as a symbol for “the first man,” and inquire first, what does tradition say of his creation? In Gen. ii. 4b-8 we read thus:—”At the time when Yahweh-Elohim[1] made earth and heaven,—earth was as yet without bushes, no herbage was as yet sprouting, because Yahweh-Elohim had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and no men were there to till the ground, but a stream[2] used to go up from the earth, and water all the face of the ground,—then Yahweh-Elohim formed the man of dust of the ground,[3] and blew into his nostrils breath of life,[4] and the man became a living being. And Yahweh-Elohim planted a garden[5] in Eden, eastward; and there he put the man whom he had formed.” (See Eve.)
How greatly this simple and fragmentary tale of Creation differs from that in Gen. i. 1-ii. 4a (see Cosmogony) need hardly be mentioned. Certainly the priestly writer who produced the latter could not have said that God modelled the first man out of moistened clay, or have adopted the singular account of the formation of Eve in ii. 21-23. The latter story in particular (see Eve) shows us how childlike was the mind of the early men, whose God is not “wonderful in counsel” (Isa. xxviii. 29), and fails in his first attempt to relieve the loneliness of his favourite. For no beast however mighty, no bird however graceful, was a fit companion for God’s masterpiece, and, apart from the serpent, the animals had no faculty of speech. All therefore that Adam could do, as they passed before him, was to name them, as a lord names his vassals. But here arises a difficulty. How came Adam by the requisite insight and power of observation? For as yet he had not snatched the perilous boon of wisdom. Clearly the Paradise story is not homogeneous.
3. How the Animals were named.—Some moderns, e.g. von Bohlen, Ewald, Driver (in Genesis, p. 55, but cp. p. 42), have found in ii. 19, 20 an early explanation of the origin of language. This is hardly right. The narrator assumes that Adam and Eve had an innate faculty of speech.[6] They spoke just as the birds sing, and their language was that of the race or people which descended from them. Most probably the object of the story is, not to answer any curious question (such as, how did human speech arise, or how came the animals by their names?), but to dehort its readers or hearers from the abominable vice referred to in Lev. xviii. 23.[7] There may have been stories in circulation like that of Ea-bani (§ 8), and even such as those of the Skidi Pawnee, in which “people” marry animals, or become animals. Against these it is said (ver. 20b) that “for Adam he found no helper (qualified) to match him.”
4. Three Riddles.—Manifold are the problems suggested by the Eden-story (see Eden; Paradise). For instance, did the original story mention two trees, or only one, of which the fruit was taboo? In iii. 3(cp. vv. 6, 11) only “the tree in the midst of the garden” is spoken of, but in ii. 9 and iii. 22 two trees are referred to, the fruit of both of which would appear to be taboo. To this we must add that in ii. 17 “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” appears to have the qualities of a “tree of life,” except indeed to Adam. This passage seems to give us the key to the mystery. There was only one tree whose fruit was forbidden; it might be called either “the tree of life” or “the tree of knowledge,” but certainly not “the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”[8] The words “life” and “knowledge” (= “wisdom”) are practically equivalent; perfect knowledge (so primitive man believed) would enable any being to escape death (an idea spiritualized in Prov. iii. 18).
Next, which of the trees is the “tree of life”? Various sacred trees were known to the Semitic peoples, such as the fig-tree (cp. iii. 7), which sometimes appears, conventionalized, as a sacred tree.[9] But clearly the tree referred to was more than a “sacred tree”; it was a tree from whose fruit or juice, as culture advanced, some intoxicating drink was produced. The Gaokerena of the Iranians[10] is exactly parallel. At the resurrection, those who drink of the life-giving juice of this plant will obtain “perfect welfare”, including deathlessness. It is not, however, either from Iran or from India that the Hebrew tree of life is derived, but from Arabia and Babylonia, where date-wine (cp. Enoch xxiv. 4) is the earliest intoxicant. Of this drink it may well have been said in primitive times (cp. Rig Veda, ix. 90. 5, of Soma) that it “cheers the heart of gods” (in the speech of the vine, Judg. ix. 13). Later writers spoke of a “tree of mercy,” distilling the “oil of life,”[11] i.e. the oil that heals, but 4 Esdr. ii. 12 (cp. viii. 53) speaks of the “tree of life,” and Rev. xxii. 2 (virtually) of “trees of life,” whose leaves have a healing virtue (cp. Ezek. xlvii. 12). The oil-tree should doubtless be grouped with the river of oil in later writings (see Paradise). Originally it was enough that there should be one tree of life, i.e. that heightened and preserved vitality.
