PARALLEL GUIDE 4
The JE Account of Creation and the Fall
Summary: The narrative on creation and humanity is far more than a tightly packed
doctrinal statement. The JE account of creation includes the famous story of the Fall.
This chapter progresses verse by verse culminating with comments on the doctrine
of original sin as it has been developed by St. Paul and others.
Learning Objectives
• Read Genesis 2:4b-3:24
• Differentiate between God breathing life into the human body and the point of
view that separates human beings into a ‘body and soul’
• Explain what moral autonomy means
• State the meaning of sin in the Adam and Eve story
• Distinguish between “original sin” as a doctrine and acts of sin
• Describe the difference between an “etiological legend” and an “etymological
legend”
4
Assignments to Deepen Your Understanding
1. In your notebook, write a short essay which contrasts the difference between
the Greek understanding of hubris and the Christian doctrine of “original sin.”
2. Record in your notebook meanings for the following terms:
• narrative, etiological legend, typology, etymological legend
• ruach, nephesh, neshama, omniscience
• moral autonomy, original sin, hubris, duty, alienation.-
3. Other religions have their stories to explain human behavior. See what stories
you can find from other major faiths or from the stories told by Native Americans
or people native to Africa.
Preparing for Your Seminar
When do you think most people become aware of “original sin”?
What do you think of the idea that we sin even when we do not intend to do so, or
are unaware that this has happened?
What can we do to save ourselves from sin?
Additional Sources
Anderson, pp. 151-166, discusses the Yahwist epic. Note especially on pages 156-
157 Anderson’s explanation of how the Yahwist moves backward from an aware-
ness of Israel’s history to an eventual concern with God as Creator of all. This is an
important correction to one’s natural impression that creation, since it comes on the
first page of the Bible, is the primary doctrine of the Bible.
There are two other books well worth looking at in connection with the JE story of
the creation and fall. One is Phyllis Trible’s God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality in
the Overtures to Biblical Theology series (Fortress Press, 1978); the other is Richard
Hanson’s The Serpent Was Wiser; a New Look at Genesis 1-11 (Augsburg Press,
1972). Trible suggests, among other things, that we translate ha’adam as “the earth
creature,” at least until the woman is created. This underlines the notion that the
“Man” is incomplete—he is not man—until the woman is created. Trible has some
good things to say about language also.
Hanson makes much of the notion of “the Fall.” He is a modern popularizer of the
basic conviction that we do not have any account of a fall in the Bible, if by fall we
mean the smashing of the divine image and the total depravity of human beings.
This stands in contrast to Augustine’s view.
Chapter 4
THE JE ACCOUNT OF CREATION AND THE FALL
The JE story is quite different in both style and content from the P account. The P
story is a very tightly packed statement of doctrine; with very few words and a rhythm
like the ticking of a metronome or the swing of a pendulum, the P author “explains”
creation. The JE account is narrative. The author lets us in on the thoughts of the
characters—God, man and woman, and the serpent. The story not only tells us of the
creation of human beings and the terms under which human life is to be lived, but
it also describes the present state of affairs in which these terms are violated. The
sin of Adam and Eve is told, not so much to explain how sin came into the world,
as to describe what sin is. Still, the story did come to be regarded, at least by the
fifth century CE if not earlier, as an explanation of how and when sin first appeared;
Adam and Eve were thought of as two individuals who lived long ago. Actually, the
JE narrative is the story of Man and Woman; Adam is ‘adam—humankind. It is the
story of Everyman and Everywoman.
We call this the JE account because at this point in Genesis it is almost impossible
to separate these two sources. There are places in the Pentateuch where it will be
both possible and important to separate these authors, but this is not one of them.
Remember that when we speak of “the author,” both here and elsewhere, we are not
speaking of an individual writer but of a group of contributors who worked over a
fairly long period of time.
A final comment before we examine the text: the divine name. In this story the name
is “the LORD God.” You should recognize in this translation that the Hebrew words
are YHWH Elohim. This is a very strange combination. It occurs in Genesis only
in this story. Although the two words are used within the same sentence elsewhere
in the Old Testament, they are used as a single name in just one place. The form
is such that in English we would use a hyphen to join the words: YHWH-Elohim.
There have been various guesses about this. Perhaps it is an old Hebrew expression
meaning “YHWH of the gods.” Such a pattern is found in the Old Testament, as,
for example, in the expression “YHWH of hosts.” “YHWH of the gods,” however,
sounds too polytheistic for Old Testament usage. Perhaps originally only the name
YHWH was used, and the redactor added Elohim to make clear that it was the same
God as the one in the P account. At any rate, it is used consistently in this story and
serves to mark it off as a complete story in itself, distinct from Gen. 4, the story of
the birth of Cain and Abel.
A very minor point, but one that sometimes causes confusion, is the division of
the Bible into chapters and verses. Why should the P account go over into chapter
2, and especially why should it end in the middle of a verse, and the JE story pick
up in the middle of the same verse? The answer is simple: the division marked by
chapters was developed during the Middle Ages. Verses were inserted during the
Reformation when printing became possible. These were not present at all in the
Hebrew text nor in the Greek text of the New Testament.
