Tyler Handley - December 8th, 2008 in Feature 1 votes Vote Up! Vote Down!

I have always thought of the Tree of Life and the fall of man as a metaphor for maturing.  A child is innocent and does not know right or wrong -  or about its own death – but a child learns from its mistakes and about its fallibility.  It learns what is right and what is wrong, mostly from an authority figure.  A parent or guardian is like a covenant writer; they set up the rules for their children to obey.

A child’s life is easy.  They don’t have to work, but instead are given everything, like God gave Adam everything in the garden of Eden.  But there comes a time when a child needs to grow up, work to live, and take responsibility for actions.  The Tree of Life, and man’s fall from it, is a nifty symbol for maturing.  John Peter Lange goes so far as to say that taking responsibility for ones own actions is the central theme of Genesis 2-3.  “It was designed to bring out the necessary self-determination of a creature choosing freely, either for or against God, either for the God-willed good or the possible evil – and so to make perfect its independence” (206 Lange).  The ability for Adam and Eve to take responsibility for their own actions signals the death of innocence and birth into a world of free-will in which actions are judged by their consequences and justice is done to those who disobey.

It is because of the impact of this story on western civilization that I think it fails as an adequate and sustainable etiology for contemporary thought.  First of all, it has remained static as an etiology.  Society and its morals evolve as it needs to adapt to new circumstances.  It tries to explain the origin of the cultural norms of the time it was written.  For example, man blames woman for the fall, and God states that man would hold domain over woman.  Science has given us testable etiologies – real stories of where we came from and why we are the way we are.  Michael Shermer, in his short story “Genesis Revisited: a Scientific Creation Story” cleverly provides a more scientifically accurate creation account.  For example, “And God created the pongidids and hominids with 98 percent genetic similarity, naming two of them Adam and Eve, who were anatomically fully modern humans” (MichaelShermer.com).  There is still beauty in Genesis 2-3, but it can no longer be looked at as an etiology…as they are supposed to explain the way things are and came to be.  Since science has been more successful at explaining these things, the story of Adam and Eve and the Tree of Life has been relegated to the ranks of myth.  “A narrative expressing a profound psychological or religious truth that cannot be verified by historical inquiry or other scientific means” (G-30 Harris/Platzner).  To “J” the Yahwist Genesis 2-3 was an etiology, but to contemporary eyes it is a myth.

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Tags: adam and eve, genesis, lange, tree of life