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WAT002 – The First “Sin” and the Garden of Eden
Growing up a Christian I never suspected that one of my biggest challenges theologically would end up being how I should feel about the serpent in the story of the Garden of Eden. Who exactly was the serpent, what is he, and why, if he is such a vile creature, does Jesus admonish his followers in the “Bible” to “be wise like serpents” (Matthew 10:16, KJV) and refer to himself as being lifted up like a serpent on a pole (John 3:14)?
“And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,”
John 3:14, NSRVUE
If you grew up Christian like me, I’ll warn you now, this topic is a doosy and will require you to keep a REAL open mind. It may just cause you to reexamine everything you’ve been told by the “church” regarding the matter of original sin and the Garden of Eden.
The Biblical Garden of Eden
As a recap, the majority of Christians are taught from the Bible to believe that God lovingly placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden along with two trees, the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” and the “Tree of Life”. God told them both that they may eat of any tree in the garden except ONE, a tree in the center of the garden that was the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil”, but of course, God’s new creation immediately disobeyed the one rule they were given. Let’s just set aside for the moment the whole question of how a “perfect” God creates a being that immediately breaks the very first rule they are ever given so we can focus on the serpent a bit.
One day Eve is walking in the garden and a serpent appears to her. We are told in the book of Genesis that the serpent was the most wise, or cunning, or shrewd or crafty (depending on which translation you read) of all the beasts on earth (Genesis 3:1). Again, this is re-affirmed by Jesus later in the New Testament when he instructs his followers to be “wise” or “shrewd” like serpents (Matthew 10;16).
“Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
Gen 3:1, NRSVUE
16 “I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.
Matthew 10:16, NRSVUE
It has long puzzled many Christians how it is that the serpent is depicted as the one who caused the original sin and was cursed by God and yet also later presented as a good and noble creature worthy to be looked up to and emulated (i.e. “be wise like serpents” and “the son of man must be lifted up like the serpent”).
In the Biblical account written by the Hebrews and appearing in our modern “Bibles”, Eve tells the serpent that God forbid them to eat of the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” and warned them that if they even touched the fruit, they would die. In fact, the warning as recorded in Genesis says that “in the very day” they eat of the fruit, they will die.
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 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.”
Genesis 2:16-17, NRSVUE
Let’s also set aside for the moment the statement “in the day that you eat from it you will surely die” which the majority of scholars agree means a LITERAL 24-hour period or day which did NOT happen, and focus on the next verse.
It is interesting to note that the VERY next verse following, Genesis 2:18 discusses how Adam was alone and that God looked for a “helper for him”. Only after parading all of the beasts of the field before Adam was it determined that Adam could not find a suitable mate and thus God decided to create Eve from his rib. This part of the story is often overlooked and needs to SERIOUSLY be re-examined. God FIRST has Adam look for a mate from among all the “beasts of the field” and only afterwards decides to create woman. This, I believe, is important to understand later on.
Because of this, it is worth examining this passage here:
18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” 19 So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all cattle and to the birds of the air and to every animal of the field, but for the man[a] there was not found a helper as his partner.
Genesis 2:18-20, NRSVUE
What should be carefully considered here (and which is in keeping with other extra biblical sources) is that “God” originally viewed Adam as no different than all the other “beasts of the field”. Even the Hebrew version of the story here in Genesis confirms this when it says that ONLY after Adam named all the beasts of the field was it apparent there was no mate or helper suitable for him. In other words, God expected Adam to find a mate from all the OTHER beasts of the field because Adam was himself, just a “beast of the field”. This will make much more sense later and is connected intimately with the story of the Watchers and for whom “women” were created.
Continuing on with our story of the Garden of Eden, the serpent responded to Eve that what “God” told her about the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” was not true. He informed her that if she touches the fruit she will not die and furthermore, if she eats of the fruit her eyes will be opened and she will become like God, knowing the truth of good and evil. As we all know, Eve then became persuaded to eat of the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” and even persuaded her husband to eat of it also. When God later found out about this (apparently totally unaware of when it first happened by the way), he became angry at all three of them (Adam, Eve and the serpent), cursed them with many curses, and cast them out of the Garden of Eden.
I pause here for a moment because for a LONG time I never understood the big “sin” here. Did God not want man to know the difference between good and evil? Why does that make any sense? And worse yet, when we (humans) DO learn the difference between good and evil, we are punished for it? That also made no sense to me. Why wouldn’t God want his followers to KNOW what’s wrong and what’s right? How can one be ‘judged’ if one doesn’t even understand what is “good” and what is “evil”? Clearly, I felt, I was missing something in the story. What EXACTLY was the “knowledge” of good and evil that Adam and Eve learned?
I will submit to you early that the answer MAY lie in the notion that before this point, man was considered just a ‘beast of the field” in the eyes of God and, like all other “beasts” was not subject to judgement over laws of morality such as “good and evil”. But once man became “enlightened” with the wisdom that came from eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, he was elevated to a status above mere beasts of the field and now subject to judgement. If that is the case then the original sin was less to do about eating a piece of fruit and more to do with whether we remained mere uneducated “beasts” as “God” intended us to be or whether we disobeyed by become “enlightened” beings.
