Wilderness Urgency

After the renaming of ’ishah to Eve*, furthering a divide begun in loneliness, we hear a continuation of judgment upon the not overtly cursed ’ishah and ’ish.

Stronger clothing is now provided—leather instead of leaves. This is an affirmation in the midst of a punishment. If they are going to continue their body shame, they might as well do it in style. Fashion is a first occupation?

Immediately a second thought comes that if ’ishah and ’ish did not die immediately upon eating the fruit of The Tree of Knowledge, but received fashion-forward clothing, they may not be content with accessorizing and go for The Tree of Life.

Creation may not have had an initial sense of eternity as it was built Day-by-Day. To deal with a questioner forever may not be what g()d bargained for.

Thus was ’adam sent East of Eden. They move directly from the naming of Mother Eve* to tilling Mother Earth. Such tilling will be a constant reminder of human origins—the dust of the earth. The uncertainty of water and weather is reminiscent of chaos beyond a vault of Heavens and below the surface of sea and land—something always having to be dealt with.

The ambivalence of relationship between creator and creation is captured here with the solicitous care of clothes and the expulsion of the humans and their new wardrobe.

Lest ’adam think that tilling outside of Eden is much more difficult than inside and Eve* not feel up to going through a second labor and they attempt to reenter Eden, a barrier is set up.

Are the cherubic and whirling sword actually dangerous or Wizard of Oz flim-flam? Is this a more authentic threat of death than a prior command threatening the same? Is this the end of a G*D/human partnership (G*D and ’adam, Inc.)? An end of story with no happy ever after?

There is a naming that makes a direct connection between a name and that which is named. This suggests a potential of control. If you can name, you have dominion. For such a reason people guard their “true” name and share only their “use” name.

There is also a naming that disconnects by way of inventing an etymology or public, easy, explanation of a name—putting a layer of reason between the name and the named. This distraction allows a false sense of knowing the named.

Alter quotes Herbert Marks regarding these two naming processes:

In a verisimilar narrative, naming establishes and fixes identity as something tautologically itself; etymology, by returning it to the trials of language, compromises it, complicates it, renders it potentially mobile.

Adding to the misdirection of an etymological sufficiency here are additional ways in which the Hebrew root word for “Eve” sounds like more than “to live.” In the related language of Aramaic, “Eve” can sound like the word for or evocation of a “serpent.”

Readers might begin to wonder about such a connection and suspect an on-going conversation or questioning of what we think we know and how it is we know it. “Eve” not only connects us with basic animal life—multiplying—of post-Edenic biology, but with knowledge of good and not-good—questioning—of post-Edenic philosophy and psychology.

Readers might also travel farther down that path and begin connecting the question-asking serpent with the beginning of life or being its mother. Current abortion legalist use a fetal heartbeat as a measure of the beginning of life while those more oriented toward honoring multi-valent choices come closer to the arrival of a question as a marker of the beginning of life.

It is not until we get to the point of multiplying, post-Eden, that a “mother” is a possibility. Unless the “shame of nakedness” is code for bodies mature enough for procreation, there is nothing to suggest there was ever going to be children born within Eden. G*D seemed satisfied with the two. ’Ishah and ’ish, to talk with at evening time. The grafting, budding, process of rooting a rib or cloning it that has been used up to this point has carried no suggestion of birthing, much less mothering.

Like G*D or g()d, Eve needs demythologizing. Might that be notated with the orthography of Eve* ?

Isn’t it the way of the world that the one who gets the blame in first wins—at least doesn’t come in last and can make it to a subsequent heat. ’Ishah has found cunning within the polarity of good and not-good and uses it by getting the first blame in—Serpent did it!

The serpent received a full-on curse with no reason given or consideration acknowledged of the value of a previous relationship. For ’ishah and ’ish, there are consequences, but they are not labeled as curses of these two. As close as a curse comes is to the soil ’ish will be tilling. These consequences might better fall in a category of rued disappointment.

“If they want knowledge so badly, here’s a dose!”

In the absence of knowing about death, good, and not-good, humans also don’t know about birth and the cost of multiplying—labor. A foreshadowing of labor pains and their repeat is not a change in potential like the loss of limbs. It is a change in relationship—’ishah and ’ish have not been under the dictate of multiply and increase. It has been enough to walk in the cool of a Garden, forever and ever.

