they hiding from? Surely not God. As we will see in the next episode, God knows what happened. And yet, we cannot rule out their desire to hide their nakedness from God – not only do they clothe their bodies, but they will later secrete themselves among the bushes, hoping God will not see them. So, yes; they try to hide from God.
But not only God. When their eyes are first “opened,” they see one another – nakedly exposed and vulnerable to the other – and rush to fashion clothing. So their clothes are a protection from the eyes and thoughts of each other, too. The man and woman – created from one body, and brought together that they might unite and become “one flesh” as God intended – quickly put on clothing to armor themselves against one another, to enforce a kind of separation that has come about from understanding what is good and what is evil.
We could say: their eyes opened, they know they are guilty of the one thing God forbade them. And in their guilt, are ashamed. And in their shame, in their shared guilt, they try to hide their shame by covering up their bodies.
Now think about this. When we hide our bodies, it is not only our bodies we hide, is it? We hide our knowledge of our bodies inside of our clothing.
For example, people who are ashamed of their bodies often wear heavy or bulky clothing, where people proud of their bodies tend toward close-fitting, revealing clothing. But body shame is not only about physical appearance. In fact, it may have nothing to do with the physical self. People can be ashamed of their bodies for entirely mental or emotional reasons, and hide their bodies in an effort to hide themselves; to become invisible to others. In fact, some people’s eating disorders are the direct result of some emotional or mental sense of shame. The eating disorder is a physical attempt to hide or purge the mental/emotional shame.
That’s what’s going on in this story. It is about physical shame – wanting to bodily hide from one another and God – but it is also, and more significantly, about wanting to hide emotionally, mentally, spiritually. They have done a shameful thing, and know it, and want to escape both their knowledge and the consequences of their actions by hiding themselves. They want to armor themselves, protect themselves bodily and spiritually, by putting on the “protection” of clothing.
What they have learned – by losing it – and what we are to learn by hearing the story, is that human security lies in obedience to God. When we abandon obedience to God, we become unprotected. We are on our own in a frightening world. Apart from God we are orphans in a cold universe, and therefore very vulnerable. Death lurks in every shadow and strange noise. To live, we must return to God’s orbit; we must be obedient to God. We must understand that it is God who determines good and evil, and therefore the parameters within which we can fully and securely live.
Let’s look at it all more closely.
The Big Question
In the last session, we began exploring the Serpent. I said that in this I would challenge what we were all taught in Sunday school, because there is no evidence in the story that the serpent is Satan. The serpent is not even evil. It is merely a serpent, one of the creatures God created for His perfect Garden; one of the creatures meant to provide company for human beings; one of the “animals” brought to the human creatures to be named by them. (And “to call the name of,” remember, means to exercise dominion over.)
Genesis 3:1 – “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made.”
The word translated ”crafty,” is also translated as sly, cunning. And “craftiness,” or “cunning” is a variable quality in the animals God created. You can see this if you consider a fox, rabbit, and eagle. Each exhibits a different degree and kind of “cunning” or “slyness.” And so it is throughout the animal world. The scripture tells us that at the beginning the serpent was “more crafty” than any other animal God had made. It was the most cunning, the most crafty in a range of cunning and crafty creatures. It was, in that sense, the closest among animals to the human creatures, and therefore a fit animal to raise a natural question.
So, in the story, the serpent is not an opponent to God. Except, that is, in the sense that all of nature is opposite God (“opposite” = “opponent”). Creation is not a part of God, even though created by God. Creation, including human beings, is separate from God the same way a work of art is separate from the artist who creates it. And just as you can see something of the spirit of the artist in his or her artwork, so you can see something of God in creation. But in neither case would you say the artwork is the artist, or that the artwork is in some sense one with the artist. Rather, we understand that the artist is separate from, and superior to, the artwork – no matter how much of one’s soul is poured into the creative act.