The JE
Account of
Creation and
the Fall
Genesis
2:4b-7
These verses treat the creation of the universe in a very summary way. In contrast to
P, who lays out in detail the creation of the cosmos in which human beings finally
appear, JE assumes its creation. Instead of preparing the earth with vegetable life for
humans and animals to eat, as P does, JE draws a picture of a desert world in which
humans are created first so that the ground may be tilled. This is a completely dif-
ferent approach. Both P and JE describe chaos as the first state of the world, but the
P writer has in mind the total universe in which the dry earth and, eventually, living
creatures find their proper place. JE’s eyes are focused on the earth directly around
humanity. Chaos in this account is the lifeless desert. Instead of bringing order3into
the chaos of unlimited waters, creation for JE is bringing life into the chaos of the
desert land.
Water, for JE, is the element necessary for life, not a threat of the destruction of life as
it is for P. In the desert—and remember that much of the Near East is desert—water
is precious. The two great centers of early civilization in this area were Egypt along
the banks of the Nile and the civilizations which sprang up in the Tigris-Euphrates
basin. (You will notice that the Euphrates is mentioned in the JE account.)
The close link between humanity and earth, as we saw in the last chapter, is expressed
in the words themselves: ’adam and ’adamah. Here it is made even more clear as
the man is made out of the earth.
After he shapes the man, as a mud doll, God breathes into him the “breath of life,”
and the man becomes a “living being.” This is very important as an expression of
how the Hebrews understood human nature. We sometimes speak of “body and soul,”
meaning a physical shell and the really important part of us which lives inside it. We
sometimes think of the “soul” as the same as the mind, or as an immortal substance
that continues to live after the body dies. Nothing like that is found in this story. The
being who is formed from the dust is the whole person. God does not breathe a soul
into the body, but life. When the breath leaves a human being, he or she is dead. The
idea of two parts of a human, body and soul, comes into our thinking from Greek
rather than Hebrew thought.
Ruach,
Nephesh, and
Neshama
Three Hebrew words should be distinguished: ruach, nephesh, and neshama. Ruach
is “wind, storm, spirit”; it is used in Gen. 1:2. It occurs frequently in the Old Testa-
ment and is the usual word used when speaking of the “Spirit of God.” Nephesh is
most usually translated “soul” in the English Bible, but it does not have the con-
notations of an immortal substance or a “spirit” as in the popular use of the word
“soul.” As we saw in the discussion of Gen. 1, it combines the meanings “anima-
tion” and “uniqueness.” Neshama basically means “breath,” though it is sometimes
translated “spirit” and once as “soul.” Obviously these words are closely related in
meaning. Indeed, ruach and neshama are often indistinguishable. In Job 33:4, they
are both used in a poetic form which indicates that they are synonymous, and both
refer to God’s creating an individual life. When you see the English word “soul,” the
Hebrew is likely to be nephesh. Still, it may help you to resist thinking in terms of
our body-soul distinction if you remember that the Gen. 2:7 expression describing
the man when he became a “living being” is the same as that in Gen. 2:19 for the
animals, there translated “living creature.”
Genesis
2:8-9
Both P and JE show humanity as closely connected with the earth, and each describes
it as different from the rest of creation. P does this by saying that humanity is made
in the image of God; JE does it by having God bend over the mud doll and directly
breathe life into it.
After the creation of the human creature, God plants the garden. It was usual in the
Near East for kings to own large gardens, usually orchards with nut- and fruit-bear-
ing trees. This is almost certainly the imagery here. This is God’s garden, and God
puts the man in it to take care of it. Verse 9 mentions two special trees: the tree of
life in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There
is no further mention of the tree of life until the end of the story in 3:22. Appar-
ently we have two traditions here, one of which mentions the two trees and another
which deals only with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We will hold off
discussion of the significance of these trees until they reappear in the story. Do note,
however, that the trees are described as having been made by God to be pleasant to
see and good for food. This is a crucial point in Gen. 3.
Genesis
2:10-14
This section has no relationship to anything else in the story. It must have been a
separate story having to do with an original “paradise” which the author added,
without further development. The life-giving water of rivers is the point of this sec-
tion. The river which is in the garden is sufficient not only to water all of the garden
but also to provide the water for all the other rivers of the world! The four rivers
into which the river divides are supposed to be the rivers which water all the known
world. The first river, Pishon, is impossible to locate. There are many guesses, but
none is very convincing. The second, Gihon, is probably the upper Nile. The third
and fourth are, as named in the story, the Tigris and the Euphrates. Nothing further
is done with this little section, but when we get to the book of the prophet Ezekiel,
written during the time of the Exile, we shall find him speaking of a stream which
will flow from the Temple in Jerusalem, and this stream will water all the earth.
The stream is the Torah, the Law, which in Ezekiel’s vision of the future will be the
salvation of all humankind. Thus, this imagery in Genesis is picked up as a theme
in the picture of the hope for a future salvation.
