You are on page 1of 22

[JSOT 27.

4 (2003) 439-460]
ISSN 0309-0892

The Garden of Double Messages:


Deconstructing Hierarchical Oppositions in the Garden Story*

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.

There are at least four major hierarchical oppositions in the Garden of


Eden story: goodbad (GoodEvil), malefemale, humananimal (cul-
turenature), lifedeath (cosmoschaos). Applying to these a deconstruc-
tive procedure will show that these oppositions are essentially ambivalent
and that one can discover in the text double (and sometimes even triple)
messages pertaining to each of them. The importance of such a reading is

* This article is based on a chapter of the doctoral dissertation prepared by the


author under the supervision of Professor Edward L. Greenstein (Tel-Aviv University).
The work has been made possible by a grant from, among others, the Memorial Foun-
dation for Jewish Culture.
The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2003, The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX and
15 East 26th Street, Suite 1703, New York, NY 10010 USA.
440 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 27.4 (2003)

conditioned, in my view, by the particular role played by this text in dif-


ferent religious and cultural traditions of the world.
In fact, in world literature the Garden Story is a text par excellence: one
hardly nds another relatively short text that can generate so numerous
and diverse readings. There is a Jewish tradition of its interpretation (rab-
binical midrash, Kabbalah, Hasidism), a Christian tradition with its notion
of the primordial sin, a Gnostic one with its good Serpent and bad
God. In the modern period the Garden Story has been split by source-
critical analysis into two hypothetical stories that precede our text (see
bibliography in Fuss 1968: 11-26) and compared to the myths of the
ancient Near East. There is also a psychoanalytic approach to the interpre-
tation of the story (e.g. Rank 1919; Reik 1970; Fodor 1954; Cunningham
1991) and an approach deriving from hermeneutic philosophy (Ricoeur
1960: 220-27). In the post-modern age one witnesses a profusion of struc-
turalist and post-structuralist readings, which by their multiplicity and
diversity remind one of the Gnostic milieu (cf. Pagels 1988: 65-77).1
In the Judaeo-Christian tradition the Garden Story also functions as an
archetype of all the mythologies of Paradise Lost where a good initial
state becomes corrupted and deteriorates into a worse one (compare the
longing for the natural man in Rousseau, nostalgia for the Middle Ages
in Romanticism, etc.).2 A speci c feature of such mythologies is that the
responsibility for the deterioration is generally laid upon marginal, sec-
ondary and/or late elements of the situation, all manner of (dangerous)
supplements (cf. Derrida 1967: 203-34; 1972: 69-198), that is, elements
that complete the thing itself, being at the same time different from it.
One can bring as examples of such supplements turned into scapegoats:
writing (as opposed to oral speech), culture (as opposed to nature), mi-
norities (as opposed to the majority), the new generation (as opposed to
the old one), and so on. In the Garden Story, as it is conventionally under-
stood, the Woman seduced the Man to whom she is subordinate, and was,
in her turn, seduced by the Serpent representing the animal domain (which
is subordinated to the human, who gives it its names). At the same time,

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.

The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2003.


SLIVNIAK The Garden of Double Messages 441

according to a conventional understanding of the text, the Woman was


created from the rib of the Man as his helper (a late and secondary
element). The animals exempli ed by the Serpent are also a later creation
than the rst (hu)man and were intended in the beginning to help him
and/or to provide him with a mate.
Such secondary and late elements typically represent the subordinate
members of hierarchical oppositions: the bearer of the guilt is earth and
not heaven, the woman and not the man, the translation and not the
original, the envoy and not the sender, local and not central authorities,
and so on. They are often perceived as ambivalently opposing helpers,
as the Jewish tradition (rabbinical midrash, Zohar) tends to understand the
biblical expression wdgnk rz( (Gen. 2.18), which in this case can be
compared with the dangerous supplement in the sense of Derrida.
It seems clear that a deconstruction of hierarchical oppositions in the
Garden Story would contribute to the debunking of the Paradise Lost
mythology in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. According to Jonathan Culler
(1982: 86), to deconstruct a text is to show how it undermines those very
oppositions it builds, how it exceeds every structured message one can
get from it. It can also mean to show how (and at the expense of what
textual elements) the seemingly unambiguous message of the text is con-
structed and what strategies are used in order to conceal elements oppos-
ing and undermining it. Despite a profusion of post-modern readings of
the Garden Story, most of them are not deconstructive in the strict sense
of the word.3 Current post-modern interpretations often attempt at
replacing the conventional reading of the text by another coherent reading
(see in detail below, the discussion of the oppositions goodbad and
malefemale). The deconstructive approach proposed in this article does
not aim at reconstructing the text in such a way that it might produce
new unambiguous messages. To the contrary, it tends to uncover an
essential ambivalence of the hierarchical oppositions in the Garden Story,
which is usually concealed both in conventional and resistant readings.4
Unambiguous messages, which a conventional reading discovers in the
Garden Story, will be turned by a deconstructive procedure into double
messages.
We will see how the text builds and then undermines four hierarchical
oppositions, which are of importance for most of its interpretations:

