by André Rabe
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread
until you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”
- Genesis 3:16-19 RSV
The pronouncement of the curses by God is often seen as punishment, but everything that is said is also consistent with the natural progression from infancy to adulthood. As such the pronouncements can be seen as God simply stating the consequences of partaking of the fruit, the reality of becoming fully human. Toddlers might enjoy the naked bliss of bumping into other naked friends without any painful consequences. But for an adult woman the consequence is most probably painful childbearing. Children might live in the self-sufficient paradise in which food is effortlessly provided for them, but adults eat through the sweat and effort they exert.
This is not a process God tried to prevent. Everything was set up by God in such a way as to make it possible. The prohibition itself seems to have been necessary to awaken desire and set the process in motion.
The man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all living. And the Lord God made garments of skins for the man and for his wife, and clothed them.
- Genesis 3:20-21 RSV
It is only after facing God’s pronouncement of what life would be like from then on, that Adam names Eve: “The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living ” (3:20). Why the mother of all life? Logically she would only be the mother of human life. But for Adam she has opened up a whole new world and as such a whole new life.
Zornberg beautifully describes the significance of this naming of Eve as follows:
In naming her in this way, he marks a passionate and ambiguous knowledge that he can express only with the baffled intensity of one who has stepped into a transformed world … Eve has brought Adam into a world of uncertainty and agitation, of process and risk— “beyond the grasp of his intellect.” His sovereign relation to his world and its meanings yields to her enigmatic vitality: “The essence of life flows to him from her.” She has proven irreducibly other, an otherness he experiences as intense life. The way he now uses language to name her contains the irony, the doubleness, the revelation of poetry. She takes him beyond himself, and he strains to communicate this transcendence. In a word, Eve has seduced Adam. One effect of seduction is to move the other to speechlessness, and then into a new, dazzled language. 6
Are we beginning to recognize these earthlings as fully human? Yes! It is very significant that up to this stage nothing is said about sin or a fall. Yes, God announces the consequences of their actions, but none of their actions are declared to be sin. And yes, in the final act of this drama Adam and Eve are expelled from Eden. However, this image is not one of a vertical fall, but more suggestive of giving birth. Human consciousness with all its complexities is birthed out of the naive innocence of childhood, the unconscious paradise, into the richness of a more complex reality.
Growing Up
Then the Lord God said, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil.”
- Genesis 3:22 RSV
Could it be that this verse means what it plainly says? Could it be that it is exactly the humans who partook of the knowledge of good and bad, who have developed a self capable of making value judgments, who are more like God than those who lived in the paradise of naive innocence? Maybe the project of creating humans in the image and likeness of God was not an instant act but one that required a process. And neither was this process forced upon us but, rather, God creates a garden of possibilities, seduces us into it, gives us extravagant freedom, even the freedom to disobey, and then invites us to participate in the creative process of becoming.
“…and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.
- Genesis 3:22-24 RSV
Why prevent humanity from becoming immortal? Maybe this early stage of consciousness is not a state in which we should continue forever. It is unlikely that humanity would ponder the meaning of time and self with any urgency, if the limit of death was removed. Immortality might also have been seen as a quick fix, a way to instantly and magically return to the less complex, timeless, and peaceful state of the pre-ego unconscious.
However beautiful this pre-conscious stage of life is, however delightful this shameless nakedness seems to us, this naive innocence cannot be compared to the depth of intimacy enjoyed by adult lovers. Yes, as we grow we become more self-conscious, we develop personal borders and we have to negotiate the complexities of another independent will, but when the borders are finally crossed there is a fulfilled joy not present in the blissful ignorance of toddlers.
There might yet be a way for the earthlings to partake of the tree of life, but there is no way to undo the emergence of self-consciousness. To prevent them from desperately grasping at the tree of life the way they grasped at the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, a more permanent solution is required. It will involve facing this new harsher reality of navigating the complexities of relationship that involve parties with independent wills. And an awareness of the inevitability of death, would focus the search for meaning. It will require their new-found capacity to make value judgments to mature so that, eventually, they will come to repentance - a transformation of the entire person.
Endnotes
1 Charlesworth, James H. The Good and Evil Serpent: How a Universal Symbol Became Christianized . New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010.
2 Neumann, Erich. The Origins And History Of Consciousness : Volume 118 (International Library of Psychology) (p. 10). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.
3 ibid. (p. 276).
4 Ricoeur, Paul. The Symbolism of Evil . Boston: Beacon Press, 1967. p 256
5 Goodhart, Sandor. The Prophetic Law , page 110, Kindle Edition
6 Zornberg, Avivah Gottlieb. The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious (p. 24). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Chapter Six
Origins Reimagined
To unravel a thread from a tapestry could ruin the whole fabric. It would be much wiser to leave the thread where it is and just color it differently, or surround it by other threads that obscure it. Sometimes our stories develop in such a way that everything becomes new - even the beginning needs to be re-imagined. But deeply embedded stories can’t easily be removed. To reframe them, and consequently to reinterpret them, would be a wiser strategy. And that’s partly the strategy of Genesis 1. It reframes the Yahwist creation narratives in a way that transforms their meaning.
