Thursday, July 23, 2015

Double Tree

In the fashion world, a doublet is a man’s close-fitting jacket that was worn in Europe during the Renaissance. In biblical studies, a doublet refers to a duplicate version of a saying or narrative. The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is so familiar to most people that we don’t notice little inconsistencies and oddities like doublets. There are at least 3 in Genesis 2-3:
  1. 2:8a (“And YHWH God planted a garden in Eden, in the east”) and 2:9 (“And YHWH God made grow from the ground all kinds of trees, pleasant to look at and good to eat, and the tree of life in the middle of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”)
  2. 2:8b (“and there he put the human whom he had formed”) and 2:15a (“And YHWH God took the human and put him in the garden of Eden, to till and watch over it.”)
  3. 3:23 (“So YHWH God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken”) and 3:24 (“And God expelled the human and he placed at the east of the garden Eden the cherubim and the flickering flaming sword, to guard the way to the tree of life.”) 
Sometimes lines are repeated for stylistic effect, as may be the case with 2:8b and 2:15a. In between these two verses lies a passage (2:10-14) describing a river passing through Eden that branches out to become four great rivers. Even the casual reader notices that these verses interrupt the narrative flow. The literary style is more enumerative than narrative. Either the author is trying to situate Eden geographically or making a theological point about how the life-giving waters of the great rivers derive from the mighty river that watered Eden. Resuming v. 8b in 15a could be the author’s way of picking up the narrative where he left off.

But the other two doublets occur back-to-back, so this is a likely indication of two different sources. In 2:9, the emphasis is on the trees of the garden, specifically the “tree of life” and the “tree of knowledge,” although mention of the tree of knowledge seems like an afterthought. The tree of life is identified as the tree “in the middle of the garden,” but after this verse it disappears from the story until it re-appears at the end (at 3:22, 24). It is the tree of knowledge that is the forbidden tree in 2:17, but by 3:3 the tree in the middle of the garden is the forbidden tree. Something odd is going on here.

The composite nature of Gen 2-3 has led biblical scholars to hypothesize that there were two primeval stories that were carefully stitched together. Narrative A (2:4b-8, 18-24) describes the creation of humanity. Narrative B (2:9a, 15-17; 3:1-13, 23) recounts the expulsion from the garden. To these core tales, the author added additional material, such as the rivers interlude (2:10-14), the penalties for disobedience (3:14-19), and the naming of Eve (3:20).

In the original form of narrative B, the tree in the middle of the garden was not named. The text only says that humans were forbidden to eat of it, yet the humans deemed it pleasant-looking and desirable for the acquisition of wisdom (3:6). The name for the tree was created by the author in the introduction (2:9, 17) based on the effect that its fruit had on the human couple once they ate it. (BTW, in Latin, the word for evil is malum and the word for apple is malus. The Bible does not say the forbidden fruit was an apple, but the similarity of names in Latin led to that connection.)

"Fall of Man" by Rubens
"Fall of Man" (1628-29), painting by Rubens
The “tree of life” mentioned in 2:9 is a well-known symbol in both the Bible (for example, Prov 11:30) and other cultures in the ANE. The tree of life was something that humankind struggled for but could never attain. The vv. 3:22, 24 that were tacked on to the end of narrative B comes from a parallel story explaining how YHWH had to expel humans from the garden and set a sentinel at the entrance to prevent humans from eating from the tree of life. The author is telling us that a similar event was associated with the tree of life as was with the tree of knowledge.

The “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” is a symbol that only appears in Gen 2-3. The term “good and evil” is a figure of speech called a merism that uses extreme opposites to refer to the whole (for example, saying “heaven and earth” to mean the entire cosmos). It is another way of saying “the tree of all knowledge.” It should not be understood as moral awareness, that is, learning to distinguish good from evil. “Knowledge” in the Bible refers not to the learning of facts but to knowledge gained through experience.

By linking two stories of two different trees, one of life and one of knowledge, the author is trying to express how humans are built in such a way that they crave to advance their life and also to advance their knowledge. The barrier of death prevents them from achieving the goal of living forever, but there is no real barrier to our ability to advance in knowledge or wisdom. Our ability to think and grow in knowledge separates us from the animals. In our ability to strive for all knowledge, humans have the potential “to become like God.” That is what the author is trying to tell us.

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