Adam And Eve*

Litbrit, the poor thing, has for some reason taken it upon herself to read Ross Douthat's latest column.  At least we're supposed to understand that what appeared in the NYT yesterday was his most recent column; there's so little variation between them it's hard to tell if he has written more than one column or if a computer program is just rearranging words from his first effort.

When litbrit sent her email, she passed along one particularly trenchant comment:

A man telling a woman what to do with her body. Let me guess - he's probably a Catholic, a conservative, a Republican. And he probably believes philosophy ended in 1274 (hint: the year Thomas Aquinas died).

In the absence of a materially definitive and therefore legally dispositive determination of when life begins, we should trust a woman and her doctor to decide if and when to have an abortion. Is this too hard for the party of serial divorces (Newt, Giulliani, McCain, etc) pedophilia (the Catholic Church), and homophobia (the Mormorns) to understand? Leave women alone. Haven't you blamed her enough since Eden?

The only thing wrong with it is how he left out Evangelicalism's problem with domestic violence.

Douthat's column is insipid garbage, more evidence that affirmative action for conservatives is alive and well.  It's sad to see supposedly reputable - even "liberal" - organizations like the New York Times practice wingnut welfare in failed attempt after failed attempt to placate their right-wing critics. 

But chronicling Douthat's deficiencies is too easy, and frankly a little boring.  What I'd like to do instead is have a little Bible study.

Wait!  Keep reading, because I think you'll find it interesting.  But to protect those who can't stand this type of thing - really, it's ok - I'll put the rest after the jump.

See, that comment about blaming Eve got me thinking about the adventures of the first man and first woman in the Garden of Eden.  When you get into the actual Hebrew, past the accretions of thousands of years and translating them into Greek, Latin, French, German and English, the story reads very differently than the typical Sunday School lessons you may have endured as a child.  And it might be instructive to take a look at it, especially if you wonder how anyone could be a progressive and still care at all what the Bible says.

What follows is largely taken from "Ezer Cenegdo:  A Power Like Him, Facing Him As Equal," a short booklet written by my former Old Testament professor, Joseph Coleson. 

So let's start with Adam.  To begin, 'adam' was not a proper name.  God didn't not create** "Adam," but 'the human.'  The person we call Adam was an undifferentiated human being, without gender just as God is without gender.  It was only at the creation of the second human that God differentiated the sexes.

That's also where it seems to go south, at least when it comes to English translations.  The King James calls the woman a "helpmeet," the New International calls her a "helper," basically just updating the original mistranslation into more modern language.  Even the New Revised Standard promulgates this.  The phrase in Genesis 2:18 in Hebrew is 'ezer cenegdo, which is very hard to translate.  'Ezer is a word that can be from two different roots, one of them meaning "helper" and the other meaning "strength."  The root which is translated as "strength" normally refers to God.  Puts the idea of what role woman has in a different light, doesn't it, when we start to think of her as fulfilling a role similar to God.  Anyway, the question of which root to use is answered by looking at cenegdo: "like as facing."

Ok, maybe that isn't too helpful.  So let's unpack it a bit.  The concept of one's "face" is fairly important in Hebrew.  In ancient Hebrew culture, only equals can face one another, and yes, it's that important.  Yes, it really does matter that much to say that the newly-differentiated humans were able to face one another.

Coleson suggests the following as the best way to translate this bit:

How should we translate the entire expression? A straightforward literal translation is, "I will make for it a power like [it], facing it." An expansive paraphrase, expressing in English all the Hebrew intends, might read, "To end the loneliness of the single human, I will make another power, another autonomous being, like it, corresponding to it, of the same species, and facing it, standing opposite it in an equal I-Thou relationship, another human, its equal. And when I have finished that last creative step, the human species will be both male and female."

He was part of the team that translated the NLT, so his words should carry a bit of weight. 

This is why the Bible still has power, why it is said to have been inspired, because even with all the problems in it:  there is quite a bit that is, quite frankly, better than those who wrote it and better than we are today.  I believe that God intended us to respect and love one another, to treat each other as equally deserving of, well, everything.  And this belief finds its support here in the first few chapters as well as throughout the entire Bible, if one takes the time to look for it.  Which admittedly makes belief in these things hard, but who said anything needed to be easy?

So what do we do with Genesis 3, where we see the human beings sin by eating of the forbidden tree and God say to the woman, "I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you."