3. Approaches close to deconstruction can be found in Jobling 1986; Rutledge


1996, and others.
4. On resistant readings see, e.g., Reinhartz 2000: 51-52.

The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2003.


442 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 27.4 (2003)

goodbad (GoodEvil), malefemale, humananimal (culturenature),


lifedeath (cosmoschaos). There is no doubt that other oppositions could
be chosen for this analysis as well. At the end of this study we will see
how the Garden Story interacts with the narrative context of the book of
Genesisespecially with the Flood Storyand how this interaction
undermines even those meanings that survived the previous analysis.

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.

The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2003.


SLIVNIAK The Garden of Double Messages 443

obtained could not be neutral: nakedness had to be either good or bad.


Obviously, from the point of view of the rst humans (and, as it seems,
from the viewpoint of God as well) it was bad to be naked. In fact, they
were ashamed of their nakedness and made for themselves loincloths;
later YHWH, the God, made them leather garments. And yet before the
transgression, YHWH, the God, did not display any displeasure at their
being naked. One should also not forget that the initial situation of the
couple is perceived in the conventional reading as a good one (cf. above,
the discussion of Gen. 2.9-10).
One of the possible solutions of this textual dif culty is the following:
the nakedness was not bad in itself, but the transgression created an
obstacle between the humans and God, so they could not stand before him
anymore with their former integrity. Shame is thus reduced to guiltthe
humans felt guilty for having violated the prohibition and therefore felt
ashamed. In the Jewish tradition this interpretation is represented by
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, in German biblical scholarship by Dill-
mann, Holzinger and many othersalthough it is rejected by Gunkel (see
Gunkel 1902: 14; cf. also Sarna 1989 on Gen. 2.25). Still, if we accept
this reading, we have to ask what the transgression of Adam and Eve was.
In fact, they wanted to know what was good and what was bad and thus
turned a good situation into a bad one. Is getting information about a
situation equivalent to changing it in a radical way? And is a good situa-
tion in fact a bad one, about which one does not know the whole truth?
One obtains thus a double message about the situation of the humans
before the transgressionit is both good and bad.
Another question is the evaluation of the action of the rst humans:
Was it good or bad to eat from the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil?
Our text transmits an ambivalent feeling towards this tree, containing
elements from both the Good and from the evil (bad) side, as the Zohar
puts it (Zohar 1.27a). The tree was good for eating, and it was a delight
to the eyes, and a tree desirable to contemplate (Gen. 3.6), but, at the
same time, its fruit was forbidden for consumption. One should not forget
that it is situated in the very centre of the Garden of Eden (the tree in the
midst of the garden) and thus becomes a symbol of the Garden and its
representative.
The Garden Story does not answer the question of whether there was
any difference between the forbidden fruit and other fruits of the garden.
It is possible to attribute to the forbidden fruit some magic property of
opening the eyes, since that is a result of the humans eating from the

The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2003.


444 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 27.4 (2003)

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

Ngh C( Ngh Kwtb r#) C(h

trees in the garden (3.2, 3) the tree that is in the midst of the
garden (3.3)

lk)ml bw+w h)rml dmxn C(-lk )wh-hw)tw lk)ml C(h bw+


lyk#hl C(h dmhnw Myyny(l

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

As we see, the descriptions resemble each other closely. The goodness


of the Tree of Knowledge is described, in fact, almost in the same terms as
the goodness of the other trees of the Garden, in shortthe goodness
of the Garden itself. And yet its fruit is forbidden!
If we adopt the view of the hermeneutic school, according to which all
our perceptions are like readings of texts, and consider the Garden of
Eden as a text written by YHWH, the God, there is a double message
pertaining to its central element. Eating from the tree is both bad (verbal
channel of communication) and good (non-verbal channels).
According to Ren Girard (1972: 205-208), such an ambivalence char-
acterizes hierarchical relations that are typical of the teaching of culture:
things belonging to the hierarchically superior (father, teacher, king,
God) are good by de nition, but are forbidden for the hierarchically

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.

