Professional Documents
Culture Documents
4 (2003) 439-460]
ISSN 0309-0892
Dmitri M. Slivniak
The Chais Center, Hebrew University,
PO Box 18001, Ramat Mamre 101/1, Kiryat Arba 90100, Israel
Abstract
This article is dedicated to the analysis of four hierarchical oppositions in
the Garden of Eden story: goodbad (GoodEvil), malefemale,
humananimal (culturenature), lifedeath (cosmoschaos). A decon-
structive reading of the story is proposed which subverts these oppositions.
Several double messages can be discovered in the story, including: eating
from the Tree of Knowledge is both good and bad; female both
precedes male and represents a later supplement to it; the source of (the
corruption of) culture lies in nature, but nature itself is represented as some-
thing late and supplementary, a kind of culture; the world into which
Adam and Eve were exiled re ects both Life and Death, Cosmos and a
(partial) return to Chaos.
1. Among post-modern readings of the Garden Story one should mention, e.g.,
Landy 1983: 183-268; Bal 1987; Meyers 1988; Jobling 1986; van Wolde 1989; 1994:
3-47; Pardes 1992; Kimelman 1996; Rutledge 1996. See also the bibliography in Landy
1983: 184-87.
2. The myth of a Paradise Lost is in no case a monopoly of the Judaeo-Christian
culture. However, it is this cultural tradition that links the Paradise Lost motif with
the speci c story told in Gen. 23.
GoodEvil (GoodBad)
The opposition of Good and Evil (more exactlygood and bad)5 is of
major importance for every understanding of the Garden Story. At rst
sight, the good situation of the Paradise deteriorates to a worse one due to
a bad action performed by the rst couple, which ate from the tree of
knowledge of good and bad (cf. Bechtel 1993: 77). Such a reading is sup-
ported, rst of all, by the description of the interrogation of Adam, the
Woman and the Serpent by YHWH, the God, and of the cursespunish-
ments following it (Gen. 3.11-19). A connection between the bad action
of the protagonists and the worsening of their situation is clearly estab-
lished in this part of the text (cf. especially v. 17 where it appears in its
most explicit form). At the same time, Gen. 2.9-10 describes Paradise as a
good place full of vegetation, fruits and water. The description supports
the view of the initial situation of the humans as of a good one.
A closer glance at the text, however, discovers elements opposing the
conventional interpretation of the Garden Story. One has to ask the fol-
lowing questions:
1. Was the primal situation of Adam and Eve really good?
2. Was the action of Adam and Eve a bad one?
3. Is the situation resulting from Adam and Eves action (the pre-
sent state of the world) really bad?
As to the rst question, at least one essential element of the initial good
situation in the Garden was evidently bad. As Adam and Eve ate from the
tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil (good and bad), they discovered
they were naked. As the name of the tree suggests, the knowledge they
5. As is well known, the word (r corresponds in Biblical Hebrew too both bad
and evil (cf. Knig 1910: 447). (rw bw+ t(dh C( should be translated, in fact, as
tree of the knowing of good and bad, but even such a non-conventional translation as
that of Everett Fox uses in this case the traditional expression Good and Evil. Cf. on
this subject also Vogels 1998: 148-50.
forbidden tree. However, the cause of opening the eyes may be not this
speci c tree but rather the act of disobedience (cf. the reading discussed
above). So the difference between the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil
and other trees of the Garden could very well be arbitrary. The words of
the SerpentEven though God said, You are not to eat from any of the
trees of the Garden! (3.1)were perhaps not so absurd. In fact, this is
the state of affairs at the end of the Garden Story. In order to emphasize
the similarity, one also can compare the descriptions of all the trees, on
the one hand, and of (the fruit of) the forbidden tree on the other:
All the Trees The Tree of Knowledge
trees in the garden (3.2, 3) the tree that is in the midst of the
garden (3.3)
every type of tree, desirable to look at that the tree was good for eating and
and good to eat (2.9) it was a delight to the eyes, and the tree
was desirable to contemplate (3.6)6
6. In this study I use, with slight modi cations, the translation and format by
Everett Fox (Fox 1983). This translation is guided by the principle that the Hebrew
Bible originated largely as a spoken literature, and that consequently it must be trans-
lated with careful attention to rhythm and sound (Fox 1983: xi). These considerations
explain the poetic format chosen by Fox in his work.
But, at the same time, to till the soil is the very destination of the human:
On the day that YHWH, the God, made earth and heaven,
no bush of the eld was yet on earth,
no plant of the eld had yet sprung up,
for YHWH, God, had not made it rain upon earth
and there was no human to till the soil. (Gen. 2.5)
MaleFemale
The opposition malefemale, extremely important for every reading of
our text, has drawn special attention from exegetes in the last few decades.
