得窺天境
得窺天境，須看透紅塵萬丈；人神相通，隻憑借靈犀一縷。信靠耶穌，此外路路是絕望；堅定不移，萬裏迢迢聚天堂。
1 The serpent was craftier than any other wild creature that YHWH Elohim had made. It said to the woman, "Did Elohim say, 'You shall not eat of any tree of the garden'?" 2 And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, 3 but Elohim did say, 'You cannot eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, nor can you touch it, or you will die.'" 4 But the serpent said to the woman, "You would not die. 5 Elohim said this because he knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like Elohim (gods/God), knowing good and evil." (3:1-5)
Genesis 3 is a continuation of the Yahwist creation story. Theologians call this episode the fall. The man and woman intentionally disregarded God's instruction not to eat from the tree of knowledge. This marks the first occasion when humans rejected the authority of Yahweh. The essential temptation to the woman and man was to become like gods (or like God, elohim can be translated either way, though the verb "knowing" in verse 5 is plural, so the translation "gods" may be preferable). The urge to achieve divinity becomes the persistent impulse of humanity in these early chapters of Genesis, surfacing again in chapters 6 and 11.
The serpent planted doubt in the woman's mind about God's motivation as they conversed about the trees (see Figure 1.C). It was able to entice the woman by suggesting that God did not have their best interests in mind, that maybe God was trying to keep something from them in order to protect his power. The serpent never actually lied, it simply sowed the seeds of distrust by suggesting that God might be withholding something very desirable from them.
| Figure 1.C Temptation Seal This Mesopotamian seal impression from the 23rd century B.C.E. displays a seated male deity facing a female worshiper, with a date palm and snake between them. Though unlikely by today's interpretation, George Smith famously related this scene to the temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden (see The Chaldean Account of Genesis, London, 1875, pages 90-91). British Museum, London -- Lindl (1903) |
Since the tree's fruit was appealing, and she wanted to gain wisdom and knowledge, Eve ate the fruit and passed it on to Adam. Immediately they recognized that something had gone wrong. They felt vulnerable with each other and defensive toward God.
Adam and Eve now felt estranged from God and became fearful. They sought to distance themselves from God, so they hid in the garden, of course to no avail. When God confronted them, both tried to disown responsibility for their actions. The man blamed the woman and she blamed the serpent. The text suggests that denying personal responsibility for one's actions is the primal human reaction to guilt. Their choice to disregard God's instruction not to eat from the tree of knowledge epitomizes the human tendency to assert its independence and autonomy and deny subordination to God.
Contrary to what God seemed to mean in his warning "on the day you eat of it you shall die," they did not die on the spot. The death predicted in Genesis 2 apparently implied much more than just the cessation of physical life. Death signified alienation from God, which first became evident as interpersonal disharmony and shame, and later as biological death.
God cursed them and expelled them from the garden. Each of the three received a suitable punishment through a curse. God's curse is the opposite of his blessing. In the serpent's case God made it the lowest of all creatures, forced now to crawl on its belly (see Figure 1.7 where the serpents are upright). The curse on the serpent is somewhat cryptic, but God seems to be saying that the temptation to do evil, as represented by the serpent, will not dominate humanity. The couple's offspring will be bruised by the serpent's evil but not overcome by it. Perhaps this suggests that, at the very least, there is hope for humanity.
The curses were targeted to the created role of the man and woman. The woman was cursed in her relationship to her husband and in her essential role of continuing the race. They had been created for a relationship of mutuality, but now the husband would dominate. The text states unambiguously that woman's subordination to man follows the break with God, and is a result of the curse; it was not part of the created order. In addition to interpersonal dysfunction, the woman would have great pain in the course of child birthing and child rearing.
The man was created to care for and till the ground. His curse related to his essential function of caring for creation. From now on food production would be accomplished only with great difficulty. Although he was inextricably tied to the ground (remember the pun on his name), it would resist him as he tried to live off it. Furthermore, when he died, he would return to the soil out of which he came.
As a whole, these curses set the stage for the blessing that would be voiced by God in Genesis 12. God's blessing of Abram marked the beginning of his program to overcome the relationships broken in the garden. In the meantime he clothed the couple. Then they were expelled from the garden, according to God, because "the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil" (3:22). Cherubim guards were placed at the entrance to the garden to keep the man away from the tree of life (see Figure 1.D).
| Figure 1.D Winged Protector A cherub (Hebrew plural cherubim) was not a cherry-cheeked child, such as we might imagine Cupid with his bow and arrow. In the ancient Middle East a cherub was a man-headed lion or bull with eagles' wings that stood guard outside Mesopotamian temples. The term cherub appears to derive from the Akkadian word kuribu that was attached to such protector figures. Layard (1850), page 76. |
The break between humanity and deity is decisive for the course of events that follows. God was deeply offended by human disobedience. What exactly was the offense (in identifying the nature of the offense reconciliation becomes possible)? Was the sin a moral failing, or intellectual craving, or sexual transgression?
The two creation accounts of Genesis taken together establish fundamental Hebrew truths about God in relation to the universe and humanity. God is sovereign and powerful, yet approachable and concerned. God established certain boundaries for proper human behavior, yet granted humans tremendous freedom. The world is wonderfully ordered and internally consistent, indeed very good, yet it is distorted by human willfulness.