The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2003.


SLIVNIAK The Garden of Double Messages 445

inferior member (son, pupil, subject, mortal): it is good, but not


intended for you. Desire is mimetic: I desire a certain thing because
somebody else has or desires itespecially, when this somebody else is
an authoritative gure. So the hierarchically inferior begins to search for
an appropriate substitutea thing resembling the forbidden fruit but not
the forbidden fruit itself. In our case, such a permissible substitute
would be all the trees of the garden. Thus the ambivalence of the Garden
is split into the goodness of its trees and fruits on the one hand and the
prohibition of eating from its central tree on the other.
Adam and Eve ignored the split and rejected the message they heard
from God, but remained faithful to the message they saw and possibly
smelled, when they approached the tree. Did their situation turn to the
better or to the worse? Was not the knowledge and the likeness to God(s)
a blessing rather than a curse? As Maimonides puts it: a certain man
was rebellious and extremely wicked, wherefore his nature was changed
for the better, and he was made to shine like a star in the heavens (Moses
ben Maimon, The Guide of the Perplexed by Maimonides [trans. M. Fried-
lnder; New York: Hebrew Publishing Co., 1953], pp. 33-39). The nine-
teenth-century Jewish commentator Samuel David Luzzatto was certain
that the knowledge human beings obtained was worth the pain that they
received as a consequence (R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto, Perush Shmuel
David Luzzatto al Hamisha Humshe Torah [Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1965],
pp. 31-33, on Gen. 3.24). The falling produced by the transgression is a
very speci c oneit is a falling upwards (cf., e.g., Alexander 1992),
acquisition of a higher, speci cally human statusand the human beings
have to pay for the precious gift they obtained by a certain deterioration of
their situation.
But did it really deteriorate? Of course, our text contains a motif of pun-
ishment and/or elimination of an oedipal threat on the part of the son:
YHWH, the God, said:
Here, the human has become like one of us, in knowing
good and evil.
So now, lest he send forth his hand
and take also from the Tree of Life
and eat
and live throughout the ages!
So YHWH, God, sent him away from the Garden of Eden,
to work the soil from which he had been taken. (Gen. 3.22-23)

The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2003.


446 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 27.4 (2003)

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)

This is one of the palindromic pairs discovered by Rosenberg (1986:


47-68)7 in the Garden Story. Moreover, according to Kimelmans ob-
servation, it is the frame de ning the beginning and the end of our text
(Kimelman 1996; cf. also van Wolde 1994: 14). The purpose of human
creation and the fate decreed for the human after the fall prove ironically
to be the same. As the famous Protestant theologian Paul Tillich put it,
(at a certain point) the teaching of creation and the teaching of the Fall
coincide (Tillich 1956: 294). The virtual identity of the plan of God and
the penalty imposed on the human by God renders the human situation
wholly ambivalent. The present discussion has pointed up the textual
foundations on which such an interpretation can be constructed.
Summarizing this part of my reading, one can discover in the text at
least three double messages pertaining to the goodbad opposition:
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 (3.6) and
bad (2.17).
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.8
Some interpreters (e.g. Bechtel 1993), while rejecting the traditional
transgressionpunishment scheme, offer an alternative coherent reading
of the Garden Story as a maturation story. Sexual differentiation, aware-
ness of nakedness and the emergence of the feeling of shame, awareness

7. According to Rosenberg, the Garden Story represents an ideally symmetrical,


palindromic structure centered around the motif of transgression. The motifs there is
no Man to work the earththe Man is sent to work the earth represent one of the
palindromic pairs organizing the story.
8. In fact, most of the nostalgic longing for the good past usually goes along with
a hidden or open feeling of superiority: a good savage is perceived as naive and
childlike by the Rousseauist; so is the Medieval man to the Romantic. The nostalgia for
Paradise Lost is often accompanied by dread at the prospect of regaining it.

The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2003.


