Imagination is essential to any kind of good Bible study. The following is an imaginative reconstruction of the Transgression in Eden, and an attempt to figure out what the place was like.
I have carefully studied the early chapters of Genesis over many years, and here are my conclusions. You will see that it is earth-shakingly different to the usual versions, if only for one reason: it lays the blame for the whole disaster where it belongs, at Adam’s door. The New Testament does just this, and we take that very carefully into account.
The Temptation in Eden
Coming as it does, at the beginning of all things, the temptation of Adam and Eve raises some extremely important questions, whose answers are all readily available in the New Testament. Believing as I do, that all Scripture is infallibly inspired by God, I make the assumption that comments in the NT on passages in the Old are correct, and valuable beyond price to our understanding of things. If we are inattentive to what it says, we are immeasurably the losers.
The first problem arises when we consider Romans 5, where remarkably, no fewer than 10 times, repeat, 10 times, the statement is made and extended that ‘by one man sin entered the world, and death by sin’.
12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
13 (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.
14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.
15 But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.
16 And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification.
17 For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.)
18 Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.
19 For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.
As we all know, Eve sinned first, by eating of the Tree, so how could Adam be said - no, flatly asserted - to be, the one by whom sin entered into the world? The common or garden explanation is that he ate of the fruit because he loved his wife, and was prepared to die with her. That he really hated her will be shown in what follows here.
The second problem arises from an observation to which no one seems to attach any importance at all. That observation is simply this: the serpent was in the Garden.
Doesn’t seem like much – until we ask, a. and b. How did it get in there? What was it doing in there?
The tasks given to Adam were two-fold.
“And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.” (Ge 2:15-16 AV)
First, he is to dress it: i.e. act as a gardener: weed, prune the trees, make sure the irrigation channels were open, pick up dead fruit, leaves etc etc. When we consider the fact that the Garden was probably the size of Jerusalem, and probably on the same site, you begin to see the size of this task.
Second, and very oddly, he is to ‘keep it’: the Hebrew is used of ‘to act as a watchman.’ Watchman? Against what? Well, if a herd of elephants decided to take a canter through the Garden, there wouldn’t be very much garden left, so he had to keep unwanted beasts out. Makes the task even bigger. While he was dressing the garden, he couldn’t be keeping it, and vice versa. So the Lord God made Eve, an help meet for him – he needed the assistance.
Therefore, I infer that Adam had the power to include, or exclude, any animals he saw fit. For example, I imagine that if he had to mow a lawn, say, he would whistle up a herd of goats or whatever to eat the grass at the required spot. Probably telepathy or something like it.
The second inference is an ugly one. The serpent was in the Garden because of one of these three things – no other possibilities occur to me.
[SIZE=12pt]a. Adam wanted it in and/or
b. Adam invited it or ordered it in and/or
c. Adam, when it was in, didn’t see fit to evict it.
The concept that God placed it there is abhorrent to me. Would you, having just planted up the most beautiful Garden conceivable, put a dirty great serpent, which may or may not have been a dangerous animal, in the middle of if? Certainly not – and absolutely not in order to tempt them. That is a ghastly idea, and Adam would certainly have picked up on it when he had to answer for his misdemeanour. “The serpent you put in here to tempt me, tempted me. So why are you blaming me?”
Making the reasonable assumption that Adam invited or ordered it in, we now inquire “Why did he do so?”[/SIZE]
We are faced with the extraordinary picture now, of the serpent on the Tree. How comes it that it is on/by this most special Tree of all? (I get the impression that it was on the Tree in all this incident.)
The answer comes from the observation that the animal, for so it was, could talk. No serpent before or since has ever been able to do so: and this leads me to the supposition that something extraordinary had happened to this particular beast. But what? I suggest that it had eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Only this supposition explains all the facts. Consider:
1 The animal could talk, and is more subtil (smart, wise) than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. How did this happen? Serpents aren’t discernibly smarter than other animals nowadays. Eating of the Tree explains this easily enough. The fruit clearly had unusual properties, as witness the effect on Adam and Eve, but since serpent physiologies were different, the effects were different too.
