Original Sin, from a non Fundy.
Adam and Eve Part II - Androgynous Adam?
I noticed that some people disagreed with my last post - particularly the point that, according to the story of Adam and Eve, heterosexuality is a sin. Though I didn't say that I believed it was a sin, I was trying to make the point that the story was generally interpeted by the early church as a condemnation of all sexual lust, and that in view of that fact, it is somewhat ignorant and hypocritical for fundamentalists today to try and use it to sanctify their own sexual lifestyle.
Furthermore, many Biblical scholars believe that this story was written at a period of history when the religion of Yahweh was in direct competition with various fertility cults and pagan gods employing temple prostitutes. The point being that through this story, the author was offering a polemic where rather than bringing people into a closer relationship with God, sex had somehow initiated the fall and had separated mankind from God. The author's real purpose was to de-sanctify human sexuality as a religious practice. So it is all the more interesting that modern fundamentalists seem to be trying to interpret this story as a way of using religion to re-sanctify their own sexuality while condemning homosexuality.
I don't believe that human sexuality is either sacred or sinful in itself - but as with any other gift from God, like money or talent or time, it is only how we use it or misuse it that makes it so. But then what is the connection between human sexuality and original sin? I don't think we can just ignore it, because I believe it's part of the story, and I think the early church recognized that it was. But I do think it can now be better understood in the light of evolutionary theory.
Was the initial marriage between Adam and the woman in the garden of Eden a marriage between two people of the opposite sex? Pat Robertson would like to think so. But I believe that a closer reading of the story demonstrates that they were initially identical, and not of the opposite sex at all.
Androgynous Adam
There is a common assumption that when God first created Adam from the dust of the earth, that he was physically a man, with all the equipment of a modern male human being. But this is not what the story says, and it makes little sense in the fuller context and meaning of the story.
1. The name “Adam” is actually gender-inclusive, and it is actually translated “mankind” or “humankind”. So that Adam is not only representative of men, but of woman as well.
2.If Adam was first created male, then why wasn’t Eve created at the same time, since obviously Adam could not procreate without her? God never said that “Adam needs a woman so he can procreate”, he said “it is not good for a man to be alone (ie lonely) - I will make a helper for him.” So it was actually to fulfill and emotional and spiritual need for companionship, and not out of any biological or procreative necessity, that a woman was created.
3. If Adam was created as a male human being, then why did God search for a helpmate for him from among the animals? Obviously Adam could not procreate with the animals, nor would God have approved of bestiality.
4. If God created Adam male, and "woman" as female, then why was doing what they were biologically created to do - namely having sex in order to procreate - then why was this involved in original sin, as outlined earlier? Why would God have created them male and female, and then forbidden them to eat of the forbidden fruit - (an obvious reference to carnal relations) - and condemned them for doing what they were created to do - namely to procreate?
Some early Christian theologians argued it was all a matter of timing - that God was testing their ability to obey, and like two horny teenagers they simply jumped the gun. Others like St. Augustine said that it was not the act of copulation itself, but the sexual lusting after one another that was sinful. But nobody can quite explain it in a way that doesn’t make God appear very arbitrary, unfair and even contradictory.
5. Since Eve was created directly from Adam's flesh and bones, she must have also have had the exact same genetic makeup. This would have been impossible if she was of a completely different sex.. Whatever Adam was, the woman was an exact genetic copy.
6. Adam said “this is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh.” In other words, Adam recognized someone who was just like he was. The Hebrew word zo’th, is commonly mis-translated “she”, but actually means “this one” or “this other”. If Adam and Eve were naked, and had been of a completely different sexes, certainly, being a man, the first thing Adam would have recognized were all the obvious differences, and not the fact that they were exactly alike.. It also seems unlikely that given the patriarchal culture that produced this story, that a man would ever say that a woman was just like he was, ie “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh”. The absolute dignity of the male person was dependent upon emphasizing the vast differences and the fundamental inferiority of women, and not the feminist notion that they should be treated as if they were alike or the same.
7. It says that Adam named her “woman, because she was taken out of man(kind)” . Therefore, before the fall, her only identity was as Adam’s clone. She was only given the name Eve, or “giver of life”, and proclaimed to be the mother of all future human beings, after they had sex and were expelled from the Garden of Eden.
