Eden Narrative Research Articles

Genesis 3:16—Text and Context

Genesis 3:16 is arguably the most troubling biblical verse for issues of gender relations and women’s roles. It figures prominently in later Jewish and especially Christian sources, and discussions in those texts have influenced subsequent understandings of the verse and of the Eden narrative in which it is embedded. This article engages in a careful reading of the biblical text in order to elucidate its meaning apart from later traditions. Recognizing the poetic character of the four lines of this verse is an important part of the analytical process, as is situating it within the Eden tale. Also, because no text arises in a vacuum, considering the Iron Age context—the world of the Israelite populace, that is, the world behind the text, a world vastly different from our own—provides the requisite socio-historical sensitivity. An awareness of that ancient context means openness to a suggestion about what Gen 3:16 may have meant to its ancient audience.

“You shall surely die”. Elijah Montalto’s Tratado and the Critique of Original Sin

This essay focuses on Elijah Montalto’s critique of original sin, as articulated in his anti-Christian work Tratado sobre o capitulo 53 de Isaias. The aim of this paper is to investigate the argumentative strategy employed by Montalto against the Christian doctrine of Adam’s Fall, which will be referred to as the “philological argument”. The analysis begins with an examination of the translation of Gen 2:17 (“but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die”) in Jerome’s Vulgate and its reception by Augustine. Following this, the focus shifts to Montalto’s exegesis of the same verse and his use of the Ferrara Bible to contest the Christian interpretation of the Gan Eden narrative. Finally, the discussion will address Montalto’s employment of the medical concept of radical moisture to explore Adam’s prelapsarian condition. By analyzing Montalto’s arguments, this essay seeks to demonstrate that the notion of mors duplex – encompassing both physical and spiritual death –, which Christians associate with Gen 2:17, is not explicitly articulated within the verse itself.

A Suitable Match: Eve, Enkidu, and the Boundaries of Humanity in the Eden Narrative and the Epic of Gilgamesh

AbstractJuxtaposing the shared emphasis on the basic human need for companionship in the Eden Narrative and the Epic of Gilgamesh provides new insight, both into how the texts respectively present companionship and into the issues of anthropology and gender that have previously distracted readers from this theme. Focus on parallels between Eve and Shamhat, who initiates Enkidu into human civilization, has obscured Eve’s resonance with Enkidu, created to be a match for Gilgamesh, as Eve was for Adam. The match created for the semidivine Gilgamesh is the male, semibestial Enkidu; however, Adam’s “helper” is a female, explicitly contrasted with the animals, and “bone of [his] bones and flesh of [his] flesh.” Though the heroes of the epic constantly struggle at the boundaries of human existence, the Eden Narrative depicts humans, male and female, together created distinct from god and animal, though likewise compelled to acknowledge their limitations.

Nathan S. French. A Theocentric Interpretation of :הדעת טוב ורע The Knowledge of Good and Evil as the Knowledge for Administering Reward and Punishment

Nathan S. French. <i>A Theocentric Interpretation of :הדעת טוב ורע The Knowledge of Good and Evil as the Knowledge for Administering Reward and Punishment</i>

Built Women in Men’s Paradises: A Critical Analysis of the Garden of Eden Narrative and Alex Garland’s Ex Machina

Bringing the biblical story of the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2-3) into conversation with Alex Garland’s 2014 film Ex Machina, this paper examines and compares the male-scribed nature of paradise stories that describe the “building” of woman-creatures. From ancient Judean scribes to modern film-makers and computer coders, male-guarded forms of literacy enabled and continue to enable storytelling and world-building. A comparison of the accounts of the creation of Eve of the Garden with Ava of Ex Machina highlights that male control over literacy more generally and creation accounts more specifically yields diminished woman-creatures designed to serve the specific needs of men in male-imagined paradise settings. Although separated by millennia, ancient Judean scribes and modern computer programmers have imagined and built woman-creatures with a limited set of functions and programmed routines that include providing help, serving as a companion, and heterosexual receptivity.

“The Voice of Your Wife”: Why an Ancient Interpreter Chose to Voice Eve with a Testament

Abstract Eve’s Testament (Greek Life of Adam and Eve 15–30) contains an expansive first-person retelling of the Eden narrative in which an elder Eve remembers her younger self calling to Adam “with a loud voice” and saying, “listen to me!” She then admits that when she opened her mouth, “the Devil was speaking,” and she was able to quickly persuade her husband to eat of the forbidden fruit. The unparalleled decision of an ancient author to voice the primordial woman with a testament builds exegetically on a textual problem in Gen 3:17 where YHWH Elohim punishes the man for “listening to the voice of his wife” when the woman never spoke to the man in Gen 2–3. Eve’s Testament provides the missing voice of Adam’s wife, and through it, we learn how the devil used her voice to get Adam “cast out of Paradise.”

