Questions that bother us
Is it true that the first human beings enjoyed abundant privileges in Paradise? Did they not suffer or grow tired? Did they not die? Did they have superior intelligence? But if they were that perfect, how is it that it did not occur to them that in falling into sin, they lose everything that God had given them? How come they fell at the first opportunity?
Is it possible that God was so angered in Paradise that He gave the first people tremendous punishment, as we read in the book of Genesis (3:14-19), all because they ate a fruit? And what about a serpent that speaks?
If Eve did not eat the said fruit, would the women of today still suffer from giving birth? And would the serpents fly instead of crawl? And would we walk naked without feeling ashamed? Would we be immortal? Would there be no deserts on earth?
If the earthly Paradise continues to exist after Adam and Eve’s expulsion can some scientific news make sense? Or can we trust the cherubims armed with lances of fire that guard Paradise’ entrance so that no one could pass?
Can we continue believing that there is Paradise?
After reading the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis questions like these have preoccupied us for some time. There are people who have attempted to question the veracity of the story. Others are afraid that pursuing such questions may cause a loss of respect for the Bible. They end up not pursuing the questions but accepting it as a simple story that does not deserve any major attention.
However the narrative of Paradise found in Genesis 2 and 3 holds great importance in the Bible. It has the answer to one of the most anguishing questions that people make: where does the evil of the world come from? Only in interpreting it correctly will we be able to find the rich message of the story.
What does the Bible refer to when it recounts the story of earthly Paradise? All of the biblical studies assert that this account does not refer to any real historical event that marks the beginning of humanity.
The author of this account was a Jewish catechist referred to in studies as “the Yahwist.” About the year 950 BCE the Yahwist became conscious of the grave acts that were so pervasive in their society. The Yahwist discovered that things were bad, and that they were moving towards a dangerous end. They were living in a state that was so disastrous and desolate; and if nothing was going to be done to correct the situation, their families and the whole society will be doomed.
Before this, the Yahwist, illumined by God, decided to write the story found in Genesis 2-3, not to give details about the origin of human life but to alert the readers of that time about such problems and to suggest some solutions.
Love and Pain
What is it that the author discovered that bothered him so much? He was aware that some realities of life which were supposed to be a joy for all were instead the cause of suffering and pain. Maybe, many were not aware of them, or considered them to be natural and inevitable. The author, however, could not take it anymore, and he felt challenged because of the situation.
The author started to make a list of the bad things that were happening. In the first place, he, like his neighbors and friends, had a wife. He saw how a good and beautiful marriage can be turned into an instrument of domination. The woman feels attracted to the husband, but the husband considers her to be inferior to him. She is deprived of some rights and is treated as an object. Why this ambiguity in love? And he wrote: “your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you” (Gen 3:16).
In the second place, he saw how their pregnancies enslaved them and added to their suffering. They had to endure the pain of giving birth to a number of children, and in every instance, the wife underwent inexplicable pain. How is it that the coming of a new life, a reason for joy, entails so much suffering? And he wrote: “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children” (Gen 3:16).
Work and the Animals
The author had also discovered how every morning work was a cause of great suffering whenever he left for work in order to provide for the needs of his family. Many times when he came home at the end of the day he found himself tired and in pain, without even obtaining enough fruits from the arid land of Palestine. Why so much sweat and labor? And he continued: “in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life…By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread” (Gen 3:17-19).
How about the land? It seems wicked. It has to produce food for the people, but it only brings forth thistles and thorns. The more the people worked the more the land resisted. They had to give so much for the land to produce food for the children! And he added: “cursed is the ground…thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you, and you shall eat the plants of the field” (Gen 3:17-18).
Even the animals were hostile. How many times had he encountered serpents and lions attacking him as he passed through the fields? Maybe, he knew someone who had been attacked and devoured by a wild beast. Were these animals not assigned to serve the people? It seems that they were enemies. People could not trust the animals. They were a threat to human life. He continues to write, “there is enmity between the serpent and the woman, between its race and hers” (Gen 3:15).
A Frightening God
His own life seemed ambiguous. The whole of himself cried out: I want to live, but death inevitably lurked in every corner. Nobody could escape from death. Maybe he had seen his parents, his close friend, or one of his children die. Why is it that the end of one’s life is tragic and painful? Why does death necessarily accompany life, projecting sorrow above all joys? And he adds: “you will return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen 3:19).
Finally, even his God and friend was ambiguous. Thinking about Him, being with Him, speaking to Him, must have caused much joy. However, God also caused much fear. His presence was terrifying. One fears His punishments. They hid when they heard Him come. Why be afraid of God? He asks himself and wrote: “I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid and I hid myself” (Gen 3:10).
The author concluded the list of calamities he encountered in his everyday life, a life that was familiarly composed of love and pain, of marriage and the pain of childbirth, of arid land that needed to be sown and the sweat of one’s forehead, the threatening animals, life and death, the presence of God and a religiosity based on fear.
The great discovery
And the sacred writer, arriving at this point, asks: why do we suffer these ills? Where did they come from? He is certain that they cannot come from God. His faith tells him that God is good and just, and that God wants what is good for people, and that these calamities are not part of God’s creation.
Maybe he often heard friends and neighbors say: “Patience, we need to endure. Life is what it is. It is God’s will!” But he did not accept that argument. He will not blame God and his religion for this situation of sorrow and pain; and live with such false patience. In fact, he even disagreed with other religions that believed that all evil were caused by a direct action of God. Not for him. Whatever suffering people had could not have God’s approval.
