Having a bit of a kerfluffle about the Garden of Eden story this week. Specifically, God’s edict to Adam and Eve that if they ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, “in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die”.
At tha point, they werent immortal. The Tree of Life was in Eden too, and its fruit was not forbidden to them. They were welcome to immortality, apparently, unless and until they purloined the divine knowledge of good and evil. But as created, they were going to die eventually anyway.
Why didnt they nosh of the Tree of Life first, and save us all this suffering? Welp: remember, at this point, they dont know what “good” means. They dont know what ”evil” means. They dont know what ”die” means.
And, they don’t die ”in that day”; they and their descendants go on living for hundreds of years. Adam finally dies aged 832. Not until Genesis 6:3 does God get around to limiting man’s lifespan to 120 years.
Still, the received knowledge about the Eden story is that they—we-would have lived ”forever” if they hadnt disobeyed.
That led me to thinking about what ”forever” means in folk tales like the Eden story. it really isnt ”eternity” its more like the time period in ”happily ever after” in a fairy tale: a long, long duration of a temporal period, so long you cant see the end of it. Like what a child envisions when he says ”when i grow up”, or a young adult when she says ”when i am old”. It’s going to happen, but its so far off, and so incomprehensible, that theres just no need to worry about it today. It is the blesséd period when time is on your side.
And that duration has a name:
SEMPITERNITY.
Its different from eternity, which is NOT temporal; eternity is outside time. Eternity is a different dimension.
Think of the central metaphor of our faith: the Shepherd and the sheep. When the shepherd kills a wolf and saves a lamb, the lamb doesnt think, “Wow, that was a close one, but of course you, Shepherd, are just gonna slaughter me soon anyway.” It only knows it was about to be ripped to shreds and now, it isnt. Right now, it’s safe. Even though it is sooner of later destined to become dinner, or a burnt offering. I’ve read that the last line of the 23rd Psalm would be more accurately rendered “…..and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for a long time”, rather than ”forever”. A long life, a “sempiternity” (and numerous progeny) , is the only blessing God always promises people in the Old Testament.
“ I saw Eternity the other night/ Like a great ring of pure and endless light” wrote Henry Vaughn ( as though he had run into Eternity slumming it in a pub, or sump’n) .But most of us never make Eternity’s acquaintance, Couldn’t recognize it if we bumped into it. All we know is that Time giveth, and Time taketh away.
ST UnWoked & UnVaxxed! 
Hyp, this is cool! JBP has a neat reflection on the story of the Fall; will link it for you when I’m at the PC. Also, my pastor often says that the Eucharistic portion of the Mass takes believers into eternity, so that when one is called Home, it won’t be unfamiliar. We will have visited it every week – or every day – at Mass. This reflection made me think of those words.
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Here’s JBP on The Fall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vBRGWoK6_4&t=93s ~25 minutes
and here, on the entrance of evil, via Cain and Abel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vBRGWoK6_4 ~20 minutes
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I listened to the Peterson thing twice. I would really be interested in knowing what you take from it, Nanda. First, the story itself. He’s right, it is a prototype of a very old folktale, every culture has one, which asks the question:
why dont WE live and stay young “forever”, like the snake does?
When I told my daughter, aged around 8, that the snake is a symbol of immortality because people observed the shedding of the skin and used to believe it just went on doing that forever, she asked, “Didn’t they ever see a dead snake?” Although I didn’t know it then, that illustrates the idea of sempiternity perfectly. It wasn’t that a snake couldn’t be killed, of course the ancients must have seen plenty of them crushed by cart wheels and the like—but in the normal course of events, they wouldn’t just die of old age, like we do, they’d go on for an infinite, although temporal, duration.
So far so good, but …how does tht relate to sin? He makes.a big point of how predator animals can’t be evil, they simply act upon their natures. How could man have been evil then, when he ate the forbidden fruit? We were like an animal before then, we didn’t know good from evil.
I think he’s right that the story is also about the birth of self-consciousness. As MacLeish has Eve say:
“Apple eaten of that Tree
Animal I ceased to be.
‘She has a Watcher in her eyes!’
the hawk screamed from steep of skies,
Fish from sea-deep where he lies.”
I mean, the first humans must’ve noticed that animals were more afraid of them than they seem to be of other animals. And that animals don’t seem to worry so much, and that they don’t control their impulses.
if Peterson mentioned the rôle and nature of the snake. I missed it.
He seems to be saying the Fall was a good nd necessary thing because humans exercised their right to choice. Without limitations there is no freedom. So is he saying the first disobedience was NOT evil, but Cain’s assault was? Why? Actually the law had not been given yet, so why SHOULDNT Cain have assumed that even killing was justifiable in order to get greater favor with God? Both Cain and Abel brought God the fruits of their labors, but God, for an unexplained reason, holds His nose at Cain’s offering. (What does Genesis 4:7 mean?)
IMHO you cannot! on one hand distance yourself from the Genesis stories as just old folk tales , and THEN go on to the “free will” “choice” discussion. Because if it weren’t for that story, we Jews and Christians and Muslims would not be having that discussion. There could just as easily have been a Creation myth wherein God deliberately creates man as imperfect, or even that man’s emergence, complete with his nature both violent and loving is just an accident.
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Recall that JBP is a clinical psychologist, Hyp, and sees things in psychodynamic terms. The emergence of self-awareness, individuation, etc. is a good, for him – and for us – because it enables relationship with God. The Exsultet at Pascha: “O happy fault/O necessary sin of Adam/That won for us so great a Redeemer.” C.S. Lewis, in _The Problem of Pain_, posits that self-awareness was a step backward, into pain; before the Fall, he said, even autonomic bodily processes – like circulation – were in tune with God’s desires. There’s a dilemma, eh? More later on….
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“His nose at Cain’s offering.”
This has always troubled me as well. As an on again off again farmer, I don’t get the blood offering trumps all others. Farmers are people too!
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Tempus Fugit
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Shared links now posted, as promised, ST.
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Nanda,maybe Eternity is “home”, but to me it always seems “home” is an earthly word.
in the Idylls of the King, when Arthur receives his sword Excalibur at the beginning of his reign, he is dismayed because on one side of the blade is graven “Take Me up”, but the other side reads “Cast Me Away”. But Merlin calls him back to his sempiternity: “The time to cast away/ Is yet far off”…sempiternity is where we live, blessedly,,for as long as we can. This makes me think of Larkin’s poem:
“What are days for?/ Days are where we live./ They come,they wake us/ Time and time over./ They are to be happy in:/ Where can we live but days?”
“Red-troubled days”….
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Sempiternity seems ripe for pleasant invasion by Serendipity, doesn’t it, Hyp?
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“His nose at Cain’s offering.”
This has always troubled me as well. As an on again off again farmer, I don’t get the blood offering trumps all others. Farmers are people too!
Indeed, farmers are some of the best people, ST…In the ancient mind blood was seen as the life source/life force; so giving a life back to the One who created it is the ultimate offering. Grudging giving – emphasis on grudging – offering of grain, etc., which can easily be replaced, is a less complete, more conditional gift on Cain’s part.
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To all my American friends, a very happy Independence Day.
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Thanks Commander. Hope to visit your country soon.
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