‘He Gave to Adam Knowledge’: A Competing Creation Tradition in Early Judaism and Early Christianity

Abstract The Eden narrative in Genesis recounts the story of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from God’s paradise because they consumed fruit from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil. While the creation account in Genesis 2–3 is well known to modern readers of the Bible, this paper demonstrates that a competing creation tradition existed in Second Temple Judaism. According to this tradition, which circulated at least as early as the Persian period, God intentionally gave knowledge or wisdom to the primordial human(s) as a benevolent gift, and it was this knowledge that set the primordial human(s) apart from other earthly creatures. During the late Second Temple period, the creation account in Genesis 2–3 and the tradition that God gave knowledge to the primordial human(s) came into direct conflict. Consequently, many Jewish writers attempted to accommodate both creation traditions, often by suppressing certain elements of the Eden narrative such as the specific details of Adam’s transgression or the negative portrayal of the tree of knowledge.

The Evolution of the Garden-Myth? Tales from Eden, Boccaccio, and Fellini

The Garden of Eden narrative has been woven, in one form or another in several literary traditions, particularly those of the Western world. The symbolic and socio-cultural significance of the ancient account have continued to inform gender relations, as well as those with the numinous, and/or one’s idealistic aspirations of prowess, sagacity, and overall status of superiority. This is evinced in the literary work of the major periods of the Western Canon. Here we pose the question of whether or not the mythic or mythologized narrative of the Garden of Eden has in the process of centuries undergone any substantial transformation – those ascribable to an evolving myth. To this end a systematic study of a series of later tales is undertaken: a Latin tale, the Boccaccio tale derived from it, and a Boccaccio ‘70 short by Fellini. Of particular interest is the transition from literary forms to time-based visual media. The popularity of film, and now digital media, offers a singular comparativistic look into the dynamics of the Garden myth transposed on screens. To the original title question is added a meta-analytic reflection and the purview of any new moral dimension the innovations brings about. The study involves a targeted examination of aesthetic and ethic elements: the formal strategies, praxis, and dynamics between the protagonists of each tale. The main proposition is intended to re-affirm the substantial immutability of the ancient paradigmatic tale: it appears to have undergone only superficial transformations, which reiterate its universal appeal and significance across time and cultural traditions.

Emotions in Eden and After: Ancient Jewish and Christian Perspectives on Genesis 2–4

AbstractThis article traces a long-lived tradition of understanding the Eden narrative and its aftermath as a story about the birth of painful emotions, what one might translate into English as shame, fear, and, above all, sadness. The consensus reading of Genesis in the Anglo-American tradition does not reflect an underlying emotional emphasis in the fateful oracle to Eve and Adam in Gen 3:16–17. Translations and commentaries overwhelmingly interpret God’s words as physiological and material, sentencing the woman to painful childbirth and the man to onerous labor in the fields. Yet, as demonstrated by a number of scholars, God’s oracle to the pair in the Hebrew text deals with pain more broadly, with a focus on emotional pain, especially sadness, sorrow, or grief. This emotional suffering is shared by man and woman, and is the catalyst for the first murder. Hellenistic Jewish and later Christian readers embraced and elaborated on this very early emotional aspect of the Eden myth. The Septuagint translates the oracle in unmistakably emotional terms, adopting vocabulary typical of popular moral philosophy, and clarifies the thematic connection between Genesis 3 and 4 by highlighting the emotional repercussions of the emotional change wrought by the primal transgression. Authors like Philo and Josephus interpreted the Eden narrative in fundamentally emotional ways, and pseudepigrapha were particularly engaged in drawing out and elaborating on the emotions of the Eden myth. Most of all theGreek Life of Adam and Eveand 4 Ezra transform the story into meditations on emotional suffering, the former retelling the myth, the latter repurposing it into an apocalyptic vision of joy and sorrow at the end times. Both texts furthermore identify sadness (lupēortristitia, in Greek and Latin version of Gen 3:16–17) as dually significant, both as punishment and as a saving, divinizing quality, one which can also effect communion between human and divine. This way of reading Eden’s emotions dominated Christian reception of the Eden myth, from the Gospel of John on. Ptolemy, Didymus, Ambrose, Augustine, and others understood the Eden myth as primarily about the origin and meaning of emotional suffering. This style of reception remained a widespread reading until the turn of the twentieth century, when, for a variety of reasons, Christians began to read the oracle in the physiological and materialist terms (pain in childbirth and agricultural labor) that are now dominant.

