Eve of Eden
The first and greatest hero July 2007
In The Time Machine, H.G.Wells tells of a time, eight thousand centuries hence, when descendants of the human species have divided into two forms: The beastly Morlocks, and their prey, the effete Eloi, whom the Morlocks herd and provide for. The Eloi live an inert life without care, but also without thought, interests, or feeling. The Eloi have no moral sense; they are as a flock of sheep in a garden of Eden where they haven’t tasted of the Tree of Knowledge.Abstract:
Eve of Eden, wife of Adam, has got a bad rap as the "original sinner" from religious overlords. But real or mythic, she's the most courageous person who ever lived, a model of moral responsibility and independent thought for both men and women. Celebration of her achievement is long overdue.Long before, we are told in the Judaic creation myth, the God Yahweh created a man, placed him in a garden in Eden, and instructed him, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”* After a time, seeing that the bachelor could not manage alone (that shouldn’t have taken long), God created woman. The man and the woman – Adam and Eve – lived on in the garden, collecting nuts and fruits from the permitted trees. Their lives were simple but not dull, because they didn’t have the capacity to sense “dull”, any more than the Eloi would have.
Then one day Eve is approached by a talking beast, perhaps not unusual at the time. Is it really so, asks the beast, that God has forbidden them to eat of any tree in the garden? Well, says Eve, we may eat what we want, except that God has commanded, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.” Now this is not quite what God had told Adam before Eve was created, so Eve undoubtedly got her instruction second hand from Adam. Adam has added the warning to not even touch the tree, probably to reduce the likelihood of Eve straying, in light of the threatened punishment of death. And Eve only knows it as “the tree which is in the midst of the garden”. Adam has left out the name of the tree!
So now Eve is presented with a revelation: “God knows”, says the beast, “that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.“ This is news to Eve. The fruit of the tree will give moral knowledge! Why hasn’t Adam told her this? He is clearly satisfied with life in the garden, with their everlasting, carefree existence. Perhaps he kept the secret of the tree from her because he sensed in her less of a propensity to acquiesce in their docile existence, sensed perhaps a dangerous curiosity, a restlessness, perhaps even a thirst for knowledge (heaven forbid).
The new information from the beast fell on fertile ground, and Eve acted resolutely: “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, and he ate.”
God had made man and woman as non-moral beings, with one exception: They were able to choose to obey or defy God’s single rule. Confronted with this choice, Eve considered the alternatives:
1. Continue in the status quo of an unending existence as non-moral beings, without conflict and freely provided for, without responsibility or difficult choices, but also unable to affect their own lives, unable to cogitate beyond deciding which fruit to pick;And Eve made her decision, the bravest and most momentous single decision in human history. She would choose the quest for knowledge over unending Eloi-dom.
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2. An unknown life imbued with uncertainty and terminated by death, weighed by an awful responsibility for themselves and their descendants, but enriched by wonder, curiosity, ideas, and perhaps knowledge and understanding.Research in anthropology and genetics indicates that the modern human species arose in eastern Africa, during a period from 200 to 100 thousand years ago. Among the major questions remaining for researchers is the timing of what they sometimes term (with a nod to Mao) “the great leap forward”. By this they mean the critical phase of development that gave us our most distinctly human qualities: The powers of speech and cogitation, the ability to consider and make moral choices. This great leap has been placed by researchers at between 200 and 75 thousand years ago.
The biblical creation story is the parable of the emergence of man, and the tale of the garden of Eden tells us of this “great leap forward”, with Eve as its chief instrument. Eve made the choice that lifted our species up to full humanity. Eve was our first seeker after knowledge, our first philosopher. But she was no mere theorizer. She was a woman not afraid to act, even if it meant civil disobedience, even if the penalty was death. The first activist, she literally bet her life on the potential for the human species to make its own moral choices.
So what happened to this first and greatest of human heroes? Who has sullied her reputation and made her the paradigm of sin? Take a guess. The priestly class, the spiritual authoritarians claiming monopoly on moral truth for God’s flock of sheep, could not permit Eve, the ultimate spiritual rebel, to be celebrated as a symbol of free thought and moral self-determination, of rejection of mental strait-jacketing. She needed to be crushed and vilified, as she has been by the church for two thousand years. It is time for her restoration.
Eve not only gave us our birth, nor only gave us knowledge; she showed us how to live freely and bravely, preferring the risks of uncertainty with the rewards of independence to a life in the flock. In Eden, Adam was the obedient sheep, satisfied with being cared for; Eve was the daring eagle who gave us wings.
* Biblical citations from the Book of Genesis, chapters 2 and 3, Revised Standard Version
© 2007 H. Paul Lillebo
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