Seeing Through Godlike Eyes Opened in the Garden: The Cosmic and Human Dimensions of the Knowledge of Good and EvilArthur L. George Presentation at Pacific Coast Regional SBL

MeetingMarch 30, 2014

Approaching the Eden Story’s Genre as that of Myth

“A myth is the product of the unconscious mind…. When the symbolism of the myth is understood, meanings that were hidden become conscious. The story of Adam and Eve partakes of the genre of myth and so must be approached symbolically.”

Rev. John Sanford, The Man Who Wrestled with God

“The archetypal symbols are the [Eden] story, not its embellishment.”

James Charlesworth

Summary of Presentation•The cosmogonic/cosmological ancient Near Eastern context of the Eden story as a creation story

•How such context applies to human nature and behavior, and accounts for the events in the Eden story

•The cosmic nature of the knowledge of good and evil, and how it dovetails with Yahweh’s Law

•The nature of Adam and Eve’s transgression•Psychological postscript for modern world

The Nature of Creation in the Ancient Near East

In the ancient Near East, creation was conceived of as the ordering of preexisting formless (chaotic) watery substance:•Mesopotamia – Sumerian myths and Babylonian Enuma Elish•Egypt – cosmos emerges from initial watery chaos•Reflected in P’s Genesis 1: Preexisting formless, dark, watery void (tōhû wābōhû). The creation follows when God brings into order the additionally created elements of the cosmos.•Also reflected in J’s Genesis 2:5, only the preexisting chaos was a desert wasteland rather than water. Hebrew Bible and other ANE texts consistently recognize the desert as a manifestation of chaos, including, e.g., the Hebrews’ long wilderness experience associated with their sin.

ANE “Cosmic Geography”

SPACE-ATM O SPHERE

W ATERS ABO VE

W ATERS BELO W

Firm am ent

L A N D

Heavenly Bodies

Creation/Order is Inherently Unstable

•Chaos is never eliminated. It is always trying to infiltrate and disrupt the ordered cosmos. As a result, the cosmos is inherently unstable.

•Chaos is usually symbolized by a serpent/dragon, who is either a goddess or her offspring-proxy (e.g., Tiamat, Yam, Apep, Typhon)

•So when serpent appears in Garden, the audience knows that chaos has appeared and is threatening the creation.

•The serpent and Eve’s dialogue with it as reflected in the imaginings of her mind are representative of the chaos that has erupted in her mind.

Teleological Nature of Creation, and Humans’ Purpose

in the World•In ANE creation stories, nothing is fully created until a deity has given it a name and a destiny/purpose. The created, named elements of the cosmos thus have a teleological nature.

•In Adam’s case, his name is a wordplay on the Hebrew word for arable ground/soil/land/earth, ͗ădāmâ. This indicates that Adam’s purpose and destiny (and hence that of humankind) is linked with the land and the earth itself.

•Specifically, Adam’s divinely decreed task is both to cultivate (͑ābad) and guard/preserve (šāmar) the garden (Gen. 2:15). This is an assignment and destiny to preserve and further develop the divinely created order in the originally perfect garden (Adam’s world).

Normative Nature of Order vs. Chaos

•Order is good, while chaos is bad/evil. This is why in Genesis 1 God pronounced his ordered creation “good,” and why similarly the garden of Eden is considered ideal.

•Whenever chaos erupts, there is to that extent “uncreation.” This is bad/evil because it negates God’s teleological purposes in the creation. Good/evil is a cosmic phenomenon.

•This has implications for human conduct/morality/ethics: To act against this divinely created order and purpose is wrongful (sin). It contradicts humanity’s own divinely decreed purpose/destiny to further order and regulate the cosmos.

•Adam and Eve failed in their task to preserve and further order in the garden. This was the underlying nature of the transgression in the garden of Eden.

Chaos Within Humans (1)•Since humans are part of the created cosmos, the cosmic dynamic featuring chaos vs. order also exists within humans.

•When Adam was being formed from the earth, order did not yet exist on earth. Adam was created from the substance of the chaotic Eden before the ideal garden existed. He was created as a combination of the chaotic desert wasteland soil and the chaotic waters from the tehôm below.

•Therefore, humans as elements of the cosmos naturally have an element of chaos within themselves.

Chaos Within Humans (2)•This is reflected in J’s Gen. 6:5 and 8:21:•6:5 – “every inclination/imagination [yēṣer] of the thoughts of their hearts” was evil

•8:21 – “the inclination/imagination [yēṣer] of the human heart is evil from youth”

•yēṣer is nominal form of the verb (yāṣar) that J uses in Gen. 2:7, 19 to describe Yahweh’s forming both man and the animals from the ground. Thus, yēṣer also means “that which is shaped or made.” It is thus a formation within human nature, which is why J can say that presumably sinless youths who don’t even know good and evil have it.

•Hence the later rabbinical concept of the human natural “inclination/impulse of evil,” yēṣer hara, which became the rabbinical explanation for evil in the world.

The Primeval History Depicted Human Nature Taking its

Course•Since humans’ divine purpose is to further order, they must fight and suppress the chaos within themselves. Failure to do this increases chaos, manifested as sin, in the world.

•The sins of humans can actually infect nature/the world.

•This is what happened between Cain’s sin and Noah’s flood. Chaos (sin, violence) snowballed, until God was fed up and decided to start over through the cleansing of the flood.

•The flood was the ultimate “uncreation,” unleashing the original waters of chaos to swallow up and destroy all of the created cosmos except for Noah and his family.

A New Start with Different Results?

The Need for the Law•The flood washed away chaos, for the time being. New creation. The past was forgiven.

•But the same thing started to happen: e.g., Noah’s drunkenness and Canaan’s curse; Tower of Babel episode.