In that sense, Creation is apart from and opposite God. God and Creation stand apart from one another and face each other across a divide, a chasm that forever separates them. Yet, the creation is dependent upon the Creator for its very existence, while the Creator exists before, after, and always apart from the creation. While the Creator may be known by His creation, He is not defined by His creative work, nor limited to that work, nor dependent for His existence upon that work.
Just so, we and all of the creation within which we live, is dependent upon God but is not the same as God; nor is God dependent upon us. God exists outside of creation and independent of it. So it is God who decides the circumstances and parameters within which we exist, live, and thrive. We do not decide what is “good” and what is “evil” in God’s masterpiece. And trouble develops when we, the created, think we can be our own authors able to write our own story.
In this story, that trouble emerges when the Serpent asks the question, “Did God really say…?” But it is a question that we all ask ourselves: “Has God really said I cannot…?” “Does God really expect me to…?” “Why would God want…, when…is so obviously better?”
It is “natural” to question God. We all do it. Creation does it. Indeed, when the artists among us create a painting or other work of art, that art raises questions about the artist, does it not? It “challenges” the artist, and sometimes seeks a life independent of the artist, as when a work of art becomes iconic.
In this story, the Serpent represents the “natural question,” the question all of nature – and preeminently human beings – ask. It is not evil to ask the question; it is not evil to pose the question. It is evil to answer wrongly. And only human beings, with our free will (and free won’t), are able to fully answer the natural question: must we obey God to live? Are we (and by extension, all of creation) constrained by the Will of God, or may we author our own future, our own lives?
The Serpent
In a single verse Genesis provides ample evidence that the Serpent is not evil. Let’s quickly review that evidence.
The verse is: “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made.” From that verse we can conclude:
1) That the serpent was made by God.
2) Which means, the serpent is composed of the same earth as the other creatures, and of the same earth as the human creature.
In the next verse we discover that though the serpent is not the devil, it is never-the-less, the tempter: “He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
Look at Genesis 2:16: “And the Lord God commanded the earth creature, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.’”
Clearly, the answer to the serpents question is “no.” But that’s a trick question, isn’t it? God did say, don’t eat from this one tree. But the question the serpent asks is not, did God say don’t eat of that one tree? It is, did God say don’t eat from any tree? By answering “no” to the serpent’s question, the woman is half way to saying, “it’s okay to eat from the one tree.”
If that’s not clear, turn it around. If the woman answered “yes,” she would be cutting herself off from eating from every tree, which is clearly not God’s intent. So, by answering “no,” she is partially agreeing with the suggestion that every tree is good for food.
This kind of “rephrasing” is a frequent human trick. We are told one thing and, in order to justify doing what we want to do, we rephrase the information in a way that gives us “wiggle room” to do what we have made up our mind to do in any event. It is that natural impulse, that natural tendency that is represented by the serpent. It is the inherent challenge to external authority that we all resist and resent. We want to be our own bosses; we want to be the authors of our own lives. In some sense, we are forever and always teenagers in rebellion, aren’t we? The serpent gives voice to that rebellious streak – which exists as the dark side of our free will.
The very capacity to choose, to be able to create and destroy, which makes us capable of fulfilling God’s role for us in creation, is the capacity that makes us capable of rejecting God’s role for us – and hence, of rejecting God as the author for whom we work. So the serpent, friends, is inside each one of us. In the story, the serpent externalizes the defiant impulse within us. That’s all. The actual decision is not the serpent’s; it is ours. We decide daily whether to obey God or to decide for ourselves what is good to do and evil.
The Question
When the serpent asks the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?”, the “you” is in the plural form in Hebrew. That is, the serpent is asking, “did God say you two shall not eat?”
The point is that the serpent is not addressing the woman only; it is addressing the couple through the woman. That’s important. It signifies that the question is not addressed to “the weaker sex,” which reasoning has led the Church to teach that women should be subordinate to the protection and stronger wisdom of men.
