The Trial of Innocence: Adam, Eve, and the Yahwist

By André LaCocque

The Adam and Eve narrative in Genesis 2-3 has gripped not only biblical scholars, but also theologians, artists, philosophers, and almost everyone else. In this engaging study, a master of biblical interpretation provides a close reading of the Yahwist story. As in his other works, LaCocque makes wise use of the Pseudepigrapha and rabbinic interpretations, as well as the full range of modern interpretations. Every reader will be engaged by his insights.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Oct 30, 2006
• ISBN: 9781621892533

André LaCocque

Andre LaCocque is Professor Emeritus of Old Testament at Chicago Theological Seminary. He is the author of The Trial of Innocence and Onslaught against Innocence (Cascade Books); The Feminine Unconventional; Romance, She Wrote; Esther Regina; and a commentary on Ruth. He is also the coauthor (with Paul Ricoeur) of Thinking Biblically: Exegetical and Hermeneutical Studies.

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Chapter One

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Introduction

Methodology

First, a word on the nature of the text I study in this volume. It is a narrative and as such intended primarily for an extended readership. As is well known, the Hebrew mentality is not at ease with philosophical speculations. Few passages in the Bible, however, pose a series of philosophical problems as profound although deceptively in simple terms as this one. In regard to literary-critical and literary-historical criticism of the pericope under consideration, my personal opinion is that Genesis 2–3 came into being as a free creation of J (the Yahwist) against the background of the ancient Near Eastern mythological lore that includes popular epics that also circulated in Israel, as Ezekiel 28 testifies. This latter prophetic text suffices to explain many of the theme variations in the extant text of Genesis. A good summary of literary criticism of the text under consideration can be found in Castellino’s study.¹ He highlights Hermann Gunkel’s discernment of incompatibilities (Unzuträglichkeiten):

in Gen 2:5 grass and plants are created, but in 2:9 only the plants

in 2:5 the earth’s fecundity depends upon the rainfall, but in 2:6 it is rather upon the stream (‘ed)

in 2:5 again Adam is created to till the field, but in 3:23 he does that only after being expelled from Eden in Genesis 2, the animals are in the Garden, but in Genesis 3 they are not banned with the humans, so we do not know how they happen to be living in the present world!²

All of this analysis rests, it seems to me, upon illegitimate demands for rational logic addressed to a symbolic narrative. If one imagines for a moment re-writing Genesis 2–3 in such a way that it be flawless in a scholarly sense, it seems evident that the story would lose much of its power of evocation and probably become totally uninteresting. In fact, as I shall show in this study, all details of the received text (the textus receptus) of Genesis 2–3 make sense. Not any one of them can be disposed of without damage to the integrity of the J myth. Even Gen 2:10–14, considered by Paul Humbert and so many others as an erudite gloss, is not superfluous.³ So, in what follows, I shall in general take exception to highly hypothetical suggestions of text emendation. I shall rather decidedly reflect here upon the transmitted written version of the myth, and I shall assume J’s authority on the whole.⁴ My justification for doing so is threefold.

First, much of former scholarly analysis of Genesis 2–3 has been based on the assumption that J wrote in the era of David-Solomon. Therefore, what looked incongruous with that time (roughly 900 B.C.E.) had to be attributed to a later redactor. But this argument becomes invalid if J in Genesis 2–3 (the final redaction) is exilic or post-exilic.

Second, a number of my predecessors have been rightly struck by the so-called doublets in the narrative. They generally conclude that two originally independent traditions—one about paradise, the other about the humans’ origin and their fall—were subsequently combined to become the present version of the myth. All along, however, I shall call attention to the mostly overlooked dialectical mind of the author and to his fine psychological sense of reality. The world envisaged here is not simple but complex and is dealt with appropriately by J. God is Elohim and Yhwh; the human is dust and divine breath; male and female; the central tree is life and knowledge; the human work is in synergism with God’s and hard labor; the human transgression is deicide and process of maturation; the humans used to be angelic and then they acceded to a knowledge that is fruit of their hubris. Let us note here that J’s dialectic corresponds to a general conception in the Bible according to which the human is God’s creature but also sinner, blessed but also under curse, obligated to the orders of God, yet sustained by Yhwh’s grace.⁵

Third, J is unanimously recognized as a great singer of tales. What makes a storyteller talented is his or her versatility and gift for mimicry. The trained scholar can hear at times echoes of other traditional literary sources (of the Deuteronomist in particular) in the text extant, but this still proves nothing in terms of authorship. No author lives in an ivory tower and, if indeed J and D are roughly contemporaries, there should be no surprise in spotting the mutual influence of one text upon the other.

