*what is this story written for and why is it in the bible
“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.” - William Shakespeare
Adam and Eve is the first story of the bible relating to human beings. In this story Adam is created by God from dust and clay God finds he needs a helpmate. Adam is given Eve via his rib for companionship. She is his companion and they are happy for a time in Eden. Adam is given the task to name the animals which is written on his heart giving him dominion and rulership over them. This is more a recitation of what has already been given to him by God. Adam speaks the animals into existence, God is teaching Adam how to be like him. Adam knew language from the moment he was created, this is how he was able to decipher the tasks God gave.
God gave a restriction of the eating of the tree of knowledge. One day while in the garden away from Adam, as the story goes, Eve is approached by a serpent. The serpent tells Eve she has been lied to by God and that they will not die if they eat from the tree of knowledge but instead have their eyes opened. “And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” Genesis 3:3-4. Eve proceeds to eat the apple and give some to Adam who was now nearby, they then became aware of their nakedness. By eating the apple their eyes became opened and they quickly sought to clothe themselves. Now hearing the footsteps of God as the Lord was walking in the garden. Adam and his wife Eve hid from the Lord God. The Lord God then called to his creation “Where are you?” Adam replies and says he heard the Lord in the garden and hid because he was naked and scared. God asked Adam if he ate of the Tree of Knowledge to which Adam says Eve told him to eat. God asks Eve why she has done this, and Eve responds she was deceived told to eat of the Tree of Knowledge from the serpent. God then proceeds to give punishment for this disobedience:
“14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring[a] and hers;
he will crush[b] your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
16 To the woman he said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
20 Adam[c] named his wife Eve,[d] because she would become the mother of all the living.
21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side[e] of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. GEN 3:14-24
This story is often received as an explanation of life and how death got to become a part of life. People interrupt this story to explain why following God and obeying his orders are important, but I have come across in my understanding there is something more, much more, than the story of creation. The genesis (pun intended) of my perplexity came at the back end of my watching and reading Jordan Peterson. His book 12 Rules for Life and his lecture on YouTube on Pinocchio. In both he seeks to explain certain themes of life which are present in this kid story of a wooden toy becoming a real boy, and contrast this with his work with his clients on how important it is to listen. In my mind I thought I knew the story of Adam and Eve such as I thought I knew the story of Pinocchio, here I attempt to bring my thoughts on some of the more hidden themes of this story of creation to clarity.
In the play I am in the process of writing and constructing I have a central idea and to this idea I am trying (as a good writer should) to indoctrinate the audience with my assumptive predilection. Telling the story of characters interacting on the frontend, while bringing my well thought out assumptions on the backend or behind the story in its meta reality as to say the truth or theme of what I am writing. Adam in the story of creation from the bible is made as a perfect creation. With this perfect creation came the creation of woman. The woman was created from Adam by taking his rib. This perfect creation is then tempted and led to disobedience by the serpent. The serpent is seen in the story as the devil or Satan. The bible lends no explanation of the serpent but to say it was already in the garden. The Quran however explains the fall of archangel Michael who then is named “Satan” or “Iblis”. The Quran states when Satan is asked in heaven to bow to God’s new creation Adam, Satan refuses. This leads God to question Satan’s motives for disobeying His orders; Satan explains “I am better, for me you made from fire and he made from dust and clay”. God informs Satan he is not to be proud here in (heaven), and casts him out of heaven. Then God sentences him to death after the second coming of his Christ. Satan tells God that before his scheduled demise he will lead all that follow the straight path of God to evil and temptation. Satan states “he will lay in wait for them in the straight path and led them astray with temptation.
For this reason, Eden cannot be the heaven to which God dwells. This would explain God coming to see his creation walking in the garden not in constant observation of his creation and its wife. The serpent is seen in the story as Satan either be it demon possessed or the actual entity; but either way it is in the garden. Is this done by God’s permission? The idea underlying my play is that God and Satan are not two separate entity’s but one in the same. The God being the greater stronger of the one and the Satan being the more corrupt evil aspect of the one. Light in darkness, Yin in Yang, Courage in Chaos. The Quran does not bear witness to the existence of only one earth but says there could be multiple planets and galaxies with lifeforms as various as the stars in the sky. The making of God in the song “Who is God” by Rakim explains how God created himself in the darkness, discarding parts of his element he saw unfit and returning himself to the oneness of creation to create perfect things. “Energies explode he below to keep releasing, Atoms by the millions, til the numbers increasing, Til it was burning he kept returning itself to the source, The hotter his thoughts it gave the center more force, He gave birth to the sun which would follow his laws, All caused by his mental intercourse, who is God?”.