8. In the real world of nature and life’s evolution, it is not male and female who first invented sex, it is sexual reproduction which invented male and female. This biological fact is mirrored in the story of Adam and Eve. The differentiation that we now see between the sexes, originally came about as a result of the fact that life forms that had previously reproduced asexually, (as Adam did when God cloned the woman from his side), later experimented with another method of reproduction. Instead of simply dividing and creating clones of themselves, some life forms began to exchange genetic material with each other. Why? The reasons why they did this, and why sexual reproduction eventually became such a successful survival strategy for countless species today, is still a matter of debate. It may help to transmit and proliferate beneficial genetic mutations more quickly and easily, and conversely it may also help to eliminate detrimental mutations before destroying an entire species.
Whatever the reason for its success, the differences between male and female of various species came about as a result of the fact that only one of the partners in this genetic exchange could retain and nourish the resulting genetic hybrid, that is, gestate the baby. For human beings, that means that women evolved to have babies, and they are also most intimately involved in raising them to maturity, while men serve as providers and protectors. So the differences between the sexes ultimately comes down to the fact that life, as symbolized by Adam and Eve, invented a survival strategy that involves sexual reproduction, and therefore different roles for males and females (though there are other solutions, including some species where individuals can change roles when necessary, or even perform both roles when necessary.)
The effect of sexual reproduction is to create genetically distinct individuals. Adam and Eve became like God in the sense that #1 they had changed their own sexual identity and now became distinctly male and female, and #2 through sexual reproduction they had concieved an entirely new life experiment - ie a genetically distinct individual who was not exactly like either parent. Individuals who would come to learn to compete rather than cooperate with other people, and to exploit rather than cooperate with their environment. (the first shocking example of this was the very next Biblical story, that of Cain and Abel)
But that was not God’s original intention. It was - and continues to be, mankind’s choice, and our insight into that choice has become our own understanding and knowledge of the difference between good and evil. That even though we are now divided male and female, black and white, Jews and Gentiles, homosexual and heterosexual, we can still choose to love each other, respect our differences, and work together as God originally intended. Adam and Eve were not created for sexual procreation, they were created as partners in paradise - it was sexual procreation which transformed Adam and Eve into two distinct sexes that seem to have been battling ever since, and transformed their world into a fight for survival.
This is also why we see that after Adam and Eve chose to reproduce sexually, that God laid out the natural consequences of that choice. The woman would no longer be treated as equal to the man, but come to rely entirely on his providence and protection. Likewise, men would take on the burden of providing for their families in a world where a kind of brutal competition rather than love and cooperation would become the norm between people, tribes and nations.
As further evidence that Adam was initially capable of asexual reporduction, Both the seven days story of creation, and later on in Genesis, it describes mankind as intitially being created both male and female.
Ge 1:27 So God created man(kind) in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Gen 5:2 “Ge 5:2 Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.
There may be some room for debate concerning the first citation - whether or not it is talking about two individuals, one male and one female, or one individual who was both male and female. But the second citation seems to leave no doubt. He created them male and female and called them Adam - not Adam and Eve. So Adam was originally not a male as we understand it - he was both. This, along with the woman who was cloned from Adam’s rib, was actually their way of explaining asexual reproduction. And the story of Adam and Eve is really the story of life's evolution on the planet.
Some early Biblical scholars with no knowledge of genetics or evolutionary theory, tried to explain what the story was really saying:
Rabbi Jerimiah Ben Leazar writes: “When the Holy One, blessed be He, created Adam, He created him a hermaphrodite.”
Rabbi Samuel Ben Naham said: “When the Lord created Adam He created him double faced, then he split him and made him of two backs, one back on this side and one back on the other side.”
Was Adam created a hermaphrodite, or some kind of double-sexed Siamese twin waiting for God to surgically separate them? Is that what the story is telling us? It seems monstrous even to think about.
It is interesting to note that certain species which still reproduce asexually actually do retain a kind of immortality. An entire species can be more or less like a single immortal organism - it continues to evolve over time through random genetic mutations, but it never really dies.