In short, the final redactor of Genesis 2–3 has produced a consistent and fascinating story, unwinding from beginning to end without major bumps along the way. The literary structure goes in the same direction. Whether we adopt the pattern suggested by Rosenberg⁶ or by Walsh,⁷ for example, both emphasize the rigorous internal correspondence of the different parts. There is thus no compelling reason that I can see not to credit the exceptional storyteller J with such achievement.

The present study is by and large a synchronic reading of the text. This narrative is to be attributed to J, and chances are that J, redactor or editor of most of Genesis 1–11, should be dated roughly at the time of P , the Priestly author of Genesis 1:1—2:4a.⁸ The difference of style between the two sources is evident, but the linkages between Genesis 1 and 2, that we shall point to in the body of this study, are all the more plausible if J knew P or vice-versa. Indeed, it makes sense to have a creation fresco by P in Genesis 1 focusing on the universe, and a creation narrative by J focusing upon the human being, center of the created cosmos.

A necessary note of caution: this book is no systematic exegesis of Genesis 2–3. Rather it is a study in the explicit (and sometimes implicit) archetypal anthropology of the biblical text under consideration.⁹ I feel no obligation to deal with all the critical aspects of the text, but only with what in the text has a bearing upon J’s anthropological doctrine in those two chapters.¹⁰ As the Genesis text is here followed like Ariadne’s thread, topics are recurring and dealt with piecemeal. This is evident as to motifs such as: eating, tree of knowledge, nakedness, clothing, tilling, and keeping. The reader will not find here an exhaustive treatment of evil, for example, although the issue of evil is considered whenever the relevant texts dictate. Therefore, the topical index at the end of this book is to be used for cross-reference.

The Yahwist’s Presuppositions

The human being is a divine creature and, as such, is endowed with

God-like characteristics.

To construct his myth of Adam and Eve, J ingeniously combined traditional elements he found scattered in Israel’s and the ancient Near East’s lore.¹¹ In so doing, J was moved by an inner conviction, which incidentally we may consider as fundamental for the whole Bible, that the human is a divine creation and is endowed with God-like qualities. As such, the human is by creation under a divine commission, to till and guard the world, the latter described as a garden of delights. The point is that the human is a divine desire, not a luxury object, or a slave. It is thus without surprise that we discover that the humans become for God a question: will they or will they not meet God’s expectation?¹²

For J, such an anthropological view is clearly self-evident and the story he tells in Genesis 2–3 may be called a myth precisely because of its implied claim to universality.¹³ To the extent that it is integrated in an all-encompassing view of the narrator, the myth eventuates in a veritable anthropological paradigm.¹⁴

One dimension of the myth that stirs negative reactions today is its patriarchal framework. Adam is clearly the referential member of the human couple, so that Eve is presented to him, acclaimed by him, and named by him. Her weakness before temptation is underscored; her punishment after the fall is in her own flesh. In the course of this study, I shall show that this point must not be overstated. In the text there are numerous corrective details that strike a fairer balance between the genders. But patriarchalism is all the same pervasive and an irritant to modern sensitivities.

The same is true regarding the type of sexuality presented here as the normal and acceptable connubial mores. Celibacy and homosexuality are totally outside of the tale’s purview. Sexuality is here monogamous, exogamous heterosexuality . . . [considered as] normative.¹⁵ J’s anthropology is thus incomplete and reflecting a social background that is both archaic and patriarchal. It is all the more striking as, in spite of its limitations, the myth of Adam and Eve has overcome the onslaughts of time and remains one of the most powerful and inspired visions of the human condition. Indeed, it remains, even in the twenty-first century a voice that time has not dimmed. In short, it is a classic.

It requires that here the universalistic claim of the Adam and Eve myth be dealt with phenomenologically. We must right away add that the universalistic dimension of this narrative is not due to its proposing any kind of universals (for one would be hard pressed to find such dogmatic propositions), but to its classicism. It is a vision of the human which is still meaningful today,¹⁶ thus a universality-promoting ethical system.

The Intent of the Text

Genesis 2–3 is a myth of origins. As such it is timeless.

We are dealing with a deceptively simple biblical story. It figures among the most familiar narratives of sacred literature and of world literature. Adam and Eve are known universally, even by people who never read Genesis 2–3. This makes clear at least two things. First, such widespread and long-standing existence of the myth in our collective imagination for thousands of years is a tribute to its power of evocation. Second, nothing can be more damaging to such a loaded message than when people entertain the illusion that they have heard so much of and about it that they do not need to hear it ever anew. For, when the mind ceases to be curious, a sort of immunity to the impact of the Word develops that is at times more detrimental than sheer ignorance. Thus, the universal knowledge enjoyed by the myth of Adam and Eve is also its curse. To consider the story of Adam and Eve as a tale for children is only possible when the story is vaguely known, when it is considered from a distance and with a preconceived feeling that nothing can be learned from so naïve a tale. Naïve and hackneyed—those are formidable hurdles to overcome if we decide to read afresh the story of Adam and Eve!

