Could Adam and Eve Have Left? (2)

May 08, 2022

Response by Alan Mudd  (Index:  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5  ) 
(See editor's note at the end.)

I take it from your post that your position on the question, “could Adam & Eve have left the garden if they'd wanted to?” is the same as mine: it isn't addressed by Genesis. & so as a question relating to the text & what the text is trying to convey, the investigation really just stops there.

That is to say, finding the point moot, we ought not “demand”—as you say—that the text answer. I would, however, contend that there is a broader way to see the question.

When it was posed to me, Genesis was not named as the text in question & I felt it important to indicate that the Genesis story was the main text I knew to speak of & that as far as I knew, Genesis didn't address the issue. I think I then attempted some imaginative work to frame an answer of any kind that the text might not overrule. Which is to say, I wanted to speculate for a minute to see if it got interesting. I chose to see the directive around not eating the fruit as an avatar of choice (whether understood or not by the pair) & offered that the decision to take the fruit could be seen as representative of a choice, at least in some sense, to leave the garden.

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. . . there seems to me to exist an independent & intertextual mythos regarding the names Adam & Eve. Paradise Lost, for instance, . . .   

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What I think must be understood about this answer is that I think now I am departing not only from the text in question but the question itself. Neither Genesis nor the question was asking nor answering regarding metaphorical avatars of choice surrounding departure, so I was careful in responding to re-iterate that though there are geographical markers listed in the Genesis story, nothing is ever mentioned about some path out of the garden nor about any desire they may or may not have had to take an exit. What I thought I was admitting was that I could not really apply the question regarding the text & I wanted to re-purpose the question in a way that might actually illuminate something. Well, it may or may not, but that was my answer. 

More to the point is the decision to specify the Genesis story as the source I was most familiar with, as there seems to me to exist an independent & intertextual mythos regarding the names Adam & Eve. Paradise Lost, for instance, presents a narrative I might have referred us to. The television series adapted from graphic novel, Good Omens, might be another text. Other ancient texts refer to the story. Plenty in the interim between then & now.  

So there are at least various versions of the narrative to which we may refer when we hear the phrase “Adam & Eve,” & I would suggest then that there is at least a choice we must make about “to which story are you referring when you ask about these characters?” Or even, to which commentaries, sermons, etcetera... because these are characters that have lived in our imaginations for thousands of years & the differing treatments they have received over the course of history can be at least indicative of some quality or character of the culture making the representation.

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The act of asking questions of a text that the text doesn't want to answer (or care about answering) absolutely should lead us to think that reading anything onto the text in that matter is inappropriate. But if the question sparks interest in us, I don't think it's necessary to ignore the interest.   

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I made mention in our conversation about Helen of Troy & also about King Arthur as mythic characters who have taken on different characteristics over time in the manner in which they are portrayed & understood. Those distinct representations are not merely misreadings of prior stories, but reactions to prior understandings thereof & re-imaginings.

The act of asking questions of a text that the text doesn't want to answer (or care about answering) absolutely should lead us to think that reading anything onto the text in that matter is inappropriate. But if the question sparks interest in us, I don't think it's necessary to ignore the interest. So in this instance it might be interesting to explore why ask the question at all... then address what other answers might be offered (by oneself & others), why the answers either inspire or irk us, does any of this investigation reveal anything to us about how we understand the nature of God &/or the nature of humans in relation to God.

I'm not suggesting we read anything onto Genesis. I'm not suggesting the investigation of sideways questions will necessarily be revelatory, nor that even if they are revelatory that they are to be given any kind of equal weight with a reading of Genesis. In fact, at this point, what I believe is happening is an examination of personal relationship with important/powerful/salient myths. It will be more revealing about us than it will about any kind of canonical reading. Nonetheless I think it neither valueless nor irresponsible, provided we understand the frame we're working in.

To that end, I'll note that in the course of the conversation begun by the question, one of the answers by one of the participants (after I'd identified the fruit as an avatar of choice) was something like: “if they'd known, they wouldn't have eaten it,” & they went on to characterize God as provocative, unfair, & irrational in connection to such a seemingly absurd & drastic scenario of choice. What dawned on me in the course of this was that, as a mythic/symbolic (almost dreamlike) representation of the problem of self-consciousness (that of moral responsibility for a world we do not well understand) the statement, “if they'd known, they wouldn't have,” struck me as not remotely representative of my own nature nor the nature of others as I'd observed.

My experience has to the contrary been that “knowing” about consequence is never (or hardly ever) enough to dissuade us from choosing those things which take us out of our innocence & away from harmony with our creator. That a person must come to understand on a deep level that his rationality for behaviors is limited & flawed & usually this understanding isn't even enough to keep him from doing himself & others harm, from seeing those injuries & feeling shame.

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I'm not suggesting we read anything onto Genesis. I'm not suggesting the investigation of sideways questions will necessarily be revelatory, nor that even if they are revelatory that they are to be given any kind of equal weight with a reading of Genesis. In fact, at this point, what I believe is happening is an examination of personal relationship with important/powerful/salient myths. It will be more revealing about us than it will about any kind of canonical reading. Nonetheless I think it neither valueless nor irresponsible, provided we understand the frame we're working in. 

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Adam & Eve doesn't even seem a cautionary tale to me under this frame, but just a statement about where we stand. It's like, by the time you're old enough to understand this story, you're already in this position. If you are a self-conscious (aware/sentient) individuated creature, you're already in the place of Eve & Adam, having imagined yourself as more qualified than God to make decisions—or even to have imagined that there is any real such thing as will which is not God's will. That this assertion is a kind of virtual or simulated reality, which is always doomed to death & catastrophe, & the bad news is that you can't avoid it. It's just part of coming into being as a person. The best one might be able to do (I'll surmise) is to transcend the situation through desire & effort to surrender back into the will of God... but you can never really go back into the place prior to the separation... this is what I see as the problem in the myth. The thing we have to accept.

Now... I'm not sure I have said anything new or valuable about the myth, but I am sure that it was considering the speculative framework that caused me to look back onto the myth in a different light & it was my resistance to the characterization of the absurdity of the situation which helped me to say/see more contours in the narrative.

Perhaps it's important to note where Texts will not go, but to note as well that we are not bound by texts as to which conversations we may have with ourselves. I don't think that's wise either. Like... “well, the Bible is silent on this issue so I can't have an opinion,” seems pretty difficult as a place to stand... at least difficult as a place to end.

I'll return & end as I often do with Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan:

And in wrong, or no Definitions, lyes the first abuse; from which proceed all false and senslesse Tenets; which make those men that take their instruction from the authority of books, and not from their own meditation, to be as much below the condition of ignorant men, as men endued with true Science are above it. For between true Science, and erroneous Doctrines, Ignorance is in the middle.

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Editor's Note:
Alan Mudd holds an MFA in Writing & Poetics from Naropa University and is Editor of Turnsol Editions. 

A few comments:  First, this response by Mr. Mudd (already in hand before part 1 was published) was originally scheduled to wait a week, but incoming replies to part 1 made it better to put this out immediately.  Second, the author's writing style has been entirely maintained rather than forcing an externally imposed style. The one exception is the editorial act of inserting bold block quotes from the article itself. These are intended to draw readers in, not interfere with the flow of the article itself---although, admittedly, any change in another's text is an act of interpretation. Hopefully, this is not irksome, or overly so, to Mr. Mudd. Finally, I encourage any readers who might be inclined to misread the term myth or mythos as "fairy tale" to understand it in its classic sense of traditional story of nation building force.  gdc 

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