All fall down - the point of Adam and Eve

The "talking snake" was left legless in the Garden of Eden story

If Eve were the only girl in the world, and Adam the only boy – where on earth did their son Cain get his wife from? Or were the first humans incestuous? That conundrum is an apparently decisive argument to dismiss the stories of Adam and Eve in the Bible as having neither truth nor relevance.

But there is more than one way of looking at the ancient story in Genesis 2-4. First, it’s about a specific couple with a specific role, not necessarily the first-ever humanoids. Secondly, there are similar ancient stories from different parts of the world. That suggests a kind of collective memory of an historic event that passed through oral cultures that embellished or distorted it in the process. And thirdly, when linked to the rest of Scripture, Genesis 2-4 introduces theological teachings central to Christian faith: the chapters are more about the nature of human beings than their origins.

Not such a lonely world?

There is no point in insisting, as a small minority of commentators and believers do, that everything that anthropologists and archaeologists have discovered during the past 150 years is wrong. Interpretations of evidence may be modified as more discoveries are made, but the evidence remains.

We know that there was a leap in the number of human-like creatures between 1.8 million and 800,000 years ago. There was also a rapid (in evolutionary terms) change in their brain-size. True humans have a much larger brain than their ancestors, which is essential for the unique human ability to reflect self-consciously and think abstractly (and, one could add, relate personally to God). In June 2017 researchers claimed the latest evidence suggested that the earliest humans emerged in Africa at least 300,000 years ago, and spread rapidly.

Translators are unsure if and when “Adam” should be rendered as a proper name. This is because “Adam” is a generic term in Hebrew for “mankind” and is related to the word for “ground”. It associates humans with both the rest of the animal creation and with the physical elements of the earth. The New International Version uses it as a name in Genesis 2:20 but qualifies it with a footnote, and the New Revised Standard Version in 4.25, long after Cain has killed Abel. Similarly “Eve” simply means “living” and is not used by the Genesis author until 4:1.

The emphasis on the physicality of Adam in Genesis rules out any idea of humans being pre-existent souls (or aliens) clothed temporarily in flesh or trapped on earth. It also rules out any idea of reincarnation. This is a major theological assertion for both ancient and modern audiences, and was stressed by Paul in his essay on the resurrection: “The first man was of the dust of the earth” (1 Corinthians 15:47-49).

Clearly, though, the rest of Scripture treats Adam and Eve as actual, if representative, persons. In Romans 5 draws the contrast between Adam’s disobedience and Jesus’ sacrificial obedience. True humans, male and female, according to Genesis 1:27 are people created “in God’s image”. At the very least, that means being capable of relating to God, as the mid-20^thcentury poet David Gascoyne wrote:

            Let me remember
            That truly to be man is man aware of Thee
            And unafraid to be. So help me God.¹

It takes nothing from the authority and inspiration of Scripture to suggest that God singled out a pair of existing hominoid creatures for three purposes. (The 1950 Roman Catholic Encyclical Humanis Generis suggested “divine inflatus” – the jump from hominoid to true human in God’s image – took place about 800,000 years ago.) One purpose was to make them aware of his existence, thereby imprinting his image on them. The second was to make them aware of the reason for, and boundaries of, their own existence. And the third was to initiate a family line whose task was to spread the word of his existence and purposes. 1 Chronicles 1 traces a line from Adam to Abraham. Luke 3 traces the genealogy of Jesus back to Adam, although Matthew 1 begins with Abraham, the “father” of the Israelites.

In Genesis, the couple are located in “Eden”, which means “Paradise”. That term may relate to a state of being as much as to a specific place, although the author sites it in the Near East, where the rest of the Bible is set and which was one of the earliest centres of civilisation. That reinforces the point that the Bible is a sort of biography of a specific group of people with a specific task, not the story of the whole race.