Development in Consciousness
Genesis 1 represents a radically new understanding of God, creation, and humanity. It was authored after Genesis 2 and 3 (Yahwist) and the source behind this text is known as the Priestly Source - P for short. As such it also represents a later development in thought. By that I do not mean that it developed solely from the Yahwist source but rather that various influences pushed the narrative forward. By placing this later developed narrative before the Yahwist accounts of creation, it completely reframed those earlier stories.
The prominence of the conscious mind in the Genesis 1 narrative is evident in that unconscious symbolism is fading. There are no talking animals, no magical trees, no speculative metaphors that could encourage the superstitions that were so abundant in ancient religions. The symbolism of the unconscious contains a beautiful wisdom, but when it is given free rein it easily develops into unhelpful superstitions and hyper-spirituality. This does not mean that the wisdom of the unconscious i
s completely absent here. Rather, as with the development of humans, the unconscious becomes obscured.
And so Genesis 1 represents a development in consciousness. It is an exploration of origins that opens up new horizons not imagined by the previous stories. The scope is no longer terrestrial, as in the earlier Yahwist creation story, but cosmic. Neither does this creation story begin somewhere within time, but rather time itself comes into existence in the poetic rhythm of this narrative as day follows night and each new day builds upon what came before.
Consciousness of Time and Narrative
Greater awareness of time and the sequence of events is entirely consistent with a more developed consciousness. The conscious is separating itself from the unconscious, and the new understanding that is awakened can be likened to the light separating itself from darkness (verse 3).
But what is this new awareness of time? In the unconscious state, the sequence of events is not that important. When everything is one and all is whole, the relationships between separate entities are invisible for there are no separate entities. But with the awakening of a separate self, the separation of all things becomes visible and so also the temporal relationships that connect them. Time becomes the space in which dynamic relationship exists.
All of reality is in motion. Everything is in the process of being changed. Every sentence in Genesis 1 bears witness to this truth.
Time is a movement, a movement with a shape. But what is this shape?
Some think time is a line; a line with a direction; an arrow - always moving forward from what was, to what is yet to be. And there is no way to reverse its direction, no going back and no stopping the future. Yet, many things from the past return. Does time twirl around in circles like the circular serpent? From spring to summer to autumn to winter, round and round our planet spins, and so too our lives. This circular movement could be good … or not. The rhythms help us remember and help us learn. What dies in the winter makes space for new life. But … the patterns become familiar; the routines and habits carve out a path, a circular path, that soon becomes a trench in which many have lost hope of ever being able to escape. So what is it - are we moving anywhere new, or are we trapped in the boringly predictable cycles of time? Is there anything new?
But what if the shape of time is a spiral! A spiral has both rhythm and direction: a repetitious cycle and a forward trajectory. It is moving somewhere, yet it does not lose the beauty of its pattern. Each repetition is unique and its forward motion retains the memory of its past. Day follows night, and night follows day, yet each day offers something new although it is similar to days gone by.
It is in this rhythmic motion, in this unfolding narrative itself, that God has made himself at home. This is the beautiful new vision presented by the first chapter of Genesis. All of creation is his temple and the whole story is permeated with his presence. In humans a unique opportunity exists to reflect this presence, for the story to become aware and conscious of itself.
Divine Presence
The general theme remains theological, as in earlier texts, in that it explores similar questions such as: Who and what is God? Where is God? And what is the relation between God and creation, specifically the relation between God and humans?
It also asks, where is God at rest? What kind of resting place does he desire? This was a key theme for early religion. Both the garden and the temple were images that were primarily concerned with an appropriate space for God to rest in. The temple was not so much a place where people went to worship as it was a space in which the divine was at home. During a time when each tribe and nation claimed that a god chose their mountain, their city, and their temple as a special abode, Genesis 1 envisions a whole new space in which God dwells. In the crescendo of this story, God finds rest, not in an isolated temple or a hidden garden, but in the goodness of creation itself.
Tohu Wa-Bohu
When God began to create heaven and earth, and the earth then was welter and waste [tohu wa-bohu] and darkness over the deep[Tehom] and God’s breath hovering over the waters.
- Genesis 1:1-2 RA
When God began creating … there was something already present: Chaos! What a peculiar thought. In fact, this idea is so perplexing that volumes of theories would be written to explain it away and to justify us overlooking the chaos of verse 2 and hastily skipping to verse 3. It would have been so much simpler if God began creating by commanding “let there be light.” But there it is, right in the middle of God beginning to create and the first creative words spoken - chaos. Before a word is spoken, Elohim broods upon this depth of the unformed. What is happening here? At the very moment of creation, the ruach Elohim , the divine movements, vibrate upon the face of a chaotic depth.
