Ishmael

what they’d done, they said, “Okay, you wretched people, that’s it for you! We’re not taking care of you anymore. You’re out. We banish you from the garden. From now on, instead of living on our bounty, you can wrest your food from the ground by the sweat of your brows.” And that’s how these accursed tillers of the soil came to be hunting us down and watering their fields with our blood.’ ”

When I finished, I saw that Ishmael was putting his hands together in mute applause.

I replied with a smirk and a modest nod.

13

“One of the clearest indications that these two stories were not authored by your cultural ancestors is the fact that agriculture is not portrayed as a desirable choice, freely made, but rather as a curse. It was literally inconceivable to the authors of these stories that anyone would prefer to live by the sweat of his brow. So the question they asked themselves was not, ‘Why did these people adopt this toilsome life– style?’ It was, ‘What terrible misdeed did these people commit to deserve such a punishment? What have they done to make the gods withhold from them the bounty that enables the rest of us to live a carefree life?’ ”

“Yes, that’s obvious now. In our own cultural history, the adoption of agriculture was a prelude to ascent. In these stories, agriculture is the lot of the fallen.”

14

“I have a question,” I said. “Why did they describe Cain as Adam’s firstborn and Abel as Adam’s secondborn?”

Ishmael nodded. “The significance is mythological rather than chronological. I mean that you’ll find this motif in folktales everywhere: When you have a father with two sons, one worthy and one unworthy, the unworthy son is almost always the cherished firstborn, while the worthy son is the secondborn—which is to say, the underdog in the story.”

“Okay. But why would they think of themselves as descendants of Adam at all?”

“You mustn’t confuse metaphorical thinking with biological thinking. The Semites didn’t think of Adam as their biological ancestor.”

“How do you know that?”

Ishmael thought for a moment. “Do you know what Adam means in Hebrew? We can’t know the name the Semites gave him, but presumably it had the same meaning.”

“It means man.”

“Of course. The human race. Do you suppose the Semites thought that the human race was their biological ancestor?”

“No, of course not.”

“I agree. The relationships in the story have to be understood metaphorically, not biologically. As they perceived it, the Fall divided the race of man into two—into bad guys and good guys, into tillers of the soil and herders, the former bent on murdering the latter.”

“Okay,” I said.

15

“But I’m afraid I have another question.”

“There’s no need to apologize for it. That’s what you’re here for.”

“Okay. My question is, how does Eve figure in all this?”

“Her name means what?”

“According to the notes, it means Life.”

“Not Woman?”

“No, not according to the notes.”

“With this name, the authors of the story have made it clear that Adam’s temptation wasn’t sex or lust or uxoriousness. Adam was tempted by Life.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Consider: A hundred men and one woman does not spell a hundred babies, but one man and a hundred women does.”

“So?”

“I’m pointing out that, in terms of population expansion, men and women have markedly different roles. They’re by no means equal in this regard.”

“Okay. But I still don’t get it.”

“I’m trying to put you in the frame of mind of a nonagricultural people, a people for whom population control is always a critical problem. Let me put it baldly: A band of herders that consists of fifty men and one woman is in no danger of experiencing a population explosion, but a band that consists of one man and fifty women is in big trouble. People being people, that band of fifty–one herders is going to be a band of one hundred in no time at all.”

“True. But I’m afraid I still don’t see how this relates to the story in Genesis.”

“Be patient. Let’s go back to the authors of this story, a herding people being pushed into the desert by agriculturalists from the north. Why were their brothers from the north pushing?”

“They wanted to put the herder’s land under cultivation.”

“Yes, but why?”

“Ah, I see. They were increasing food production to support an expanded population.”

“Of course. Now you’re ready to do some more reconstruction. You can see that these tillers of the soil have no sense of restraint when it comes to expansion. They don’t control their population; when there isn’t enough food to go around, they just put some more land under cultivation.”

“True.”

“So: Whom did these people say yes to?”

“Mm. Yes, I think I see it. As in a glass, darkly.”

“Think of it this way: The Semites, like most nonagricultural peoples, had to be wary of becoming overbalanced between the sexes. Having too many men didn’t threaten the stability of their population, but having too many women definitely did. You see that?”

“Yes.”

“But what the Semites observed in their brothers from the north was that it didn’t matter to them. If their population got out of hand, they didn’t worry, they just put more land under cultivation.”

“Yes, I see that.”

“Or try it this way: Adam and Eve spent three million years in the garden, living on the bounty of the gods, and their growth was very modest; in the Leaver life–style this is the way it has to be. Like Leavers everywhere, they had no need to exercise the gods’ prerogative of deciding who shall live and who shall die. But when Eve presented Adam with this knowledge, he said, ‘Yes, I see; with this, we no longer have to depend on the bounty of the gods. With the matter of who shall live and who shall die in our own hands, we can create a bounty that will exist for us alone, and this means I can say yes to Life, and grow without limit.’ What you should understand is that saying yes to Life and accepting the knowledge of good and evil are merely different aspects of a single act, and this is the way the story is told in Genesis.”

“Yes. It’s subtle, but I think I see it. When Adam accepted the fruit of that tree, he succumbed to the temptation to live without limit—and so the person who offered him that fruit is named