First, it needs to be said that this is a curse, not part of the original intention of God's creative activity.  Second, quoting Coleson again,

God's statements here to the woman (and then to the man) have more the character of predictions than of judgments. Now that sin had entered the world, the order of the world had been changed.

Nor should this be taken as being permanent.  Jesus is called the "new Adam" by Paul, and his work was to restore the original order of creation.  He came to destroy the hierarchical order and replace it with one in which, as Paul says in Galatians 3, "there is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female.  For you are all one in Christ Jesus."

This isn't intended to gloss over the Bible's problems, or to suggest, against all evidence, that Christianity has been only a force for good.  The intent is to show that the Bible simply doesn't always say the things people think it does.  Coleson's booklet, and this post, are based simply upon the plain meaning of the Hebrew words in Genesis.  No messing around, no twisting, just getting past several millennia of patriarchal culture to wonder at the way this tradition, passed orally for untold years then finally written down by unknown ancients, managed to preserve such a radical view of the inherent, God-ordained equality between male and female.

Oh, to bring it all back to Douthat's column and the comment above, the Hebrew also makes it clear that Adam was there, with Eve, the entire time she was speaking with the snake.  She didn't need to convince him of anything, nor did she need to tell him anything that had happened.  He just didn't have the courage and intelligence, apparently, to take part in the conversation.  There never has been any reason to "blame Eve" for anything.  Nor has there ever been any right granted to men to think for one second that women are inferior, that they don't have full moral and intellectual agency and the ability to think, and decide, for themselves.

*Reading through this again, I see how utterly heteronormative it is.  About the best I can do is assure you that nothing written in this post is intended to say anything about sexuality.  Nor do the first few chapters of Genesis have anything much to say on that subject.  They're descriptive, not really prescriptive.

**I do hope creation language, used theologically, isn't going to trip anyone up.  I'm not talking about evolution or natural selection or anything to do with what we now call science.  Frankly, if more people would just attempt to understand the difference, we'd have fewer fights. 

Comments

[low-tech cyclist]

This is only marginally on topic, but I swear I'm gonna start smacking people around who say that this issue is all about "when life begins," regardless of which side of the debate they're on.

[TikiHead]

I always felt the Genesis story was a very clever way to describe why we're human beings, and not animals: We wear clothing, we name things (use language), and we distinguish between right and wrong. Adam and Eve were not really human until they ate of the Forbidden Fruit. Nor could such creatures, who does not know the difference between right and wrong, really sin.

[oddjob]

"And God created humanity in God's image. Male and female did God create them."

Female is just as God-like as Male.

(I've obviously taken a few liberties with the text, but I did that to strip out the default genders of the languages involved. I think doing so makes a crucial Biblical concept far clearer.)

Stephen, I don't know Hebrew. What is it about the Hebrew of the Genesis text that makes it clear Adam was there when the snake & Eve conversed?

[oddjob]

Adam and Eve were not really human until they ate of the Forbidden Fruit. Nor could such creatures, who does not know the difference between right and wrong, really sin.

This is another take on the Genesis story and to me it makes more sense. Eating the Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was the first step towards adulthood.

[litbrit]

Female is just as God-like as Male.

I thank you for that, oddjob. For the time being, I remain devoted to my eyeliner and high heels for those times when certain males need to be reminded of same. (I'll try to remember to quote you the next time I really need to rest on the seventh day.)

Seriously, though, this is an excellent post, Stephen. I wish I'd known you back when the nuns (and later, the Baptist and Mennonite missionaries) were preaching otherwise--I could have said, "Well, I happen to know someone who uses a contextually purer and likely much more spot-on translation of the original, and guess what? I'm walking into class first and the boys can just follow behind me."

[Sir Charles]

What about Adam and Steve, you heteronormative bastard.

[Stephen]

I've obviously taken a few liberties with the text,

No, that's pretty literal.

What is it about the Hebrew of the Genesis text that makes it clear Adam was there when the snake & Eve conversed?

What I meant to say was that the words make it clear, not that there's a special meaning in Hebrew.

To wit, Genesis 3:6b, "She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it."

As Coleson says in his article,

Apparently, the man stood by, saying nothing, offering no support, while the woman struggled with the temptation presented her by the serpent. Then, when she had eaten, he did, too, without a word of protest. The man appears passive throughout, and it is not to his credit.

[wev]

Stephen, I wish I had words to tell you how much I appreciate this post. I signed up and studied NT Greek for years in my forties only to realize I'd never master either it or ancient Hebrew well enough. This is one of the things I wanted to know about.