But Rashi, a 10th century Rabbi, translated this verse as follows:
At the beginning of the creation of heaven and earth when the earth was without form and void and there was darkness … God said Let there be…
His argument, which many translators are now supporting, is that the beginning is a subordinate clause to the act of creation that begins when God speaks. In other words Genesis 1:1 is not the first act of creation but rather it is in verse 3 where God speaks for the first time. It seems that chaos is the raw material from which the created order emerges.
Why has it been easier to imagine God creating out of nothing than God creating out of this chaotic depth? What is it about chaos that has evokes disgust and inspires fear? Since the earliest myths humans told, chaos has been associated with crisis, with evil, and with monstrous destruction. Our experience of chaos is seldom pleasant. Rather, we associate it with things falling apart, with confusion and with destruction. As such it became the enemy - the dragon that devours. And this mythic understanding of chaos has certainly found allies in some forms of Christian theology. Karl Barth, for instance, describes the chaos as that which God negated, worse than nothing, from which nothing good can come. 1
Could it be that the author of Genesis is beginning to subvert the myth of chaos? Have we misunderstood the tohu wa-bohu? Maybe we have feared it the way we fear the unconscious. We avoid this depth for it does not subject itself to control; it does not follow the patterns of our conscious logic. And if God is only perceived from the perspective of the conscious self, then we imagine a God of control, of mastery and of order - not a God in relationship with chaos. Like Jacob, we have no desire for the untamed wildness of Esau. We want a God as ordered, civilized, self-sufficient and conscious as ourselves. We would rather run and pretend that Esau does not exist than acknowledge this relation to the untamed other.
But God is more than what we can fit into our conscious frameworks. He is more than what is known and ordered. This God is present too in the unknown, the unordered, the unformed, the unexplained, the unpredictable and the unconscious. This God is not obliged to validate our order or submit to our reason. Yes, a distinction is made between Elohim and tohu wa-bohu, but God shows no aversion to it. Rather, there seems to be a mysterious attraction. Is there a part in God over which God exerts no control? Could chaos, in similar fashion as Esau, be a relation rather than an enemy? We seldom stand amazed in front of the expected order, rather it is unexpected chaos that astounds us. The kind of order in which chaos is an enemy, becomes oppressive, manipulating and ever more rigid. It soon loses whatever semblance of beauty it had. The only way in which order can retain its beauty is by embracing chaos as a friend. This kind of order acknowledges that it originates in and is composed of chaos. And it is in nurturing this playful relationship that new meaning, new beauty, and renewed order is possible.
Those who study these ancient texts have noticed the similarities between the first few verses of Genesis and the myth of Enuma Elish. In fact the very meaning of the words Enuma Elish is: “When in the beginning,” an almost identical starting line to the first verse of Genesis. The connections become even more astounding as we follow the story further. In this myth it is the chaotic waters, personified in the
female face of Tiamat, that need to be overcome by the violent evil wind of Marduk. In Genesis we have chaotic waters, we have a wind, and we also have a face upon these waters. What we translated as “the face of the deep” is in Hebrew “the face of Tehom” - the Hebrew equivalent to Tiamat. In the Hebrew language it lacks the definitive article ‘the’ and therefore is used as a proper name (“The face of Tehom” vs “The face of the Tehom”).
Do you recognize the unconscious matrix of the text? The Genesis creation account is written over the unconscious text of many myths. The same signifiers are present, but the meaning is transformed as new relationships are formed between these signifiers. The God of Genesis does not need violence to defeat an evil formless chaos; rather his breath silently hovers, whispering possibilities of beauty and life. Can we recognize what it is within this formless depth that attracts the spirit of Elohim? The tohu wa-bohu is more than the opposite of order - it’s a different kind of order. It is more than nothing, it’s the possibility of everything.
Remember, this watery depth is not the seas, for they were created on the third day. The book of Job perceives this depth as a watery womb from which the seas were born.
Who hedged the sea with double doors, when it gushed forth from the womb. when I made cloud its clothing, and thick mist its swaddling bands?
- Job 38:8-9 RA
Creative Edge of Chaos
In the Hebrew Bible tohu is used to describe the desolate desert. The bohu is closely associated - a poetic twin (welter and waste) - and also refers to the uninhabitable nature of this wilderness. One Midrashic commentary translates it as “bewildered and astonished.” 2 And in the Kabbalah, an ancient Jewish tradition of mystical interpretation, it is compared to Yesod hapashut (“simple element”), in which “everything is united as one, without differentiation.” 3