Genesis
2:15-17
The man is put into the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. The garden is not a
wonderful paradise in which the man simply reaches forth his hand for anything
that he wants. He is put there to work. This should make it clear that work is not
originally considered a curse. Many of the pictures of Eden or paradise depict it as
a place in which there is no more work—where everything is there for the grasp-
ing. At the end of this story we see the author’s view of why work has become so
unpleasant for us that we want to think of paradise as a place where it does not exist.
The man in the garden of Eden is God’s steward, tending the garden for its owner.
This is similar to P’s idea that humankind is given dominion over the earth but only
as God’s representative.
God forbids the man to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Every
other tree he may eat from, but if he eats from this tree, he will die. In the Hebrew,
this warning is very emphatic. Literally, the last part of v. 17 reads, “for in the day
that you eat of it, dying you shall die.”
What does “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” mean? Why should God
forbid the man to eat from it? Is it not a good thing for us to know good and evil?
In answering this, we should realize that many of our questions are not the ones the
JE story deals with. Its main point is that God has provided everything that the man
needs and has told him not to eat of that tree. God’s reasons are God’s own; the
man is supposed to obey. Arguing that it is good for humans to know good and evil
is exactly the temptation that the serpent offered! JE asserts that it is not our place
to argue with God about what is best; God has spoken and we should obey! The
attempt on our part to decide for ourselves what is good and what is evil is called
moral autonomy. Autonomy literally means “self rule” or “self law.” To a people
like the Israelites who had covenanted with God to obey God’s law, moral autonomy
is the same thing as taking the place of God.
Gerhard von Rad argues that the expression “good and evil” in Old Testament usage
is not necessarily used in a moral sense. It frequently means “everything” or, when
used with a negative, “nothing.” “Knowledge of good and evil” means, therefore,
“knowledge of everything,” omniscience. von Rad notes that the verb “to know” in
Hebrew does not mean simply intellectual activity, but participation or experiencing.
It is used for sexual experience in 4:1. When we speak of knowing good and evil,
argues von Rad, we speak of the kind of life which characterizes maturity.
The serpent insinuates the possibility of an extension of human existence beyond
the limits set for it by God at creation, not only an increase in pure intellectual en-
richment but also familiarity with and power over mysteries that lie beyond human
capacity. That the narrative sees man’s fall, his actual separation from God, occur-
ring again and again in this area (and not, for example, as a plunge into moral evil,
into the subhuman!), i.e., in what we call Titanism, man’s hubris—that is truly one
of its most significant affirmations.
The outcome of von Rad’s argument, that it is humankind’s overreaching pride
(hubris is the Greek word for this) which is the issue in the Fall, is no doubt correct,
but his theory that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is the same as the tree
of knowledge as such seems unconvincing. W. Malcolm Clark (Journal of Biblical
Literature, September, 1969) presents a much more convincing case. He maintains
that to discern rightly between good and evil is, for the Yahwist writer, a divine
characteristic. This characteristic can be shared with humankind, but the person with
whom it is shared serves only as God’s representative in the act of discernment. The
leader of a tribe or clan, the judge, the good king, all make judgments upon members
of the clan or on courses of action that are to be taken. These people are supposed
to pronounce God’s judgment, not give their own opinion. Indeed, one function of
both prophets and priests was to ascertain that it was divine wisdom and not opinion
that prevailed in such matters, that the ruler had rightly fulfilled the responsibility
to speak God’s word truly.
To eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would be to presume to discern,
to make judgment, on one’s own—not as God’s representative. It would also involve
taking the risk of being held responsible for such judgments and for their results.
Genesis
2:18-20
In the P account, humanity is created male and female from the beginning. In the
JE story, ’adam seems to us to be male, in part because the word is transliterated
into the name “Adam.” We need to remember, however, that the Hebrew word itself
means “human being”; there is a separate word for “male human being” which we
will see when the “female human being” is created. There was no question in Old
Testament times about the relationship of man to woman. Man was superior; woman
was subordinate to him. The P statement, “Male and female created he them,” is
remarkable in view of the attitudes of the times. JE is much more typical of the Old
Testament ethos in equating, in our translations at least, ’adam with the male sex.
Yet JE has God say, “It is not good that the man should be alone. . . .” That verse
could just as well be translated “It is not good that the human being should be alone
. . . .” How much of our difficulty in understanding the relationship of the genders
stems from English’s lack of a generic singular noun and pronoun? At this distance
from the original authors it is, of course, impossible to say. We would do well to
try to translate what is actually in the text and not what is limited to our traditional
understandings of the text. From the P account we could see that it would not be
good for humankind to be represented only as male, because half of the nature of
humankind would be missing. In JE, however, it seems that what is not good about
the man’s being alone is that he would have no suitable “helper.” What kind of help
does he need? Is it physical help in tending the garden or some other kind of help?
What comes to mind when you hear the word “helper”? Probably you think of an
assistant of some sort. So we may think that the first creature needs a sort of “as-
sistant creature.” But the word “helper” is used in the Bible more often in Psalms
than any other book. There it refers to God, and God is scarcely an “assistant human
being.” Thus, the “suitable helper” which the first creature needs is probably not to
be considered intrinsically subordinate.
