I’ve spent a lot of my life listening to the experts on science tell me about the world from the microbes to the galaxies, from the big bank theory to immunology to gut microbia to global warming. I’ve also spent the first half of my lifetime listening to preachers tell me about how it was created in 7 days and Eve was made out of Adam’s rib to be his helper. About how they were given this lovely garden to live in but Eve, the foolish one without the brain, decided she wanted to know stuff too so they got kicked out. About how it’s all in there, the one and only book written by the Hand of God, and the Word is totally infallible.
After years of listening to the preachers I decided I needed to read the “infallible Word” myself. Soon I ran aground because the infallible Word shifted depending on which translation I read. So, finally I went to bible school, then to Seminary, then into Hebrew language studies.
So no. The story of the Garden of Eden is not about you. No it’s not. It’s not about a couple in a garden who realized, Oh Gosh, we’re naked. Shame. Better head to Walmart.
It’s about the planet.
It’s about wisdom.
It’s about the proper use of knowledge, applied only when wisdom agrees. (At this point my evangelical friends likely stop reading and point at me like the heathen loving liberal I am. However, I am hoping one or two would read this to the end.
Here are few Hebrew words defined from Genesis 1 and 2. Don’t skim this! It’s important.
1. God - Elohim - this is a plural name for a male/female creator. “Let US create man in our image, male and female?
2. Created - two different words. The first one, create as in conceive. Related to conceiving a child or conceiving an idea. Happens pretty fast. The second one, formed. Related to pregnancy and birth or building from plans. This happens a lot slower. So the word becomes flesh. The thoughts become reality. The earth created before anything existed becomes over time a planet full of living things. The gleam in your father’s eye becomes you.
3. Helper or helpmeet. This word for why a woman was made at all, in Hebrew is a verb meaning to surround and protect. There are lots of visuals about this that are implicit. Eve created to surround and protect Adam. Sex? Pregnancy? Physical protection from ? what? Keep reading please.
4. Woman created from Adam’s rib. The Hebrew is not necessarily a rib but more accurately side or half of. Adam was split. Side thought - we all have a seam down our middle and two lungs, two kidneys, arms, legs, brain halves? But one heart. Yessum. Equals meant to be in unison.
5. The Identifiers. The Hebrew language provides a specific identifier to all nouns - masculine and feminine. For example, earth is feminine, sun is masculine, rock, masculine, water, masculine. Everything in the Hebrew bible has a masculine or feminine identifier. By the time we get to English, these identifiers were lost in translation and the concept of them often changed identities. I’ll explain.
Man, masculine. Woman, feminine.
Spirit - feminine. In modern bibles this entity is identified as He.
Spirit is also called the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Wisdom and Understanding. The Spirit is Female.
The word Wisdom is identified with woman in numerous scriptures. It is the wise woman of Proverbs who tends her household and provides abundance for all. Wisdom is probably the greatest and most under represented theme of the whole 66 books. Wisdom should be right up there at the top along with repentance and redemption.
Here are a few more important identifiers.
Knowledge, masculine.
God’s knowledge, feminine.
Wisdom, feminine.
Opinion, masculine.
It might be a good idea to think about that one for awhile.
Well now, so what am I trying to say here? Here is my opinion, hopefully tempered by some wisdom.
In my opinion: This first two chapters of the Bible isn’t about a dude and his girlfriend, translated and extended ad infinitum ad nauseum into “women must be submissive” and man must dominate and subdue the earth.
In my opinion: Genesis 1 and 2 is about the use of knowledge without wisdom. The garden is our planet. The tree is all of the tasty things we can learn from a telescope to a microscope. The serpent is the iconic representation of DNA which contains the encyclopedia of all living things.
In my opinion: When wisdom fails to surround and protect the endless search for knowledge, at some point that knowledge will fail to protect itself. Eventually it will cause the demise of the garden. Man will eventually get kicked out into a hellish desert.
This is where we are now. One of those tricky scriptures that I read as a kid has stuck in my head for over sixty years. “Knowledge (learning) will increase but man will never come to an understanding of the truth.”
I could wax poetic over the importance of reinstating the role of women in leadership, of the desperate need for the wisdom that chooses conservation and nurturing over confiscation and killing.
I could shout about the incessant drive for more, jobs, more building, more dissecting and reconstructing the planet to serve the latest whims of humans.
I could rail on about the destruction of the garden we have been given to obtain metals and building products to build something that is not the garden. I could yell at the world over reading a clear warning about keeping wisdom firmly surrounding and protecting the use of knowledge so it doesn’t destroy us all. I could weep and cry over the religious perversions that told wise women to shut up and sit down and led us down this destructive path under leaders who love money over all else.
I could.