SLIVNIAK The Garden of Double Messages 447

of existential limitations and of death are viewed, according to this


approach, as mere stages of the maturation process, thereby excluding
the theme of transgressionguiltpunishment. This reading is, in my view,
no less problematic than the transgressionpunishment approach, for it
seems to contravene a number of textual facts. If, in fact, the emergence of
shame is a normal stage in the process of maturation, why does YHWH,
the God, open an interrogation as if a crime were involved (Gen. 3.11-17;
cf. the direct mention of a violated prohibition in vv. 11, 17)? On the other
hand, interpreting the curse of the earth in v. 17 as a mere awareness
of limitations9 strikes one as a gross understatement. Being object of a
curse is much worse than being subject to limitations! Further, one can
compare Gen. 3.17 to 4.11 and 8.21 where the motif of the cursed earth is
obviously related to the sin or badness of the humans. If the Garden
Story describes a maturation process, this process implies guilt feelings as
an integral part.
Another option is to read the Garden Story against the grain in the old
Gnostic fashionas an account of a good action by the humans. One
can mention, for example, the second reading proposed in the article by
David Jobling (1986: 22-24; cf. also Dragga 1992): the Man is created to
till the ground, but God makes him work in his private garden. The Man
frees himself due to a manipulation where the Woman and the Serpent
take part, begins to ful l his true destination and even gets married (the
marriage of the hero in Vladimir Propps terms; see Propp 1968: 63).
One has to remark that such a reading ignores the feelings of guilt and
shame of the heroes, the divine curses (cf. above) and the general senti-
ment of regret one has from reading the story. Despite some recent
attempts to replace the traditional transgressionpunishment interpreta-
tion by something else, one cannot erase it altogether. My aim here is
not to refute such a reading, but to highlight textual elements opposing it
and thus to demonstrate the complexity and ambivalence of the good
bad opposition in the Garden Story.

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).

The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2003.


448 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 27.4 (2003)

to Timothy 2.11-15; cf., in the Jewish tradition, R. David Qimi to Gen.


2.18), the woman is a late and secondary being, created from the
Mans rib as his helper. She is responsible for existential evil, because she
seduced the Man and caused his transgression. Such a traditional read-
ing, and the Garden Story itself, have often been blamed for the male
chauvinistic and misogynist messages it carries. It has interest for us as
another case of the opposing helper mythology, where one of the mem-
bers of the hierarchical opposition is viewed as late and secondary and
considered as a source of misgivings.10
However, does the text of the Garden Story provide any foundation for
such a reading and are there, actually, textual elements opposing it?
Beginning in the 1970s, attempts at a reinterpretation have been made in
feminist circles (see Trible 1973; 1978; Bal 1987; and discussion in
Jobling 1986; Greenstein 1989; Lanser 1988; Clines 1990). Here are the
main tenets of the new hermeneutic approach as conceived by the biblicist
Phyllis Trible and the narratologist Mieke Bal:
1. The fact that the Woman is created from the body of the Man
speaks perhaps in favor of her superiority: the Woman (h#)) is
superior to the Man (#y)), as the human (Md)) is superior to the
ground (hmd)) s/he is taken from. At the same time we can
understand the Hebrew word (lc not as rib, but as side (cf.
Gen. R. 17.8). In this case both the Man and the Woman are
sides of a primaeval androgyne and one cannot say which one
of them is primary and/or superior.
2. The word rz( (helper)applied to the female humandoes
not necessarily mean something secondary and subordinate: it is
sometimes used in the Bible as a designation of God (Exod.
18.4; Deut. 33.7, 26, 29; Pss. 33.20; 115.9-11; 124.8; 146.5, etc.).
3. The Woman is the only person in the story who takes responsible
decisions: the Man tacitly ful ls her will and the Serpent is only
a seducer.
As critics have remarked, Trible and Bal did not succeed in wiping out
the traditional reading completely. Important textual facts still speak in its
favor:

10. An especially elaborate mythology of opposing helper can be found in the


kabbalistic Book of Zohar (1.27ab), where this category is applied to the woman, the
Oral Torah, the rod of Moses and more.

The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2003.


