Do you think the story in Genesis, from the beginning up to Adam and Eve being escorted out of the garden, is historical fact handed down through the generations or do you think it is a metaphor for something? If you think it is a metaphor what do you think the metaphor means? thanks brian
Myths are certainly a figurative form of communication, but they are not allegories--there is no one on one connection between the story and something else. However, it is often the case that a person can find metaphorical meaning in them as applied to their own life or to events in history.
Myths are a powerful form of literature--IMHO, the MOST powerful form of literature--because more than any other genre they pass on a culture's deepest values. Because they are not obviously didactic, our filtering fences are down--they sort of slip inside to the deepest unconscious mind where they do their work without our awareness. It therefore makes perfect sense to me that a religious anthology like the Bible would include myths.
The classic must-read essay on the power of myth is "On Fairy Stories" by JRR Tolkien. coolcalvary.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/on-fairy-stories1.pdf
Here is my take on Genesis 3. I see it as almost a race "memory" of the evolution of our moral sentience. Let me tell the story, but in different words.
Long ago, in the primeval forest, humanity was simply another creature. Our choices were made according to our animal instincts. At that time, we had no moral conscience. Just as one can't blame a lion for eating a gazelle alive, the things we did were without blame. It was a state of innocence, of morally unconscious peace. Like all creatures, we were in harmony with nature, with each other, with ourselves, and with God. It was like a beautiful Garden.
But evolution didn't stop, and two new instincts evolved--empathy and a sense of fairness. These are the foundation for what we call the moral conscience. These new instincts facilitate altruism, enabling us to form cooperative groups--an incredibly adaptive ability.
But you can see the conflict coming. It was inevitable that the day would arrive where older instincts were going to conflict with our conscience. And it was inevitable that the day would come when, during that conflict, a human would opt to satiate the older instincts rather than the conscience. When that happened, the conscience rebelled, creating that awful feeling of wrongness.
With that ancient decision, our innocence vanished. A dissonance came into being. A dissonance with nature. A dissonance with each other. With ourselves. And with God. We had been "expelled from the Garden."
And so we find ourselves in our present condition, still having both the older instincts and newer conscience. We tend to describe the older instincts as "bad" or "evil" because of the harm that selfishness does. But in all fairness, these inclinations evolved for our benefit. If they suddenly vanished, we would stop having children, stop eating, no longer seek shelter. There is nothing innately wrong with gathering things to prepare for a future which might have fewer resources--it only becomes wrong when we harm another to do so, by stealing from them or exploiting them. IOW there is nothing wrong with doing good for ourselves. The problem only arises when we cross the line into hurting others for our own personal gain--THAT is when our conscience kicks in.
Another story which describes this inner battle is the very famous Cherokee tale of the two wolves. The grandfather explains to the grandson that each of us has two wolves within us: a good wolf and a bad wolf. These wolves constantly fight. The grandson asks, Which wolf will win? And the grandfather says, The one you feed.
Judaism similarly preserves the knowledge of this inner warfare with its teaching that we all have a yetzer hara, inclination to evil, and yetzer hatov, inclination to good.
I imagine that every human society has this awareness, although some articulate it more clearly than others.
That is my take on Genesis 3.