Imagine if all human beings were genetically identical. Of course, it might seem much less interesting a world, but on the other hand, we would be even closer than one big family, since even within families there is genetic variation. There would be no basis for genetic competition. No racism or ethnic strife - no battle of the sexes or homophobia either. We would all be the same, and all working together. We are Borg? Perhaps, but in a more spiritual way. A kind of shared spiritual consciouness that we associate today with the presense of God. Perhaps God’s original intention when life was first created, was to avoid all the strife that would come with sexual reproduction.
Competition and selfishness among human beings came with individual consciousness, and the development of individual consciousness can ultimately be traced back to the fact that we are unique and sexually reproducing individuals. Sexual reproduction gives every person their own unique genetic make-up, and therefore every person has developed the attendant biological instincts and motivation needed to successfully compete and pass on just their own genes, even at the expense of other people. It is this inherent biological selfishness within people is what leads them to sin against others. The Bible calls it 'original sin' - Darwin called it "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest" - but among human beings, it is the source of all greed, wars, hatred etc. So perhaps the story is pointing out this ultimate connection between sexual reproduction and sin.
It is interesting that Jesus said people who go to heaven will no longer be male or female, but like the angels. We will become as God originally created Adam and his companion to be - neither male or female. Just human beings who were created to love and worship God, and to love and take care of one another.
Our knowledge of good and evil seems to have come about as a result of the fact that as sexually reproducing individuals, we have been given a choice between loving our neighbor, or doing what’s only in our own selfish biological interest. Sexual reproduction gave us a knowledge of good and evil, because it helped to furnish us not only with an individual consciousness and unique genetic makeup, but a biological motive to do evil, in order to try and gain an evolutionary advantage over others. "Family values" is is the natural extension of genetic selfishness, and really the moral opposite of "love your neighbor as yourself".
The moral of the story is that God created us all equally in his image, and though we are no longer biologically identical and the same, and we have since accentuated our differences through sexual reproduction - we remain equally in the image of God - white or black, rich or poor, heterosexual or homosexual.
posted by R. Stephen Hanchett
I noticed that some people disagreed with my last post - particularly the point that, according to the story of Adam and Eve, heterosexuality is a sin. Though I didn't say that I believed it was a sin, I was trying to make the point that the story was generally interpeted by the early church as a condemnation of all sexual lust, and that in view of that fact, it is somewhat ignorant and hypocritical for fundamentalists today to try and use it to sanctify their own sexual lifestyle.
Furthermore, many Biblical scholars believe that this story was written at a period of history when the religion of Yahweh was in direct competition with various fertility cults and pagan gods employing temple prostitutes. The point being that through this story, the author was offering a polemic where rather than bringing people into a closer relationship with God, sex had somehow initiated the fall and had separated mankind from God. The author's real purpose was to de-sanctify human sexuality as a religious practice. So it is all the more interesting that modern fundamentalists seem to be trying to interpret this story as a way of using religion to re-sanctify their own sexuality while condemning homosexuality.
I don't believe that human sexuality is either sacred or sinful in itself - but as with any other gift from God, like money or talent or time, it is only how we use it or misuse it that makes it so. But then what is the connection between human sexuality and original sin? I don't think we can just ignore it, because I believe it's part of the story, and I think the early church recognized that it was. But I do think it can now be better understood in the light of evolutionary theory.
Was the initial marriage between Adam and the woman in the garden of Eden a marriage between two people of the opposite sex? Pat Robertson would like to think so. But I believe that a closer reading of the story demonstrates that they were initially identical, and not of the opposite sex at all.
Androgynous Adam
There is a common assumption that when God first created Adam from the dust of the earth, that he was physically a man, with all the equipment of a modern male human being. But this is not what the story says, and it makes little sense in the fuller context and meaning of the story.
1. The name “Adam” is actually gender-inclusive, and it is actually translated “mankind” or “humankind”. So that Adam is not only representative of men, but of woman as well.
