The Great Tragedy
BUT it is when we come to read the bible story of the creation of man that its unreliability becomes more manifest than ever. The story of Adam and Eve seems to have been lifted bodily out of some foreign document. This is evident from the fact that it is never referred to again throughout the Old Testament. When the Jews were carried into captivity they became familiar with the Babylonian legend of creation, its Garden of Eden, the serpent, the forbidden tree, the fall of man, etc. The name of the first man in the Babylonian story was Adami.
The belief that man was formed out of the earth is very ancient. Men saw dead bodies return to dust, and, naturally enough, they inferred from it that man was made out of the dust of the earth.
In the Jewish story, as related in the second chapter of Genesis, the first man was a bachelor, and if he had liked that sort of life, woman, in all probability, would never have been created. It is suggested in the story that God asked Adam to choose a companion from among the animals, which were made to pass before him, that he might name them, and if possible select from among them a companion for himself:
And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an helpmeet for him. *
Adam was lonely:
And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs... and the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. **
* Genesis ii, 20.
** Ibid. 21-22.
The story of the temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, on which the whole theological system of the churches is built, is so crude that it can not stand any kind of an examination. Adam and Eve, for instance, are warned against the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. But, really, they did not have to eat of this tree to be able to tell good from evil, for they already knew the difference. When Adam saw God, his maker, did he not love and honor him? If so, he knew what was good. Did he not love his garden home? If so, he could tell what was good. And did he not rejoice when Eve appeared before him with the freshness of beauty in her cheeks and the sparkle of love in her eyes? If so, Adam knew what was bliss. What was the object, then, of telling Adam that he must not learn to distinguish good from evil? Did not Adam and Eve enjoy their daily walks and musings? Did they not see that the trees and the flowers springing up at their feet were fair to look upon? Were they not able to smell the fragrance that came with each passing zepyhr, or to feast on the luxury of shade and color that greeted their eyes? Did not the song of the birds wake melodies in their souls? Surely they were not wooden beings without either feeling or taste; yet, if they could feel and choose, they certainly knew what was good and what was not good before they ate of the magical tree in Eden.
Again, were not Adam and Eve made in the image of God? How, then, could they be ignorant of good and evil? If they could not tell the difference between good and evil, or between God and the devil, in what sense were they created moral beings? A man really created in the likeness of God does not have to eat of a tree before he can tell right from wrong.