And the woman saw that the tree was good to eat
And that it was lustful to behold;
And the tree was desirable to make one wise;
And she took of its fruit and did eat,
And gave also to her mate with her, and he ate.
and the eyes of both of them were opened,
And they knew that they were naked;
And they sewed fig leaves together,
And made themselves loincloths.
Reading and rereading the concise yet precise tale, one cannot help wondering what the whole confrontation was about. Prohibited under threat of death from even touching the Fruit of Knowing, the two Earthlings were persuaded to go ahead and eat the stuff, which would make them "knowing" as the Deity. Yet all that happened was a sudden awareness that they were naked.
The state of nakedness was indeed a major aspect of the whole incident. The biblical tale of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden opens with the statement: "And the both of them were naked, the Adam and his mate, and they were not ashamed." They were, we are to understand, at some lesser stage of human development than that of fully developed humans: Not only were they naked, they were unaware of the implications of such nakedness.
Further examination of the biblical tale suggests that its theme is Man's acquisition of some sexual prowess. The "knowing" that
was held back from Man was not some scientific information but something connected with the male and female sex; for no
sooner had Man and his mate acquired the "knowing" than "they knew that they were naked" and covered their sex organs.
The continuing biblical narrative confirms the connection between nakedness and the lack of knowing, for it took the Deity no
time at all to put the two together:
And they heard the sound of the Deity Yahweh
Walking in the orchard in the day's breeze,
And the Adam and his mate hid
From the Deity Yahweh amongst the orchard's trees.
And the Deity Yahweh called to the Adam
And said: "Where art thou?"
And he answered:
"Thy sound I heard in the orchard
and I was afraid, for I am naked;
and I hid."
And He said:
"Who told thee that thou are naked?
Hast thou eaten of the tree,
whereof I commanded thee not to eat?"
Admitting the truth, the Primitive Worker blamed his female mate, who, in turn, blamed the Serpent. Greatly angered, the Deity put curses on the Serpent and the two Earthlings. Then - surprisingly - "the Deity Yahweh made for Adam and his wife garments of skins, and clothed them."
One cannot seriously assume that the purpose of the whole incident - which led to the expulsion of the Earth-lings from the Garden of Eden - was a dramatic way to explain how Man came to wear clothes. The wearing of clothes was merely an outward manifestation of the new "knowing." The acquisition of such "knowing," and the Deity's attempts to deprive Man of it, are the central themes of the events.
While no Mesopotamian counterpart of the biblical tale has yet been found, there can be little doubt that the tale - like all the biblical material concerning Creation and Man's prehistory - was of Sumerian origin. We have the locale: the Abode of the Gods in Mesopotamia. We have I he telltale play on words in Eve's name ("she of life," "she of rib"). And we have two vital trees, the Tree of Knowing and the Tree of Life, as in Anu's abode.
Even the words of the Deity reflect a Sumerian origin, for the sole Hebrew Deity has again lapsed into the plural, addressing
divine colleagues who were featured not in the Bible but in Sumerian texts:
Then did the Deity Yahweh say:
"Behold, the Adam has become as one of us,
to know good and evil.
And now might he not put forth his hand
And partake also of the Tree of Life,
and eat, and live forever?"
And the Deity Yahweh expelled the Adam
from the orchard of Eden.
As many early Sumerian depictions show, there had been a time when Man, as a Primitive Worker, served his gods stark naked. He was naked whether he served the gods their food and drink, or toiled in the fields or on construction jobs. The clear implication is that the status of Man vis-a-vis the gods was not much different from that of domesticated animals. The gods had merely upgraded an existing animal to suit their needs. Did the lack of "knowing," then, mean that, naked as an animal, the newly fashioned being also engaged in sex as, or with, the animals? Some early depictions indicate that this was indeed the case.
Sumerian texts like the "Epic of Gilgamesh" suggest that the manner of sexual intercourse did indeed account for a distinction between wild-Man and human-Man. When the people of Uruk wanted to civilize the wild Enkidu - "the barbarous fellow from the depths of the steppes" - I hey enlisted the services of a "pleasure girl" and sent her (o meet Enkidu at the water hole where he used to befriend various animals, and there to offer him her "ripeness."
It appears from the text that the turning point in the process of "civilizing" Enkidu was the rejection of him by I lie animals he had befriended. It was important, the people of Uruk told the girl, that she continue to treat him to "a woman's task" until "his wild beasts, that grew up on his steppe, will reject him." For Enkidu to be torn away from sodomy was a prerequisite to his becoming human.
The lass freed her beasts, bared her bosom, and he possessed her ripeness . . . She treated him, the savage, to a woman's task.
Apparently the ploy worked. After six days and seven nights, "after he had had his fill of her charms," he remembered his former playmates.
He set his face toward his wild beasts; but On seeing him the gazelles ran off. The wild beasts of the steppe drew away from his body.
The statement is explicit. The human intercourse brought about such a profound change in Enkidu that the animals he had befriended "drew away from his body." They did not simply run away; they shunned physical contact with him. Astounded, Enkidu stood motionless for a while, "for his wild animals had gone." But the change was not to be regretted, as the ancient text explains:
Now he had vision, broader understanding. . . . The harlot says to him, to Enkidu: "Thou art knowing, Enkidu; Thou art become like a god!"
The words in this Mesopotamian text are almost identical to those of the biblical tale of Adam and Eve. As the Serpent had predicted, by partaking of the Tree of Knowing, they had become - in sexual matters - "as the Deity - knowing good and evil." If this meant only that Man had come to recognize that having sex with animals was uncivilized or evil, why were Adam and Eve punished for giving up sodomy? The Old Testament is replete with admonitions against sodomy, and it is inconceivable that the learning of a virtue would cause divine wrath.
The "knowing" that Man obtained against the wishes of the Deity - or one of the deities - must have been of a more profound
nature. It was something good for Man, but something his creators did not wish him to have.
We have to read carefully between the lines of the curse against Eve to grasp the meaning of the event:
And to the woman He said:
"I will greatly multiply thy suffering by thy pregnancy.
In suffering shalt thou bear children, yet to thy mate shall be thy desire" . . . And the Adam named his wife "Eve," for she was the mother of all who lived.
This, indeed, is the momentous event transmitted to us in the biblical tale: As long as Adam and Eve lacked "knowing," they lived in the Garden of Eden without any offspring. Having obtained "knowing," Eve gained the ability (and pain) to become pregnant and bear children. Only after the couple had acquired this "knowing," "Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain."
Throughout the Old Testament, the term "to know" is used to denote sexual intercourse, mostly between a man and his spouse for the purpose of having children. The tale of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is the story of a crucial step in Man's development: the acquisition of the ability to procreate.