The type of helper deemed suitable emerges as we see what kind of helpers are of-
fered. God forms all of the animals out of the ground, the same earth from which man
was made. These are the first helpers to be offered. The man names each of them.
As P has God give humankind dominion over the animals, so JE accomplishes the
same thing by having the man name them. In naming them, the man takes posses-
sion of them and asserts his dominion over them, just as in the P account God takes
possession of the darkness by naming it “night.”
None of the animals is “fit” for him as helper, although humans have used animals
to help them in their work for thousands of years. The JE writer knew that animals
were used for plowing and carrying loads for human beings. The “fitness” of the
animals as the human’s helpers, therefore, cannot refer simply to this.
Genesis
2:21-24
The animals, no matter how much they may help physically, could not prevent the
first individual from being “alone.” A helper is needed to assuage loneliness.
God creates the woman. He causes a “deep sleep” to fall on the human. This is a
supernatural sleep; one cannot watch God’s direct actions. It was a Hebrew belief
that no one could see God and live: God’s majesty is too much for humankind to
bear. During this deep sleep, God took something from the body; “one of his ribs”
is the usual translation, but it is not clear in the Hebrew. The word means something
much bigger than a single bone; it is more like our term “a side of beef.” From the
body of the first human God forms the woman and brings her to the man.
Then the man recognizes her: she is bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. When
he calls her “Woman,” he is not naming her, as the animals were named. Rather,
this is a cry of joyous recognition that she is part of him. ‘Ish is Hebrew for “male
human being”—’Ishshah means “female human being.” The two words are the same
except that one is masculine and the other feminine. From this, JE traces the bond
between husband and wife. The man and woman are as close to each other — ’ish
to ’ishshah —as humanity is to the earth— ’adam to ’adamah. The helper that is
“fit” for the man, then, is one who is of his same nature, one who can make him no
longer alone.
Note that the woman is not subordinate to the man as his helper. In the world in which
JE was writing, the place of women in society was very low indeed. A woman was
almost everywhere regarded as a possession of a man. She was on the same level as
his animals or his slaves. In those circumstances, JE was raising the status of woman
very high: she is part of man’s own flesh. The subordination of one to the other is
not presented in JE until after both have sinned. Much later St. Paul urged that “. . .
husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves
himself. For no one ever hates his own body, but he nourishes it and tenderly cares
for it . . .” (Eph. 5:28-29). (Note that in this same passage, however, St. Paul says
that the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of his body, the church.
No one can doubt that this is subordination—and there is good reason to overcome
this attitude now—but for those times, St. Paul’s total exhortation was a big advance
beyond the common attitude.)
Besides dealing with the main theme of the story of creation, JE does something else
here that is characteristic of this source: it gives an explanation for why something
came to be as it now is. Woman (‘ishshah) is called woman because she was taken
from man (‘ish); also, a man leaves his father and mother when he marries, because
he and his wife are one flesh. A word and a custom are explained. We should note
here that throughout Old Testament history, it was the woman who left her family at
marriage. Does this verse, perhaps, give us a glimpse of an older custom? We do not
know for sure, although there is some recent evidence that points in this direction.
Etymological
Legends
A story that explains how a word came about is called by scholars an etymological
legend. (Etymology is the study of word origins.) A story that explains the origins
of a thing, a place, a custom, or almost anything else, is called an aetiological (or
etiological) legend. The origin of the word “woman” is explained by the etymological
myth of the creation of the woman from the man. The origin of the marriage custom
is explained by the same story as an etiological myth. The author may have more than
one purpose in telling this story. Sometimes, as here, JE includes an etymological
and an etiological purpose along with its major purpose. At other times, the story
may be told simply for its etiological or etymological value. While very often we
know that the words which are “explained” did not come about as JE claims they
did, that the customs or the other things have some other more likely explanation,
nevertheless the author’s explanations show us a bit about the society in which the
author lived. (We discuss later the last verse in this section, about the man and the
woman being naked but not ashamed.)
The story of the Fall is one of the best known stories in the Bible. It is also one of
the most difficult and most misunderstood.
Genesis
3:1-7
With a wonderful use of words—so few that say so much—the writer sums up the
temptations that the woman faces: the fruit is good for food, pleasant to the eyes,
and would make one wise. It is attractive on the physical level (food), the aesthetic
level (beauty), and the intellectual level (wisdom). Note especially that the woman
in 3:6 recognizes the fruit as having precisely the same characteristics God gave it
in 2:9. That is, the trouble does not arise because the woman fails to investigate the
properties of the fruit, or because she is wrong in the conclusions she draws. The
error is on quite another level.
When we come to study ethics (the study of how we make our moral decisions) in
more detail, we see that a moral problem arises only when there is a conflict be-
tween what we ought to do and what we want to do. As long as our desires and our
duties agree, there is no problem. In this verse we have a summary of desires, any
one of which may conflict with duty: we may desire something because it is useful,
because it is pleasing, or because it will increase our stature, status, or power. None
of these desires is bad in itself—the problem comes about only when such desires
conflict with duty.