Thank you and thanks to litbrit for her valour.

[Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle]

At least we're supposed to understand that what appeared in the NYT yesterday was his most recent column; there's so little variation between them it's hard to tell if he has written more than one column or if a computer program is just rearranging words from his first effort.

The same program where MoDo gets hers?

[litbrit]

it's hard to tell if he has written more than one column or if a computer program is just rearranging words from his first effort.

The same program where MoDo gets hers?

Calvin J et al: HA! So true. Only I'd guess MoDo has the 2.0 version that threads all that thoughtful alliteration through the thicket of Mo's theses. Ross wags a finger and dishes out blame while MoDo fingers the wag who outed Plame. (That sort of thing, and if I don't stop, she might plagiarize this comment to save having to write half of Sunday's column.)

[oddjob]

Apparently, the man stood by, saying nothing, offering no support, while the woman struggled with the temptation presented her by the serpent. Then, when she had eaten, he did, too, without a word of protest. The man appears passive throughout, and it is not to his credit.

Of course he stood there passively. He was not just innocent, but naive. That's the problem with having no knowledge of good and evil.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

A great post, one which I would keep in my permanent library of blog posts if I had one. But I want to riff on it a little, because it actually leads to a political poit that goes beyond "Ross Douthat is an idiot" or "abortion has never been as condemned by Scripture as protestors claim."

It actually goes to the heart of one of the other main disputes going on but give me a little time (and a series of posts) to get there. Let me start with litbrit's comment.

You might have had some problems with the nuns, because Catholics know about translation probles. They don't use the KJV but the Douai-Regeims translations -- or, in many cases newer Catholic translations. (If you can find it, one of the more fascinating ones is by Msgr. Ronald Knox -- whose other career was as a detective story writer.) And Catholics are not 'Biblical literalists' -- no matter what Sister Anthony tsught you in 6th Grade. They accept the Bible as an infallible guide, yes, but only in areas of 'faith or morals.' Not in History, not in Science. The "Catholic World View" would not be shaken if archaeology proved -- as seems likely -- that King David was a minor tribal chieftain, or that the Jews never were 'slaves in the land of Egypt.' And, in my own Catholic days -- and I had become an atheist and left the Church -- in that order -- before Vatican II -- evolution was presented as an obvious fact, the 'mechanism' through which God brought about his creation.

It's the Protestants -- particularly the evangelical Protestants that have the problem -- and it surprisingly points out why Protestants support one political position more strongly than most Catholics do -- though presently there are a lot of Catholics arguing it.

(But that's for the next post. This really is building somewhere, bear with me.)

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

It's the Protestants -- and here I mean the American, Evangelical Protestants for the most part -- who would have had problems with your response pointing to a 'beter translation.' (I am generalizing here, even towards American Protestants, and know there are some exceptions -- and the most interesting theologian I know of on the net, the Tubingen-educated Chris Tilling of Chrisendom "My blog is primarily occupied with biblical and theological themes – especially those Apostle Paul shaped, but I try as best as I can to squeeze in a decent amount of inappropriate baloney on the way." is an English Evangelical whose attitude towards American Evangelicals is much like ours.)

Most Evangelical laymen -- and too many preachers, particularly those who see themselves as 'called by God' to preach rather than those who believe you have to study first -- might, intellectually, realize that the KJV is a translation, but emotionally they hold on to the attitude of the old joke "If the KJV was good enough for St. Paul, it's good enough for me."

They simply don't want to hear about translation errors in the KJV, or the better translations that have come out. They've been told these are not better translations at all, but merely the attempt of 'modernists' to 'change God's Word to make it more tolerant of modern decadence.' (Few of them are even aware that there were earlier english translations that the KJV built on.)

This, and the belief of many of them that the Bible was really written for and about 20th-Century America is why they are sometimes so delightfully idiotic, but, as I will finally get to shortly, is also the reason why they so readily fall for Republican Constitutional Principles.

But before I do, in the next post or so, a brief quiz about the King James who appointed the commission that did the Translation. (Minor point to remember. Today a translator who uses an interpretation his sponsor doesn't like may suffer minor penalties. But when the sponsor was a 17th Century Monarch, not going along with what he wanted could be, literally, fatal.)

One, and only one, of the following statements about King James is untrue. Which is it?

a) He hated tobacco
b) He was homosexual
c) He believed in witches and fought against the spread of witchcraft
d) His wife -- required for the succession -- was 16 years old
e) He believed in the Divine Right of Kings to the point where he believed that 'the King's Touch" could cure certain diseases.
f) His succeeding Queen Elizabeth was applauded because it meant there were not competing claimants to the Throne.