Is Man Superior to Animals? A Comparative Reading of Animals in Biblical Narratives and Chinese Classic Texts

Abstract This article aims to discuss the interrelations between human and animals from the perspective of comparative reading of biblical narratives and Chinese classic texts. By reviewing animal symbolism in these two traditions, this article argues that the Chinese symbolic animals are closer to nature, and the biblical symbolic animals are depicted with political and theological reflection. The article reads the garden of Eden narrative with a cross-textual approach, the understanding of she in traditional Chinese culture shed light on the serpent, an alternative interpretation of the serpent's theological importance is unveiled.

Partners in crime? The partnership of the woman and man in the Garden of Eden narrative

The Garden of Eden narrative of Genesis 2:4b–3:24 is more than an account of a fall from grace. The author is interested in the dynamics of human partnership and has made it the centrepiece of the narrative that situates humanity within the vocation of serving and keeping the earth. This partnership has traditionally been under-explored. Scholars interested in gender have focused on the depiction of the woman with less attention to wider gender significations and the intricate partnership narrated between the pair. This article shows how a particular vocabulary of partnership, namely, the word-pair, ʾ îš and ʾiššâ, are used to highlight key points in the development of the relationship. It argues that notions of sex/gender are subsumed within the vocation of serving and keeping the earth, and fundamentally formulated as a work of partnership of sexed human beings.

Connectivity Thinking, Animism, and the Pursuit of Liveliness

AbstractIn this essay, Deborah Bird Rose takes up Val Plumwood's challenge that Western thought needs radical revitalization by pursuing the liveliness of the biosphere and human ontologies of connectivity. The first part looks at obstacles to the West's understanding of Earth as a place of lively, interactive connectivities that promote diversity, complexity, and relationality. In this context Rose offers a brief overview of Indigenous animisms. The second part explores the question of liveliness. It is taken as given that the West now seeks ontological legitimacy in science, and so this discussion focuses on what biological scientists have contributed to contemporary ontology wars. The third part examines trauma in the Garden of Eden narrative, highlighting both the disaster of the story and its continuing relevance. Drawing on the work of theologians, in particular, Rose seeks in this section to recuperate a mythic foundation for a Western animism from within that great site of loss.

Of Eden and Nazareth: Stories to capture the imagination

In pursuit of counter-traditions that have read the Eden narrative without subscribing to the Christian fall�redemption paradigm, this article engages Richard Kearney�s hermeneutical� phenomenological reading of the imagination to explore new avenues for imagining sin and salvation along post-metaphysical lines. The first section provides insights proceeding from an intratextual reading of the Eden narrative. The second section proceeds to incorporate the biblical and rabbinical concept of the yetser to elaborate the reading described above. The section follows Kearney�s reading of the Eden narrative to elicit the imagination along ethical lines as humanity�s passion for the possible. The third section reads the annunciation narrative along these same lines, illustrating how a divine kingdom of justice and love is possibilised by an imagination captured by divine promise and hospitality. By reading these two narratives together through the lense of the imagination, novel ways of rethinking sin and salvation along post-metaphysical lines emerge that portray salvation as human participation in God�s ongoing creation of justice and love, thus enabling the God Who May Be.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article is relevant to the fields of philosophy, philosophy of religion and theology. The narratives of fall and promise, previously read by philosopher Richard Kearney in different contexts and not in relation to one another, are read here from a decidedly theological point of view.

The Relative Dating of the Eden Narrative Gen *2-3

The present study investigates the methodological presuppositions inherent in a relative dating of Old Testament texts. Using Gen 1-3 as a test case, this study examines one of the most crucial texts in classical Pentateuchal scholarship. Recently, European scholars have tended to assume a late dating for the non-Priestly Eden narrative, an evaluation yielded through comparison with Priestly, Deuteronomic-Deuteronomistic, and late wisdom texts. However, given the lack of distinct textual reference to Priestly texts, the investigation argues that Gen 2-3 constitutes a pre-Priestly composition. In addition, no conclusive evidence indicates either Deuteronomic-Deuteronomistic or late wisdom texts influenced Gen 2-3; in fact, the lexical comparisons commonly adduced are not as conclusive as often believed.

When God Abandoned the Garden of Eden: A Forgotten Reading of Genesis 3:24

Genesis 3:24, the final verse in the Eden Narrative, states that God stationed “the cherubim and the spinning-sword-flame” east of the garden of Eden, from which he had recently expelled Man. Or so it does in its masoretic version. Four Targumim, however, reflect an ancient, divergent vocalization of the verse’s fourth word. In this vocalization, the verse must be read as stating that God himself settled east of the garden. This divergence profoundly affects the meaning of the entire Eden Narrative. The targumic reading is grammatically and stylistically sound, and, conceptually, it fits well in the verse’s textual setting. Moreover, a deliberate alteration from it to the masoretic reading would fall squarely into an independently identified pattern of theologically-driven changes in vocalization. The targumic reading may therefore be closest to the original authorial intent.

