The familiar story of Adam and Eve (Genesis 2:4-3:24) is a separate narrative written in a voice different from the story we hear in chapter 1.\u00a0 The style of storytelling becomes folksy and colorful, God walking through the garden as if in human form.\u00a0 This is a second creation story, distinct from the account of God making the world in seven days.\u00a0 Take a look at Genesis 2:4 and you’ll see the hinge where the two stories are spliced together.<\/p>\n
The story begins with a garden with no one to till it.\u00a0 So God forms a mud creature out of the dust and breathes life into it.\u00a0 This mud creature is called \u201c\u2019adam,\u201d the Hebrew word for human.\u00a0 The word is also related to \u201c\u2019adamah,\u201d which means ground.\u00a0 The \u2018adam, therefore, is a being fashioned from the ground and made in connection to the earth: to till the ground and tend the garden.<\/p>\n
We learn that there are four rivers that flow from Eden, and two trees within it.\u00a0 One is the Tree of Life.\u00a0 The other is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.\u00a0 Scholars debate the meaning of this name.\u00a0 Some argue that the tree offers universal knowledge, others maintain that the tree offers the \u201cpower of discernment between good and evil\u201d (Collins).\u00a0 These finer points aside, if one tree is the Tree of Life, the other must surely be the Tree of Death, a reality that the story goes on to explore.<\/p>\n
-Emily M D Scott<\/p>\n
Sources: <\/em><\/p>\n Collins, John J.\u00a0 Introduction to the Hebrew Bible. <\/em>Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004.<\/p>\n Sharp, Carolyn.\u00a0 \u201cCreation, the Garden of Eden and the Irony of Wisdom.\u201d\u00a0 Yale University, Introduction to the Old Testament.\u00a0 New Haven, CT.\u00a0 Fall, 2004.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The familiar story of Adam and Eve (Genesis 2:4-3:24) is a separate narrative written in a voice different from the story we hear in chapter 1.\u00a0 The style of storytelling becomes folksy and colorful, God walking through the garden as if in human form.\u00a0 This is a second creation story, distinct from the account of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[16],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions\/124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}