Thus, he arrived at a great discovery (even if it comes from a primitive mentality): the situation that the people of Israel and the whole of humanity are faced with is in reality a situation that rides on a temporary “punishment,” a consequence of our sins. And so, we are the only one responsible for what happens to us.
This revolutionary thesis has two advantages. On one side, it signifies a positive and hopeful vision of life. That it is not God’s will but a “situation of punishment.” It refers not to a definitive state but to a passing event in one’s life, from which one can be freed at any time. On the other hand, it leads to a reflection of our responsibility for the social ills.
How Paradise Came To Be
To the sacred writer the list of ills serves to elaborate what were the “punishment of God” to the first people (Gen 3:14-19). It reflects the situation in which the whole of humanity presently lives.
However, it still does not resolve another problem. If the world, as it is, is not what God wants, then God cannot continue to support its existence. It is not what God intended it to be. And what was the will of God for this world? The author wanted to know exactly otherwise he would not know how to behave.
And this is where the problem lies: the author did not know exactly how the world of God’s plan actually worked. His knowledge was confined only to this confused world of his time and none other.
What, then, did he do in order to respond to this question? Inspired by God, he took the list of evils that he made (Gen 3:14-19) and imagined an inverse situation, marked by wellness, where none of those in the list existed. He envisioned an ideal world, willed by God, which we constantly lose because of our sinfulness. The result of such imaginary elaboration was Paradise.
In fact, the Paradise of Genesis was but a description of a state of life that was exactly opposite to what the author knew and experienced in his daily life.
The world as God planned
If we now analyze, part by part, this Paradise described in Genesis 2:4-25, we will see that it stands contrary to the world that appears after original sin as recounted in Genesis 3:4-24.
In Paradise the woman was not dominated by the husband, but was his companion, his appropriate help-mate (Gen 2:18), with equal dignity. The man recognized this and exclaimed: “This at last is bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh” (Gen 2:23). And here is the man who is attracted to the woman, and joined his wife to become one flesh (Gen 2:24), without either of them dominating the other.
Death did not exist. Humans could continue to live forever because God responded to the deepest desire of humans. God allowed the tree of Life to grow in the middle of the garden (Gen 2:9). And it was enough that Adam extended his arm and ate of the fruit of the tree for him to live forever (Gen 3:22). Death did not cause sorrow to life.
There were also no pain of childbirth in Paradise, neither did childbirth exist. As humans did not die, there was no need to have children in order to prolong their life after death. The author, however, did not think that only one pair existed: Adam and Eve. They stood as symbols and representatives of all men and women the author knew who did not want to die.
Tempting offer
The land was not wicked. It was fertile and it produced all kinds of fruit trees, exquisite and pleasant to the eyes (Gen 2:9). There was no drought. The watering of plants and trees was assured by the river that surrounded the garden with its four branches (Gen 2:10). Never has an Israelite seen so much water within such short distances!
Work was no longer a source of fatigue and frustration. In Paradise the task was easy: to cultivate the garden and to take care of it (Gen 2:15). Taking into account the abundance of water available, this was an easy job.
There is no enmity between humans and animals. On the contrary, they existed to accompany the human and they were exactly what they were meant to be. That is why it is said that he “gave names to all the animals created by God.”
Finally, in Paradise God does not infuse fear. God was the friend of the people: “God walked in the garden in the cool of the day” (Gen 3:8), and lived in intimacy with the people. God’s presence did not surprise them nor did it cause them to hide.
Paradise, future hope
The earthly Paradise of the Bible was an imaginary construction of the sacred writer, who, inspired by God used popular language to convey a profound message to the people of his time: a hopeful possibility, that enabled them to say: “this is how God wants the world to be. God does not want domination by the husband. God does not want death, or drought, or oppressive work, or slavery, or enmity with the animals. God does not want a religion that springs from fear. God wants paradise. This is what we miss.”
But God had not changed His mind; neither will He change His plan. For the author, Paradise is not something that belongs to the past. Rather, it belongs to the future. It is not a situation that is forever lost, that one can only remember with nostalgia. It is a project that one should see with hope. It is like a final model, a blueprint of the world that people must build with their strength and sacrifices. It is seen at the beginning of the Bible not because it happened at the beginning but to show, before anything else, the goal of a person’s journey.
Towards a new Paradise
The Paradise of the Bible, with its fruit trees, abundant waters, easy work and painless childbirth, must have appeared attractive to its readers, who must have labored much in order to obtain what is being described here. It was an effective way of calling them to take responsibility for what is being done in the world.
Today this Paradise no longer attracts our attention. We need to live it. In order to do this, we must first eliminate the ills that are present in our families, in our society and in the world: people living in sub-human conditions, barrios without water, workers with miserably low wages, contaminated food, divisions and wars, killings…
Further, we need to realize that it is a “situation of punishment” for which we are responsible. Thus, we must eliminate the notion of fatalism, passivity and resignation and eradicate fatalism that says: “Patience, we need to endure. Life is the way it is. It is the will of God!”
And finally, looking at the other side of this list, we can begin to reconstruct our own Paradise. Things will work out well when we become what we need to become and discover what we are losing because of our sinfulness, our own doing.
Paradise is a prophesy of a future that is projected from the past. It is not a childish story, or something that already transpired. It is a joyous portrayal by the sacred writer to lead his contemporaries to the light. And until now it remains an on-going project that survives through the faith and the courage of people who are tasked to bring it to completion.
