But of the tree of the Ye shall not surely die.
knowledge of good and evil, For God doth know that in
thou shalt not eat of it: for the day ye eat thereof, then
in the day that thou eatest your eyes shall be opened, and
thereof thou shalt surely ye shall be as gods, knowing
die.* good and evil. **
* This was spoken to Adam alone, for as yet Eve was not
created. See Genesis ii, 16, 17.
** Ibid. iii, 5.
Which of the two speakers told the truth? Adam and Eve did not die on the day they ate of the tree, as God had said they would—Adam lived to be nine hundred years old—and their eyes were opened to know good and evil, just as the devil had predicted. We have already anticipated and answered the argument that when God said they would die on the day they ate of the forbidden tree, he meant they would become mortal. They were not immortal before they had tasted of the fruit, since God expelled them from Eden to prevent them from eating also of the tree of life and becoming immortal.
To few of the readers of the bible has it ever occurred that the first commandment God ever gave to man practically made the acquisition of knowledge a crime. The truth is that the first commandment of every revealed religion is a "Thou shalt not know." According to Genesis, the Lord offered a Paradise to man on condition that he steer clear of knowledge. There has been considerable discussion as to the precise location of the Garden of Eden. But if we do not know where the Garden of Eden was, we know very well what it was. The Garden of Eden was—Ignorance. This is the Paradise which the revealed religions offer to man. To know is to be expelled from Paradise. After God had placed Adam in Paradise, that is to say, in a state of ignorance, he said to him: "Thou shalt not eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge," threatening him at the same time with death on the day that he ate of the fruit of that tree. Everything else was permitted save the acquisition of knowledge. On the day that man opened his eyes he lost the paradise of the gods—Ignorance!
It has been customary to trace modern scepticism, or free inquiry, to the eighteenth century, or to the Renaissance; but in reality modern thought began with Adam in the Garden of Eden—assuming for the time being the correctness of the narrative. Man broke the very first commandment the gods ever gave, "Thou shalt not know," and by so doing he became himself a menace to the gods. That is very interesting. It was not man who died on the day the fruit of knowledge was plucked; it was the gods. "Take care!" said man to God. "Take care! The day on which I eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge thou shalt die!" It is now admitted by the foremost biblical scholars that there are really two different stories of the creation of man in the first and second chapters of the bible. The universe is called into being by Elohim in the first; while Jahve is the name of the creator in the second. Another important difference between the two accounts of the creation is that in the one, man appears before the deity has completed the creation of the heaven and the earth; while in the other man is the last thing God creates. It will be observed also that there is not a word said in the second account about man being made in the image of God, or of his being created male and female; while there is nothing in the first account about a garden or a forbidden tree. On the contrary, in the earlier story every tree is given for "meat" unto the man and the woman, who were created at the same time, and not the one out of a rib of the other, and at a later time, as is related in the second account. In the first, or Elohistic story, God blesses Adam and Eve and commands them to "be fruitful and multiply"; in the second, or Jehovistic story, child-bearing is not a blessing, but a curse pronounced upon the woman for having eaten of the forbidden fruit. Eve has no offspring until she is expelled from Paradise in the second version, while in the first, Adam and Eve are commanded from the start to "multiply and replenish the earth."
But why are both stories published? In all probability, to satisfy both the Elohistic and Jehovistic factions. It is also probable that the different accounts are the work of different compilers or collectors of news. The bible gives many signs of being a miscellany of floating reports and rumors, or "they says," picked up here and there, and put together very loosely. Nor should we be surprised at the differences between the Elohistic and Jehovistic writers, for they are not more hopelessly at variance with each other than are the evangelists who tell the story of Jesus.
II. Taboo and Totem.
WHAT is the most probable explanation of the Garden of Eden story, whether in its Babylonian or Hebrew form? To answer this question and also to help explain many of the institutions and ceremonial observances in the bible, it will be necessary to acquaint ourselves with the meaning of certain words, such as taboo, totem and magic. The word taboo has come into the modern language from the Polynesian, and it means forbidden. And yet there is a fundamental difference between a thing which is forbidden in the English sense of that word, and a thing which is taboo in the sense which primitive races attached to that word. For example, when we see a notice which reads, "Passengers are forbidden to stand on the platform of the train," or "Smoking not allowed in the dining-car," the object of the interdiction is in either case perfectly plain. We know why the act in question is prohibited. There is no suggestion of mystery about it. A thing that is taboo, however, is so for a reason which is undiscoverable. The bible forbids the eating of pork. Why? The theologians try to explain that the prohibition against pork had a sanitary motive. Such an answer is tantamount to an admission on their part that they have not studied the bible with any care at all. To say that Moses objected to pork on sanitary grounds would be about as reasonable as to say that he commanded the extermination of Gentiles on humanitarian grounds. Yet many fall into the mistake of supposing that it was the fear of leprosy, or the thread-worm, which induced the Jewish legislator to place swine's flesh under a ban. To see how inadequate this explanation is, all we have to do is to remember that in all the bible there is not a single disease of any kind which is caused by the eating or the drinking of anything. Disease in the bible is supernatural. Meats or vegetables, the observance or neglect of dietary and sanitary laws, have absolutely nothing to do with the coming or going of a pestilence. Health, in the bible, has no more to do with cleanliness of the body, with the use of soap, or moderation and prudence in eating and drinking, than success in war, or prosperity in life has with personal merit or effort. It is God who sends both health and sickness, famine or the plague, as he sends manna from the clouds and quails from the sea. To win a battle the people had only to stand still, and see the Lord fight for them. Not until the Greeks appeared in history was it discovered that health and sickness had natural causes, and that the gods had nothing whatever to do with them. What, then, is the explanation of the interdict against swine's flesh in the bible? Before answering that, let us look at a few other examples, of taboo in the Old Testament.