The story of the Fall commences roughly on the third page of Genesis; where it falls depends on print size. It is the very opener of the story. The story of Creation sketches in the setting, but the setting is not elaborated. We hear something more about Adam and Eve and how they came about, but nothing like a history of their lives in Paradise. The human events begin with the Fall. If this were not our own at least inherited myth—inherited by way of the decline of the last civilization and the myth’s acceptance by our own, in Christendom—but there promoted to the status of revealed truth—thus if we see it from the outside, objectively, it would be quite correct to surmise that it is a myth attempting to explain the mystery of human existence and suffering. At the same time, it recognizes our very high state in the order of nature, our transcending capacities—while also explaining the dark side, man’s war against himself and nature and, above all, the absolutely unavoidable—death.
We might also read the third chapter of Genesis as a head-shaking and despondent look back to another and ancient time. Tiny pockets of “paradise” have actually survived into ours: primitive hunting and gathering societies (e.g. Papua New Guinea, Amazon region, some island societies). The Fall in Genesis could thus also be read as a view of the transition between such primitive societies and the later agricultural dispensation, the last vastly more complex and riddled with conflict. The herding phase was an intermediate between the two here and there. That this surmise is also correct is evident. Agriculture is prominent in Genesis 3:17—and it is the new thing; it is part of the curse.
Now, of course, we tend to view the primitive as holy, the complex as riddled with evil. The higher the knowledge, the more complex the society always tends to be. Eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge is thus—shifting to another culture—the opening of Pandora’s box. But sentimentality is clearly at work here. To know anything genuinely means to live it. The hunting and gathering life undoubtedly is also just—life. What characterizes it, when we find it, is ample resources and low levels of conflict; those two are obviously linked. That we find it is already a kind of fall—at least for the people who’ve been found. The next thing you know, they’ll be greedily wanting gas-engines for their boats. After that, kiss paradise good-bye.
When I ponder it, the paradisaical state is present all around us as the animal kingdom. It is primitive society—but without the presence of mind. It lives without our form of consciousness, without history, and without memory. Animals don’t consciously notice death taking others; no fear of it is present—as it it’s also absent in little children. Thus the ultimate Fall is the rise of consciousness as such—and secondarily those transformations in the environment that cause knowledge to increase and also to sharpen. Knowledge is only mildly present in the primitive, and always closely twinned with particulars; it is extraordinarily sharp (conceptual) in a vast, rich, and dying technological culture. Its level increases with every advance of civilization; conflicts multiply; and tools for giving it force become obscene, like atomic bombs.
Having said this much, the core issue sharpens. It is the stupefying observation that something sublime, like awareness, produces evil and the more it develops, the more its dark shadow grows. This is a real issue. Genesis attempts an explanation. The problem is disobedience. But Genesis’ explanation is paradoxical. The idea of obedience contains within it two crucial elements: freedom and knowledge. Adam and Eve knew something—before, as it were, they did. The knew about the Tree of Knowledge. They had been told about it. Something of the fruit of that tree had been given to them before Eve ever reached for that famous apple. The writers and editors of Genesis were people just like us—stupefied by the paradox of reality. And they, too, punted. The explanation must lie deeper than anything that we can now see from the shadows of this valley.
Blog posts should not grow into chapters. These comments will continue. I want to extract more from this, not least something more on death and its linkage to transcendence.
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