These features of the Hebrew worldview were not held universally throughout the ancient Middle East. While the biblical creation narratives share certain similarities of detail with the creation stories of the ancient Middle East, their understandings of deity and humanity significantly differ. By comparing the stories we can identify commonly held mythic motifs, but also grasp the Bible's distinct perspective.
Primeval Sin. The significance of the tree of knowledge and the prohibition of eating its fruit is much debated (see Barr 1993). Here we outline three basic interpretations of the nature of the transgression.
1. Morality. By eating from the tree of knowledge, humanity chose to discriminate between what is good and what is bad on the basis of their own judgment, rather than by automatically accepting God's definition. By acting on their own, the couple irrevocably separated themselves from God, and their relationship to God was forever changed.
2. Knowledge. The Hebrew phrase "good and evil" can sometimes designate the totality of knowledge (see Deuteronomy 1:39 and 2 Samuel 19:35). Eating the fruit of that tree was an act of human pride, an attempt to know everything God knows. God would not tolerate any such challenge to his preeminence, and expelled the original couple from the garden lest they also eat from the tree of life and become invulnerable.
3. Sexuality. The story in Genesis 2-3 deals quite a bit with sexual matters. The couple is naked and not ashamed. Later they experience shame because of their nakedness. Even the serpent has been interpreted by psychoanalysts as a sexual symbol. The Hebrew term for "knowledge" can have sexual associations, as in Genesis 4:1, where "Adam knew Eve," which is clearly a euphemism for sexual intercourse. The sexual interpretation suggests that coming to knowledge, symbolized by eating the forbidden fruit, signifies the passage from childhood through puberty to adulthood. Sexual experience involves the pain and alienation of coming to know oneself and the other in new ways. Discovering the sexual impulse means one cannot go back to the state of innocence ever again.
All three interpretations have hints of truth in them. Yet the big affront to Yahweh seems to be humanity's desire to become like gods, to be independent, self-sufficient entities. By focusing on this dimension, perhaps the first interpretation contains the most truth. By their act of self-determination, the original couple expressed their intent to live by their own authority, not by God's. They tried to seize what could only be divinely granted. God would not abide this direct challenge. He expelled them and denied them access to perpetual life, symbolized by the tree of life.
This concern with self-determination versus divine-determination appears to be the key to the Yahwist's interest in this story. Would the prosperity of the Davidic empire lead the Israelites into an attitude of self-sufficiency? Would they forget about Yahweh? Would they try to grasp greatness on their own or wait for God's blessing? The Yahwist recalls the story of the first ancestors as a warning against self-determination.
16 To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pregnancy pain: in pain you will bear children. Yet you will long for your husband and he will dominate you." 17 And to the man he said, "Because you heeded your wife and ate from the tree I commanded you not to, cursed is the ground on account of you: you will eat with pain all the days of your life. 18 Thorn and thistle will sprout for you when you want to eat the plants of the field: 19 by the sweat of your forehead you will eat bread until you return to the ground (for from it you were taken)--dust you are and to dust you will return." (3:16-19)
14 Then YHWH Elohim said to the serpent, "Because you did this, cursed are you more than any beast or creature of the field. On your belly you will go, and dust you will eat all the days of your life. 15 Enmity I will create between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will bruise your head and you will bruise his heel." (3:14-15)
8 They heard the sound of YHWH Elohim walking in the garden in the cool of the day. The man and his wife hid from YHWH Elohim among the trees of the garden. 9 YHWH Elohim called to the man and said to him, "Where are you?" 10 He said, "I heard you in the garden and I became afraid, because I am naked. So I hid." 11 He said, "Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat from the tree from which I commanded you not to eat?" 12 The man said, "The woman you gave me, she gave me something from the tree and I ate." 13 Then YHWH Elohim said to the woman, "What did you do?" And the woman said, "The serpent tricked me and I ate." (3:8-13)
Adam's Apple. Common lore has it that the fruit the original couple ate was an apple. The text says nothing about apples. The fruit was probably something native to the ancient Mesopotamian world, perhaps a pomegranate, date, or fig.
6 So when the woman saw that the tree was a good food source and that it was pleasant to look at and desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some of its fruit and ate. She also gave some to her husband and he ate. 7 The eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked. They sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin cloths. (3:6-7)
Serpent. Who/What was the serpent and where did it come from? Apparently, it was one of the creatures God had made. Only in later interpretations is the serpent identified with Satan and the Devil (for example, Revelation 12:9 in the New Testament; see Pagels 1995). Ancient mythological texts, however, suggest that more is involved than just snakes. The serpent is akin to the dragons and monsters of ancient creation myths, creatures such as Lotan (Leviathan) in the Baal texts from Ugarit and the water god Apsu in the Enuma Elish from Mesopotamia (see the note on Cosmic Myth above).
The Fall. Although the notion of a "once for all fall" is not found in the Hebrew Bible, this story became the basis for the Christian notion of original sin. It appears first in 2 Esdras 7:118, and was developed by Paul in the New Testament, who said, "sin came into the world through one man," and "one man's trespass led to condemnation for all" (Romans 5:12, 18). Judaism does not accept the notion of original sin. Instead, it holds that one is subject to the evil impulse (yetser hara) that must be controlled by the good impulse (yetser hatov). This good impulse is cultivated by doing godly deeds and observing the commandments.