With a credible challenge to a magisterial G*D, head of all gods, and creator of Dusty (a play toy shaped from clay)—the actual entrance of good and not-good (G*D’s privileged domain) brings a chorus from Greek tragedy announcing a resultant future that comes from challenging a G*D or g()d or gods.

Likewise, productivity has not been known. All that has been needed is to look at a tree’s fruit, and it floats into the mouth, delicious—peel me another grape! Now to till with a purpose! The serpent loses limbs and ’ish develops sweat glands.

If a game of revelation is going to be played, it is time to have an image of a creator become more real. From the outside, it appears all that is needed is a name and it is automatically filled with substance and will obey. Not so. Making, shaping, and relating are hands-on processes.

“Go, return to the dust of the ground and wrench from it your sustenance yourself. See how it will disappoint and exhaust you as you have disappointed and exhausted me”

 

This account is a fiat, not an experience to learn from. The distinction of privileged human over the rest of creation is clear in a comparison between this declaration and the subsequent ones directed toward ’ishah and ’ish. This command reveals what is behind the traditional translation of “having dominion”. It is non-relational.

What “serpent” means here remains unclear. What is clear is that any connection between a serpent and a retrojected understanding of a satan is a false equivalency.

Humans and animals, alike, need a cunning compatriot able to goad or trick. Without a coyote-like character, there is no continuation of a story that begins before us and includes us.

Initially, it is unclear whether an evolutionary forebear of today’s serpents once walked as well as talked, before parseltongue, a universal language. DNA evidence suggests a physical transformation different than other reptilian skitterings.

Culturally, it is unclear  if this serpent is a remainder from Canaanite myths of a primordial sea-serpent whose cunning may be nothing more than its connection with the roiling water pre-Day One and all the possibility that lies beyond the boundaries of a children’s book of literal creatures (unless naming shape-shifted their first form).

It is unlikely this story is simply a folktale account of why snakes crawl. To go just a little deeper, we are invited to look again at the dual categories of good and not-good. One recurrent reality is the cunning ways we have manipulated both good and not-good to advantage particular persons and programs.

Politics at every level from personal to familial to clan and tribe to city- and nation-state slightly shift the conversation until “War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery,” and “Ignorance is Strength” and an opponent is a repeatedly sequential treasured friend and implacable enemy. One little word separated Easter and Western Christianities and became a Shibboleth projected into every aspect of everyday life—damning all differences.

A variance does not need a good/not-good differential applied to it such as the same verb here used to distinguish a mere “hiss” (a cunning echo of a big-bang’s background radiation) from an involuntary reaction to “trample” the hisser. This one verb traps us into enmity that also separates us from all the good still available beyond a Day One boundary of light/good and dark/not-good beyond a physical sun, moon, and stars.

And they saw. And they ate. And they heard. And they hid.

Many have commented on the difference between seeing and hearing. At the moment I am remembering Jacques Ellul and the limits of apprehension. Our eyes face forward. We can focus near and far but peripheral vision, at best, takes in half our current context and the further to the side we strain, the less detail is available. Our ears have their frequency limits but we can gather sound information from all around, a part of teachers’ having eyes in the back of their head.

These senses can work well together, and they can also be so consuming that the other sense is blocked out. To be captivated by a lovely tree makes hazy what we have heard and is still echoing if it weren’t overridden by what we are seeing. The music of the spheres asks us to close our eyes and drop our jaw to best attend to its presence.

The differences between sight and sound energize and relax us, put us on high alert and settle us down. Each can sharpen or dull our attention. Window shopping can trigger our desire, and a snatch of song can transport us miles and years away.

Any tree can be seen to be central, just like a tamed fox or a tended-to flower we have come to know. In this knowing we know good and it won’t be long before we also know what is not-good about this good. Declarations of “It is good!” are always provisional and come back to bite us. Eventually, we will need to see past this duality.

The story we come into the middle of has G*D present in a garden and knowable through hearing. How do you imagine G*D sounds like ahead of our seeing? Humming a catchy tune? Singing “Some of My Favorite Things?” Shuffling clumsily after a long day and yearning for a mini-Sabbath?

If none of these trigger you to alert, why hide? Why respond with fear when you are missed and asked after? Now for more questions.

’Ishah touched the Tree of Knowing Good and Not-Good with her eyes.