But what is duty? Particular duties may come from any number of sources. A parent
gives an order to a child and expects the child to receive this order as a duty. Society
requires certain things of its members and expects them to regard these requirements
as duties. No command has the force of duty unless it is accepted by a person as
rightfully his or her duty. A command that is issued by a more powerful person to
a weaker person may be obeyed because of fear of punishment, but it will not be
obeyed out of duty unless the person commanded agrees that the command is right
and proper. That is, no conflict inside the conscience of the person will arise between
desire and duty unless the duty is accepted as forced by the conscience.
The serpent first dismisses the threat of the use of power to enforce God’s com-
mand by saying: “You will not die.” It then moves to dismiss the rightness of the
command by suggesting that God was wrong to have forbidden the woman to eat of
the fruit: God was jealously protecting himself against possible competition when
humankind becomes like one of the gods. When the force of duty has been done
away with, when neither fear nor perception of rightness counsels obedience, then
desires can have their way. So Eve eats of the fruit and gives some to her husband,
and he eats too.
“They knew that they were naked; they sewed fig leaves together” and made cloth-
ing for themselves to cover their nakedness. We are certainly not supposed to think
that they could not see before eating of this fruit, but when they saw each other then,
they did so in innocence, whereas now they do so in shame. They were “one flesh”
before, and this was proper; the woman had been created for the man so that he could
overcome loneliness. When an individual puts his or her desires ahead of duty—ahead
of what is due another—the bond between them is broken. The individual is then
thinking only selfishly, and not of the other. The other becomes merely an object
to satisfy the individual’s desires. Here the man and the woman are no longer “one
flesh,” each fulfilling the other; they have become strangers, each concerned with
his or her own desires. The result is alienation. Alienation is an important and pow-
erful word; it is the state of affairs that exists when one is alien, foreign, a stranger
in regard to others; it points to the walls that come up between people and separate
them. Alienation cancels out the communion or companionship which overcomes
loneliness. In such a state of affairs, the very physical signs of communion, the sex
organs, became objects of shame.
More than simple awareness of their sexuality is seen in verse 7. Their eyes are
opened and they are aware of themselves. In the state of innocence the relation-
ships of the man to the woman and of both to God were easy and natural, without
the need for thought. Duty was not a burden but the natural response of each to the
other and of both to God. The moment the man and the woman ate of the fruit, they
put their own judgments first. They focus on themselves, and in so doing, become
self-conscious and aware of themselves.
There are two sides to this situation. On the one hand, by deciding to follow their
desire rather than their duty to be obedient to God, they sin. The JE writer sees the
very heart of sin as the creature’s grasping the role of God and deciding what is good
and what is evil. JE arranges a wonderful word play that makes the point forcefully.
The word for “naked” in 2:25 and 3:7 sounds the same as (is a homophone of) the
word describing the serpent as “crafty” in 3:1. The man and woman wanted to be
like God; instead, they ended up like the serpent. This is the story of a fall from the
perfect state in which God created humankind. On the other hand, there is a sense
in which it can be said that, until humankind in full self-awareness risks making
decisions and being held accountable for them, we are less than free creatures who
show forth the divine image. While the Fall marks the fact of sin, it also marks the
beginning of human moral life. It is only by being a moral person, making decisions,
that righteousness is possible. A person who has never been tested in the conflict
between desire and duty never really knows if he or she is able to be obedient. The
fact that the man and the woman chose disobedience makes this the story of the
Fall; the fact that they chose makes it also an upward movement. For this reason,
some later interpreters have understood the fall as an upward (or even “fortunate”)
fall. JE does show, however, that to enter into the life of moral responsibility is to
take upon oneself a life which demands a great price—the price of innocence.
Genesis
3:8-13
The picture which the writer paints of God walking in the garden in the cool of the
day is anthropomorphic (speaking of God in human terms). We have already noticed
(in chapter 2) that J and E both use anthropomorphic symbols. In this story, however,
the symbol is more than simply JE’s customary way of speaking; it shows that in
the garden God and human beings live together in a close relationship. There is no
need for temple, ritual, or priesthood for God and humankind to speak with each
other or be in each other’s presence.
Because of their disobedience, however, the woman and the man feel shame in their
relationships with each other, and they feel fear in relation to God. The close, natural
relationship with God is broken, so they hide from God.
Then God asks, “Where are you?” Does the writer not know that God is omniscient
(knowing all things)? Or, is the writer denying this teaching about God? Actually,
neither is happening. It seems that the writer is using this form of words to make
a point. The same form of words is used later (Gen. 4:9) in the story of the murder
of Abel by his brother Cain. Here God is asking an open-ended question. He gives
the man a chance to confess and seek to restore the broken relationship. The man
understands the nature of the question and answers it appropriately. The answer is
that they are afraid and hide. Shame and fear, both of which come about as results
of humankind’s striving to overreach, have resulted in alienation from both fellow
human beings and God.
When God asks the man if he has eaten from the tree, the answer given is typical of
the ways in which we try to avoid responsibility for our actions. The man says that
the woman, whom God had given to him, gave him the fruit to eat. He shifts the
blame to another person; he also suggests that God was to blame, since God gave the
woman to him. We often try to blame forces outside ourselves for our wrongdoings.