2 “When the woman saw that the tree was pleasant to the eyes, and good for food, and to be desired to make one wise, she took…” This is a very peculiar part of the whole transaction. So far she had been under the impression that if she ate of the Tree, or even touched it, she would die: and those instructions, she said, were from God Himself. If that is the case then what made her change her mind? Feminine curiosity? Inquisitiveness? Surely not. Not when her life might be at stake.
Look at it like this: Professor Linus Pauling, twice a Nobel-Prize winning laureate, says to you, a green undergraduate in his laboratory… “If you drink from that bottle, you will certainly die. Don’t do it!!!” Tell me, what could possibly convince you to drink from that bottle? He has never been wrong yet, so what would make you drink of that? I can hardly think of any circumstance save one that would make me do so.
But suppose I saw another student drink of it, and not only did he not die, but he obtained superpowers (such as the ability to fly) that I wanted, I would do so then. I think that is a fair assumption. Therefore I suggest that if Eve saw that the serpent was eating of the fruit, and not only surviving, but becoming able to talk, and be subtil, then there was a serious possibility that she would do it – and she did.
Adam was standing right there: (“..she gave to her husband with her and he did eat…”). Why did he not, on hearing all this, pick up a stick or something, and break the serpent’s back with it – or at least chase it out of the garden?
And why did he not say to Eve, “…you just touch that tree Eve, and I promise you won’t sit down for a month!!!” ?
He did neither of these things. Why not? A further indication that he was there lies in the serpent’s statement : “…ye shall not surely die” which is perfectly natural if it was talking to both of them, but less so if it wasn’t. Nor is it unreasonable to suppose that since Adam was the Keeper of the Garden, he would have kept a special eye on this most special of all Trees.
The whole thing makes very little sense until the New Testament sheds light on the incident, but it in a quite unexpected way.
[SIZE=12pt]The apostle makes a gigantic contrast between the Lord Jesus’ actions, and Adam’s in Philippians 2. The relevant words are: “Who being in the form of God (as Adam was in God’s image and likeness) thought equality with God (RV) (Ye shall be as gods..) not a thing to be grasped (RVm)…”
This passage shows clearly that it was equality with God that was being ‘snatched’ here. That was the real offence. It wasn’t the beauty of the tree or its fruit: there were plenty of other trees that were ‘pleasant to the eyes’ – in fact, all of them in the Garden were. It wasn’t the fact that it was ‘good for food’: they had enough of that elsewhere. It was the third element that was important: to be equal with God. None of the other trees could confer that one thing. And that was the thing that Adam snatched at.
The second comment by the apostle on the incident is in 1 Timothy, where he states, again unequivocally, that “Adam was not deceived.” In other words, what he did, he did with malice aforethought. He disobeyed God wilfully. It will not do to say it was because of his love for Eve that he did this: the proper course of action would have been to do as the Lord Jesus did: to say to God “Lord, she has sinned. Slay me instead.” Adam didn’t – not because he wasn’t bright enough to figure that one out, but for another, very dangerous reason.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]It is appropriate to point out here that there is a Law of Physics which states the every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The magnitude of the offence in God’s eyes, is demonstrated by the magnitude of the consequences. The Law of Moses is full of examples of this. The consequences of that sin, in terms of pain and suffering and death have been incalculable. Therefore, this was the greatest sin ever committed in the history of mankind. Hitler, Mussolini, Attila, Saddam Hussain were all kindergarten kids by comparison. Hitler managed to murder six million Jews. Adam killed the whole world. By this, we can assess the magnitude and nature of that sin.
How can eating the fruit of a tree possibly be regarded by a just God as sufficiently heinous to warrant the consequences that have flowed from there? If someone climbed over the fence at night and stole your prize grapes or something, would you, as a judge passing sentence, have him, his wife and every last one of his children and grandchildren executed? For the next n generations? No, there has got to be more here than meets the eye. Just why did God regard this act as the most appalling in the history of the world?