•Merely having knowledge of good and evil is not sufficient.

•The solution? Create and impose the Law (Torah), requiring Hebrews to follow it. The rest of the Pentateuch is devoted to this process.

•But what is the necessary condition for humans being capable of (1) understanding and (2) obeying the Law? Answer: The knowledge of good and evil

1. The Nature of the Knowledge of Good and Evil as Described in the

Eden Story•When Eve saw the tree of knowledge of good and evil, she recognized that it “was to be desired to make one wise” (Gen. 3:6), which was her principal interest in it.

•Then, once she and Adam ate the forbidden fruit, “the eyes of both were opened and they knew” certain things (Gen. 3:7).

•Observing this, Yahweh remarked, “Behold, the man has become like one of us [gods], knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:22).

•This means that such godlike knowledge included wisdom and an ability to perceive, discern and distinguish.

2. The Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Hebrew Bible

•Age of maturity where know good and evil and can tell right from wrong, and can assume adult roles and responsibilities.

•Isaiah 7:14-16 describes a stage in the growth of a child before “he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good.”

•Hebrew law sets age of 20 when men acquire certain rights and responsibilities (in essence, legal capacity ), such as performing military service, giving offerings to Yahweh, and obligations to pay taxes.

•Curse that Yahweh placed on the children of Israel in the wilderness as punishment was imposed only on people 20 years of age and older (Num. 14:29-30), presumably because only they were old enough to be deemed capable of and responsible for sin.

•Deuteronomy 1:39 and Qumran rules are likewise.

3. Kings Must Exercise this Knowledge

•David was able “like the angel of God to discern good and evil” (2 Sam. 14:17) and had “wisdom like the wisdom of the angel of God to know all things that are on the earth” (2 Sam. 14:20).

•Solomon’s prayer: “Give thy servant therefore an understanding mind to govern thy people, that I may discern between good and evil” (1 Kings 3:9). “God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding beyond measure, and largeness of mind …” (1 Kings 4:29-31).

•Story of 2 women claiming child: “the wisdom of God was in him, to render justice” (1 Kings 3:28).

•Proverbs (1:3), which claims to be from Solomon: written to provide young men (endeavoring to attain the knowledge of good and evil) such insight into wise behavior.

Conclusion: Meaning of Knowledge of Good and Evil

•The knowledge of good and evil is a merismic understanding of how the cosmic dynamic of the opposites of order (good) and chaos (evil) operates in the world (including in our psyche) and of the human role in this dynamic.

•This knowledge offers a godlike perspective, as it transcends the opposites, and enables us to see and deal with the opposites within us.

•Since the human evil imagination lies in the human faculty of mind (heart), correspondingly it needs to be countered and controlled by an antithetical ordering faculty of our psyche: the knowledge of good and evil.

•This explains why Adam and Eve could not have understood the prohibition. Rather, in the garden the chaos in raw human nature took its course because there was no capacity yet in their psyche that could curb it.

The Remedy: The Law as Imposed Order•As shown by the primeval history, the knowledge of good and evil is a necessary but not sufficient condition for reining in our chaotic/evil nature so that order and good will prevail.

•Therefore, guidance and rules are needed: The Law. The Law itself is a form of cosmic order, such that when it is understood and followed order can be brought to human affairs. The Law is therefore a creative principle because it helps bring order (good) to the part of the cosmos that is humankind.

•Humans must therefore apply their knowledge of good and evil so as to understand the Law and align themselves with it. This echoes Adam’s destiny.

The Cosmic Nature of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and of the Role of the

Law

Since the Knowledge of Good and Evil Is Necessary,

Why Was a Transgression Necessary to Gain It?Should consider this taking the whole primeval history

as a literary unit.•For the author it was important to depict to the audience raw chaotic human nature and what happens when this nature takes its natural course. •It was important that Adam and Eve learn their lesson the hard way, so that they could experience first hand both the pure chaos within themselves (evil) and then the coming of the corrective ordering knowledge (good) This enables the audience to feel the same dynamic within themselves. Thus, a transgression was helpful for literary/rhetorical purposes.•The Eden story and the rest of the primeval history thus illustrate why the Law was necessary and should be obeyed.

The Nature of the TransgressionIt was an elevation of human consciousness to full ego consciousness, dramatized as a singular epiphany. It was disobedience, but not a full “sin,” which first occurred with Cain. Therefore, no “fall of man” or “original sin.” Bruce Naidoff: “Genesis 2-3 reflects a coming to a state of awareness that, as it were, precedes sin.”David Wright: “if there is a vertical movement in the story, it is not a ‘Fall’ but an ‘Ascension,’ toward the rank and species of deity.” Cyrus Gordon: “not so much an account of the ‘fall of man’ but rather of the rise of man halfway to divinity”Carl Jung: “cosmogonic myths are, at bottom, symbols for the coming of consciousness”Mythologically speaking, the garden is a metaphor for our mind.

Modern Psychological Postscript•J thought of human evil (sin) as a manifestation

of an underlying natural chaos (a cosmic principle) that lies within the human mind that manifests itself in impulses (in later Jewish thought called the yēṣer hara ͑).

•Today psychologists understand this as our Shadow, the unconscious dark side of our psyche in which resides, among other things, the qualities that we repress and suppress as our dark or evil side.

•Therefore, if the biblical author is correct in identifying the problem, this problem of evil must be addressed most fundamentally by confronting and dealing with the Shadow (both in individuals and in collectives) and otherwise evolving our Selves to a higher level, rather than through prophylactic rules.

Thank you! Questions?Arthur L. George

artlgeorge@gmail.comThe Mythology of Eden

Hamilton Books, June 2014This presentation is at my page on www.academia.edu