Eating the apple (2)

Saturday, April 2, 2022

6:05 a.m. Focus. Receptivity. Clarity. Presence. Shall we continue our look at the story of Adam and Eve and the snake and the apple?

Not to mention, God.

Smiling.

Insert from the beginning of Chapter Three of Genesis through your fourth division.

[In printing out the online Genesis I chose, I took out the traditional verse numbers as distraction, and marked it into ten sections for my own convenience. I won’t refer to those section numbers here, but they help me keep track. BTW I didn’t choose the King James version of the story for the same reason, to avoid distraction. People read the familiar phrasing and their critical faculties go to sleep; they don’t actually engage the material. At least, that’s a potential pitfall I see.]

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’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’”

But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.

Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.

So your next question was why the story was told with just these elements. Why via the woman? Why from the snake?

I am assuming that the myth is an extended use of symbolic figures, symbolic acts, and is not meant to be CNN covering a breaking story via its Eden desk.

Why the woman rather than the man? Let’s start with why she decided to eat the fruit. She saw that

• The tree was good for food
• It was a delight to the senses
• It was to be desired to make one wise

Nourishment, aesthetic delight, and a means to personal growth. Or am I missing something? Does this imply that she rather than he saw the tree in this light?

These were feminine perceptions; they were both practical (food) and aesthetically pleasing, and they led onward.

A la Goethe’s “The eternal feminine leads us onward”?

Leaving Faust out of it for the moment, that is nonetheless an apposite [not “opposite”] comparison.

So does it imply that the man – the personification of the masculine – was blind to these considerations?

Treat that thought as a spark, and see where it leads you over time. Of course do not make the elementary mistake of identifying feminine with female and masculine with male as if this were referring to psychological monoliths.

In any case, you see, she saw the tree as nourishment, and indeed you could say that it woke up those who ate the fruit. It didn’t make their lives easier, but it did change them.

It did that.

Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.

Is this saying that the fruit gave them self-awareness, and they began to do for themselves?

It says that the act of doing what they had been told not to do gave them self-awareness, but the first result of that form of self-awareness was to make them ashamed of what they were.

Ah. They were already beginning to judge.

Exactly. Now tell us (we are smiling, as you feel), was that development good, or bad?

Yes, very funny. The only possible answer is, It depends on how you look at it.

Yes, it does. Now, do you suppose that God saw it as good, or evil?

Not unless God had eaten of the same kind of fruit. Genesis earlier said God created the world and found it good, but I don’t imagine that was “good” in opposition to “bad” in the way we see things.

No. He created and approved. So now must we assume that when Adam and Eve fell into judging things, God fell into judging things?

No, I get it. Of course not, but they now could no longer see it any other way. Having eaten the apple, they were forced to judge everything, which led them to project onto God their own state of perception.

Well, after all, scriptures aren’t written by God, but by humans, so whose point of view will they reflect? And remember, we use the word God because words are necessary, but you must not fall into the forgetful habit of assuming that we mean by the word whatever the word suggests to you.

Yes, I know that.

You do, but not everybody knows that you do, and not all of you will remember it all the time. We aren’t engaged in theology, here; we are talking about your place in the scheme of things. However, in a sense that is all that scriptures are doing. They seem to be about God, or the gods, but they are always written by humans, for humans, and it is well to remember that, if you can. Next section.

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. But the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”

When I marked this, I noted that this is the last time God and they would talk face to face. Now, Zechariah Sitchin would have it that this is a real chronical of specific events, and that God (or the gods) referred not to some separated abstraction but to a physical presence. In other words, he took all this to be more a chronical than an analogy. I’ve never decided how to think about his work. I think there’s something to it, but it seems to me he was reading things from too materialistic a viewpoint. Your view on Sitchin?

One investigation at a time. The point here that you correctly flagged is that, as you said, it is the last time the humans would meet the divine face to face. Does this mean that humans fell? “The fall of man”? But – does increased self-awareness equal a fall?

It’s a change, for sure. I suppose we could look at it either way, assuming we had to pin it as good or bad.

Exactly. Now, if God was not seeing things as good and evil, how do you explain the next part?

He said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.”

He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”

The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.”

I was kind of expecting you to explain it.

Your questions were: “God didn’t know? And is this about attributing blame? Tracing causes?” But notice, God addresses the man, not the woman. He says first, “Where are you,” then “Who told you,” then “Did you eat the forbidden fruit?” Why the man and not the woman? Why did God ask When, Who, and What?

It implies that God didn’t know, which argues against omniscience. It is as if God were much the same as the Adam and Eve; on a par with them.

No, they were on a par with God. They weren’t yet self-aware, but they were living in the garden, at the same level as God, able to converse face to face. And then God addressed the masculine aspect of humanity and called for an accounting. The man did not lie. What good would it have done him, to try to lie to his God? He said, “I followed the lead of the creature you made for me.” A paraphrase might be, “I listened to another aspect of myself that went beyond literal obedience.” We don’t say that Adam in the myth saw this. Those who told and eventually wrote the story didn’t necessarily see it this way either, of course. But it is there in the fabric of the story – in the nature of things – to be seen, and perhaps it is time for you to see it clearly. It wasn’t that the man was passing the buck, but that he was saying that the woman “who you gave to be with me” had led him to it. If that was passing the buck, it amounted to passing it back to God itself.

I could imagine that as a reaction, actually. In effect, “You have only yourself to blame.”

Again, remembering that this story is told from the point of view of a humanity that had fallen into an inability not to judge things as good and bad, proceed to your next long section.

But we’ve gone our usual time. Much longer?

No, we can pause here. Begin with your eighth section next time.

Okay. Thanks as always.