The key was given above. It was because Adam grasped/snatched at equality with God. But how, and just as important, why?[/SIZE]
The Answer
The first thing that Adam heard, on opening his eyes for the first time was this:
“ And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” (Ge 1:28 AV)
Adam, in other words, was to be the Lord of the planet, filling it with his descendants, subduing it to his will, having dominion over all life on the planet. He was ‘a little lower than the angels’ so the height of his exaltation was not inconsiderable. And yet, here he was in this place, pulling weeds, picking up dead leaves and fruit and thoroughly menial it all was too. A gardener. And a man of such intellect too! Naming all the animals that were brought to him require taxonomic abilities and vocabulary of a very high order indeed.
He wanted to be like God – the Lord of all creation. He wanted the fulfilment of that prophecy, spoken at his ‘birth’ to be fulfilled NOW. His pride got hold of him, and his attitude stank. Listen to this, spoken after the creation of Eve:
“ And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” (Ge 2:23 AV)
Do you hear a word of thankfulness to God for His consideration for him? Is there a prayer of rejoicing there? Not a vestige. He had walked and talked with angels, so why be beholden to them? It was his body that that taken the knock, not theirs. She had come from him, and he barely avoids taking the total credit for her creation. Extraordinary ingratitude is a fair summary here, I think, verging on the insolent.
So just how was he going to fulfil that prophecy and become the Lord of all creation? Certainly not by pulling weeds! There was only one thing for it – God had said, don’t eat of that tree. Why not? he asked himself. Why, because if he ate of it, he would become like God Himself, and God didn’t want that now, did He? Hmmmmm. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God must know good and evil – and He wants to keep it from me. Hmmmm. Let me try it.
There was a problem.
God said, that if I eat of the Tree, I will surely die. He’s never wrong. So what do I do? Why, let’s conduct a little experiment. A little animal experiment. Let’s see what happens to a serpent. He calls up the serpent, and makes it eat of the Tree.
Lo and behold, the experiment worked. It didn’t die, and better still, it gained the power of speech.
I think, you see, that there is a very large grain of truth in these speculations. I think that Adam now spoke to the serpent on one or two occasions, and communicated all of his thought processes out loud to the animal, which soaks it up and later regurgitates the material.
Have you ever noticed that the first words to Eve are ‘Yea, hath God said…?’ This is not the start of a conversation, it is the continuation of one, and we are not told with whom. Eve sounds totally surprised by the question and gives the absolutely correct answer – because it was the only one she knew. She shows no surprise at the fact that the serpent is there on the Tree: which indicates that it had been there before. What she didn’t know was where it was all going, and that she herself was in extreme danger.
As I said before, as far as she knew, and as far as Adam knew, this was a lethal fruit. Adam was standing right there ‘with her’ as I have pointed out – and he doesn’t say a word to stop her. This is impossible to understand, except on the supposition that he had passed the animal experiment stage, and now needed a human subject. Which human subject? Not he himself. Oh no. That was too dangerous. So who then? Eve, of course. If she died, so what? The Tree of Life was standing right there. That might save her. And in any case, he had other ribs.
In case you think this is too far fetched, listen to what the Lord said: “Ye are of your father the devil. He was a murderer from the beginning…” I used to think that He was talking about Cain, but in the light of the foregoing, it is pretty obvious that He was talking about Adam.
Adam was willing to let Eve administer that poison to herself, and say nothing. Adam had let the serpent in. Adam had filled it full of guff. And now Adam was willing to let her die – all in his pursuit of equality with God. He didn’t love her – he hated her. He was a murderer, right from the beginning – and he ended by successfully murdering the world.
Isn’t it interesting, too, that he points to Adam as their father, and names him as ‘the devil’ – and so significantly in this context, the ‘false accuser’ – of God!!!
