Bereshit

 

 
Immortality Missed
David H. Aaron

We regularly distinguish common stories from those we consider mythic . The philosopher Paul Ricoeur suggested that this distinction is useful for recognizing that myth manages to express profound ideas about what we perceive to be fundamental aspects of reality. At the same time, we recognize deep down that we cannot completely know reality. Our only way to convey what we understand and sense is to engage the symbols and imageries made available through imaginative language and the arts. In effect, myth enables us to say what we feel we know, even when that knowledge remains ethereal.

The opening stories of Genesis are most certainly mythic in this sense. However, they have undergone a number of editorial transformations that obscure aspects of their original intent. I do not believe these emendations were devised to demythologize the original stories. Rather, the editors here, as elsewhere in Genesis, merged various aspects of their literary inheritance with the intent of leaving us with a narrative that was something of an anthology. This practice was not uncommon among ancient Near Eastern cultures. The final product could not help but influence how each individual component would be interpreted.

I want to elucidate two aspects of Genesis 1–3 that have been partially obscured by that anthologizing process. First, within Israelite literature there were competing ideological camps regarding the depiction of God. One we would recognize as monotheistic—the belief that there is only one God. The other should be defined as monolatristic —the belief that a supreme God referred to by the letters YHVH (which I will render Yahveh , according to convention)is responsible for Israel, but that other gods also exist. Israel did not develop from monolatry to monotheism along a straight path. Rather, these two notions of God probably existed side-by-side for quite some time. Our Bible preserves passages typical of both schools of thought. Needless to say, monotheism eventually became a core belief within Judaism, and the literary vestiges of other beliefs were simply read through monotheistic lenses.

The second idea I wish to explore is only understandable against the backdrop of monolatry, and that is the issue addressed by the Adam and Eve story: our mortality. As we shall see a little later, when scrutinized on the basis of its clear monolatristic imagery, the story proves to be a profound elucidation of humankind’s failure to achieve immortality—what was very much within our potential for a brief moment in time.

Our understanding of this first chapter will be quite different if we reconceptualize its expressions in harmony with ancient Near Eastern literatures. The notion that God created simply by speaking is central to the epic known as Enuma Elish , a Mesopotamian story of divine intrigue, combat, and creation at many levels. In Enuma Elish , the god Marduk is proclaimed the supreme deity by a cluster of deities engaged in a revolt against the divine establishment. Demonstrating his powers before his subordinates, Marduk speaks and brings various things into existence, just as Yahveh , Israel’s God, speaks in Genesis 1 and brings the world into existence. In effect, our biblical author has Yahveh emulating—and at some level, replacing—Marduk as creator, by using his same technique. Moreover, Enuma Elish and other Mesopotamian legends make clear that the gods created human beings to serve them and that those humans (as we shall see) physically resembled gods.

Now I am not saying that Genesis 1 reads precisely or even predominantly the way other ancient Near Eastern creation stories read. There are many differences, and they are important to highlight. However, certain basic themes apparent in Genesis are clearly drawn from a cultural repertoire that was shared throughout the ancient Near East. For instance, that Israel’s God, Yahveh , is not alone when the world is created emerges explicitly on the basis of a few verses, especially 1:26 and 3:22. The former reads: “ Elohim [‘God’ or perhaps ‘the gods’] said, ‘Let’s make a being who will have our form and our appearance.’” The form of the verb, naaseh , expresses a first-person plural subject. This form is also behind verse 3:22, which reads: “ Yahveh of the gods said, ‘The human has become just like us, cognizant of good and evil. Should he reach and eat of the tree of eternal life, he will become immortal.’”

The word for “God” in Hebrew is, oddly enough, a plural word, Elohim . Unfortunately, we cannot explain how this plural noun came to mean “God” in the singular. But the expression Yahveh Elohim is likely a reflection of an earlier ideology that understood Yahveh to be the principal deity amidst a pantheon of lesser gods. This is the idea we hear in the biblical phrase taken from Exodus 15:11, which we recite in our liturgy even today: “Who is like You, Yahveh , among the gods ?” ( Mi Chamochah ). The answer to this rhetorical question is not “There are no other gods,” but rather, “No god is like You, Yahveh .” Verses like these are many in number.

When monotheism finally came on the scene, it did so with a vengeance. There are numerous passages whose primary goal is to counter non-monotheistic ideologies. For instance, in II Samuel 7:22 we read: “You are great, Lord, Yahveh , for there are none like You, nor are there gods other than You!” Notice how this author engaged the notion of “like You” as we find it in Exodus 15, but then elucidated its meaning by demanding that there are no other gods. Similarly, the writer of Isaiah 45, who was a vehement advocate of monotheism, wrote unequivocally in God’s voice: “I am Yahveh , and there are no other gods besides Me!” (v. 5). No one expends energy arguing against ideas that have no adherents. Based on the vehemence of the monotheistic argument in the writings of certain authors, we can assume that monotheism was not Israel’s original ideology. Moreover, it may not have been its dominant belief system for quite some time, even though it would eventually become a signature element of the Jewish religion.