And that, of course, is how God has operated all through history: from small, obscure beginnings the Kingdom of God is built, stone by stone. The story of God’s revelation of himself and people’s encounters with him starts with one couple. They grew into the Israelites who were a small tribe with a big task (see Deuteronomy 7:7-9). The twelve apostles were a dozen men of mixed ability charged with a world-wide mission in a hostile environment (Matthew 28:19-20). The church today is a minority community called to continue the same mission. “Unlikely” individuals are called by God to fulfil tasks that can succeed only through humble dependence on him (see Jeremiah 1:4-10; 2 Corinthians 12:7-10).

For the purposes of the biblical narrative and the subsequent stories of the Israelites, Jesus and the Apostles, Adam and Eve were the first people to discover who God is and what he wants. Unfortunately, they messed it up.

Did the snake really talk?

Christians know that God can “speak” in all kinds of ways. “Messages” can be suggested by scenery, circumstances, events, animal behaviour (think spiders and patience) and human antics. Prophecy may come straight to the mind but biblically some prophetic messages were prompted by external factors (as in Jeremiah 18:1-12). Solomon nurtured his wisdom through observing nature (1 Kings 4:33f); Job appealed to the “message” of the animal kingdom that innocence doesn’t guarantee freedom from suffering (Job 12:7).

Temptation can assault us in the same way. Bible writers, Jesus and the apostles were in no doubt that there is a sub-personal evil power in the cosmos they call Satan, bent on attempting to neutralise anything that promotes goodness and godliness. That it can make itself felt, and heard, through all kinds of means is just as likely as someone “hearing” something from God.

So when we encounter the two “talking” animals in the Bible, we don’t have to suspend our credulity. In each case the focus is on the message, not the messenger. Balaam’s taking donkey (Numbers 22:28-31) is an obstinate beast that brays at him in such a way that Balaam’s conscience is pricked; he’s clearly had the animal a long time and there is a bond between them.  He “hears” in the donkey’s complaint his unfair treatment and then realises what the problem is. God “spoke” through the animal’s behaviour.

The snake in the Garden of Eden is more difficult and is regarded as the mouthpiece of Satan. Snakes (whether or not they have poison in their mouths) are loathed throughout the world and are universal symbols of evil. They appear in the Harry Potter stories, where the evil Lord Voldemort has a pet snake (Nagini) and a monster serpent or Basilisk guards the Chamber of Secrets.

To call a person a snake is a shorthand for saying they are slippery, devious, dangerous, and scheming. In the Bible snakes are seen by Jesus as a symbol of deception in Matthew 23:33; and Satan is referred to as the serpent in Revelation 12:9 and 20:2. The deception of Adam and Eve by a serpent is directly mentioned in 2 Corinthians 11:3. (The tree in question is not named in Genesis and is generally considered to have been “any” tree, not one with special powers. It was breaking what seemed to Adam and Eve as an arbitrary rule, not eating a certain kind of fruit, which was at the heart of God’s command not to eat its fruit.)

A little imagination can make sense of the account without dismissing it as fantasy. Maybe the snake was by or in the tree, drawing her attention to it. Perhaps it was enjoying the forbidden fruit; maybe birds were pecking at it, too, all eating it with no apparent ill effects. Genesis 3:6 says she saw it was “good for food” – how could she, unless a creature was eating it? Did the windfalls on the ground smell appetising? When she picked one up was it smooth, pleasant to the touch?

Merely looking at something can create a craving (think cake, ice cream and chocolate adverts). The inner voice fuelled by “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16) shouts loudly in our heads. By now, perhaps, Eve was drooling. All her senses were being assaulted; her primal need for food was aroused. Temptation does not usually impact itself on our minds in some intellectual way, it attacks on several fronts at once and especially through feelings and emotion. She could have turned away, but consciousness overwhelmed conscience.

The serpent’s promised “wisdom” would have been interpreted by Eve as discovering something new. People are naturally curious – that is part of being in God’s image. We have grown in knowledge and embarked on research and discovery by exploring and examining God’s world, by asking “what if?” Eve’s error was to ignore the possibility of unforeseen consequences; she did not do a risk assessment.  She didn’t consider if God’s warning was like a “thin ice” sign, to protect her from hidden dangers. By venturing ahead, she, and Adam, gained only the hurtful personal experience of wrongdoing – what we call guilt. In spiritual terms, the temptation was the bully’s ploy to drag better creatures down to its infernal level.