The truth of the matter, as we shall see, is that Genesis 2 and 3 are an astoundingly profound reflection on being human and they are a strikingly relevant exposition of human nature.¹⁷ No other passage in the Bible has come so close to a theory of the homo. Perhaps no other text in world literature has said so much about who and what is human and, by ricochet, who and what God is, in such an economy of words, such an austerity of style, and such an ingenious literary form.¹⁸

To state that all human beings descend from one human pair and are thus all kin and equal is no trivial message. But we should start by emphasizing a point that preempts all others. In the terms of Paul Tillich, there is no point in time and space in which created goodness was actualized and had existence.¹⁹ In other words, These things never happened but are always.²⁰ Tillich concludes from this to the concomitance of creation and fall, because the humans are fundamentally what we know them to be, fallible and with an evil inclination from youth (cf. Gen 8:21).²¹ What is emphasized by the use of the term myth to characterize the nature of Genesis 2–3 narrative is that there is no chronological precedence of the events as told there over those of actual history. The relation between the two is different; it is one of prototype to type. The prototype invokes a multiplicity of events upon which it imprints the unity of an intelligible sequence.²²

This point is somewhat paradoxical, because the chronological sequence in the events as told regulates the structure of any narrative, and J’s story is no exception.²³ It is, however, a mistake to extrapolate this inner temporality into an historical one. We are to understand terms like before and after as referring to the inner temporality of the narrative, not to an historical chronology. In other words, before and after express an inner and simultaneous tension between two poles of the same reality, be it human, animal, or generally speaking natural. The human is a complex being, full of contradictions and ambiguities, capable of untold saintliness and appalling cruelty.²⁴ J’s way to give expression to such human intrinsic contradiction is to tell a story in which both extremes are presented dialectically and sequentially. The central tree (of life) is both offered and then forbidden; it is also the (same) tree of knowledge that kills. Adam is the human species and an individual, male and/then female and male. Human work is synergetic with God’s and then the human toil par excellence. Sex is communion of the genders and then a source of pain and suffering. But, as Franz Rosenzweig insists, the binary conceptualization that differentiates between two sides marked by ‘good and evil’ is preceded by a unity prior to separation and division. This horizontal truth is the truth of revelation, a knowledge that is different from any other forms of knowledge. It can make the point that contradictory statements may be both true.²⁵

The complex of Genesis 2–3 is marked by construction-deconstruction. But the two aspects are simultaneous, or at least, in continuous rhythmic succession, like heartbeats. Innocence is followed by innocence-on-trial and the recovery of innocence through repentance and the quest for justice—

unless, of course, the heartbeats come to a stop, then Genesis 3 becomes the death-toll of innocence. Genesis 4:1 tells us about the co-creation of a man with God but this man is Cain, the one who will bring down the creation of another man, his brother, to de-creation. Ambiguity of the existence that is pulled on both ends by good and evil, life and death, life-giving and life-

taking, trial and slaughter.

The chronological misunderstanding of Genesis 2–3 has stirred a series of issues, that are as detrimental as they are wrong. Is the human still in the image of God after the Fall? Is there between the Creator God and present humanity an analogy of being? Is sin hereditary? Is the original sin perpetuated in extensity to the whole of the human race and in intensity in each descendant of Adam and Eve? Is a sinful state determined ever since the original couple’s blunder? Is God so inexplicably angry with humanity that His anger would be only assuaged by Christ’s sacrifice?

None of these issues finds their mooring in the biblical text.²⁶ Adam is both the person in the Garden and the one expelled from Eden. It is why in this essay the term dialectical is used to characterize the J’s thinking and writing.²⁷ To quote once more from Tillich, Man is estranged from the ground of his being, from other beings, and from himself.²⁸ His estrangement characterizes his present existence; the ground of his being is the person in the Garden. Without the latter, there would be no estrangement—and the human angst would be groundless.

So far, I have used descriptive terms such as narrative, story, tale, and myth. The word myth needs elaboration. It is used here as a pointer to the intent of the text. The story of Adam and Eve is no fable or legend. It is a myth,²⁹ meaning a philosophical or theological reflection on the origin of all things or of selected things under the form of symbolic expression so as to set up a paradigm and found options in life, by which the human situates herself in the world. Myth is narrated philosophy.³⁰ An (archetypal) anthropological myth focuses on the nature and destiny of the humans, their raison d’être, their relations with the Creator and with other creatures, their alienation to their environment, their limitations and mortality, their work and sexuality, their aspirations and hopes, their institutions and techniques. It has thus little to do with fable, which is a work of pure fiction, intended to found and initiate simple morality. Myth has also little to do with history as we understand it today. Myth does not lie, but it does not claim either to be an eyewitness report on primary events. What interests myth is less archaeology than archetype. In fact, there is much substance in the declaration that, The myth is religion’s authentic mode of speech, to express the truth about the invisible realities by visible media.³¹

Myth is universal, both in terms of being a revealing mirror of the soul and of being a healing lesson. Myth is didactic, it explains the present phenomena by conjuring up their remotest origins. Its function falls in parallel with modern psychoanalytic exploration into the embryonic or inchoate seeding of the future development.