Accepting that certain aspects of our first three chapters of Genesis were written by someone comfortable with a monolatristic belief system, we now turn to the role of those verses cited above, Genesis 1:26 and 3:22. What is the purpose of the Adam and Eve story? Various later editors grafted onto the original narrative core a variety of themes that were foreign to the earliest mythological material. If we clear away those various additions, we end up with a legend that instructs us as to the difference between humans and gods.

In ancient Near Eastern religions, gods were immortal but not necessarily eternal. By that I mean: gods could live forever, but they could also be killed. The epic mentioned above, Enuma Elish , describes combat among the immortal gods, which results in the death of two particularly significant deities, Tiamat and Qingu. Tiamat is the Mother Goddess of creation—of the world of the gods, that is. Her offspring would eventually create humans as servants (as recorded in a variety of other ancient stories). This helps us understand the intent of that verse in Genesis 1:26, which depicts the deities coming together to make a being that was fundamentally like themselves—offspring, if you will. Humans, then, look just like gods, but they differ in the character of the knowledge they have or could have and in not having been granted immortality from birth.

The serpent in our story correctly perceives that the gods have subjected the first humans to a ruse. The threat about instantaneous death upon consuming of the trees is quite untrue. Had Adam and Eve eaten of both trees in the center of the garden they would have been transformed into the equivalent of deities. But since they ate only of the Tree of Knowledge, they were left with but two-thirds of a god’s characteristics. That is, we look like the gods (having been created in their image), and we have the ethical discernment of gods as a result of having eaten of the Tree of Knowledge. However, having failed to grab the fruit of eternal life before being banished from Eden, we did not acquire immortality.

Many of these details are shared with stories in other ancient cultures. For instance, Gilgamesh, King of Uruk (ancient Babylon), is also two-thirds god and one-third human (see Tablet I, line 46). Just as in the Genesis story, the missing third is immortality itself. After witnessing the murder of his closest friend, Enkidu, by the jealous goddess Ishtar, Gilgamesh sets out to find the secret of eternal life so as to avoid Enkidu’s fate. The secret of divine immortality turns out to be a certain “plant of rejuvenation,” which allows one to regain youth so as to live again with the wisdom acquired over the years. Gilgamesh, unsure as to the effects of eating the plant, hesitates to consume it. At that moment of hesitation, a snake sneaks up and carries the plant off. In effect, his delayed action proves to be his undoing.

The similar characteristics hardly require elucidation. Just as Gilgamesh achieves two-thirds of divine likeness, Adam and Eve are also, in effect, two-thirds gods. But, because they fail to eat of the plant of immortality, they fail to acquire that final third—as is the case with Gilgamesh. Both stories even involve a serpent, although the serpent’s deeper cultural significance remains ambiguous.

Despite these similarities, these represent two very different ways of narrating this core mythic theme. If we peel away the various strata placed upon the chapters by later authors, I think we can come close to reconstructing the original core story as follows:

The gods said, “Let us make humans [to serve us] that resemble us in appearance and form [only lacking understanding and immortality].” The gods did just that: they created the creature known as adam to resemble themselves in appearance—male and female. . . .

Yahveh , the chief god, placed the male and female in the Garden of Eden and said, “Of every tree in the garden you are free to eat; but as for the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, you shall not consume its fruit. As soon as you eat of it, you shall die. ” . . .

Now the serpent, being shrewd [grasped the divine ruse]. He approached the woman and said, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat of the trees of the garden?’” The woman replied to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the garden trees; only regarding the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, ‘You shall neither eat of it nor touch it, lest you die.’”

The serpent responded, “[This is not true. If you eat of that tree] you are not going to die. [The gods know that as soon as you eat of that tree you will grasp what is good and evil and you will become just like gods.]”

The woman ate of the Tree of Knowledge and did not die. She shared the fruit of that tree with the man, and he did not die. At that moment, Yahveh , supreme among the gods, was moving about the garden. The man and woman hid. Yahveh called to them. Upon finding them, he suspected that they had eaten of the Tree of Knowledge. . . .

To the other gods Yahveh proclaimed, “Now that man and woman have become like us in knowing good and evil, should he stretch out his hand and take from the Tree of Immortality, he will [rival us] and live forever!” At that moment, Yahveh drove them out of the garden and prevented their return by stationing cherubim and a fiery, ever-turning sword to guard access to the Tree of Immortality.
(Verses drawn from Genesis 1:26–31, 2:15–3:24)

I offer this as a reconstruction of the core story, upon which were grafted the ideas of nakedness as inappropriate, sin, and deception, along with the resulting punishments that now define the human condition (pain in childbirth, relentless working of the land, etc.). But the core story strikes me as more focused and profound than the final redacted version. It forces us to reflect upon just how much of life is as it is because of opportunities missed, because of hesitancy at moments that required boldness, because of our failures to scrutinize the truth of what we are told. And who among us, confronted with our own finitude, will not find this yearning for immortality-missed poignant?  (Return)

David H. Aaron received his doctorate from Brandeis University and ordination from the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati. He is professor of Hebrew Bible and History of Interpretation at HUC-JIR, CIncinnati. His most recent book is Etched in Stone: The Emergence of the Decalogue (T & T Clark, 2006