Genesis 3: You Don't Get To Email Your Serpent Just Because It Speaks In The Bible
Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 9:34AM | by Otter 
I think the serpent should be flying, as a symbol of seraphic wisdom. But that’s just me.From the Mailbag:
After reading the Bible story today to our children about the temptation of Eve, my husband and I were wondering why God put the tree there in the first place. Since He would know that Eve would be tempted and sin.
You’re reading historically, as though this were the documentation of facts about “what happened.”
This is a huge mistake in any story with a main character named Humankind, a setting called The Garden of Delight, and a talking animal.
I’ll unapologetically offer the literary question to answer the religious one:
What does the tree symbolize? The very name (“the Tree of the Knowledge of Good And Evil”) tells us it symbolizes a state of being, one in which the person who eats is morally / ethically / spiritually self-aware rather than unselfconscious by virtue of his / her innocence.
In this sense, the story isn’t so much “theological” (“God set this tree here for purpose X”) as it is psychological (“this is what it means to have a soul”) and anthropological (“this is what it’s like to be human”).
In other words, it doesn’t say much about God.
It says a hell of a lot about you and me.
It’s a description of the truth about every one of us: that we “fall” (or rather choose to descend) from innocence into sin and shame and a consciousness of our mortality that infects our choices. And that anxiety about our mortality has us grasping for meaning in ways that we might as well call “sinful.” That’s to say, they corrupt our relationships.
In Genesis 2, Adam meets the woman and says, “This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” In chapter three, when God demands whether he is now self-aware, he responds, “It’s because of the woman you gave me.” Relationship turns to shame when we embrace the knowledge that we are both mortal and moral, that we give and take offense, that we are liable to judgment for our choices.
Note too that the serpent in the ancient world did not represent Satan (who was a member of the court of heaven) but wisdom, fertility (that is, sexuality) and immortality. Recalculate, and read the story again. It has a strong sexual overtone, but even if you dismiss that, it’s an allegory about the mind coming of age as a moral agent with the potential to fail.
Such a condition requires a redemption, what St. Paul called “The ministry of reconciliation.”
Otter
Hell, I don’t know where else to put this….
Reader Comments (3)
This is brilliant.
Thanks, GED.
I removed your links to your commercial website. I thought they might be accidental, as we have a strict non-commercialism policy at RipChurch.
And you're a quick reader.... thirty seconds elapsed between you looking at the post and calling it brilliant. ;)
This made me laugh.
He's right, though. It is a brilliant post. I refer to it every few months or so.