Garden of Eden

After Eden, YHWH no longer dwells among humans. The flood reverses creation, but YHWH still does not restore His presence. The builders of the Tower of Babel—a ziggurat with “its top in the heavens”—seek to bring YHWH down its stairway to inhabit the temple, but YHWH rejects their attempt to establish His presence on their own terms. Instead, YHWH chooses to come down to Jacob via the stairway of Bethel and later to Israel at Sinai, establishing His presence through His covenant with Israel and bringing order through the torah.

The two creation stories in Genesis (1 and 2–3), and the hidden creation account in Psalms and the Prophets, can be read without their ancient Near Eastern context. But to understand what the biblical authors are responding to, revising, and arguing against, we need to read them alongside four Mesopotamian stories—Atrahasis (ca. 1700 B.C.E.), Enuma Elish (late 2nd millennium B.C.E.), Adapa (early 2nd millennium B.C.E.), and the Epic of Gilgamesh (2nd millennium B.C.E.)—along with the Canaanite Baal Cycle (14th–13th century B.C.E.).

Paul’s (ca. 5-67 C.E.) portrayal of Jesus as an exalted ruler may seem to challenge Jewish monotheism. Yet the idea of a human king ruling on God’s behalf is already found in the Bible. Reading Paul alongside Jewish traditions of divine kingship shows how his claims about Jesus remain consistent with exclusive allegiance to one God.

At creation, humans and animals were alike—plant-eating, unclothed, and speaking the same language; God even brings the beasts to Adam to find a fitting companion. Everything changes when Adam and Eve eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. What kind of story is this? Remarkable parallels with the Mesopotamian Gilgamesh epic show how the biblical author crafted an Israelite wisdom story about the end of humankind’s infancy.

Already the editors of the Torah recognized the discrepancies between the two creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2–3 and made redactional alignments so the two stories would read better next to each other. Such awareness is also evident among the earliest interpreters of the Bible, including the book of Jubilees and the Septuagint.

The primordial man and woman may believe they ate from the Tree of Knowledge, but they actually ate from the Life-Giving Tree. This causes a chain reaction leading to the emergence of sexuality, procreation, and continuity for the human species.

YHWH advises Adam and Eve not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge but does not disclose that the reason they will die is because they will lose access to the Tree of Life. YHWH does not allow humans to become gods, both wise and immortal (Genesis 3:22), and thus expels them from the garden. Consequently, the woman must bear children to perpetuate the species, and the man must till the earth to produce food.  

The expulsion from the garden of Eden is not a story about human error or sin. It is the inevitable result of the human desire for knowledge.

Wheat, grapes, citrons, figs, pomegranates, and olives have all been presented as the fruit that Adam and Eve ate, yet the apple, which only entered the scene in the 12^th century C.E., became the most popular candidate.

The Garden of Eden story includes a lengthy introductory exposition (vv. 2:4b-3:1a), whose seemingly tangential details contrast the utopia of Eden with the dystopia of the real world.

Four Aramaic targumim (ancient translations) have God, and not just cherubim, taking up residence east of the garden. This is based on a slightly different vocalization of the Hebrew text, which is likely a more original reading than our current biblical text (MT).

The golden calf is a Jewish version of the “fall” of Adam and Eve in Christian tradition.

Reading Cain’s murder of Abel and the account of Cain’s descendants as a metaphor for the trajectory of human development and the change in patterns of human behavior.

The Tower of Babel is a marvelous tale about the ambition and hubris of primal humanity, with a biting political message and dark insights into the human condition.