In this respect, one must realize that the myth is the coalescence in the form of a narrative of a preliminary awareness of finitude, of a prior angst before life. J ingeniously expresses the consciousness of sin and guilt in a highly symbolic and amazingly understated vignette. The story is told as a soul’s catharsis; the nature of the narrative is cathartic because it is confessional. Such confession is capable of being universal and of transcending all ages.³² How so?

The Question Of Relevance

Genesis 2–3 narrates a foundational, though mythical event. It is written in the light of collective and personal experience. It claims to be paradigmatic.

To return today to an ancient myth in order to probe the meaning of life is not self-evident. At a minimum, it suggests that there is still a definite advantage in listening anew to a message that, it is true, has given an abundant and impressive proof of its authenticity and its capacity of transforming life. For over two and a half millenniums, the story of Adam and Eve has been read, meditated and assimilated by a cloud of witnesses.

On the scores of age, universality, credibility, impact, and capacity for personal transformation—some would say of vivification—the story in question is almost without par. It is not just old, it is enduring, it has become eternal. It provides a prototype, that is, as the Oxford Universal Dictionary defines the word as, a pattern, model, standard, exemplar, archetype.

This last point allows us to qualify the kind of myth embodied in Genesis 2–3. Myth is often associated with a fitting ritual. The myths of origin are meant to be recounted at appointed times during the liturgical year, so as to make sure that the cosmos is ordered anew and some sort of social and cosmic stasis is achieved by virtue of the myth retold. Myth is by and large liturgical. Its temporality is: then and each time it is declaimed. By contrast, the J’s narrative points to some type of timeless event which decisively impacts humanity’s history. Hence, its temporality is entirely different, without cyclical recurrence and without ritual repetition. The event puts its mark on the whole of history from beginning to end, but need not be reactivated ritually in order to find its efficiency—I am, of course, referring especially to Genesis 2 about which the question might arise; Genesis 3 certainly does not need any ritual recitation in order to be immediately relevant and accurate! In all this, the medium is not rite, it is history. That is why J’s work is not primarily about the origin, but about the world and humanity under threat in the present.³³

Strictly speaking, therefore, the term myth as applied to J’s narrative must be qualified. The text is a reconstruction on the basis of J’s actual historical and religious experience, within which he discovers a paradigmatic interaction between Creator and creature, as well as a sin/transgression that is part of the human condition (Westermann). The world of harmony described in Genesis 2 can only [be] grasp[ed] through, in spite of, and because of distanciation.³⁴ It is also from the standpoint of historical experience that one must conclude, with Reinhold Niebuhr, that the world of disruption painted in Genesis 3 that is our world is inevitable but not necessary.³⁵ That J is capable of imagining a world of harmony because and in spite of living in a world of disruption brings up a text that "portrays two possible modes of human being-in-the-world and the consequences of each."³⁶

No doubt, J’s setting in life had a definite bearing upon experience and imagination. Now, as we shall see in the section Author and Date below, I shall argue for a sixth-century date, at a time when Judah had been uprooted and resettled in Babylon. Judah in exile was exposed to the foreign empires and, for the first time with such intensity, to their political power and their religious triumphalism.³⁷ Thus, declaring the living God Creator of the whole universe was, to the exiles, therapeutic.³⁸

The question also arose as to what extent the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem with the Temple, and the deportation of the elite of the Judean population to Mesopotamia was a crime against God. Was the God of Israel also the God of Babylon? Were the Babylonians liable ethically, as the Israelites would be in similar circumstances? In short, is sin a human condition, not just an Israelite specialty? Conversely, is God in covenantal relationship with other nations beside His people Israel?

To these questions, J answers positively. He does so in Genesis 2–3; he also does so, and in more detail, in Genesis 9 (the so-called Noahide covenant with the nations). Furthermore, J dramatizes the principle of God as universal Judge. God calls Israel in judgment, but also the whole universe. The Babylonians will not escape God’s trial in due time. Today, they are victorious and it seems that Yhwh has been dealt a great defeat with the humiliation of His people; but some time God will call on the Babylonians and ask, Where are you? (Gen 3:9). Then, no equivocation will save them. Their condemnation is justice rendered—just as Judah’s punishment by exile is no mere historical accident but their deserts.

