The Bible was writtem 600-400BC and many elements are Babylonian, as when the Jews returned from the Captivity they felt inspired to write a scripture and make a state religion, because they saw what it did for Babylon.

But whatever the sources of the story, it is one of those guiding stories of the West in particular, and has been influential in forming people's ideas about the relation between woman and man, humans and God, so I think it is important to look at it.

Until its view was challenged and largely overthrown by modern science, the official Christian Church held to the idea that God created the Earth and everything in it in 6 days, and then He rested. Creation was complete and at rest. And in the subsequent 6,000 or so years, that creation has been moving further and further from the perfection of the 6th day, decaying bit by bit, until at the end of history Jesus Christ will return to redeem matter, to spiritualize it, if you will. And this New Heaven and New Earth will not decay, but will exist in perfection for all eternity.

The reason given for the state of degeneration of God’s creation is the Fall of Adam and Eve. Because they questioned and denied the omnipotence of God, and thought it possible to know what God knows, see what God sees, and create as God creates, they set into motion the conditions for a terribly suffering world.

It is easy to laugh at this impossible vision of human history, but there are truths to be found here. The writers of this story were trying to grapple with their own suffering, and the obvious lack of unity they saw on display all around them. They were struggling for an understanding of the creative force which set this planet spinning, an explanation for the events of a history that seemed to contradict the idea of a benevolent and loving Divine Essence. They clearly felt that whatever the original intent of this God, things had gone terribly wrong. So they hypothesized a ‘Fall’ from divine unity for which humans were responsible. It was simply not possible for them to blame God, nor has this ever been possible in the entire history of humanity. Why not? I suggest that although we may have forgotten much, there is a knowledge as intrinsic to us as our hearts and blood and bones, and it is the knowledge that we are one with whatever it is that caused us to be here, and that it is perfect. Experiencing that perfect oneness either in life or after death has always been seen as the great goal of human life. Based on archaeological evidence, there has never been a group of human beings which did not ask and seek to answer essential spiritual questions. To my eyes, the ‘religious instinct’ is as real as any ‘animal’ instinct that directs us. It may be encoded in the neuro-chemicals in our brains, about which little is known.

This story, and the many like it, indicate that unity is our most elevated and most desired condition. From our earliest days as distinct human beings, we have formed groups: families, clans, tribes, villages, cities, ‘civilizations’, and on and on. Human relations are what our philosophers speculate about, our religions emphasize,and our love songs celebrate.

The Adam and Eve story is a troubling story. I have tried to bring many interpretations to it over the years, as has an army of theologians, philosophers, poets, ecologists, feminists… What I know now, which puts me I suppose in the Gnostic camp, and thus in line for a swim in the Lake of Fire, is that the snake was right. The oldest and most recurrent symbol for the Great Goddess, the very first deity envisioned by humans, is the snake, by the way. And what we see in Genesis is an extremely historical event-in Riane Eisler’s words, the attempt of the new ‘dominator cultures’ to overthrow the ‘partnership cultures’ which preceded them. The invasions of the Indo-Europeans from the periphery into the civilizations of Old Europe, the Mediterranean, the Fertile Crescent, and Africa, represent a devastation and disruption truly unprecedented in human history, according to Eisler. This wily serpent in the Garden was the voice of the old order, and thus in the eyes of the new order of the storm and thunder warrior gods, it had to be discredited. The fact that in 600-400BC, when the Hebrew Bible was first written, over a thousand years after the Aryan invasions, it was still necessary to engage in propaganda, speaks to the power of these earlier cultures. Though they worshiped the Great Goddess, they were not matriarchal in terms of dominance of women over men, but were ‘partnership’ cultures for whom the concept of dominance was apparently distasteful; in other words, they had a different paradigm for human relations altogether.

Back to the snake. The snake told Eve that God was not telling her the whole story, which is that humans as creations of God are part and parcel one with God, and can, as I said, know what He knows, see what He sees, create as He creates. Knowledge is the key. Eat of the tree of knowledge and you will see that you are God. So Eve did, and she got her man to eat too. We are told that all disaster in the human world resulted from this act of disobedience.

Simply in terms of the story, and whatever its interpretation, all can agree that Adam and Eve ate. And knew. And thus so do we. That is how I choose to see the story. We forget, we have forgotten, but we know. What we know is the unity of all that lives, with itself, and with its creative source, however one chooses to conceptualize that source. And each one of us possesses within us the potential to do the job the Bible said Jesus was sent to do, which is to redeem matter through spirit. The cultivation of knowledge is the key.

So it a political story, meant to discredit the older Goddess religions. And as I said, the Snake (whom some gnostic texts refer to as the Instructor, and female) was right. And Eve ate, so now we know.

Rootsie