2.If Adam was first created male, then why wasn’t Eve created at the same time, since obviously Adam could not procreate without her? God never said that “Adam needs a woman so he can procreate”, he said “it is not good for a man to be alone (ie lonely) - I will make a helper for him.” So it was actually to fulfill and emotional and spiritual need for companionship, and not out of any biological or procreative necessity, that a woman was created.
3. If Adam was created as a male human being, then why did God search for a helpmate for him from among the animals? Obviously Adam could not procreate with the animals, nor would God have approved of bestiality.
4. If God created Adam male, and "woman" as female, then why was doing what they were biologically created to do - namely having sex in order to procreate - then why was this involved in original sin, as outlined earlier? Why would God have created them male and female, and then forbidden them to eat of the forbidden fruit - (an obvious reference to carnal relations) - and condemned them for doing what they were created to do - namely to procreate?
Some early Christian theologians argued it was all a matter of timing - that God was testing their ability to obey, and like two horny teenagers they simply jumped the gun. Others like St. Augustine said that it was not the act of copulation itself, but the sexual lusting after one another that was sinful. But nobody can quite explain it in a way that doesn’t make God appear very arbitrary, unfair and even contradictory.
5. Since Eve was created directly from Adam's flesh and bones, she must have also have had the exact same genetic makeup. This would have been impossible if she was of a completely different sex.. Whatever Adam was, the woman was an exact genetic copy.
6. Adam said “this is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh.” In other words, Adam recognized someone who was just like he was. The Hebrew word zo’th, is commonly mis-translated “she”, but actually means “this one” or “this other”. If Adam and Eve were naked, and had been of a completely different sexes, certainly, being a man, the first thing Adam would have recognized were all the obvious differences, and not the fact that they were exactly alike.. It also seems unlikely that given the patriarchal culture that produced this story, that a man would ever say that a woman was just like he was, ie “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh”. The absolute dignity of the male person was dependent upon emphasizing the vast differences and the fundamental inferiority of women, and not the feminist notion that they should be treated as if they were alike or the same.
7. It says that Adam named her “woman, because she was taken out of man(kind)” . Therefore, before the fall, her only identity was as Adam’s clone. She was only given the name Eve, or “giver of life”, and proclaimed to be the mother of all future human beings, after they had sex and were expelled from the Garden of Eden.
8. In the real world of nature and life’s evolution, it is not male and female who first invented sex, it is sexual reproduction which invented male and female. This biological fact is mirrored in the story of Adam and Eve. The differentiation that we now see between the sexes, originally came about as a result of the fact that life forms that had previously reproduced asexually, (as Adam did when God cloned the woman from his side), later experimented with another method of reproduction. Instead of simply dividing and creating clones of themselves, some life forms began to exchange genetic material with each other. Why? The reasons why they did this, and why sexual reproduction eventually became such a successful survival strategy for countless species today, is still a matter of debate. It may help to transmit and proliferate beneficial genetic mutations more quickly and easily, and conversely it may also help to eliminate detrimental mutations before destroying an entire species.
Whatever the reason for its success, the differences between male and female of various species came about as a result of the fact that only one of the partners in this genetic exchange could retain and nourish the resulting genetic hybrid, that is, gestate the baby. For human beings, that means that women evolved to have babies, and they are also most intimately involved in raising them to maturity, while men serve as providers and protectors. So the differences between the sexes ultimately comes down to the fact that life, as symbolized by Adam and Eve, invented a survival strategy that involves sexual reproduction, and therefore different roles for males and females (though there are other solutions, including some species where individuals can change roles when necessary, or even perform both roles when necessary.)
The effect of sexual reproduction is to create genetically distinct individuals. Adam and Eve became like God in the sense that #1 they had changed their own sexual identity and now became distinctly male and female, and #2 through sexual reproduction they had concieved an entirely new life experiment - ie a genetically distinct individual who was not exactly like either parent. Individuals who would come to learn to compete rather than cooperate with other people, and to exploit rather than cooperate with their environment. (the first shocking example of this was the very next Biblical story, that of Cain and Abel)
But that was not God’s original intention. It was - and continues to be, mankind’s choice, and our insight into that choice has become our own understanding and knowledge of the difference between good and evil. That even though we are now divided male and female, black and white, Jews and Gentiles, homosexual and heterosexual, we can still choose to love each other, respect our differences, and work together as God originally intended. Adam and Eve were not created for sexual procreation, they were created as partners in paradise - it was sexual procreation which transformed Adam and Eve into two distinct sexes that seem to have been battling ever since, and transformed their world into a fight for survival.