According to the traditional understanding (as, e.g., in Pauls rst epistle
9. In 3.17-19a the man learns the reality of male adult life: potential and
limitation (Bechtel 1993: 106).
1. After the separation between Man and Woman, only the Man is
still called Md) in our story.
2. In one of the curses a hierarchical relationship is established,
whereby the Woman is subordinate to the Man: towards your
husband will be your lust, yet he will rule over you (Gen. 3.16).
The hermeneutic revolution effectuated by Trible and Bal does not,
therefore, achieve a complete neutralization of the old hierarchical
message. But perhaps there is another message by its side? Pardes (1992:
39-59) suggests such a possibility. She sees in the Garden Story traces of
more ancient matriarchal and polytheistic conceptions. At the base of the
designation of Eve as yx-lk M) (the mother of all the living, Gen. 3.20)
and the enigmatic saying of Eve h-t) #y) ytynq (Gen. 4.1),11 Pardes
reconstructs a matriarchal goddessa female counterpart of the God
YHWH who creates the Man together with him12 (cf. Cassuto 1961, ad
loc.; Sarna 1989, ad loc.; for mythological parallels to Eve in the ancient
Near East, see, e.g., Graves and Patai 1966: 69, 79-80).13
It should be emphasized here that the traces of the matriarchal message
are very well concealed due to the literary and linguistic unity of the
Garden Story as it has reached us. In order to get convinced of it, it is
worthwhile to enumerate all the uses of the root yx in our text: tm#n
Myyx (rush of life, 2.7), hyx #pn (living being, 2.7, 19), Myyxh C(
(Tree of Life, 2.9; 3.22), hd#h tyx (living thing, 2.19, 21; 3.1, 14),
Mlw(l yx (live throughout the ages, 3.22), Myyxh C( Krd (the way to
the Tree of Life, 3.24). Together with the denomination discussed by
Pardes (yx lk M), 3.20), twelve cases of the use of the root yx can be
found in this relatively short story. In all the cases but one, the root
appears inside a rhythmic group consisting of two members (three to ve
syllables)and mostly as its second member. One also has to keep in
The pronominal ending K1 in the original text denotes here second person
masculine singular. It is interesting that in the description of the trans-
gression itself the action of the Man is represented as less important and
subordinate to that of the Woman:
The woman saw
that the tree was good for eating
and that it was a delight to the eyes,
and the tree was desirable to contemplate.
Thus the story does not give an unequivocal answer to the question of
what the transgression of Eve was, and the question of YHWH, the God,
What is this that you have done? (Gen. 3.13), is not just a rhetorical one.
We really do not know what her crime waseating from the tree or only
giving from its fruit to the Man. In other words, we cannot decide whether
the Woman was a full participant in the transgression or only an agent
who led the Man to transgress.15 It means that the text does not provide us
with an unambiguous answer, whether the prohibition pertained only to
the Man or to the Woman as well, that is, whether the Woman was a part
of the primaeval (hu)man or merely his supplement.
This study has discerned three messages in the Garden Story, which
contradict each other:16 a patriarchal (androcentric) one, a matriarchal
(gynocentric) one and a neutral one. According to the patriarchal message
the Woman is subordinated to the Man and represents a later and subordi-
nate element; according to the matriarchal one, she is, on the contrary,
the mother of all being, including the Man; the neutral one suggests a
primaeval unity of Man and Woman. All the three messages are closely
interwoven. Let us see now how they relate to each other. In fact, the
patriarchal message looks like a reversal of the linguistic correlations of
the Story. One can observe the reversal with the aid of the following table:
14. In Hebrew we have here verbs in imperfect, rst and second person plural:
lk)n, wlk)t, w(gt, Nwtmt.
15. Cf. Vogels 1998: 146: The ban of eating of the tree was imposed on dm:
not merely on the man, but also on the woman. According to the approach proposed in
this article, the problem accepts no unambiguous solution.
16. This triple message can, in fact, be reduced to two double messages: (1)
female both precedes relationship between male and female is both a unity and a
hierarchy; (2) female both precedes male and represents a later supplement to it.
If the human (Md)) is created from the ground (hmd)) and the living
beings (yx) are engendered by Eve (hwx), so one could expect the man
(#y)) to be born/created from the woman ( h#)), as it happens in every-
day reality. But in the Garden Story the relationship is the opposite: in the
case of #y) and h#) the ending h characterizes not the source, but the
offspring. The patriarchal message about the woman as a dangerous
assistant, a supplement violating the primary harmony of the Garden,
looks itself like an alien bodyone could say it writes itself above
other messages and subdues them, while reversing the linguistic correla-
tions of the text.