Answer, and starting to reach my point in the next post.

[C.S.]

Prup, judging from the justification and machinations behind the Gunpowder Plot, I'd say F. But maybe he just hated tobacco.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

The answer is D -- she wasn't 16 but 14. The other statements were all true -- and try that quiz on the next preacher you run into. (Not a Jehovah's Witness, btw, they have their own -- surprisingly interesting -- translation, the New World Translation.)

But -- and this will move towards my point -- the key is the different way they interpret the Bible. And here I want to contrast Evangelicals not to Catholics or Liberal Protestants, but to Jews. (I believe the points made will be true about most branches of Judaism from Orthodox to Reform. I am not as sure about the "ultra-Orthodox" like the Satmar and Hasidim, or the Israeli equivalents. And, of course, there ARE Jews who have picked up on the Protestant style of interpretation, though I think most scholars would reject this utterly.)

A Protestant -- of the type I'm discussing -- will often say "The Bible says it. That settles it." And, in fact, if a 'sacred-text' is taken as a whole, in context, this is a reasonable position to take for a believer. But the problem is that this 'infallibility' is not given to the text as a whole, but is assumed to be given to each individual verse.

(In fact surveys have shown that most Evangelicals don't read the Bible very much. At best, they read the passages their pastors or pet evangelists direct them to, and totally out of context. Many of them just take their pastor's word for what's there.)

Sometimes it seems as if they, in effect, have cut the text intop little snippets, put them on index cards, and code them by topic, totally ignoring context, time of composition, or authorship -- and only pull out the ones that 'prove' what they are asserting.

In extreme cases I have known of Christians who treat the Bible as if it were the I Ching. Have a problem? Open the Bible at random, read a random verse on the page, and you will "find your answer."

On the other hand, Jews do not view the Bible (or their Bible, the "Old Testament") in this way at all. Most believing Jews at any point on the spectrum of Judaisms would accept that, in some way, "God was the author of the Bible." But they are also aware that it is a collection of small books written in different circumstances at different times to people in different types of political and social situations, and that it was both relevant to them and a 'message for the Ages.'

In fact, they give God far more credit than Christians do. They believe he has created a work with many, maybe an uinfinite number of 'sub-texts' that need to be reinterpreted anew constantly. They see him as being so wise that he could bury -- in comments about current conditions -- advice and guidance that would be valid in the entire different circumstances of pre-exilic Jerusalem, post-exile Roman Empire, 11th Century Islamic Empire, eightteenth century Poland (where many of the 'ultra-orthodox' got stuck), today's America, and probably to a future time where we are not limited to one planet.

But something that complex isn't a simple 'box of answers' -- not to mention an I Ching. (Even the kabbalists and other "Jerwish mystics' accept the same idea, if they get lost in assuming 'the code God used' was far more complex and involved side issues like the numbers of verses and not the ideas included.)

I think some of you may see where this is going by now -- and apologies to those who need them for the long sight-seeing journey along the way -- but one more segment -- possibly delayed an hour or two by mundanity -- will get me there, because I'm not talking religion, I'm talking political philosophy.

[Gene O'Grady]

I used to teach NT Greek to largely evangelical Stanford students many years ago. A very interesting experience; don't know what they learned, but I learned a lot about the agricultural metaphors in the gospels from my students with farm backgrounds. One of whom once misunderstood something I said about the Trinity (in which in fact I believe) and asked me to step outside to settle it...but a more level headed (and smarter) comrade calmed him down.

Remiscences aside, the thing that never ceased to amaze me was the extent to which they had got down pat the arguments for the textus receptus (the pre-scientific Greek text behind the KJV) in detail that I've only ever heard in discussion with the very few people who are deep into the history of classical and Biblical textual scholarship. Unfortunately, tact required that I not answer in equal detail to show how wrong those arguments are.

Anyone still reading may want to look at Rowan Williams' essay of Bishop Westcott in Anglican Identities.

[Sir Charles]

Hey Gene,

Fisticuffs over the Trinity -- now that's fucked up.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

(Okay, let's hope TP isn't crqanky now. I had this finished at four, got growled at, and wasn't able to get back to it until now. I'm going to break this into 2 parts -- and should edit it, but have a very early appointment tomorrow.)