A third enigma—why no “fountain of life”? The references to such a fountain in Proverbs (xiii. 14, &c.) prove that the idea was familiar,[12] and in Rev. xxii. 1 we are told that the river of Paradise was a “river of water of life” (see Paradise). The serpent, too, in mythology is a regular symbol of water. Possibly the narrator, or redactor, desired to tone down the traces of mythology. Just as the Gathas (the ancient Zoroastrian hymns) omit Gaokerena, and the Hebrew prophets on the whole avoid mythological phrases, so this old Hebrew thinker prunes the primitive exuberance of the traditional myth.
5. The Serpent.—The keen-witted, fluently speaking serpent gives rise to fresh riddles. How comes it that Adam’s ruin is effected by one of those very “beasts of the field” which he had but lately named (ii. 19), that in speech he is Adam’s equal and in wisdom his superior? Is he a pale form of the Babylonian chaos-dragon, or of the serpent of Iranian mythology who sprang from heaven to earth to blight the “good creation”? It is true that the serpent of Eden has mythological affinities. In iii. 14, 15, indeed, he is degraded into a mere typical snake, but iii. 1-5 shows that he was not so originally. He is perhaps best regarded, in the light of Arabian folk-lore, as the manifestation of a demon residing in the tree with the magic fruit.[13] He may have been a prince among the demons, as the magic tree was a prince among the plants. Hence perhaps his strange boldness. For some unknown reason he was ill disposed towards Yahweh-Elohim (See iii. 3b), which has suggested to some that he may be akin to the great enemy of Creation. To Adam and Eve, however, he is not unkind. He bids them raise themselves in the scale of being by eating the forbidden fruit, which he declares to be not fatal to life but an opener of the eyes, and capable of equalizing men with gods (iii. 4, 5). To the phrase “ye shall be as gods” a later writer may have added “knowing good and evil,” but “to be as gods” originally meant “to live the life of gods—wise, powerful, happy.” The serpent was in the main right, but there is one point which he did not mention, viz. that for any being to retain this intensified vitality the eating of the
- ↑ The English Bible gives “the Lord God.” This, however, does not adequately represent the Hebrew.
- ↑ See commentaries of Gunkel and Cheyne. As in v.10, the oceanstream is meant. (See Eden.)
- ↑ A widely spread mythic representation. (Cp. Cosmogony.)
- ↑ See an illustration from Naville’s Book of the Dead (Egyptian) in Jewish Cyclopaedia, i. 174a.
- ↑ Or park. (See Paradise.)
- ↑ The later Jews, however, supposed that before the Fall the animals could speak, and that they had all one language (Jubilees, iii. 28; Jos. Antiquities, i. I, 4).
- ↑ Cheyne, Genesis and Exodus, referring to Dorsey, Traditions of the Skidi Pawnee, pp. 280 ff.
- ↑ ”Good and evil” may be a late marginal gloss. See further Ency. Bib. col. 3578, and the commentaries (Driver leaves the phrase); also Jastrow, Relig. of. Bab. and Ass. p. 553; Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, p. 242.
- ↑ See illustration in Toy’s Ezekiel (Sacred Books of the Old Testament), p. 182.
- ↑ Gaokerena is the mythic white haoma plant (Zendavesta, Vendidad, xx. 4; Bundahish, xxvii. 4). It is an idealization of the yellow haoma of the mountains which was used in sacrifices (Yasna, x. 6-10). It corresponds to the soma plant (Asclepias acida) of the ancient Aryans of India. On the illustrative value of Gaokerena see Cheyne, Origin of the Psalter, pp. 400-439.
- ↑ See Life of Adam and Eve (apocryphal), §§ 36, 40; Apocal. Mos. § 9; Secrets of Enoch, viii. 7, xxii. 8, 9. “Oil of life,” in a Bab. hymn, Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, ed. 3, p. 526.
- ↑ Cp. the Bab. myths of Adapa and of the Descent of Ishtar.
- ↑ W. R. Smith, Relig. of Semites, pp. 133, 442; Ency. Bib., “Serpent,” §§ 3, 4.