Furthermore, we learn in verse 3:6 that when the woman was convinced that the fruit of the forbidden tree “was to be desired to make one wise” she not only took and ate, but “also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.”
In other words, despite what the Church has taught through the centuries, the woman was not out alone, wandering without the guiding wisdom of the man, seduced by the devil (being naturally more gullible), and then, having committed a sin and having realized her sinfulness, willfully sought out the absent male and tempted him to join her in sin. No, none of that happened – at least, not in the original story. It all happened in the retelling of the story by the Church (and perhaps by the partriarchs of Judaism and Islam, as well).
In the story, the man is with her. She didn’t have to go hunting for him; he was there. And he didn’t enter just after she ate, either; apparently he was there the whole time. And never spoke up to correct her. Why?
Trible maintains it is because the two were “one flesh.” That is, they were in perfect harmony and unity. (Which is, remember, the definition of “life.”) Being in harmony, one could speak for the other. But being in harmony does not negate individuality either, so while the two might be harmonious, neither is subsumed in the other; each is both capable of moral reasoning and responsible for his and her own decisions. It’s just that they trend toward seeing things the same way. Hence, what the one finds beautiful the other does, too. And what the one answers is likely to be what the other would answer as well.
The Quakers have a term for this. I encountered it in Quaker worship. When Quakers sit in silence before engaging in decision making, they do so for the purpose of allowing the Holy Spirit to bind them in unity. Then, when they address the issue before the community, they are more inclined to see things the same way. It often works, and when it works one person is likely to make a statement and hear it affirmed by another Quaker who will say, “My Friend speaks my mind.” It does not matter which Friend originally spoke, those who are “of like mind” will affirm the sentiment as their own. But that does not excuse any individual from personal responsibility to also listen to God’s “still, small Voice,” and to break the harmony if s/he believes God is saying something different. Indeed, the obligation is to speak a dissenting word, if one is convinced it is from God, because it is known in Quaker circles that the majority could be listening to a voice other than God’s. It might be that the one still, small Voice of opposition might be the true Voice of God.
Something like that is being indicated in the story. That the serpent addresses the woman does not mean the man is not being addressed; hence the plural form of “you.” Speaking to the woman, the serpent addresses the couple. The man is there, silent. Not because he’s abdicating his role and responsibility, but because he is in accord with her thoughts and speech. At the point where he has a different thought or word to speak, he is both capable and culpable for speaking it or withholding it. The fact that he never speaks up, never contradicts, never demurs indicates that throughout the encounter, he is in agreement with his mate: she is accurately speaking for him: “my Friend speaks my mind.”
The Response
Once the question has been raised, it needs an answer. And the woman provides one (3:2). She faithfully restates God’s law: “The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, “you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.”‘”
Her faithful restatement indicates that the law given to the Earth Creature before man and woman were fashioned from it is known to the man and woman after their partition. It also indicates that the woman knows the law – contrary to some historical theologians, who have argued that the woman sinned because God gave the law to the man, and she was ignorant of it. That’s obviously incorrect.
Not only does the woman faithfully recite the law, she also interprets it. Notice that God did not say anything about touching the fruit of that tree, only that they are not to eat it, but she has interpreted the command not to eat as an injunction to have nothing to do with the tree. She has internalized the command by digesting it and coming up with her own interpretation of it: if I am not to eat of it, I should have nothing to do with it, not even touch it. She is not ignorant of the law; she is as fully capable of understanding and obedience as the man; she is fully adult and a fully responsible person before God.
Furthermore, she answers for both herself and her man: “We may eat…”. And the man, who is there with her, does not disagree either in whole or in any particular with her response. He is in full agreement; silent by agreement, and not by either absence or subordination to her. He doesn’t even object to her taking on a “leadership role in the family.” In this instance, she acts as the “head” of the family – because where life reigns there is no hierarchy between man and woman, but equality – harmony, unity, mutuality.