In other words, Genesis 2–3 has become along the many centuries of its existence as a literary composition one of those primordial warrants constitutive of human existence—at least in the world influenced by Jewish, Christian and Islamic worldviews.³⁹ It has informed our understanding of the creation of humanity, of its proximity with the divine and its superiority over animals and plants, of the fundamental equality of all humans, of their knowledge (for better or for worse) of good and evil, of their primal transgression and inclination to transgress the divine commandment, of their striving towards immortality, and more.

Such information is so deeply rooted that it has become unconscious in many people, an axiom as it were, unarticulated and unexplored. Everyone knows that the human is mortal and that mortality is a determined fact ever since Adam. Death exercised dominion through that one, says Paul (Romans 5). But, why is that so, and, as a consequence, what the meaning of human finitude and finality is often remains unaddressed.

The purpose of the present study is to undertake an adventurous voyage into the underlying meaning of the story of Adam and Eve. The sole requirement is to provisionally suspend all suspicion towards the text, so as to allow our preconceived orientation in life to be disoriented by the text and reoriented perhaps in a different direction. Why would any one decide to make the voyage at all? Because perhaps a pre-knowledge of God, in St. Augustine’s words, makes that our heart is disquieted until it rests in [Him].⁴⁰

Author and Date

Probably written in the sixth century B.C.E., Genesis 2–3’s tradition is collective rather than individual.

The purpose of this study is to help decipher the reflection on human nature offered by an ancient author, whom we know only by the siglum J (see table one, page 8). He is the greatest narrator in the Pentateuch and arguably in the whole Bible. In the book of Genesis, he is the author of a narrative on creation and other stories. According to Heinrich H. Schmid and practitioners of the so-called New Criticism, J presupposes the classical prophets of the eighth century and is built in the prophetic spirit, illustrating the major themes of Yhwh’s leadership and Israel’s election. This late date would explain the striking silence of the Hebrew Bible on Adam and Eve after Genesis 5; an absence that seems to indicate that they were not known before J created them as personages.⁴¹ He did this by building on the common noun ’adam (human), which he promoted to the level of a name (Adam), and on the traditional (even perhaps mythological) hawwah (now designating Eve; see on 3:20 below).⁴² This, however, does not mean that the doctrine of God as creator of heaven and earth is a relatively recent development in Israel’s consciousness. Texts such as Genesis 14:19, 22; 24:3; Pss 19:2ff.; 33; 136; and 1 Kgs 8:12 (emended) are older attestations of the idea of creation in Israel.⁴³ Ben Sira is the first to deal with the J story. But he remains silent on Adam’s sin, although not on Eve’s (Sir 25:24 // 4Q184). This contrasts with 4 Ezra 3:1; 4:20 on the first Adam or with Sifre Deut par. 45.⁴⁴

One of the most important grounds for judgment regarding the date of the J composition is its concept of the universal rulership of God. It is self-evident that such a motif would not be foreign to the time of the alleged greatest expansion of Israel, under David and Solomon. However, the concern for universality is even more powerfully developed in the sixth century exilic prophecy of a Deutero-Isaiah, for instance.⁴⁵

Another clue is provided by the patterned sequence in the J narrative of divine gift/human abuse of it (sin)/punishment/forgiveness. True, this pattern would fit most any time in Israel’s consciousness of her history. The era of exile in Babylon, however, is most probable, because the gravest theological crisis in ancient Israel’s history erupted then. The exiles had to deal with major theological issues. Why did God become so angry with his people as to allow a foreign nation to deport them into an impure land and to destroy his own temple (586 B.C.E.)?⁴⁶ A corollary question was whether there was a reprieve in sight.

J thus addresses a community that feels expelled from paradise and sent into a land of hardship. Retrospectively, they feel that they earlier lived in a divine Garden, with the commission to till and guard it. Then all was well, simple and innocent, due to an uninterrupted communion with the Creator of heaven and earth. The humans were in peace with earth and hearth. But they flouted this peace by lusting for a sham freedom that allegedly would make them God-like. The Creator had no other choice but to enforce the warning He gave them in advance (in Gen 2:17 in parallel with the pre-exilic prophetic corpus).

