Tag: adam

Throughout this short series of posts I have been attempting to get across the enormity of the situation that the writer of Genesis so economically presents. Once grasped, the implications are simply gigantic. The myth of Adam and Eve is embedded in our culture, and as such it can be difficult to access its power. It has become a ‘fairy story’ for children and consequently the message is largely lost as it is turned into a revenue generation tool for the corporations. It seems to me that our culture likes to minimise the ‘old myths’ and those who are open minded enough to pay attention are forced to grapple to gain anything useful beyond variations of ‘God saw that it was good’ and a sense that somehow things went belly up.

In the last post we looked at bringing to life of an idol and what this means to us. Now its time to begin looking into the foundational myth of the fall of Adam and Eve. Even people with no exposure to religion have a grasp on it. You can see this if you look at some of the ways business has taken the story up. It is highly parodied, and often paints Eve as a seductive temptress and Adam as a childish fool. All this is totally predictable of course, since the myths themselves have so much to teach us that it’s no wonder ‘the world, the flesh and the devil’ have conspired to belittle them.

In this post I want to begin with a telling of the “Standard” version. I am grateful to a fellow student who wrote this in an essay entitled “What did Adam and Eve do wrong?” I have only slightly altered it.