SLIVNIAK The Garden of Double Messages 449

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

11. Qnt/I-have-gotten a man, as has YHWH.


12. As is well known, in Canaanite and Hebrew texts the root qnh can denote the
act of creation (as in Gen. 14.19).
13. Some of the Jewish medieval exegetes (so Saadya Gaon, Ibn Ezra, R. David
Qimi ad loc.) sense a hermeneutic problem with the designation of Eve as mother of
all the living and limit this characteristic to human beings only (for another solution
see Gen. R. 20.8, Torat Hayyim: BereshitHayye Sarah [ed. R. Mordecai Leib
Katzenelenbogen; Jerusalem: Mossad Harev Kook, 1986], p. 64.). At the same time,
this characterization implies that Eve should be the mother of the First Man as well.
Such an understanding is represented, among others, in the psychoanalytic literature
quoted above.

The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2003.


450 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 27.4 (2003)

mind that the opposition lifedeath is one of the hierarchical oppositions


organizing the whole story. From this point of view the expression M)
yx lk is just typicalit is a two-members construction of three syllables,
where the root yx represents a part of the second member. The strange-
ness of this designation and its contrast to the dominant patriarchal stream
of the narrative are skilfully hidden, and the verse itself is integrated into
the linguistic-literary unity of the Garden Story.
Side by side with patriarchal and matriarchal conceptions one may
nd in the Garden Story another conception, which can be called neutral
or unifying. This conception stresses the original unity of the Man and
the Woman (cf. Gen. 2.23-24) and enters into apparent tension with every
hierarchical construction of the malefemale opposition. The following
hermeneutic dif culty illustrates the case: Was the eating from the Tree
forbidden only to the Man or to the Woman as well? According to the
text, the prohibition was given to Md) before the partition into Man and
Woman (Gen. 2.16-17). The question of whether the fruit of the tree is
forbidden also to the Woman gives us a clue to an understanding whether
the Woman is part of the primaeval (hu)man (the unifying conception) or
something exterior to him, a supplement (the androcentric conception).
In the rst case the relation is not hierarchical, at least in the beginning,
when they represent a unity. The text does not give us an unambiguous
answer to this question: one cannot decide unequivocally whether the
prohibition fell on the woman as well. Moreover, we clearly hear two
distinct voices. One of them belongs to YHWH, the God. Here the prohibi-
tion is mentioned only in connection with the transgression of Md)the
Man:
From the tree about which I commanded you (sing.) not to eat, have you
eaten? (3.11)
Because you have hearkened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you (sing.), saying:
You (sing.) are not to eat from it! (3.17)

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.

The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2003.


SLIVNIAK The Garden of Double Messages 451

She took from the tree and ate


and gave also to her husband beside her,
and he ate. (3.6)

Another voice we hear is that of Eve. According to her, the prohibition


pertains to both the Man and the Woman. That is how she explains it to
the Serpent:
From the fruit of the other trees in the garden we may eat,
but from the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, God has said:
You are not to eat from it and you are not to touch it,
lest you die. (3.2-3)14

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.

The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2003.


452 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 27.4 (2003)

The source: hmd) hwx #y)


The offspring: Md) yx h#)

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.

The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2003.


SLIVNIAK The Garden of Double Messages 453

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).

The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2003.


454 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 27.4 (2003)

Nature), he is shrewd (Mwr(, a quality associated with intellect and there-


fore with Culture).21
In addition to the ambivalence of the NatureCulture opposition that is
produced by the ambiguous status of the Serpent, there are in the narrative
other factors that undermine this hierarchical opposition. Elements re-
sponsible for the falling upwards toward Culture lie within the realm
of Nature: (male) sexuality symbolized by the Serpent and the feminine
principle represented by Eve (with such connotations known to traditional
exegesis as feelings vs. reason, emotionality vs. rationality, etc.). Both
natural elements point to the very beginning of the world: the Garden
Story speaks of Eve as mother of all living (human and animal), and the
Serpent in many cultures (as well as elsewhere in the Bible) symbolizes
the primaeval chaos.22 But at the same time these elements are viewed as
something late, as a supplement: Eve is formed from the rib of Adam,
and the Serpent is created together with other animals from the earth after
Adam already exists. According to the double message of the Garden
Story, the source of (the corruption of) Culture lies in Nature, but Nature
itself is represented as something late and supplementary, as Culture is
usually perceived.

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.

The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2003.


SLIVNIAK The Garden of Double Messages 455

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.

The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2003.


456 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 27.4 (2003)

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.

The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2003.


