Comments on Stephen Greenblatt’s Book (2017) The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve

By Razie Mah

These comments examine a roughly hewn history of the Biblical stories of Adam and Eve. Greenblatt is both a modernist and postmodernist. He reduces complex phenomena. He expresses grievance for politically favored identities.
For example, he reduces the existence of the early Genesis text to an innate human compulsion towards stories with nonsensical components, such as fairy tales. Similarly, he grieves for the way Eve was used to justify “murder” by early and medieval Christians.
This is standard fare in today’s literature on this topic.
Leavened with these comments, however, Greenblatt’s account is no longer standard. Instead, the entire work stands as an unwitting testimony to a larger, more comprehensive history. Open the comments and see.
Greenblatt’s prologue indicates that, during his teenage years, he “dies” to his parent’s cultural cognitive space. No wonder he ends up sitting in an endowed chair as a Professor of Humanities at Harvard. He is “born again” to Big Government Liberalism.
Indeed, his mission is to announce the demise of his parent’s cultural cognitive space. This is required by BGL. However, in the epilogue, he glances longingly back to the stories of Adam and Eve. They provide something that a scientific account of human evolution cannot: meaning.
Greenblatt never imaginatively enters the stories of Adam and Eve. He writes of those who do. Yet, in the very construction of his work, he re-enacts Saint Paul’s vision. Through Adam, paradise is lost. Through Christ, heaven is gained.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Razie Mah
• Release date: Nov 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781942824404

Razie Mah

See website for bio.

Book preview

Comments on Stephen Greenblatt’s Book (2017) The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve

By Razie Mah

Published for Smashwords.com

2017

Notes on Text

This work comments on a book by a professor of humanities at Harvard University. The book is titled, The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve, and is published by W.W. Norton & Company.

My goal is to examine the book from the perspective of the first singularity. The hypothesis of the first singularity addresses the question: Why civilization?

As such, two essays serve as prerequisites to this work: The First Singularity and its Fairy Tale Trace and Comments of Original Sin and Original Death.

Greenblatt’s book is also a prerequisite.

‘Words that belong together’ are denoted by single quotes or italics.

Table of Contents

Don’t Look Up

Chapters 1, 2 and 3

Chapters 4, 5 and 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8, 9 and 10

Chapters 12, 13 and 14

Don’t Look Up

0001 Stephen Greenblatt, the John Cogan Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, is an expert on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the period that Leo Strauss initially identifies as founding the modern era. In particular, Strauss points the finger at Thomas Hobbes, a contemporary of the poet, John Milton.

0002 Later, Strauss shifts his accusation to Machiavelli.

0003 Why this shift?

Machiavelli is interested in power. Hobbes writes about truth and power.

0004 Modernists are interested in scientific truth and mechanical power. Post-modernists are fixated on social power. The first goes with Hobbes. The second attaches to Machiavelli. The first comes in the form of reduction. The second harvests grievance and ambition.

Greenblatt is both modern and postmodern. He is a Big Government Liberal.

0005 In the prologue, Greenblatt tells