Furthermore, as a budding “educated” Christian, there were other things that really bugged me about the story of the original sin, namely the curses. For example, Adam is cursed with physical labor toiling after the soil the rest of his life. Ok, that makes sense since he ate fruit God freely provided but once he sinned he has to go make his own food. The serpent is cursed to crawl on his belly and perhaps that makes sense if the serpent previously could fly or walk and this allowed it to be in a position to tempt Eve. But what about Eve’s punishment? Greatly increased pain in childbearing and forced to be ruled over by man? What on earth does THAT have to do with the sin at hand? Maybe being ruled by man could make sense but pain in childbirth? How does this remotely relate? Unless maybe we’re missing something about what happened here. And yes, I do believe we (Christians or former Christians) are missing the real meat of the original sin.
Before we get to that, I’d like to point out a couple of other interesting things about Eve and the serpent story that also often go overlooked by the modern “church”. Technically, it appears, the serpent did not lie to Eve about the consequences of eating the fruit of the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil”. The two claims the serpent made were that 1) “you will not die” in the day in which you touch the fruit and that 2) if you eat of the fruit your eyes will be opened and you will become like God, knowing the truth about good and evil.
As to the first point, Adam and Eve did not die “in the day” they touched and ate of the fruit. In fact, Adam lived to be over 900 years old according to the Bible and thus lived nearly a thousand years after eating the fruit. Modern apologeticists deal with this apparent contradiction by using the following logic. Before Adam and Eve ate of the fruit they were given eternal life but once they ate the fruit the “pronouncement of death” was placed upon them and eventually they would die. Thus it WAS in the day they ate of the fruit that it became inevitable that they would die. Some people, such as myself, didn’t accept that answer and pointed out that the verse says in the literal DAY that they eat of the fruit they should die. To deal with THAT, modern apologists often cite an obscure verse in the Bible that says to God a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day in order to suggest that one day equals a thousand years to God therefore Adam and Even did die within the thousand years defined as a “day” to God. For me personally, this is nothing but a bit of mental gymnastics that is required by those who insist the Bible contains no contractions and is “infallible”. Because the Bible can’t be wrong, this MUST be the solution. In fact, even I used to believe it as well until I read more of the history behind the story. My point is this, Eve said in the day that she touched the fruit she would die. Scholars agree that means a literal, twenty-four hour day. The serpent told her that was not true, she would NOT die the day she touched the fruit. And, in fact, Eve did not die the “day” she touched the fruit. In other words, the serpent did not lie. Further, the one who DID lie to Adam and Eve in this case, is God.
The second point is this. The serpent told Eve that when she ate the fruit her eyes would be opened and she would be like God, knowing the truth of Good and Evil. The book of Genesis actually records that’s EXACTLY what happened.
22 Then the Lord God said, “See, the humans have become like one of us, knowing good and evil, and now they might reach out their hands and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever”— 23 therefore the Lord God sent them forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which they were taken. 24 He drove out the humans, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.
Genesis 3:22-24, NRSVUE
So then, the EXACT thing that the serpent said would happen, happened. When Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” they became like gods (i.e. one of “us” in the plural form). And it was BECAUSE man had become like “one of us” that he was kicked out of the Garden of Eden.
I would like to point out that the reason Adam and Eve died, according to the story in Genesis, was because they were removed from the Garden of Eden and no longer allowed to eat from the “Tree of Life”. One could argue therefore that it was not the eating of the fruit that caused them to die but rather the removal from the Garden. and access to the Tree of Life.
Another point that doesn’t make a lot of sense to many but makes sense later when one understands the historical accounts of the Watchers, is what happens immediately after Adam and Eve eat of the fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Let’s review:
8 They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 He said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”
Genesis 3:8-11, NRSVUE
So you see that as the serpent said, their “eyes were opened” and the first thing they noticed was that they were naked so they immediately covered their sexual parts (i.e. loins). When God comes to speak with them his first question is, “who told you were naked, did you eat from the Tree?” So apparently, as I see it, one of the big keys to understanding the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is the issue over man’s “nakedness” or sexuality. We will delve into that more later.
The ultimate point we are driving to here in this post is that the serpent in the Garden was not just some random “beast of the field” that tempted Eve to eat forbidden fruit (oh and as a teaser, what does the term “forbidden fruit” suggest to you?). Rather, the point the author WILL be making is that the serpent in the Garden was none other than an angel, specifically a Seraphim angel as the author of the book will demonstrate soon. As we will see in future blog posts, the Seraphim are said to have the appearance of a serpent as documented in the Bible itself. In other words, a “serpent” may, in fact” be a way to refer to an angel. More on that later.
I’ll end today’s blog with the following food for thought. When one looks at the ancient Sumerian texts of the Enuma Elish (also known as the seven tablets of creation) we will find that the Garden of Eden story was actually written THOUSANDS of years prior to the version re-told in the Bible and in that the older version of the story it sheds additional insight into what is actually happening in the Book of Genesis. We will begin to examine the older Sumerian tablets of creation next.