Genesis 3 is no different from further developments of J’s on the fratricide of Cain that ends with the gift of a protective sign; or on the deluge, that ends with the rainbow, another sign of covenant; or, again, on the human hubris in building the Tower of Babel—right where the exiled audience of J have been coerced to settle—and the election of Abram/Abraham. Paradise is now off-limits. A flaming sword makes its reentry by stealth impossible. But original innocence and justice are retrievable. Eden is for the righteous who obey the commandments and practice justice and compassion. As the eighth century prophet Micah said, "He has told you, O human (’adam), what is good; and what the Lord requires of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God. (6:8). There is thus no justification in reading Genesis 3 as an irrevocable curse on humanity, or as a Fall without redemption, a death of innocence. J’s message to the exiles is not that there is no hope for the dry bones they have become (see Ezekiel 37), but that innocence is now on trial, exemplified by the exile in Babylon. Genesis 2–3 belongs to a complex literary unit reaching its apex in Genesis 12 where Abraham inaugurates the history of salvation, the pilgrimage of the righteous back to Eden. In fact, as a scholar puts it, J’s work in the first chapters of Genesis is meant to make the doctrine of Israel’s election intelligible by exposing the bases for it: It was . . . the determinate act of the one only God the creator of the whole earth . . . . [and] it was to demonstrate that it was not an election to privilege but to responsibility . . . for all mankind."⁴⁷

All evidence points in the direction of a late J literary source, including its vocabulary permeated as it is by a developed wisdom tradition to be dated around the time of the exile.⁴⁸ The consequence of such chronology is of considerable import. It says that Genesis chapters 2–11 have been written with the purpose of grounding the post-exilic Israelite community in its remotest past and of contributing to its sense of identity by universalizing and prototyping the people’s course of history, from an idealized pre-exilic time, to the exile in Babylon in the sixth century B.C.E., to the hardships of the (botched) restoration in the same century, and by anticipation to an eschatological (that is, ultimate) return to the Garden as prophesied by Deutero-Isaiah.

A recent work says, "It is linguistically impossible for J to be exilic or post-

exilic."⁴⁹ But one must take into consideration the obvious ancient sources used by J and influencing his style (see Genesis 6, for example).⁵⁰ Gen 2:4—3:24 has been reworked by R, the final redactor of the Torah. R is assuredly post-exilic. Furthermore, Genesis 2–3 forms a distinct unit (or subunit) and displays specific characteristics unmatched elsewhere in any biblical narrative: the double naming of God, for instance, or, most strikingly, the couple of Adam and Eve (not to be mentioned again elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, as we saw, but in the late 1 Chr 1:1 [Adam]) ; the duality of trees; the Garden of Eden (by that particular name); the typology of marriage by which man leaves his blood-family and clings to his wife; the role of the serpent; plus scores of other elements, so that while Genesis 2–3 indeed belongs to the J source, it displays discrete characteristics.⁵¹

Within the perspective set by the series of catastrophes on a universal scale in Gen 3–11, the call of Abraham in Gen 12:1 becomes the beginning of the restoration, a restoration that is as paradigmatic here as was the original innocence and its trial in the early chapters. Innocence is restored with Abraham, with the Exodus, with the return from exile, with the eschatological judgment. What precedes redemption, including the exile in Babylon, is brought to the level of universal human trial in J’s foreword.

Now the foreword is not necessarily written first, of course. It stands to reason that it was written last and perhaps by another person than J but in his train. In other words, before the myth, there is a particular history, a history underpinned by the human experience of the desire for infinitude and self-divinity that leads to catastrophe. J took advantage of this very human condition for building an anthropological myth that mirrors the peripeteia or turns of fortune of his people’s history. In it the Promised Land plays a central role, and the expulsion from there is a fall hopefully not final.

It is thus at the very nexus of Israel’s history as prototypal of the human experience before God that Genesis 2 and 3, universal prologue to the Heilsgeschichte, open themselves up to their anthropological reading. They focus on a personage called Human (’adam), bound to a space that is soil (’adamah). Adam is involved in a historical relationship with the Creator of heaven and earth, as well as with an other that is his alter ego, with the ground from which he comes and to which he returns, with animals and with plants. He is under a commandment that both grounds his liberty and spurs his desire for robbing God of His prerogatives.⁵² Adam is the image of the human beings because Israel is the image of humanity.

Structure and Plot

In terms of structure, plot and ideas, J contrasts with both the ancient

Near Eastern myths and, in a different way, with P’s cosmology.

Did a myth of Adam and Eve predate the J’s account? Yes and no: Yes, in the sense that there was a rich mythological material in the ancient Near East at J’s disposal. Cosmogonies and speculations on the birth of humanity (and for what reason) were broadly circulating from one country to the next. J uses discrete motifs selected from this material; for instance, the serpent and its ties with wisdom or cunningness; the tree of life; God’s promenade in the evening breeze; others. No, in the sense that all those traditional elements are by far superseded by the creativity of J. He was probably the first one to name the primordial couple Adam and Eve. More decisively, he created a comprehensive story with well-rounded characters revealing in fine details the complexity of the human soul and the intricacy of human relations with God and with the universe.