The final point to make is the difference between the Christian and Jewish views of 'religious education.' Almost all Christian education is designed to teach the students the -- Bible-based -- 'right answers.' Again, the assumption is that the Bible is a 'Box of Answers' and, usually unspoken, the assumption is that the Pastor/Teacher/Evangelist/Author has found them all out -- because they are 'obvious' -- and never mind that if you ask twenty other pastors from different churches, every one of them will, most likely, differ in some important way about at least one of 'the (obvious, Bible-based) Answers.

(The extreme, with a slightly different philosophy behind it, is the Catholic Catechism, which is to be learned by rote -- or was when i was a Catholic -- my elbow still aches from the times I had to write out an answer multiple times because I merely inverted two words.)

Jews will have none of this. The Bible doesn't have 'right answers' to be found, but rather infinite levels of meaning to be reached, the infinite onion, growing from the center as you peel off the successive skins.

Jews don't just accept competing opinions, they welcome and demand them -- and they always have, at least in post-exilic days. In fact, one of the 'great misinterpretations' of Christianity is the belief that, in his discourse in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was, by saying, repeatedly "But I say unto you..." claiming a unique authority from God.

Christians, early post-Paulinian Christians in particular, were ignorant and scornful of Judaism, and didn't realize how essentially Jewish this type of discourse was. Let me demonstrate by adding the words that would have been understood by his hearers -- there is some dispute about the particular schhols and rabbis he was referring to, but this is the most common. My additions are in brackets, of course.

"You have heard it said [by students of Rabbi Gamaliel] that... but I [preferring and being convinced by the arguments of Rabbi Hillel] say unto you..."

(If I could understand Hebrew, I am sure that I could give exactly similar quotes from the students in the religion class being taught by the 'rabbi next door,' at least once summer comes and he and I have our windows open.)

For Jews, the way to 'peel the onion' is through argument, through delving ever deeper into the hidden sub-texts of the text, accepting both the wisdom and the subtlety of the 'Author' and accepting there will be millenia more of arguing over the deeper meanings.

A class in the Talmud that wound up with every student merely echoing the rabbis belief would be a failure. (Okay, theoretically, I'm sure there are rabbis who prefer the ego-massage.)

Nor are Jews literalists in the Creationist sense -- again, theoretically, there are plenty of Jewish creationists. In fact, there is, at least for the non-Orthodox, little problem in criticizing actions in the Bible, or admitting that there is a lot of myth and 'puffery' in it. A Conservative Jewish -- one step to the left of Orthodoxy, but to the right of Liberal, Reconstructionist, and Reform -- group recently released a Translation that included as a foreword all the recent archaelogical evidence that casts doubt, for example, on the importance of David or the splendor of Solomon.

Let's break here, but...
Okay [*sound of whistle blowing* "the train is reaching its destination, please wake up and gather your luggage"]

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Finally, and my apologies for the amount of bandwidth, hope a couple of you stayed awake this far.)

Now take these two ways of interpreting a text I described in the last section, only instead of the Bible, compare them as ways of interpreting the Constitution.

(Note that I am not saying that a person's religious or cultural background means that he will interpret the Constitution in a particular way. I believe it may 'increase the possibility' but Jews, Catholics, and Protestants on SCOTUS have all been found on all sides of the Constitutional interpretations.)

To continue my heay-handed spelling out of the obvious, I'll finish for now with a set of statements, and let you picture the person speaking the variants:

"The (Bible/Constitution) is a Book of Answers, it's positions are obvious from the words themselves"

"The (Bible/Constitution) is an onion, and the more it is examined, the deeper the understanding of it becomes as it relates to changed conditions."

"The (B/C) was given complete and entire at the beginning, and (Paul's commentary/the Amendments) merely clarify its original purposes."

"The (B/C) was created at a specific time and under specific circumstances. It does contain certain basic principles that continue to be a guide, but those principles must be adjusted because of the changed experiences of people then and now."

"The principles in the (B/C) are so consistent that merely looking at one (section/verse) is sufficient to apply the Constitution to modern problems."

"The principles in the (B/C) are, in some cases the results of compromises made necessary by the times. They are valid, because of the wisdom of the author(s), but our understanding of them has grown as they have been adapted to a society ever more complex than the one they were originally written for. To be able to use them we must look at the dcoument as a whole, to commentators, and also must square it with the ever-growing body of experiences that compose modern society."

Rabbi Zvi, meet Pastor Rick.

Justices Blackmun and Brennan, meet Justices Scalia and Rehnquist.