At the end of this part of the analysis one should stress that the tradi-
tional Judaeo-Christian interpretation of the malefemale opposition in
the Garden Story (the woman as a later and secondary creation and as a
seductress into sin) evidently does not hold the text together as a
whole. One readily discovers textual facts that contradict it. On the other
hand, there hardly exists an alternative coherent reading that could totally
ignore it. Contrary conceptions appearing in certain feminist writings
those of an ideal matriarchal society destroyed by a male seizure of
powerare nothing but typical reincarnations of the Paradise Lost
myth and should be understood as such.
HumanAnimal (CultureNature)
The only representative of the animal realm that makes an appearance in
the Garden Story is the Serpent. There is an agreement among exegetes
belonging to different traditions that the Serpent symbolizes the animal
kingdom and/or the animal side of the human being escaping rational
control (the sexual drive, Nature, etc.). Yet the Serpent is a very peculiar
animalit speaks. The Bible is not a collection of fairy tales, and the only
speaking animal we meet in the Pentateuch besides the Serpent is
Balaams ass. The case is represented as something extraordinary: And
YHWH opened the mouth of the ass (Num. 22.28).17 Evidently, the
Serpent is not a typical animal eitherit perhaps functions as a mediator
17. On the Serpent as a speaking animal, cf. R. David Qimi on Gen. 3.1. Cf. also
Savran 1994 on this and other parallels between the Garden Story and the Balaam
Story.
between the human beings and the animal world. But it not only speaks
like humans, it grasps the situation better than humans do!
The very name #xn can be connected, at least in popular etymology,
with the verb #xn signifying a certain (forbidden) way of obtaining the
knowledge (to divine) and to the word t#wxn meaning copper or
bronze (the metal of diviners?). One can mention here also the ambiva-
lent t#wxn #xn (copper snake) built by Moses and destroyed by King
Hezekiah (2 Kgs 18.4). This word family evokes an association with the
world of smithsa marginal group mediating between interior and
exterior, solid and liquid, cosmos and chaos. In the research by
Paula McNutt (McNutt 1990; 1995) a link is established between margi-
nal smiths known in many traditional cultures, such groups as the biblical
Kenites and Midianites and, of course, such a biblical character as Cain
(one of the etymologies of his name is smithsee, e.g., Hendel 1993:
97; Sarna 1989: 32; Westermann 1985: 31). Cain is a cultural hero of the
book of Genesisthe builder of the rst city.18 Being a Promethean
gure, in the biblical context he easily becomes a negative personage. A
Promethean hero naturally opposes the High God, stealing from his
power, but in the context of the religion of Israel, which unconditionally
identi es with the God of Heaven, the cultural hero is viewed negatively
and the culture itself as corrupt.19
Let us return to the Serpent. Symbolizing the animal world and Nature,
it also clearly is a cultural heroit causes humans to obtain such crucial
elements of culture as knowledge and clothing and, like any good
Promethean hero, acts against the High God.20 From a certain point of
view the Serpent is more human than the humans themselves arewhile
they are naked (Mymwr(, a state clearly including them in the realm of
18. Some modern exegetes (so Cassuto ad loc.) infer from the text that the builder
of the rst city was not Cain, but his son Enoch. In any case, Cain gave the name to the
city, and the act of naming is of crucial importance in the rst chapters of Genesis.
19. Schneidau sees in the ambivalence of culture the most important message of
the Hebrew Bible (Schneidau 1976). Cf. also Niditch 1985: 48-50, on the difference
between such heroes as Cain and Romulus.
20. Being a phallic animal, the Serpent evidently symbolizes (male) sexuality. On
the equation phallusserpentPromethean hero, see Jung 1990: 145-51. Cf. also the
rabbinical midrash, according to which Cain was born from the poison injected by the
Serpent into Eve. Cain himself is a Promethean/phallic herohis name can be derived
from the Semitic root qwn meaning to slay with a hammer and his tilling the mother-
Earth can be regarded as incestuous (see Rosenzweig 1972: 191).
LifeDeath (CosmosChaos)
There is a well-known textual enigma: whether Adam and Eve were
created mortal or immortal. I have no intention to discuss it here, but one
thing seems clearthe world into which Adam and Eve are exiled is
pervaded by death:
Cursed be the soil on your account;
with painstaking labour shall you eat from it, all the days of your life.
Thorn and sting-shrub let it spring up for you,
and you shall eat the herb of the eld!
By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread,
until you return to the soil,
for from it you were taken.
For you are dust, and to dust shall you return. (3.17-19).