The resounding success of J’s tale of origins is in large part due to his ingenious molding of difficult issues into a most simple narrative form whose ingredients are:

the Creator God described in decidedly anthropomorphic terms;⁵³

a garden with all kinds of (natural) fruits, plus a mysterious but directly identifiable tree with two sides: tree of life/ tree of knowledge;

an androgynous human being, later split into male and female, in a happy relationship with God, with one another, with the universe;

a serpent, with the uncanny capacity of conceptualization and speech.

The plot is also simple:

God gives instruction to eat all the fruits of the Garden but the one on the dark side of the central tree called tree of knowledge;

the serpent lures the woman into transgressing the commandment. Both woman and man eat of the forbidden fruit;

God describes to the serpent and the human couple the dire consequences of their transgression;

God closes all access to the Garden.

This, however, is only the first act of an extraordinary play that includes in the following chapters other episodes of sinning against Creator and creatures. After the human rebellion against God in Genesis 3 comes, for example, in the next chapter the revolt against the brother.⁵⁴ With Genesis 2–3, we are dealing with one detail of a painting of which all the details contribute to the whole.

The diptych-like bearing of human vocation, vis-à-vis God and vis-à-vis the other, involves humanity as a whole. Within this universal framework, J’s ethical charge culminates with the eventual redeeming acceptance of divine election by a man called Abram/Abraham (Genesis12). Abraham fulfills the promises and orders addressed to the Primal Human. He fills the earth with his progeny (see Gen 15:5; cf. 1:27; 3:20); subdues the earth (Gen 17:6, 20; cf. 1:28; 2:15); his ultimate fatherland is the Garden of God; his relationship with God redeems the botched relationship of Adam with God.⁵⁵ The Abrahamic initiative is presented as the beginning of the human pilgrimage back to Eden (Go to the Land that I will show you). While Genesis 1 is a closed structure, virtually a separate book; Genesis 2–3 introduces a radical doubt, and a story that never ends.⁵⁶

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The structure of Genesis 2–3 is called palinstrophic (‘chiastic’) by Joel Rosenberg.⁵⁷ Significantly, the narrative is regularly interrupted by non-

narrative elements, that is, parenthetic statements, such as namings and

etiologies⁵⁸ (see Gen 2:10–14, the four rivers; 3:14–19a, divine pronouncements; 2:23; 3:20, namings; 2:24; 3:19b, etiologies):

Jerome Walsh also speaks of a seven-scene structure and of the concentric arrangement of [these] scenes.⁵⁹ Let us note that these are grouped around a single hero (’adam) as is the case in the Gilgamesh Epic.⁶⁰

Statistically, the word ’adam appears twenty-three times in Genesis 2–3, mostly with the article, but not so in 2:5, 20; and 3:17–21—an indication that Adam is not an isolated character, but is regarded as historical humanity.⁶¹ Down to the second century B.C.E. book of Ben Sira (see 33:10–13) one finds an alternation of singular and plural (like in Genesis 1:27) for Adam. The narrative has been read as paradigmatic, not simply as an etiological myth. It is only under the influence of historicism and dualism that its interpretation trajectory (Wirkungsgeschichte) has been slanted either to etiological explanations that risk short-changing the polyvalence of the text, or to the historicization of Adam and Eve.⁶²

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It is now possible to come with some hermeneutical remarks. First, the text that we will close with in this book is a piece of art, a masterpiece. Our communion with it occurs inasmuch as we, the readers, co-create this artistic work. It is a false dilemma to pitch the author’s intention against what the reader makes him/her say. The piece of art—any piece of art—exists in order that we, in communion with its original creator, re-create it when it comes to us. We are to give it a name, like Adam does in Genesis 2:19–20. More generally speaking, we are to recreate the world created by God. That is why J’s narrative on creation starts by saying that, in the absence of Adam—in our absence—the whole world was not yet (2:5). This is a striking statement as, for anything to be absent, it has to have been previously present. The world is not yet, because Adam is not yet there to re-create it. Thus, the world of Genesis 2–3, from an it becomes a Thou.

Second, it is legitimate to ask why J’s anthropology chose a paradise (a luscious tree park) as its setting. If J’s ultimate purpose is to show the extensity and the intensity of the process of redemption, was it not paradoxical to imagine a time when salvation was a totally foreign concept because there was nothing to save from? In other words, does the time before time belong to our present reflection on human nature?

