{"id":4595,"date":"2020-03-01T22:51:33","date_gmt":"2020-03-01T22:51:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/2020\/03\/01\/the-garden-of-eden-in-context-based-on-genesis\/"},"modified":"2020-03-01T22:51:33","modified_gmt":"2020-03-01T22:51:33","slug":"the-garden-of-eden-in-context-based-on-genesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/2020\/03\/01\/the-garden-of-eden-in-context-based-on-genesis\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Garden of Eden in Context\u201d\tbased on Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 and Romans 5:12-19"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Six years ago I
\nshared with the worshiping community in this church my learnings
\nabout the Garden of Eden story. \u00a0Some of you weren’t here yet, and
\nsome of you don’t have perfect memories. \u00a0The challenge of serving
\nTHIS church, though, is that some of you DO seem to have perfect
\nmemories, and I don’t want to bore you. \u00a0So… if I do, I’m sorry. \u00a0I
\npromise I’m getting to new and different points, but we all need to
\nget there together, and that requires reviewing the information about
\nthe story first. \u00a0\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n<\/p>\n

\nThe Creation
\nstory that starts in Genesis chapter 2 is the Yahwist version, which
\nmeans it is folk literature, aimed at explaining why things are they
\nway they are. \u00a0Folk literature and shared communal myths are pretty
\ndeeply related. \u00a0While the entire rest of the Hebrew Bible never
\ncomes back to mention the Garden, or Adam, or Eve again, the
\nChristian tradition has been quite obsessed with this story. \u00a0That’s
\nlikely due to the work of Paul in Romans, and the way that Paul’s
\nunderstanding became a normal way of understanding the point of
\nJesus!<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n

\nHowever, the
\nstory itself makes the most sense when we look at it in context, and
\nthe context for the story is the Ancient Near East, and the creation
\nstories of the Ancient Near East. \u00a0For transparency’s sake, my
\nunderstanding about this text comes from the brilliant Roman Catholic
\npriest and scholar Addison Wright, who shared with \u201cEcumenical
\nScripture Institute\u201d in 2011.<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n

\nThe Canaanites,
\nneighbors and frenemies of the Ancient Israelites, have a creation
\nstory centered around their tribal god, Baal. \u00a0Baal
\nwas for them the storm god and fertility god. He fought Leviathan in
\norder to bring order out of chaos. \u00a0He dispensed well-being on the
\nearth. \u00a0He is called rider of the clouds, and much of this is
\nappropriated for YHWH. \u00a0Baal has a holy encampment on his holy
\nmountain after the intentional flood at the sea \u00a0\u2013 like YHWH with
\nSinai and Noah. \u00a0Some text fragments of Baal’s creation story have
\nincantations against snake bites, with a story about a man in the
\neast near the Tigress called Adam who touched a tree he shouldn’t
\nhave touched, and got bit by the snake, and by calling on the gods he
\ngot the incantations to avoid death, and the enmity between humans
\nand snakes. \u00a0That tree was the tree of death.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

\n<\/p>\n

\nOK,
\nso hopefully I’ve done my job in convincing you that the early
\nGenesis stories that the Yahwist tells fit into the Ancient Near
\nEast. \u00a0Now, in the Ancient Near Eastern people believed that
\nyou could EITHER be immortal OR reproductive. \u00a0You probably can see
\nthe problem \u2013 if you let immortals reproduce, you get to infinite
\npeople very quickly. \u00a0You can probably also see then, that for the
\npeople who believed this, sexuality was inherently related to death
\nand mortality. \u00a0The capacity to procreate came WITH the reality of
\ndying. \u00a0And, lest we forget the rather long era of human history
\nbefore effective birth control, sexuality and children were tied
\nclosely together. \u00a0So again, parenthood and death was one option and
\nimmortal life without sexuality was the other. \u00a0One could not have
\nboth, as they saw it.<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n

\nFurthermore, in
\nAncient Near East stories, paradise gardens are places that IMMORTALS
\nlive. \u00a0Thus, children do not live there. \u00a0Given this assumption,
\neating from \u201cthe tree of the knowledge of good and evil\u201d
\ntransformed Adam and Eve from being immortal, asexual beings into
\nmortal, sexual beings. \u00a0That knowledge seems like it may have had a
\nlot to do with sexual maturity.<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n

\nNow, when I
\nfirst heard this, I liked it a lot. \u00a0Mostly I liked it because it
\npulled us out of blaming women for everything, and out of a hyper
\nfocus on sin. \u00a0I wasn’t really convinced by it though.\n<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n

