The Garden of Eden

     So, where do we begin? Well, we might as well start at the beginning with Genesis and the creation story! Since we're being a little more formal (Bible Study mode), I'll say up front that I believe the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament to most of you) dwarfs the Belated Testament, or what most of you know as the New Testament, in aesthetic and literary appeal. But that's just me. Secondly, I have no problem, and welcome, a religious interpretation, etc., if that's how many of my readers are going to approach it. I'll know where you're coming from! I've been there. I will more often than not, talk/type in a literary way, as if we were doing a study on Hamlet or Moby Dick. But we'll figure it out!

    First of all, so you know where I'm coming from, and you may already know all this. If you do, I apologize. I do not mean to lecture. Most non-evangelical biblical scholars believe there were 5 authors of the Hebrew Bible. To simplify things, they were called the "Yahwist" (or J writer); the "Priestly" writer (or P writer); the "Elohist" (or E writer); the Deuteronomist; and finally the Redactor, or the guy during the time around the Babylonian exile who put all these writings together in whatever coherent form he saw fit...while also editing all of the previous work he received - sometimes editing severely. I believe, with a few others, that the original story of creation to the death of Moses was written by the Yahwist. Her original writings/stories, I believe were used as a template, so to speak, for the later writers. I believe she was a woman of high standing who lived at the end of King Solomon's reign and into his idiot son Rehoboam's reign, and that she was writing for her friends or local people. Almost like a fictional origin story much like James Michener in our day. I believe she was just trying to take whatever tales she knew and make a story. But David was her hero. We'll get back to that. I also believe it's all fiction or prose writing, if you will...but really GREAT fiction! That shouldn't matter because I can't prove it, in the same way that believers can't prove any of it is true before David. So away we go!

    Of the two creation stories in Genesis, the Yahwist writes the beautiful words, "Before a plant of the field was in earth, before a grain of the field sprouted - Yahweh had not spilled rain on the earth, nor was there man to work the land - yet from the day Yahweh made the earth and sky, a mist from within would rise to moisten the surface, Yahweh shaped an earthling from clay of this earth, blew into its nostrils the wind of life. Now look: man becomes a creature of flesh."

    I love that! As opposed to the grand cosmic Priestly version (6 days, etc.), Yahweh, almost childlike puts his hand in the mud and molds a figure and then, either nostril to nostril, or mouth to nostril blows his own breath into the clay figurine and animates it. It reminds me of beautiful children't literature! But to keep this first study short from my end, because I could bore people forever with this, my favorite part is the creation of Eve.

    Did you know that we have no record of any other creation stories of woman from the ancients? And I believe that this is one of the many times where we can make an educated guess that the Yahwist was a woman...because of her story of Eve.

    So Yahweh feels it's not good for man to be alone and he needs to create a partner for him. I'll save the jokes about Yahweh creating animals first! But now since Adam doesn't find a helpmate among the animals, Yahweh puts Adam into a deep sleep that reminds me of anesthesia. And now we have the only male instance of giving birth! In using Adam's rib, much like a builder would do for a building, which is what "rib" means, it seems to me that Yahweh is building a solid structure as opposed to the mudpie the Yahwist wrote for us earlier. It's almost like Yahweh was getting it right this time as opposed to the sloppier job with Adam. Eve is created from a living being and not from clay. Pretty cool! AND the Yahwist uses 6 times more text to tell Eve's creation story than she did with Adam. Also, very cool...and interesting!

    No misogyny or feminist discontent. Women, as I hope to talk about a lot, later on, are always at the forefront for the Yahwist from Eve to Tamar to Sarah and Rebecca. Women rule in the Hebrew Bible! I do not interpret Yahweh's action in bringing the woman to Adam as that of an attendant at a wedding, or even of a father giving away the bride. J (as I will call her from now on) is not in the business of endorsing marriage. Her wryness doesn't cease in any of this opening chapter. No one has ever hinted at the limits of sexual love like J. It unites in act, but not in essence. Parting is played off against clinging, which is revealed as inadequate to overcome parting. We part from mother and father, rather as the woman was parted from Adam. Clinging cannot make us one flesh, and no man since Adam can say, "Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh." Adam and his still unnamed woman were one flesh, but we only cling...at best.