A first response is that the beginning is also the end. In a pithy formulation that has become famous, Hermann Gunkel wrote, Urzeit wird Endzeit (Primordial time becomes End-time).⁶³ Redemption within history is restoration of the original harmonious relations between God and humanity.⁶⁴

Ecclesiastes comes with a far-reaching statement capable of opening up our horizon. God, the author says, has set eternity in the human hearts (3:11). The humans have a sense of eternity, of unlimitedness, of transcendence. It is even this very sense that distinguishes them from the animals. Humans are the only creature for whom the beyondness of all limitations (spatial, temporal, earthly, worldly, humanly) is familiar territory. In a striking novel, the French author known only by his pen-name Vercors, writing just after the dehumanizing Nazi era, imagines that archaeologists in a remote Pacific Island discover by accident strange creatures, whom they are incapable of classifying among humans or animals. Finally, one of the explorers notices the presence of a talisman on the neck of those animaux dénaturés (the title of the book). The conclusion is incontrovertible: those are human beings.

Genesis 2 is a vista open on human transcendental dimension. Because innocence is on trial here and now, its original state had to be invoked. It is how a second innocence looks like.

Genesis 2–3 as Universal Classic

Contrary to a generally accepted assessment of Genesis 1 to 11, the primeval history is less about the relationship of God and the humans in general, or God and the peoples of the world, than about God and Israel. These chapters of Genesis were composed for the use of the Judeans exiled in Babylon and are to be interpreted as relating to the exiles’ situation. For instance, the prophetically styled indictment of the human sin in Genesis 3 could not conceivably be detached from the prophetic denunciation of Israel’s sinfulness as the cause for the people’s expulsion from the land. That is why one must stress the unbreakable unity of Genesis 1–11 and Genesis 12: the message to the exiles ends on a note similar to the moving beginning of Second Isaiah’s book, Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, says your God, speak tenderly to Jerusalem (Isa 40:1).

This theme of God’s gracious creation and re-creation in spite of Israel’s waywardness is placed by J (as also by Deutero-Isaiah) within a universal context. J proceeds by amplification: what is true for Israel is also true, by extension, for the nations as well as for the individual. Israel is a microcosm, mirror allowing all human beings (’adam) to discover their own identity. God is the God of Israel, but He is also the Creator of heaven and earth and hence the God of all humankind.⁶⁵ This makes of J’s narrative in Genesis 2 and 3 an anthropogenesis. Viewed from the special vantage point of Israel, it reflects the universal dimension of its election. Election and anthropogony are the two faces of one coin. The Bible—which is from cover to cover about Israel’s election—is an anthropology for God, said Abraham Heschel. Genesis 2 and 3, in particular, are an anthropology for God, before God, and as seen by God.⁶⁶

This point emphasizes the contrast between P and J according to their particular purposes. While P comes with a cosmology in Genesis 1:1 to 2:4a (with striking ancient Mesopotamian parallels), J’s approach in Genesis 2:4b to 3:24 is historical and anthropological. It is by a deliberate and logical choice by the final redactors that Genesis 1 precedes Genesis 2. They also were guided by the actual experience of dramatic rebirths, indeed re-creations of their people, after shedding the shackles of Egypt and of Babylon, events that were read both archaeologically and eschatologically. The message is one of hope, not of loss and despair. It is unwarranted to feel constrained by the traditional division of the biblical text into chapters and verses and to draw a line after Gen 3:24. This brought sometimes the best form-critics to conclude that, The story . . . has no gradual relaxation of tension, as Old Testament stories commonly do. It ends sharply with a final judgment that is as harsh as the judgment of the Flood Tale.⁶⁷ This is wrong, for J story continues uninterrupted beyond Gen 3:24 and also beyond the Flood. Genesis 2 and 3 are part of a larger literary unit, and it is somewhat arbitrary to select them at the exclusion of Gen 4:1, for instance, or, for that matter, of the rest of the chapters down to Genesis 12. The expulsion of the primal couple from the garden constitutes a natural but provisional caesura in J’s narrative.

Genesis 2–3 are a section of J’s universal prologue, that precedes the vocation of Abram/Abraham in the chapter 12, as well as the patriarchal/ matriarchal stories around the figures of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The very enumeration of these names shows the J’s predilection for saga narratives, that is, for groupings around individual heroes. This is equally true regarding Adam and Eve.⁶⁸ Naming a human couple as ancestors of humanity presents numerous advantages, especially in the literary form chosen by J. It is also fraught with the danger of giving the impression of dealing with the particular instead of the general. J took that risk because, as Kierkegaard would say, the problem is less to deal with the Human than with the humans (each taken individually). Therefore, one should not be misled by J’s individualization of Adam’s blunder. J uses this device for the sake of dramatizing and archaeologizing evil. Paul Ricoeur says, I do not begin evil; I continue it.⁶⁹ There is a collective dimension to sin, which creates a transbiological and transhistorical solidarity of sin [which] constitutes the metaphilosophical unity of the human race.

The narrative introduces named characters and their doings are steeped in subjectivity, but it is a paradigmatic subjectivity. It is buttressed by a deep-rooted conviction that humans reveal their soul in their choice of activities. The being