If Rakim’s bars hold true this gives thought to the Lord’s creative apparatus, his creation mechanism which can be interrupted as his law. The energies the Lord creates then disregards can be seen as thrown away or dispersed into nothing, but these energies are apart of the oneness of God all the same. Them being destroyed they were still created by the entity of the One, God. The man Adam created as a perfect being had with him also the spirit and the ability to disobey God. Thus, Adam’s ability to stay in obedience to the Lord had to come from a source outside of God the element of free will. The law written in nature which adheres to Gods call for every living thing to act in accordance with its own nature. The law of God is seen and observed and completely evident. The sun doesn’t take a day off when it is tired, a tiger cannot live as a loner in the hills because it is done with society, a roach has to run when light is on. No other living life form on the planet earth has the ability to make decisions the way humans can. Free will meaning having the power of acting without constraint of necessity or fate with the ability for discretion must’ve been the element of creation God placed in Adam to make even the angels in heaven submit.
Adam was created to be a vessel to which God’s truth could be evident and seen as good, but evident to who? Was his creation of angels the same as him creating planets where he attempted perfection then discard it, then attempted again until he was able to find the perfect environment encompassing what he wills? “There is a crack in everything God has made” Compensation by Ralph Emerson. God meaning perfection or oneness to say he has made a mistake means he has created something good, but God is oneness and has created all things, so he has also created darkness, void and evil. These things are prevalent in all human beings intertwined with the decision to decipher what is good and what is evil. This story of Adam and Eve kick starts human life as we know it, but was their disobedience orchestrated by God from the start? My belief is no. To me this story is about how important it is God has created man different from himself. The limitations give way for community which leads to completed goals when proper cooperation is given; The darkness of human life leads to hope for better tomorrows and appreciation of the day and simple things. We (humans) have the full knowledge or applicability to conceive right from wrong and in so doing find the right in all temptations and bad situations. Eve represents partnership for Adam. A partner to strengthen his resolve at times, but she can also lead him to bad decisions like Eve eventually did. I believe this analogously is present in the story to represent how though we in relationship are one group; Adam and Eve each has their own decisions to make and those decisions can adversely affect the other. I believe the serpent represents temptation; the entity to which a decision is laid in front of a free willing intelligent being.
The serpent represents the idea and to this idea they are represented as hissing and whispering and away from God and partner. Secrets needed to whisper are not good for relationships, and those done in the dark away from God are leading to chaos and destruction. These ideas are ones that can cast us out of heavenly mindsets and put us in anguish. The rules and laws of God’s punishment are simply the retribution for which Adam must now walk and bear. Meaning this is to which God can ultimately resolve Adam be it through his Christ. God has placed within the punishment for Adam a clear path to Jesus unraveling the death and bitterness Adam faces from being tempted and led astray by Satan. This is the Tree of life which is what God has put into the world through Jesus the concept of eternal life and blissful living is present with a Jesus filled life. Living a life Jesus would be pleased with. Jesus enters the world as a second Adam a redemption for the free willing intelligent being. Jesus being tempted from the start of his life until the end and knowing his fate and still fulfilling his duty to God. Sat him at the right hand of the father. Lord of living intelligent beings and bearer of good news for those seeking righteousness. Adam is cast out of Eden because God does not want him to eat of the tree of life. Eating from the tree of life in the representation of the body of Jesus. God in turn puts Jesus into the world for the living beings to understand and follow the representation of Jesus’s life. Same as everything the Lord has made God has put light in the darkness, the peace to be found in the punishment, the way to God through being cast out of his paradise. “There is a crack in everything God has made” Compensation by Ralph Emerson. And this crack is not a blemish but beauty.
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