God, the fates, or simply bad luck, on the one hand—the powers which are supposed
to be in control of things—or another human person, on the other hand.
God then begins to question the woman, and she shifts the blame to the serpent.
Notice that the questioning stops here. God does not ask the serpent why it did this
thing. Moral responsibility belongs to humankind alone, and no appeal to forces in
nature is allowed. As we see, humanity’s sin has an effect on the world of nature:
among other things, the serpent is cursed. The serpent is not asked to account for his
acts. Sin belongs to humankind. This is one of the main reasons, as we suggested
earlier, that we should not regard the serpent as Satan or the Devil.
Next comes the judgment. These verses are mainly etiological: they explain why
certain things are as they are. Why does the snake crawl on its belly—a very difficult
way to travel, it would seem, in comparison with walking on legs—and why is it so
feared by people? Why do women have so much more pain in childbirth than other
animals? Why is woman subordinate to man? Why is it so difficult to make a living,
when the earth has such abundance?
Genesis
3:14-19
There is meaning on a deeper level than this. While the serpent is not cast in the role
of Satan in the story, it is easy to see why the notion of Satan would come about and
why he should be linked to the serpent. So many times in our lives we know that the
evil we have done did not happen because we set out on purpose to do it. It seems as
though wrong ideas come to us with suggestions that seem very appealing. Often we
see that they were wrong only after we act on them. It would really be quite simple if
the only evil that happened was what we wanted to happen: we would quickly learn
not to want evil! The trouble is that we seem to be tempted from outside ourselves
in ways we too often do not recognize in time. The JE writer is quite certain that we
cannot escape our responsibility because of such temptations. The decisions remain
ours to make. Yet the reality of temptation makes the notion of Satan an obvious one.
The loathsomeness of the serpent crawling about, hissing and leering out of hidden
places with evil-looking eyes, makes it an obvious symbol of this evil force.
The odd syntax of Gen. 3:15 makes it so difficult to translate that it is impossible
to know how to render the part about the seed of the woman striking the serpent’s
head and its striking the heel of her seed. Early Christian writers used it as a sign of
the Messiah: Mary, the “new Eve,” gave birth to the one who defeated the power of
evil—struck the head of the serpent—but to do it he had to undergo the destructive
power of evil himself—his “heel” was struck by the serpent. This could not have
been what JE meant! But it is an example of a way the early church interpreted the
Old Testament: they looked for signs of the Christ in it.
This way of using the Old Testament is called typology. Typology refers to the prac-
tice of seeing certain Old Testament figures or events as being types (typoi in Greek)
which foreshadow things to come, e.g., the coming Messiah. Christians have also
seen Noah’s ark as a type of the church—the shelter in which those who are elected
by God for salvation will ride out the destruction at the time of God’s judgment.
Passover has been seen as a type of Easter: as the Israelites were delivered from
slavery in Egypt and brought into the covenant with God, so Christians are delivered
from bondage to sin and are brought into the new covenant by Jesus Christ.
Sometimes typological images can be helpful in interpreting Christianity in the
context of its Israelite heritage; sometimes the types suggested are too remote and
fanciful to be entertained. One thing should be kept in mind, however, in dealing with
the Old Testament: its writers did not intend these persons or events to be interpreted
in this way. It is one thing to say that we can understand this or that Christian image
in the light of an Old Testament image; it is something else entirely to say that the
Old Testament means a prediction of this or that Christian image. The meaning of
the Old Testament must be sought first in its own terms, and not in those imposed
by later Christian interpretation.
Neither the man nor the woman is cursed by God. Judgments are pronounced, and
they are unpleasant; but there is no curse on people as there is on the serpent. Tra-
ditionally, the woman’s punishment has been seen as pain in childbirth. However,
the verse actually uses the same term for “hard labor” as is used in verse 17 for the
man’s punishment. Although their spheres are different—children for the woman
and crops for the man—the labor of each is commensurate with that of the other. The
subordination of woman to man is stated, and her situation is shown to be frustrating
in other ways: “. . . your desire shall be for your husband . . . .” The woman will seek
rest and fulfillment in her husband, but she will never find it there. Instead, she will
find a subordinate role. JE is offering an etiological explanation of a situation which
was the cultural norm at that time, and the cultural norm, this subordination, comes
as the result of sin. It is not presented as part of God’s intention in creation.
When God’s judgment turns to the man, the ground is cursed for his sake. The man
himself is not cursed. God’s purpose of redemption is always in the writer’s mind.
Humanity is in a special relationship with God which even sin cannot destroy. The
man is judged, but not cursed. The ground is cursed because of him: ’adam brings
a curse on ’adamah.
The man and the woman will eat only as a result of toil. The man was created for
work. He was to till the garden and care for it. Now, work has become toil. It is hard,
bitter, and offers few rewards. Instead of being a plentiful garden, the earth is now
a hostile place in which the barest necessities of life must be eked out by the sweat
of one’s brow. This is the kind of world in which humankind has lived throughout
the ages and is still the situation of most people today. Modern affluent America is
quite different from most of the societies of the world, but we are becoming aware
that even we may not have escaped the ancient judgment after all.