Far too many people regard the garden of Eden Story as a fairy tale. But Jesus didn’t, and that alone should settle the question for anyone who calls him or herself a disciple of His. Paul the Apostle certainly regarded the story as truth, and the great Book of Revelation, despite its complexities does so too. Far be it, then, for us, humble students of His Word, to depart from that position. It just isn’t good enough.I have carefully studied the early chapters of Genesis over many years, and here are my conclusions. You will see that it is earth-shakingly different to the usual versions, if only for one reason: it lays the blame for the whole disaster where it belongs, at Adam’s door. The New Testament does just this, and we take that very carefully into account.
The Temptation in Eden
Coming as it does, at the beginning of all things, the temptation of Adam and Eve raises some extremely important questions, whose answers are all readily available in the New Testament. Believing as I do, that all Scripture is infallibly inspired by God, I make the assumption that comments in the NT on passages in the Old are correct, and valuable beyond price to our understanding of things. If we are inattentive to what it says, we are immeasurably the losers.
The first problem arises when we consider Romans 5, where remarkably, no fewer than 10 times, repeat, 10 times, the statement is made and extended that ‘by one man sin entered the world, and death by sin’.
12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
13 (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.
14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.
15 But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.
16 And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification.
17 For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.)
18 Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.
19 For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.
As we all know, Eve sinned first, by eating of the Tree, so how could Adam be said - no, flatly asserted - to be, the one by whom sin entered into the world? The common or garden explanation is that he ate of the fruit because he loved his wife, and was prepared to die with her. That he really hated her will be shown in what follows here.
The second problem arises from an observation to which no one seems to attach any importance at all. That observation is simply this: the serpent was in the Garden.
Doesn’t seem like much – until we ask, a. and b. How did it get in there? What was it doing in there?
The tasks given to Adam were two-fold.
“And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.” (Ge 2:15-16 AV)
First, he is to dress it: i.e. act as a gardener: weed, prune the trees, make sure the irrigation channels were open, pick up dead fruit, leaves etc etc. When we consider the fact that the Garden was probably the size of Jerusalem, and probably on the same site, you begin to see the size of this task.
Second, and very oddly, he is to ‘keep it’: the Hebrew is used of ‘to act as a watchman.’ Watchman? Against what? Well, if a herd of elephants decided to take a canter through the Garden, there wouldn’t be very much garden left, so he had to keep unwanted beasts out. Makes the task even bigger. While he was dressing the garden, he couldn’t be keeping it, and vice versa. So the Lord God made Eve, an help meet for him – he needed the assistance.
Therefore, I infer that Adam had the power to include, or exclude, any animals he saw fit. For example, I imagine that if he had to mow a lawn, say, he would whistle up a herd of goats or whatever to eat the grass at the required spot. Probably telepathy or something like it.
The second inference is an ugly one. The serpent was in the Garden because of one of these three things – no other possibilities occur to me.
[SIZE=12pt]a. Adam wanted it in and/or
b. Adam invited it or ordered it in and/or
c. Adam, when it was in, didn’t see fit to evict it.
The concept that God placed it there is abhorrent to me. Would you, having just planted up the most beautiful Garden conceivable, put a dirty great serpent, which may or may not have been a dangerous animal, in the middle of if? Certainly not – and absolutely not in order to tempt them. That is a ghastly idea, and Adam would certainly have picked up on it when he had to answer for his misdemeanour. “The serpent you put in here to tempt me, tempted me. So why are you blaming me?”
Making the reasonable assumption that Adam invited or ordered it in, we now inquire “Why did he do so?”[/SIZE]
We are faced with the extraordinary picture now, of the serpent on the Tree. How comes it that it is on/by this most special Tree of all? (I get the impression that it was on the Tree in all this incident.)
The answer comes from the observation that the animal, for so it was, could talk. No serpent before or since has ever been able to do so: and this leads me to the supposition that something extraordinary had happened to this particular beast. But what? I suggest that it had eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Only this supposition explains all the facts. Consider:
1 The animal could talk, and is more subtil (smart, wise) than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. How did this happen? Serpents aren’t discernibly smarter than other animals nowadays. Eating of the Tree explains this easily enough. The fruit clearly had unusual properties, as witness the effect on Adam and Eve, but since serpent physiologies were different, the effects were different too.
