Primordial narratives are pretty hard to understand − then add the Church Fathers
By Debbie Blue
Old Testament Reading: Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7
For Sunday, March 13, 2011: Year A − First Sunday in Lent
This is a beautiful and sad (maybe, slightly funny?) story. I don’t know. I can’t tell. The weight of interpretation it so heavy here, I find it hard to read. I do know you can’t leave out Genesis 2:18-25.
But, okay, trying
God is super creative—makes the world, like God doesn’t want to be alone. God seems very generous, makes a human and gives the human fish and food and a lush garden to live in and says, “eat freely of all this beauty, except that one tree.” (Maybe its poison, whatever, it will make him die if he eats.) God, not liking to be alone Godself, thinks the human shouldn’t be alone either. The animals are nice but they aren’t really companions the human can be intimate with. So god uses a rib from the first human to make another one. Using the bone God (intimately) sculpts the intimate other.
Misinterpretation
The first human upon seeing the new one, likes “her,” but apparently sees her as derivative: says, “this one shall be called woman for out of man she was taken.” God used one of Adam’s bones, so it could be a bit of a leap on Adam’s part to say she came out of him, but, okay---at any rate they’re naked together and not ashamed. Seems kind of sexy and ecstatic. It would be nice if that lasted awhile. But, narratively anyway, things are moving along pretty quickly.
Misrepresentation
Suddenly a crafty snake appears and talks to the intimate other. The snake brings up the poison tree and makes it seem like it’s the best tree ever. While he’s at it he makes the creative-lover-intimacy-maker, who drew so close as to blow into the nose of the human, seem like a sort of greedy, rivalrous liar who wants to keep the humans away from what is REALLY good. The snake makes it seem like the creator is at heart not very generous and deeply concerned about keeping humanity at a distance. The god the snake draws is afraid the humans will be like him. Is the god the snake makes up, the one we often end up worshipping? Both the humans end up eating fruit from that tree and afterwards they aren’t together naked and unashamed, they are sort of slinking around lying and hiding. They sew fig leaves together to cover their genitals.
What Happened?
The trajectories of interpretation are staggering and winding. It is the original sin, it is total depravity, it is uncontrolled Eros winning, it is the difficult but necessary step we all must take in order to be fully realized humans. I like the Girardian take on it: It is the first story of humans forging their identities “over against.” It is a story that reveals that rivalry exists at the heart of humanity. Maybe God isn’t at all like the picture the snake draws. Maybe God is truly generous and creative, loving, desiring intimacy, but something about humans just couldn’t see it that way. We make up a god that is greedy, rivalrous, more into transcendence than intimacy—a god that is very concerned with maintaining God’ status above humanity. Christianity is always urging us to trust God—but the god the snake and the human discuss, is not really one that I could trust—and yet that’s the god we so often end up worshipping.
A Lot of Damage
How Christians have interpreted this passage has shaped the world (the subjugation of women, the demonization/distortion of the erotic, the exclusion of women from the clergy etc). The writer of 1Timothy blames the sin of the world on women. The Church Fathers followed his lead. Who wants to spend a sermon trying to undo all that − and yet it’s kind of glaring.
The Hardest Question
Primordial narratives, ancient epics of origin, different versions woven together to reach their final form after the Hebrew temple was decimated by the Babylonian empire? There’s SO much to consider here. Is it something about the pathology of power? This may seem like a cop out for the hardest question, but it really about sums it up for me: What does it all mean?
Debbie Blue is one of the founding pastors of House of Mercy in St. Paul, MN, the author of Sensual Orthodoxy and From Stone to Living Word. She lives on a farm with her family, friends, and animals