Finally, the part of the judgment which sounds so harsh even in English is almost
brutal in Hebrew: “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to
the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Not only will it be necessary to labor and toil for little reward, but it shall all be done
with the knowledge that death stands at the end. Life is futile, useless.
The judgment which is given shows forth a disruption in the created order. God had
looked at creation and found it very good: it all fit together and was suitable for God’s
purposes (the P story). In JE, the world is a garden, a suitable place for God to walk
in the cool of the evening. This perfection has been shattered by the man and the
woman. It does not mean that the divine image in humankind is shattered—nowhere
does the Bible suggest that—but it does mean that humanity is now out of joint in
relationship to the earth (toil and death), in relationship to his or her mate (shame and
lack of fulfillment), and in relationship with God (fear and hiding). In trying to be
like a divine being, humankind has sinned and spoiled God’s wonderful creation.
The man names his wife. The Hebrew is hawwah, which is similar to the word for
“living.” St. Jerome, who translated the Old Testament into Latin, made “Eve” out
of it. Here the man uses the naming formula with the woman as he had done previ-
ously with the animals. The pattern of domination and subordination is acted out. It
is only at this point that we should call the two by the proper names, Adam and Eve.
Until this point, “the man” and “the woman” are better translations.
Genesis
3:20-24
Notice that even though the judgment has been given, God does not simply wash
his hands of Adam and Eve. God does not kill them on the day they eat of the fruit
of the forbidden tree. In his mercy God stays that punishment. Moreover, God
mitigates the punishment given. In an undeserved act of tenderness, God clothes
them properly with coats of skins. God the creator deigns to become God the tailor.
We notice again and again in these first eleven chapters of Genesis that God never
abandons the people, even when the judgment for sin is most severe. The intention
of God to redeem humankind, later directly expressed in chapter 12 with the call
of Abram, is indirectly expressed in these chapters by the fact that no matter how
severe the judgment, life goes on; moreover, God continues to care. God’s judgment
and God’s grace are bound together.
At this point, the second tree—the tree of life—appears in the story. Death has already
been introduced into the story with the judgment on the man, but the writer uses the
tree of life to make a further point. Immortality was never promised to the man. He
is told that if he eats of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he will surely die,
but this is simply a statement of the consequence of the act. It does not imply that
the man would live forever if he refrained from eating of it. If the garden has a tree
of life, the man might eat of that tree and obtain immortality. We might think that it
would be good to live forever. But if the description given by JE is correct, that the
man must live in toil and pain until he returns to the ground, what could be more
merciless than to allow him to live this way forever? God removes the possibility of
humankind’s becoming immortal by driving Adam and Eve from the garden where
the tree grows. The punishment is not to be eternal.
YHWH expels Adam and Eve from the garden “to till the ground from which he
was taken.” The cherubim (plural; the singular is cherub) which are placed at the
east of the garden are winged creatures, frequently lion-like. In ancient mythology
they were the protectors of the gods. Cherubim supported the throne of the king of
Babylon. In the Temple in Jerusalem, cherubim were placed in the “holy of holies”
with their wings touching across the top of the “ark,” a boxlike structure in which
relics of the making of the covenant in the wilderness of Sinai were kept. With their
flaming swords they prevent humankind from reentering the garden.
What is the meaning of Adam and Eve’s being driven from the garden? First, it il-
lustrates that human sin makes it impossible to show forth clearly God’s image in
the world and be God’s stewards toward creation. The man is still commanded to
do this: he is to “till the ground from which he was taken.” Adam cannot do it with
the simple naturalness he knew in the garden; he is now, because of his sin, alien in
respect to the earth and he must toil in order to till it.
Second, it shows that man and woman are forever cut off from the innocence they
enjoyed in the garden. The cherubim guarding against any return present a powerful
symbol of something everyone has experienced: once sin has occurred, there is no
return to innocence.
Third, if the Fall is also a fall upward, humankind now faces an important choice:
will men and women go forward to a life of responsibly chosen obedience and righ-
teousness, or will they continue to choose disobedience and sin?
The Christian vision of the fulfillment of human life, found in the Book of Revela-
tion, is set not in a garden but in a city: the new Jerusalem. A city—and, of course,
a nation or the whole community of nations—is a human construction. Two very
important English words come from words which mean “city”: civilization (from the
Latin civitas, “city”) and politics (from the Greek polis, “city”). Humankind creates
civilization when it moves from simply depending on what nature sends to building
a life with fellow human beings. Growing crops, herding animals, making the things
one needs in order to do one’s work and to live with some amount of comfort and
safety—all these activities require that people live and work together. They must
have at least some degree of justice and sense of community if they are to succeed.
Political organization has as its purpose the formation of ways of living together
so that community and justice can be found. Community and justice are two of the
most important notions that we see developing in the biblical story.
The “upward fall” may set humankind on the path toward community and justice.