SLIVNIAK The Garden of Double Messages 457

4. The relationship between male and female is both a unity and


a hierarchy.
5. Female both precedes male and represents a later supple-
ment to it.
6. The source of (the corruption of) Culture lies in Nature, but
Nature itself is represented as something late and supplemen-
tary, a kind of culture.
7. The world into which Adam and Eve were exiled re ects both
Life and Death, Cosmos and a (partial) return to Chaos.
These messages are, in their turn, deconstructed (at least, in part) by intro-
ducing the Garden Story into the narrative context of Genesisthe ood
abolishes the curse of the Earth. The world into which Adam and Eve
were exiled is not our present world anymore. But even this statement is
true and false at the same time.

Bibliography
Alexander, Philip S.
1992 The Fall into Knowledge: The Garden of Eden/Paradise in Gnostic Litera-
ture, in Paul Morris and Deborah Sawyer (eds.), A Walk in the Garden:
Biblical, Iconographical and Literary Images of Eden (JSOTSup, 136; Shef-
eld: JSOT Press): 91-105.
Bal, Mieke
1987 Lethal Love: Feminist Literary Readings of Biblical Love Stories (Bloom-
ington: Indiana University Press): 104-30.
Bechtel, Lyn M.
1993 Rethinking the Interpretation of Genesis 2.4b3.24, in Athalya Brenner
(ed.), A Feminist Companion to Genesis (The Feminist Companion to the
Bible, 2; Shef eld: Shef eld Academic Press): 77-117.
Cassuto, Umberto
1961 Commentary on Genesis, I (trans. Israel Abrahams; Jerusalem: Magnes
Press).
Clines, David J.A.
1990 What Does Eve Do to Help? and Other Irredeemably Androcentric Orienta-
tions in Genesis 13, in idem, What Does Eve Do to Help? and Other
Readerly Questions to the Old Testament (JSOTSup, 94; Shef eld: JSOT
Press): 25-48.
Culler, Jonathan
1982 On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism (London:
Routledge & Keegan Paul).
Cunningham, Adrian
1991 Psychoanalytic Approaches to Biblical Narrative (Genesis 14), in Dan
Cohn-Sherbok (ed.), A Traditional Quest: Essays in Honour of Louis Jacobs
(JSOTSup, 114; Shef eld: JSOT Press, 1991): 113-32.

The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2003.


458 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 27.4 (2003)

Derrida, Jacques
1967 De la grammatologie (Paris: Minuit).
1972 La dissmination (Paris: Seuil).
Dragga, Sam
1992 Genesis 23: A Story of Liberation, JSOT 55: 3-13.
Fodor, A.
1954 The Fall of Man in the Book of Genesis, American Imago 11: 201-31.
Fox, Everett
1983 In the Beginning; A New English Rendition of the Book of Genesis (trans.
with commentary and notes by Everett Fox: New York: Schocken Books).
Fuss, Werner
1968 Die sogenannte Paradieserzhlung. Aufbau, Herkunft und theologische
Bedeutung (Gtersloh: Gerd Mohn).
Girard, Ren
1972 La violence et le sacr (Paris: Bernard Grasset).
Graves, Robert, and Raphael Patai
1966 Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis (New York: McGrawHill).
Greenstein, Edward L.
1989 Lethal Love by Mieke Bal (a review), Journal of Religion 69.3: 395-96.
Gunkel, Herrmann
1902 Genesis (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht).
Hendel, Ronald S.
1993 Cain and Abel, in Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan (eds.), The
Oxford Companion to the Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Jobling, David
1986 Myth and Its Limits in Genesis 2.4b3.24, in idem, The Sense of Biblical
Narrative. II. Structural Analyses of the Hebrew Bible (JSOTSup, 39; Shef-
eld: JSOT Press): 17-43.
Jung, C.-G.
1990 Symbols of Transformation: An Analysis of the Prelude to a Case of Schizo-
phrenia (Bollingen Series, 20; Princeton: Princeton University Press).
Kimelman, Reuven
1996 The Seduction of Eve and the Exegetical Politics of Gender, BibInt 4.1:
1-39.
Knig, Edward
1910 Hebrisches und aramisches Wrterbuch zum Alten Testament (Leipzig:
Dietrich).
Landy, Francis
1983 Paradoxes of Paradise: Identity and Difference in the Song of Songs (Bible
and Literature Series, 7; Shef eld: Almond Press).
Lanser, Susan S.
1988 (Feminist) Criticism in the Garden: Inferring Genesis 23, in Hugh C.
White (ed.), Speech Act Theory and Biblical Criticism (Atlanta: SBL)
(= Semeia 41): 67-85.
McNutt, Paula
1990 The Forging of Israel: Iron Technology, Symbolism, and Tradition in An-
cient Society (JSOTSup, 108; The Social World of Biblical Antiquity, 8;
Shef eld: Almond Press).