“The Adam and Eve story, when imaginatively contemplated, will be found to be very contemporary, describing the nature and effect of all sin – it separates us from ourselves, from others, from God.”² The point of it is to teach every generation that God has laid down boundaries for human conduct, and that we are constantly tempted to push our luck and cross those boundaries. Some things can seem good, but are in fact damaging to others if not to ourselves.

For a contemporary parallel much in the news at the time of writing, take the crass commercialism in which landlords charge the “market value” for properties because enough people can afford to rent them, yet many others cannot and are forced into sub-standard or crowded accommodation, or forced out of some areas (such as London) altogether. Maximising profits is a government-sponsored “good” for all businesses not least because it boosts the Gross National Product statistics which are seen as the chief measure of economic success. Yet people on lower incomes often suffer as a result, and the wealth gap widens – which politicians gloss over by appeal to “the figures”. Biblically, welfare is supposed to triumph over wealth. It’s one reason why there were strict rules in ancient Israel about profiteering generally, and about property ownership and leasing.

The threat of death in Genesis 2:17 refers to the spiritual “death” of alienation from God (as described in Isaiah 59:2). It would seem that the cunning serpent getting inside Eve’s head twisted this to make it appear to her to refer to physical death in 3:4,5, which the fruit-eating snake had apparently avoided.

But why should we suffer?

Paul in the New Testament claims that the whole human race “died” as a result of Adam and Eve’s sin. It seems unfair that the race should suffer alienation from God because of the failure of its first representatives. But Paul qualifies his assertion: “Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12). Even the Old Testament recognised that “there is no one on earth who is righteous, no one who does what is right and never sins” (Ecclesiastes 7:20). James in the New Testament rules out any buck-passing or blaming others for our own mistakes: “Each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed” (1:13)

The geneticist and broadcaster Robert Winston sheds an interesting ray of light on “original sin” (the inherited bias away from God). He suggests that, for example, “cheaters develop strategies that successfully mask their dishonesty from other members of the group [and] these abilities would tend to enter the gene pool – ensuring that every group has a convincing liar within it.”³

Learned behaviours and attitudes are easily passed across groups of people and from one generation to another. We quickly become used to living without reference to God (the basic biblical definition of “sin”) and the habit is catching, like a virus in the community. Western culture is now officially agnostic; God is a matter of private concern not public interest; behavioural standards are not a matter of divine revelation but of public acceptability.  

We can’t blame Adam and Eve for our imperfection and our inherent alienation from God because in their shoes we probably would have acted as they did, and in any case have done so in different circumstances since birth. Humans are inherently self-centred, not God-centred. We can overcome temptation (1 Corinthians 10:13) but we remain vulnerable to misjudgement and hasty words and actions.

The story of Adam and Eve, placed at the start of the biblical narrative, introduces us to a simple fact: human waywardness alienates us from God and we’re all infected by it. The rest of the Bible describes how slowly God sought to remedy the situation, culminating in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Think and talk

1.  Look up the references cited in the text and mull or talk them over.

2.  See how Paul uses the contrast between Adam and Jesus in Romans 5:12-21 and 1 Corinthians 15:20-28. What are the key points he is making with regard to the human spiritual condition?
3.  “Truly to be man is man aware of thee and unafraid to be”: how true do you think this is and how might it affect the way you live and think?
4.  Do you ever stop to ask if God might be “saying” something through animals, events, scenes, circumstances, other people? Take time out to meditate regularly on such things instead of rushing from one experience or engagement to the next.

References

1.  David Gascoyne, “Fragments towards a religio poetae” in Collected Poems, Oxford University Press 1965, and quoted in Ruth Etchells, Unafraid to be, IVP 1969, p. 95.
2.  Gerard Hughes, God of surprises, Darton, Longman and Todd 1988, p. 88.
3.  Robert Winston, The human mind, Bantam Press 2003, p. 298.