2 “When the woman saw that the tree was pleasant to the eyes, and good for food, and to be desired to make one wise, she took…” This is a very peculiar part of the whole transaction. So far she had been under the impression that if she ate of the Tree, or even touched it, she would die: and those instructions, she said, were from God Himself. If that is the case then what made her change her mind? Feminine curiosity? Inquisitiveness? Surely not. Not when her life might be at stake.
Look at it like this: Professor Linus Pauling, twice a Nobel-Prize winning laureate, says to you, a green undergraduate in his laboratory… “If you drink from that bottle, you will certainly die. Don’t do it!!!” Tell me, what could possibly convince you to drink from that bottle? He has never been wrong yet, so what would make you drink of that? I can hardly think of any circumstance save one that would make me do so.
But suppose I saw another student drink of it, and not only did he not die, but he obtained superpowers (such as the ability to fly) that I wanted, I would do so then. I think that is a fair assumption. Therefore I suggest that if Eve saw that the serpent was eating of the fruit, and not only surviving, but becoming able to talk, and be subtil, then there was a serious possibility that she would do it – and she did.
Adam was standing right there: (“..she gave to her husband with her and he did eat…”). Why did he not, on hearing all this, pick up a stick or something, and break the serpent’s back with it – or at least chase it out of the garden?
And why did he not say to Eve, “…you just touch that tree Eve, and I promise you won’t sit down for a month!!!” ?
He did neither of these things. Why not? A further indication that he was there lies in the serpent’s statement : “…ye shall not surely die” which is perfectly natural if it was talking to both of them, but less so if it wasn’t. Nor is it unreasonable to suppose that since Adam was the Keeper of the Garden, he would have kept a special eye on this most special of all Trees.
The whole thing makes very little sense until the New Testament sheds light on the incident, but it in a quite unexpected way.
[SIZE=12pt]The apostle makes a gigantic contrast between the Lord Jesus’ actions, and Adam’s in Philippians 2. The relevant words are: “Who being in the form of God (as Adam was in God’s image and likeness) thought equality with God (RV) (Ye shall be as gods..) not a thing to be grasped (RVm)…”
This passage shows clearly that it was equality with God that was being ‘snatched’ here. That was the real offence. It wasn’t the beauty of the tree or its fruit: there were plenty of other trees that were ‘pleasant to the eyes’ – in fact, all of them in the Garden were. It wasn’t the fact that it was ‘good for food’: they had enough of that elsewhere. It was the third element that was important: to be equal with God. None of the other trees could confer that one thing. And that was the thing that Adam snatched at.
The second comment by the apostle on the incident is in 1 Timothy, where he states, again unequivocally, that “Adam was not deceived.” In other words, what he did, he did with malice aforethought. He disobeyed God wilfully. It will not do to say it was because of his love for Eve that he did this: the proper course of action would have been to do as the Lord Jesus did: to say to God “Lord, she has sinned. Slay me instead.” Adam didn’t – not because he wasn’t bright enough to figure that one out, but for another, very dangerous reason.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]It is appropriate to point out here that there is a Law of Physics which states the every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The magnitude of the offence in God’s eyes, is demonstrated by the magnitude of the consequences. The Law of Moses is full of examples of this. The consequences of that sin, in terms of pain and suffering and death have been incalculable. Therefore, this was the greatest sin ever committed in the history of mankind. Hitler, Mussolini, Attila, Saddam Hussain were all kindergarten kids by comparison. Hitler managed to murder six million Jews. Adam killed the whole world. By this, we can assess the magnitude and nature of that sin.
