Stories of Eden: Meeting
Specially-commissioned reflections by Pádraig Ó Tuama for the Final Week of Easter
In Jonathan Goldstein’s delicious retelling of the story of Garden of Eden (from his book Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bible! Riverhead Books, 2009), Eve goes to God, frustrated with her helpmeet.
“He’s an oaf,” she complains, “All he wants to do is fart and scratch himself.” Eve likes political science and philosophy and physics. She wants to talk about the stars and Everything That Is. Adam likes to point and laugh. God shrugs his shoulders, wondering if Eve will grow to like Adam. Eve calls Adam a fool. Everything falls apart.
Looking at the story of Eve — a name meaning woman — as narrated through the tellers of Eden has caused problems for the stories of women since the start. In this second version of the Start of Things, Eve comes second. Adam has been created, has had the opportunity to do that most divine of things — to award Names to the Living — and no companion has been found. Then God brings Eve from the side of Adam and all things break loose.
Flesh of my Flesh, Adam says, a Hebrew poem for recognising kin.
Eve’s character has fascinated theologians for millennia. When Rashi — that magnificent 12th century writer who snuck in between the words of the story and asked questions that would make even Freud blush — read the story of Eden, he wondered why. Why did the serpent go towards Eve? Why her? Why not the man?
What are the stories you’ve wondered about these strange original persons? What would you ask them about the Garden?
The story as it’s told — a serpent spoke and made Eve eat and she then passed a clump of grapes to Adam — has been the genesis for awful stories of humanity. But the original story has much in it: why would a God tell people what not to do? Didn’t God know that that’s exactly what they’d do? God crossed boundaries into time and space — wouldn’t Eve and Adam need to cross boundaries into knowledge too? How did the Serpent know so much? Who told the serpent? Some have wondered if it was God.
I always wonder why they didn't talk about the fruit before the fruit was eaten. Even God was walking in the garden those days. Maybe knowledge is like that. It seems like a secret.
Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden and the garden is guarded by Angels with swords of fire. Some people call that The Fall. But a Fall from what? To where? Avivah Zornberg — a biblical scholar working in Jerusalem — suggests that it was less a Fall than an Expansion — beyond the garden, further than the land between two rivers. Eve and Adam, going where they were always meant to go - into the mad, wild world.
In lockdown we’re stuck with each other, like Eve was with Adam, like they were with God. Like they were in the garden. What is in your place of lockdown? What will you be glad to end? What do you see new?
Pádraig Ó Tuama is a poet and a theologian. As well as writing books of poetry and prose, he is the host of Poetry Unbound, a podcast from On Being Studios. He lives in Ireland.http://www.padraigotuama.com/.