Satan, the Serpent, and Witchcraft Accusations: Reading Romans 16:17–20a in Light of Allusions and Anthropology

Scholars debate whether the reference to Satan in Rom 16:20a should be identified with God's supernatural adversary or with Paul's opponents described in 16:17–19. The latter position is preferred for two reasons. First, while most scholars agree that that there is some sort of allusion to Gen 3:15 in 16:20a, the entire pericope—16:17–20a—contains language that reflects Gen 3. Paul utilizes language and motifs from the Eden narrative in order to compare the tactics of his opposition to those of the serpent. When Paul says that “the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly,” this reference to Satan presupposes the allusion to Gen 3 in Rom 16:17–19 and indicates that Satan should be identified with the opponents. Second, Mary Douglas's anthropological model, grid and group theory, is applied to explore the social tensions between Paul and his opposition. Paul uses what Douglas calls a “witchcraft accusation” by demonizing the opposition with satanic labels. The application of this social science model reinforces the conclusion that Satan should be understood as human opponents rather than a supernatural enemy.

Satan, the Serpent, and Witchcraft Accusations: Reading Romans 16:17–20a in Light of Allusions and Anthropology

Scholars debate whether the reference to Satan in Rom 16:20a should be identified with God's supernatural adversary or with Paul's opponents described in 16:17–19. The latter position is preferred for two reasons. First, while most scholars agree that that there is some sort of allusion to Gen 3:15 in 16:20a, the entire pericope—16:17–20a—contains language that reflects Gen 3. Paul utilizes language and motifs from the Eden narrative in order to compare the tactics of his opposition to those of the serpent. When Paul says that “the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly,” this reference to Satan presupposes the allusion to Gen 3 in Rom 16:17–19 and indicates that Satan should be identified with the opponents. Second, Mary Douglas's anthropological model, grid and group theory, is applied to explore the social tensions between Paul and his opposition. Paul uses what Douglas calls a “witchcraft accusation” by demonizing the opposition with satanic labels. The application of this social science model reinforces the conclusion that Satan should be understood as human opponents rather than a supernatural enemy.

Exploring the Possible World of Genesis 2–3 with Paul Ricoeur

This paper revisits the interpretation of Genesis 2–3 in light of recent developments in the scientific world. Valuable insights are sought from examining critical works by Paul Ricoeur. Four major themes emerge from Ricoeur’s work that form the protocol for the reassessment of Genesis 2–3. The study concludes that a possible world/founding narrative paradigm is the best hermeneutical strategy for understanding and appropriating the Eden narrative. It is determined that this strategy does not compete with the scientifically-informed evolutionary view of the natural world.

Holy Sofas: Transformational Encounters between Evangelical Christians and Post-Christendom Urban Communities

This article is the account of a qualitative research project into the experiences of those involved in the incarnational urban youth and community ministry of the Eden Network. Eden team members’ experiences of relocation into urban communities suffering multiple deprivations, and the engagement of this with inherited theologies and traditions have created a unique contribution to youth work and urban ministry. Cross-cultural ministry and the reframing of mission and prophetic expectation have been pivotal challenges faced by the lay Christians of the Eden Network. This article asks what the contribution of these rich experiences might be to wider academic discourses within practical theology, and considers the Eden narrative as both an example of, and critical engagement with, post-modern theology, evangelical theology and ordinary theology.

Creation and a Theology of Humanness

This article seeks a Christian biblical interpretation for a theology of humanness based on the two Creation stories and the Garden of Eden narrative in Genesis chapters 1–3. The presentation serves as a corrective to the notion that Creation was perfect and that suffering (or mental illness/disability) is caused by the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The author seeks to develop a theology of humanness which engages Genesis 1–3 with the work of David Pailin's book, A Gentle Touch: From a Theology of Handicap to a Theology of Human Being, and the work of Douglas John Hall in God and Human Suffering: An Exercise in the Theology of the Cross. Particular attention will be given to the conditions of Creation addressed by Hall, which are temptation, anxiety, loneliness, and limits—iImplying that to be human is to experience temptation, anxiety, loneliness, and limits. God, however, becomes human in Jesus Christ to embrace humanness. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God restores the relationship God had with Adam and Eve at Creation, so that Christ is present in the Holy Spirit working in the lives of human beings to bring new life out of death.