This is a dry world, full of dust (the serpent also eats dust) and it is op-
posed to the Garden of Eden with its profusion of water and vegetation, as
21. Cf. an insightful interpretation of this pun by van Wolde 1994: 7-9.
22. This is one of the symbolic connotations of the Serpent; see in detail Landy
1983: 230-31.
death is opposed to life. At the same time, as I have shown above, the
situation where the (hu)man tills the soil is implicitly considered in the
beginning of the Garden Story as the purpose of creation. At the begin-
ning there is no rain, no bush of the eld, no herb of the eld and no man
to work it. This is a situation of death to which our present world (= the
world after exile?) is opposed as life. The connotations, which the world
of the man tilling the soil obtains at the end of the Garden Story are the
very opposite of those it has at the beginning. Yet, as Rosenberg and
Kimelman have shown, the beginning and the end of the story t into the
same structural framework and relate to each other as a kind of type and
antitype. The designation of the (hu)man as hmd)h Nm rp( (dust from
the soil, 2.7) is re ected in the end of the Story as l)w ht) rp(
bw#t rp( (you are dust, and to dust you shall return, 3.19) and as
M#m xql r#) hmd)h (the soil from which he had been taken, 3.23),
the phrase xmcy Mr+ hd#h b#( lk (no herb of the eld had yet sprung
up, 2.5) as hd#h b#( t) tlk)w (and you shall eat the herb of the
eld, 3.18). It is interesting to note that while in the rst instance the
word b#( (herb) connotes life, in the second case it connotes death (a
food not t for humans).
The opposition lifedeath in the Garden Story is equivalent to two
additional oppositions: moistnessdryness and cosmoschaos. As one
knows, in the second account of the creation of the world (the Garden
Story), unlike in the rst, the state before creation (chaos) is characterized
by dryness and absence of water. The beginning of the Garden Story is
rather typical of creation myths:23 it is an enumeration of things which
still did not exist (cf., e.g., the beginning of Enma eli). But, instead of
describing the emergence of the present state of the world (and the
appearance of vegetation and rain), our text depicts the planting of the
Garden. It is interesting to compare the beginning of Genesis 2 with an-
other Garden Storythe Sumerian narrative about Enki and Ninhursag
in Dilmunwhich opens by an enumeration of bad things, which still
did not exist. Beginning as a creation story, Genesis 23 in a very subtle
and skilful way changes into a corruption story, and the nal state of
affairs (the world into which Adam and Eve were exiled) is deeply
23. In truth one should add that such a beginning can appear in the ancient Near
Eastern literature not only in creation myths; cf. Stordalen 1992: 7-10. But since the
Garden Story has a clearly de ned aetiological functionit is intended to explain
the present state of the world (at least, if we read it as an isolated text; cf. the end of the
article)the creation myth inevitably comes to the mind of the implied reader.
ambivalentit re ects both Life and Death, Cosmos and a (partial) return
to Chaos. This is the double message of the Garden Story pertaining to the
hierarchical oppositions lifedeath and cosmoschaos.
Genesis 23 in Context
Is the world depicted at the end of the Garden Story still the world in
which we live? The answer would seem af rmative, if we were to con-
sider our text in isolation. We should not forget, however, that the story
constitutes part of a larger narrative framework. The motive of the curse
of the ground appearing in chs. 3 and 4 of Genesis reappears in the Flood
Story: Md)h rwb(b hmd)h-t) dw( llql Ps) )l (I will never curse
again the soil on humankinds account, Gen. 8.21). The expression
llql Ps) )l has to be understood here as an abolition of the primaeval
curse (Rendtorff 1961). If so, the rain of the Flood (the rst rain
mentioned in Genesis since 2.5) destroys not only life, but also death, and
the world into which Adam and Eve were exiled is not our present world
anymore. The aetiological function of the Garden Story is apparently
limited by the period between Adam and the Flood. And yet, people
even today are ashamed of being naked, work in the sweat of their face
and return to the ground when dying. The Flood both abolishes and does
not abolish existential evil, the corruption inherent to creation and deeply
identical with it. The (close) reader of the Garden Story remains con-
fronted with the same ambivalence of good and evil, culture and nature,
male and female principle, life and death that one experienced before.
Nevertheless, our reading experience is not a failure. The present study
found in our text an array of meanings, which not only cannot be obtained
in a different way but cannot be represented otherwise.
Conclusion
The following double messages can be discovered in the Garden Story:
1. The situation of the rst couple before the transgression seems
to be good, but being naked is evidently bad.
2. Eating from the Tree of Knowledge is both good and bad.
3. The situation after the transgression can be characterized both
as punishment (curse) and as ful lment of the very destination of
the human, that is, it is both bad and good.
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