This look is not a mere glance but a call—a lusting after, a deep desire to sate a ravenous appetite. An ability to discern a difference between good and not-good awakens with as much force as a physical desire for survival, a need to eat. This feast for the eye cannot but be followed in an instinctual and reflexive grasping of the Tree’s fruit and ravenously cramming it in as fast as ever one can.

There is here no concern for moderation or a fear of choking. Focus is only on downloading this knowledge as quickly and completely as possible. Note the lack of discerning anything behind the data or a vehicle whereby it can be evaluated or applied. For now, there is only grasping.

This example of eating can be paired with the gasping for air one experiences from a breath held too long. It is as though we have waited from forever to receive this reviving inspiration. We know our emptiness, and there is no time to waste before sucking in new life.

Note that once we have received a good we can recognize our desire is to share it with all and even enforce it on all until it loses its goodness and becomes an outmoded trope alive in injunction and dead to a needed next bite or breath of a new good for a new occasion.

And so ’ishah passes a taste to ’ish. See, taste, know.

And so the generations pass on traditions that will need as much judgment as does nudity. This previously single-state can now be seen as good and also as not-good. And we still work at making boundary choices. When will we be nude and when naked? Such knowledge can never again be a once-for-all decision.

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Note: After language, sewing is our first technology, not fire nor wheel.

While unseen in English translations, there is a connection between ’ish and ’ishah being “naked” and a serpent’s “cunning.” In this case, “cunning” is the shorter, sharper word.

It is a well-tested rhetorical process to overstate a proposition to engage another party in a knee-jerk denial. Such a disclaimer will usually contain its own overstatement. Now the battle of wit against innocence can be joined. This scene, in part, is quite evident in false statements made by today’s leading politicians. Every response is open to a “gotcha” moment. Defensive responses carry the seed of their own downfall.

Here “touch” is added to a proscription from eating or taking into one’s self that which will awaken continual distinction and choice—taking away a call to simple obedience. Adding “touch” as an intermediary between seeing and eating helps bridge the gap or desensitize a final bite. It is like cheating at bobbing-for-apples.

With this touching overstatement, the Serpent can jump to results, not process. The ante is upped. At stake is not just dying—which is not yet known—but shifted from some unknown state, “lest you die,” to an accusation that the creator has set up the creature. Since there is no known location for the deadly tree, one might inadvertently brush by and touch it. If touch is the same as eat—you’re doomed beyond any choice you make.

It takes but a slight sleight-of-hand to move the goalpost away from the negative of death (negative even if it is not known what it means) to the positive of knowing the difference between good and not-good. If only I knew this, I would escape doom through my own reasoning and not leave room for happenstance to devolve back into chaos (as unknown a state as death).

Look, the out is right before you. Just touch, but don’t eat. Unfortunately, like any newborn, anything touchable goes right to the mouth. Game over. Cunning wins.

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If you are interested in a recent example of how overstatement works to entangle people, you can check out this editorial by James Comey: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/opinion/william-barr-testimony.html

Stories explaining the beginning of some particular behavior can be quite fanciful and equally unhelpful. This reference to a socially recognized relationship of marriage cannot later claim to be a justification for any specific claim, such as the privileging of heterosexual relations over a variety of other intersections of individuals or even singleness.

The only “father and mother” at this point is a creator carrying both what has come to be called masculine and feminine characteristics and passing them on through their image. These verses are a foreshadowing not an ontological claim of righteousness.

The ’adam of male and female in Genesis 1 and the ’adam carrying both within and needing to clarify both through division along the lines of a rib have a primary connection with their creator. The cascade of creation differentiation is about to reorient the story away from an initial creation to identify claims by individuals and groups.

As well as connecting “father and mother” to G*D in “one flesh” resultant from the “clinging” of man and woman to one another is not only a biologic, psychic, and spiritual bond but a resultant child. The two have become one, not as a reuniting but as a setting forth or calling forth of yet another creation and creator—a child.

This overly fanciful reading allows for the usual expectation to be fruitful and multiply to begin far in advance of the closing of Eden as a garden and its remembrance as a location and dream of eternity that will plague the rest of the story. In the imagery of Greg Brown, a focus on eternity has damn-near wrecked this place.

A difference between naked and unclothed introduces what can only enter later with a return to the earlier throwaway line about a tree of life and tree of knowing good from not-good. These verses are very meta-story and need to keep their appropriate place within a story and not be an explanation of anything.