This is also why we see that after Adam and Eve chose to reproduce sexually, that God laid out the natural consequences of that choice. The woman would no longer be treated as equal to the man, but come to rely entirely on his providence and protection. Likewise, men would take on the burden of providing for their families in a world where a kind of brutal competition rather than love and cooperation would become the norm between people, tribes and nations.
As further evidence that Adam was initially capable of asexual reporduction, Both the seven days story of creation, and later on in Genesis, it describes mankind as intitially being created both male and female.
Ge 1:27 So God created man(kind) in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Gen 5:2 “Ge 5:2 Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.
There may be some room for debate concerning the first citation - whether or not it is talking about two individuals, one male and one female, or one individual who was both male and female. But the second citation seems to leave no doubt. He created them male and female and called them Adam - not Adam and Eve. So Adam was originally not a male as we understand it - he was both. This, along with the woman who was cloned from Adam’s rib, was actually their way of explaining asexual reproduction. And the story of Adam and Eve is really the story of life's evolution on the planet.
Some early Biblical scholars with no knowledge of genetics or evolutionary theory, tried to explain what the story was really saying:
Rabbi Jerimiah Ben Leazar writes: “When the Holy One, blessed be He, created Adam, He created him a hermaphrodite.”
Rabbi Samuel Ben Naham said: “When the Lord created Adam He created him double faced, then he split him and made him of two backs, one back on this side and one back on the other side.”
Was Adam created a hermaphrodite, or some kind of double-sexed Siamese twin waiting for God to surgically separate them? Is that what the story is telling us? It seems monstrous even to think about.
It is interesting to note that certain species which still reproduce asexually actually do retain a kind of immortality. An entire species can be more or less like a single immortal organism - it continues to evolve over time through random genetic mutations, but it never really dies.
Imagine if all human beings were genetically identical. Of course, it might seem much less interesting a world, but on the other hand, we would be even closer than one big family, since even within families there is genetic variation. There would be no basis for genetic competition. No racism or ethnic strife - no battle of the sexes or homophobia either. We would all be the same, and all working together. We are Borg? Perhaps, but in a more spiritual way. A kind of shared spiritual consciouness that we associate today with the presense of God. Perhaps God’s original intention when life was first created, was to avoid all the strife that would come with sexual reproduction.
Competition and selfishness among human beings came with individual consciousness, and the development of individual consciousness can ultimately be traced back to the fact that we are unique and sexually reproducing individuals. Sexual reproduction gives every person their own unique genetic make-up, and therefore every person has developed the attendant biological instincts and motivation needed to successfully compete and pass on just their own genes, even at the expense of other people. It is this inherent biological selfishness within people is what leads them to sin against others. The Bible calls it 'original sin' - Darwin called it "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest" - but among human beings, it is the source of all greed, wars, hatred etc. So perhaps the story is pointing out this ultimate connection between sexual reproduction and sin.
It is interesting that Jesus said people who go to heaven will no longer be male or female, but like the angels. We will become as God originally created Adam and his companion to be - neither male or female. Just human beings who were created to love and worship God, and to love and take care of one another.
Our knowledge of good and evil seems to have come about as a result of the fact that as sexually reproducing individuals, we have been given a choice between loving our neighbor, or doing what’s only in our own selfish biological interest. Sexual reproduction gave us a knowledge of good and evil, because it helped to furnish us not only with an individual consciousness and unique genetic makeup, but a biological motive to do evil, in order to try and gain an evolutionary advantage over others. "Family values" is is the natural extension of genetic selfishness, and really the moral opposite of "love your neighbor as yourself".
The moral of the story is that God created us all equally in his image, and though we are no longer biologically identical and the same, and we have since accentuated our differences through sexual reproduction - we remain equally in the image of God - white or black, rich or poor, heterosexual or homosexual.
posted by R. Stephen Hanchett