The new Jerusalem or the Kingdom of God—both political symbols—mark the
destination toward which this path is to go. The path is strewn not only with some
degree of success, but also with inhuman failures. They are inhuman because they
show human beings in sinful contradiction of their created status in the image of
God. It is wrong to call our cruelty to one another bestial, for beasts do not act this
way. When they kill, it is to eat or to protect themselves, as their created instincts
order them to do. They show forth their nature as beasts, and the word “beast” has
no bad meanings when it is used about them. Humankind, created to live together
(male and female, Gen. 1:27; not alone, 2:18) and in God’s image, fails to show
forth its own nature, but rather denies it and is inhuman when it disrupts the bonds
of community and acts unjustly.
In the next few chapters of Genesis we see what humankind does. In between the
expulsion from the garden and the coming of the new Jerusalem, the Bible tells the
stories of human wickedness, unfaithfulness, and disobedience. It also tells of the
actions of God to construct a nation which will be a means of establishing justice
and community among all people.
Before leaving this story we should make some comments on original sin, which is
a term often used in connection with the Fall. The doctrine of “original sin,” which
has been taught in the church for many centuries, says that there is an inclination to
sin in every human being from the very beginning of his or her life. Original sin is
different from acts of sin. Acts of sin are specific things that we do that are wrong
in the sight of God; original sin is the tendency in us that leads us to do these acts.
Since at least the fifth century CE the church has taught that every person who is
born shares in original sin, even before she or he has committed any acts of sin.
Original Sin
We do not go into the question of whether or not this teaching should be accepted.
Many people today think it should not, but there are also important reasons for us not
to discard it too easily. At this point we are concerned with the fact that the doctrine
of original sin has been connected with the story of the fall in Genesis. The tendency
in us to commit acts of sin is traced to the fall of Adam and Eve. We have, according
to this doctrine, inherited the tendency to sin—or original sin—from them.
Paul says, “. . . sin came into the world through one man [Adam], and death came
through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12). In
the fifth century, Augustine used this text to formulate the doctrine of original sin
which has prevailed in western Christian thought ever since. The point that Paul
is making in Rom. 5:12-21 is that Christ’s righteousness is, by God’s grace, more
than enough to offset the effects of sin. “For just as by one man’s disobedience the
many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made
righteous” (5:19).
There are three thoughts expressed here. One is that death came by Adam’s sin and
that death has been the common lot of all. The second is that death has become the
common lot of all because all have sinned. And the third is that, by the disobedience
of one man, all were made sinners. This is ambiguous, however, since it is not clear
in what way Paul thinks all were made sinners by Adam. Is sin viewed as a kind of
“power” which “came into the world” with Adam’s fall to grasp all so that they sin?
Is sin such a “power” that it has altered the structures of life so that death is now an
option for humankind? That is, if death for all is due to the fact that all sin, if some
did not, would they not die? Must people sin because Adam did?
There are many issues in all of this, and most of them belong more properly to a
study of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. The main question as far as the doctrine of
original sin is concerned is whether Paul thought that Adam’s sin made it inevitable
that all humankind would sin, or that Adam’s having caused sin to “come into the
world” was what made sin a possibility for humankind. There is nothing in the Ro-
mans passage to compel us to make the former interpretation—that sin is inevitable
because of Adam. It is a possible interpretation, but not a necessary one. Equally
possible is the interpretation that sin as a disruptive power was introduced into the
good creation by Adam’s act, and that from then on it has grown and spread so that
all men and women in fact now do sin.
Essentially, Augustine removed the ambiguity. He said that our natures are tainted
and corrupted by the sin of Adam so that we inherit an irresistible tendency to sin
from birth. This corruption of nature is inherited in the process of procreation, much
the way genetic traits are passed on from generation to generation.
The Genesis story of the Fall does not seem to say this. Jewish scholars have never
interpreted the story as meaning that we all have to disobey God because Adam
did. All people do sin; chapters 5-11 of Genesis show sin spreading in wider and
deeper circles until it reaches into the hearts of all people. The main point of the
story of Adam and Eve is freedom. They were free to obey or disobey. Without
freedom there would be no responsibility for sin. Sin is freedom reaching beyond
its limits. Hebrew thought has always insisted that freedom remains after the Fall.
Humankind must either do right or disobey. When we move from freely doing right
as God commands it, to deciding what is right, in the place of God, our freedom
has overreached its limits.
In their freedom, Adam and Eve do what humankind has done all along: they attempt
to remove themselves from the role of creatures and to judge God for themselves. The
understanding of sin in this story is not—as the doctrine of original sin has it—that
sin is due to an infection in our nature inherited from Adam. It is that now, as always
in the past, sin springs from the same source as does human goodness—freedom and
dignity—but sin is an overreaching misuse of these gifts.
A final note about the understanding of sin in Genesis 3: sin is a conscious, willful,
deliberate act of disobedience. For the writers of Genesis, sin is not something one
can do “by accident.” And it is possible to sin in two ways: by doing what you know
is wrong (the woman picks and eats the fruit) or by neglecting to do what you know
is right (the man does not remind the woman of God’s prohibition against eating
the fruit of that particular tree).