The Challenge
If only the story stopped there! But it doesn’t, just as we don’t give up when God’s commandments are faithfully rendered to us in our daily lives. We look for loopholes, or for justifications for not obeying. We seek a rationalization why we ought to do what we think is good, rather than what God says is good.
The woman has said, no wily serpent, God has not said we cannot eat from any tree; only that we may not eat from the one tree because when we do we will die. But the serpent is not done.
Remember, death is discord, strife, hostility and danger; the disintegration of life where distinctions become oppositions, imperfections become problems, hierarchy becomes oppressive, and joy dissipates into tragedy. The woman’s reply is: “we must not take upon ourselves the power to decide good and evil, for when we do we will lose the unity, harmony, delight, and fulfillment that now characterizes our existence and relationship. It is only in obedience to God’s commands that we have what we have.” And the man does not disagree; she speaks his mind.
But the serpent replies (3:4-5), “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
In other words, the serpent calls God a liar: “That’s not true, and God knows it. If you discover for yourselves what is good and what is evil, you will be like God, able to author your own lives.” The suggestion is that God is jealous, and wants to keep human beings in a dependent position, in some sense retarded, infantilized, though we are capable of being fully adult and self-reliant, self-authorizing beings.
It turns out to be a winning argument. But it doesn’t prove God’s jealousy, it proves human jealousy. In a sense, it demonstrates the jealousy of all of nature, which wants to be self-authoring and independent, rather than God-determined and dependent. We, the crowning aspect of creation, are most capable of understanding the jealousy and the desire to be autonomous; and we, alone in all of creation, have the God-given ability to act independently, to take upon ourselves creation and destruction.
We are meant to occupy a place between God and the natural world, in order to mediate God’s Life to the creation, and in doing so to divinize the earth and all that is in it. But we also have the capacity to default. If we occupy our God-given role, not only will we experience a deep sense of fulfillment (doing what we are built to do), but we will lift creation heavenward, helping create heaven on earth. That is why the Bible insists that it is through us that Death entered the world; our decision affects everything. And it is why Paul says all of nature “groans” with the anguish of our sinfulness. What we do we do not to ourselves only; but to all of creation.
The anguish begins in the decision of the woman and man. Confronted with the challenge that nature and natural things, including human beings, do not need God to find fulfillment, the woman “saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, [and] she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate” (3:6).
And what was the result? Immediately, “the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.” Which is to say: their eyes were opened and they knew that they had no defense. Their sin “exposed” them. Suddenly, they were culpable for their disobedience, and had no way to “hide” or “cover up” their naked sinfulness.
In that light, making clothes of fig leaves – or anything else - is a pathetic gesture.
The Moral of the Story
Trible says this story “is about human obedience (life) and disobedience (death) as defined by God” (Trible, 108). Death comes from disobedience; sin. Death, or sin, is separation from the good God and all that the good God has intended for us. That goodness is accessible only when we occupy our proper place in the hierarchy, and by taking it upon ourselves to create our own goodness, we have cut ourselves off from (really, we have turned our backs on) the goodness that God – and only God – can provide.
Why do we continually fail to produce utopia? Because utopia is unGodly. Utopia is an effort to create a perfect world through imperfect people and an imperfect creation. It is human folly; human pridefulness. And that is why it always results in pain and horrendous suffering. By turning our backs on God we try to author our own fulfillment, and we get Death, Thanatos, instead: oppression, dissension, disharmony, and unrelieved tragedy where we are trying to contain the human impulse in order to create unity, harmony, delight and fulfillment.
That we yearn for Life (Eros) is a testament to our yearning for God. But we want God on our own terms, and that we cannot have. We have God on God’s terms, or we do not enter into God’s presence. And if we are not in God’s presence, we do not have Life: unity, harmony, delight, and fulfillment. And the earth either rejoices or groans with our decision.
And it is our decision; which is why God has been silent throughout this episode. But He will speak in the third and final episode, as He spoke in the first.