The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2003.


SLIVNIAK The Garden of Double Messages 459

1995 The Kenites, the Midianites and the Rechabites as Marginal Mediators in
Ancient Israelite Tradition, in Marc McVann and Bruce J. Malina (eds.),
Transformations, Passages and Processes: Ritual Approaches to Biblical
Texts (Atlanta: Scholars Press) (= Semeia 67): 109-32.
Meyers, Carol
1988 Discovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context (Oxford: Oxford
University Press).
Niditch, Susan
1985 Chaos to Cosmos: Studies in Biblical Patterns of Creation (Atlanta: Schol-
ars Press).
Pagels, Elaine
1988 Adam, Eve and the Serpent (New York: Vintage Books).
Pardes, Ilana
1992 Countertraditions in the Bible (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Perry, Menahem, and Meir Sternberg
1986 The King Through Ironic Eyes: Biblical Narrative and Literary Reading
Process, Poetics Today 7.2: 275-322.
Propp, Vladimir
1968 Morphology of the Folktale (trans. Lawrence Scott; Austin: University of
Texas Press).
Rank, Otto
1919 Psychoanalytische Beitrge zur Mythenforschung (Leipzig and Vienna:
Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag).
Reik, Theodor
1970 Myth and Guilt: The Crime and Punishment of Mankind (New York: The
Universal Library/Grosset & Dunlap [ rst published 1957]).
Reinhartz, Adele
2000 Margins, Method and Metaphors: Re ections on A Feminist Companion to
the Hebrew Bible, Prooftexts 20.1-2: 43-60.
Rendtorff, Rolf
1961 Genesis, 8: 21 und die Urgeschichte des Jahwisten, Kerygma und Dogma
7: 69-78.
Ricoeur, Paul
1960 Finitude et culpabilit. II. La symbolique du mal (Paris: Aubier).
Rosenberg, Joel
1986 King and Kin: Political Allegory in the Hebrew Bible (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press).
Rosenzweig, Efraim
1972 Historische und psychoanalytische Bemerkungen ber Volk und Land Israel
mit besonderer Bercksichtigung des Deuteronomiums, in Psychoanaly-
tische Interpretationen biblischer Texte (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag):
185-99. (English original published in American Imago 1 [193940]: 50-64.)
Rutledge, David
1996 Reading Marginally: Feminism, Deconstruction and the Bible (Leiden: E.J.
Brill).
Sarna, Nahum N.
1989 The JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis; The Traditional Hebrew Text with
the New JPS Translation (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of
America).

The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2003.


460 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 27.4 (2003)

Savran, G.
1994 Beastly Speech: Intertextuality, Balaams Ass and the Garden of Eden,
JSOT 64: 33-55.
Schneidau, Herbert
1976 Sacred Discontent: The Bible and Western Tradition (Berkeley: University
of California Press).
Stordalen, Terje
1992 Man, Soil, Garden: Basic Plot in Genesis 23 Reconsidered, JSOT 53:
3-26.
Tillich, Paul
1956 Systematische Theologie (3 vols.; Stuttgart: Evangelisches Verlagswerk), I.
Trible, Phyllis
1973 Depatriarchalization in Biblical Interpretation, Journal of the American
Academy of Religion 41.1: 30-48.
1978 God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress Press): 72-143.
Vogels, Walter
1998 Like One of Us, Knowing tb and ra (Gen. 3: 22), in Daniel Patte (ed.),
Thinking in Signs: Semiotics and Biblical Studies Thirty Years Later
(Atlanta: Scholars Press) (= Semeia 81): 145-58.
Westermann, Claus
1985 Genesis 1236: A Commentary (trans. John J. Scullion; Minneapolis: Augs-
burg).
Wolde, Ellen van
1989 Semiotic Analysis of Genesis 23: A Semiotic Theory and Method of Analy-
sis Applied to the Study of the Garden of Eden (Studia Semitica Neerlandica,
25; Assen: Van Gorcum).
1994 Words Become Worlds: Semantic Studies of Genesis 111 (Leiden: E.J.
Brill).

The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2003.

You might also like