\nThen, Father
\nWright pointed out that the punishments given in the story fit this
\nunderstanding. \u00a0 \u00a0After they eat, they see that they are naked, which
\nfits a burgeoning sexual awakening. \u00a0We stopped reading before the
\nrest of the punishments, but they are: \u00a0the couple is thrown out of
\nthe Garden, the woman will have pain in childbirth, sexual desire
\nwill complicate life, you will have to work to stay alive, and you
\nwill now die. \u00a0Which it turns out, all fits. \u00a0Leaving the Garden is
\nwhat happens when you aren’t immortal. \u00a0Pain in childbirth is only
\nrelevant when childbirth is going to happen. \u00a0Sexual desire IS
\ncomplicated, and wasn’t when they didn’t have any. \u00a0Having to work to
\nstay alive isn’t necessary when you can’t die. \u00a0Finally, being mortal
\nmeans death will come. \u00a0 Perhaps most interestingly, at the end of
\nthe list of punishments, the woman is named for the first time. \u00a0Adam
\n(whose own name means mud-creature) calls her \u201cEve, because she was
\nthe mother of all who live.\u201d \u00a0Eve means to breath, to live, or to
\ngive life.<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n

\nAt that point,
\nI was convinced that Father Wright was not only onto a cool
\ninterpretation, his interpretation was superior to any others I’ve
\never heard. \u00a0The only problem is that it doesn’t work with Paul’s
\ntake in Romans, at least as it has been used through the millenia.
\nPaul argues that as death came into humanity through Adam, the sting
\nof death is removed from humanity by Jesus. \u00a0In fact, Paul is sort of
\ntaking on the whole Ancient Near East, because he is claiming that
\nwith God’s work in Jesus, one can have children AND be immortal, just
\nnot an immortality on earth. \u00a0Paul is trying to make sense of Jesus,
\nand of the impact of his life, and this is how he does it. \u00a0I don’t
\nthink Paul meant to create quite the firestorm of misogyny and
\nsin-guilt that he accidentally did. \u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n

\nWhich then
\nleaves us free to be rather grateful to Adam and Eve, since if they
\nhadn’t eaten of that tree, none of us would exist \ud83d\ude09 \u00a0Moreso, it
\ngives us freedom to reconsider our understandings of both gender and
\nsin. \u00a0It feels like a good reminder that by \u201csin\u201d the Bible means
\n\u201cmissing the mark\u201d which always feels a lot lighter than what I
\nwould otherwise assume.<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n

\nOne of my
\ncuriosities is about why we’ve held onto this story so tightly.
\nAgain, the ancient Jews did not, and while Paul makes this argument,
\nwe could have rather ignored it as well. \u00a0Yet this story is still one
\nof the living folk narratives in our culture, for Christians and
\nnon-Christians alike.<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n

\nI’ve wondered
\nif it relates to a yearning for \u201cparadise.\u201d \u00a0It is all sort of
\ninteresting, right? \u00a0Because once we bring Paul into it, paradise
\ncomes back in the form of afterlife. \u00a0And I think people yearn for
\nparadise, quite possibly because the world we live in is so full of
\nsuffering and we’d like to consider other options. \u00a0The Garden of
\nEden itself though, according to the story, was quite small! \u00a0It was
\nsmall enough for one person to tend to it, and it contained only two
\npeople. \u00a0That would be REALLY boring for ETERNITY. \u00a0Exiting
\ndefinitely seems like the right option.<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd yet, the
\nworld is not as it should be. \u00a0We know this in our bones. \u00a0And we
\nYEARN for it to be better. \u00a0Sometimes our yearning takes the form of
\nremembering the past in a way that cleans it up and makes it seem
\ncloser to perfect than it was. \u00a0Sometimes our yearning encourages us
\nto close our eyes to the pain and suffering around us. \u00a0Sometimes our
\nyearning for better closes our eyes to the harm we are doing, and the
\nshame we live with. \u00a0Sometimes our yearning for better erupts in
\nanger for how things are. \u00a0Sometimes our yearning for better makes us
\nafraid of what is and what might come.<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n

\nAND, sometimes
\nour yearning for better is how God works with us to make the world…
\nbetter. \u00a0Isn’t it complicated that the same yearning can do harm and
\ndo good? \u00a0Oh, human life. \u00a0I think there are two best ways to respond
\nto our shared yearning for a better world. \u00a0One, as you might guess,
\nis to work with God and each other to make the world better. \u00a0The
\nother is to put our energy on noticing the things that are already
\ngood. \u00a0There may be a natural desire for paradise, and we don’t live
\nin one, but we do live in a world filled with wonders, and when we
\nforget to attend to them, we can miss out on all the goodness that is
\nalready with us. \u00a0The kindom, they say, is already here in part and
\nis coming in completion. \u00a0Let us pay attention to both parts \u2013 as
\nthey are the work of co-creating that paradise with God. \u00a0Amen <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she\/her\/hers
http:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/<\/a>
\u2028https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/FUMCSchenectady<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

March 1, 2020<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Six years ago I shared with the worshiping community in this church my learnings about the Garden of Eden story. … Continue reading \u201cThe Garden of Eden in Context\u201d\tbased on Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 and Romans 5:12-19<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[34,38,28,39,33,121,1934,1933,437,1936,1935,56,57,1937],"class_list":["post-4595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-fumc-schenectady","tag-progressive-christianity","tag-rev-sara-e-baron","tag-thinking-church","tag-umc","tag-build-the-kindom","tag-father-addison-wright","tag-garden-of-eden","tag-lent-1","tag-paradise","tag-rethink-bad-interpretations","tag-schenectady","tag-sorry-about-the-umc","tag-yearnings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4595\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}