How can eating the fruit of a tree possibly be regarded by a just God as sufficiently heinous to warrant the consequences that have flowed from there? If someone climbed over the fence at night and stole your prize grapes or something, would you, as a judge passing sentence, have him, his wife and every last one of his children and grandchildren executed? For the next n generations? No, there has got to be more here than meets the eye. Just why did God regard this act as the most appalling in the history of the world?
The key was given above. It was because Adam grasped/snatched at equality with God. But how, and just as important, why?[/SIZE]
The Answer
The first thing that Adam heard, on opening his eyes for the first time was this:
“ And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” (Ge 1:28 AV)
Adam, in other words, was to be the Lord of the planet, filling it with his descendants, subduing it to his will, having dominion over all life on the planet. He was ‘a little lower than the angels’ so the height of his exaltation was not inconsiderable. And yet, here he was in this place, pulling weeds, picking up dead leaves and fruit and thoroughly menial it all was too. A gardener. And a man of such intellect too! Naming all the animals that were brought to him require taxonomic abilities and vocabulary of a very high order indeed.
He wanted to be like God – the Lord of all creation. He wanted the fulfilment of that prophecy, spoken at his ‘birth’ to be fulfilled NOW. His pride got hold of him, and his attitude stank. Listen to this, spoken after the creation of Eve:
“ And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” (Ge 2:23 AV)
Do you hear a word of thankfulness to God for His consideration for him? Is there a prayer of rejoicing there? Not a vestige. He had walked and talked with angels, so why be beholden to them? It was his body that that taken the knock, not theirs. She had come from him, and he barely avoids taking the total credit for her creation. Extraordinary ingratitude is a fair summary here, I think, verging on the insolent.
So just how was he going to fulfil that prophecy and become the Lord of all creation? Certainly not by pulling weeds! There was only one thing for it – God had said, don’t eat of that tree. Why not? he asked himself. Why, because if he ate of it, he would become like God Himself, and God didn’t want that now, did He? Hmmmmm. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God must know good and evil – and He wants to keep it from me. Hmmmm. Let me try it.
There was a problem.
God said, that if I eat of the Tree, I will surely die. He’s never wrong. So what do I do? Why, let’s conduct a little experiment. A little animal experiment. Let’s see what happens to a serpent. He calls up the serpent, and makes it eat of the Tree.
Lo and behold, the experiment worked. It didn’t die, and better still, it gained the power of speech.
I think, you see, that there is a very large grain of truth in these speculations. I think that Adam now spoke to the serpent on one or two occasions, and communicated all of his thought processes out loud to the animal, which soaks it up and later regurgitates the material.
Have you ever noticed that the first words to Eve are ‘Yea, hath God said…?’ This is not the start of a conversation, it is the continuation of one, and we are not told with whom. Eve sounds totally surprised by the question and gives the absolutely correct answer – because it was the only one she knew. She shows no surprise at the fact that the serpent is there on the Tree: which indicates that it had been there before. What she didn’t know was where it was all going, and that she herself was in extreme danger.
As I said before, as far as she knew, and as far as Adam knew, this was a lethal fruit. Adam was standing right there ‘with her’ as I have pointed out – and he doesn’t say a word to stop her. This is impossible to understand, except on the supposition that he had passed the animal experiment stage, and now needed a human subject. Which human subject? Not he himself. Oh no. That was too dangerous. So who then? Eve, of course. If she died, so what? The Tree of Life was standing right there. That might save her. And in any case, he had other ribs.
In case you think this is too far fetched, listen to what the Lord said: “Ye are of your father the devil. He was a murderer from the beginning…” I used to think that He was talking about Cain, but in the light of the foregoing, it is pretty obvious that He was talking about Adam.
Adam was willing to let Eve administer that poison to herself, and say nothing. Adam had let the serpent in. Adam had filled it full of guff. And now Adam was willing to let her die – all in his pursuit of equality with God. He didn’t love her – he hated her. He was a murderer, right from the beginning – and he ended by successfully murdering the world.
Isn’t it interesting, too, that he points to Adam as their father, and names him as ‘the devil’ – and so significantly in this context, the ‘false accuser’ – of God!!!
