Finding the Books That Suit You-Two

​Any of us who spent time in Catholic faith formation—particularly in our youth—has enough experience such that the idea of reading “Catholic Literature” or “Catholic Books” for the joy of the art as much as the moral value is probably beyond imagination. But in this post, we are going to begin with prose from Bible itself, in a way you might find stunning.
 
FOR STARTERS, HOW DID IT ALL BEGIN?
 
There are two opening creation narratives from the Book of Genesis. One of the first breakthroughs in modern Bible Study was the understanding that the Bible was written in forms and units, and that different authors at different times composed their works in the circumstances in which they lived. A very good example is the presence of two creation stories in Genesis, side by side-- Genesis 1:1-2:3 and Genesis 2:4-4:16]. The first is noble poetry; the second is philosophy at its painful best.
 
The first creation account is the seven-day narrative, noteworthy for its organization and stateliness. There are many clues that the first account comes from the temple area in Jerusalem and a priestly hand—such as the observation that God observed the sabbath by resting on the seventh day. When and why was it written? Historians look to the time around 500 B.C. when Jews were returning home from the Babylonian captivity and there was considerable turmoil about rebuilding the temple and the observance of the Law on such matters as marriages to foreign pagan wives during the exile. This text from Genesis 1 serves as something of a sermon exhorting renewed observance of the temple law and worship, an encouragement that fidelity to the Lord—who had established order out of chaos at the beginning—would bring order again to the traumatized post-exile community of Jews.
 
THE SECOND CREATION NARRATIVE IS STUNNING
 
The dating of the second creation account—Adam and Eve, the snake, Cain and Abel, God’s curses—is hard to pinpoint. There is so much religious philosophy enfolded in this narrative that I must think we are looking at a text composed in the “Wisdom Era” of the Bible, closer to the time of Christ, possible after Alexander the Great [356-323 B.C.] and about the time that Israel would be influenced by Greek ideas and philosophy. What would have inspired this this Biblical composition? Possibly the same moral anguish that inspired the Book of Job. How does one explain injustice, the suffering of the innocent, the tangible presence of evil, the longings for what one cannot have? How to explain the backbreaking labor necessary to eat and survive, or the grueling and often lethal pains of childbirth? The Greeks wrestled with such questions in their famous tragedies. And so, it would seem, were the Jews in their sacred Scripture—and so we continue in our art and writing today, as we will see below.
 
The biggest difference between “Creation I” and “Creation II” is the subject. Genesis I is the seven-day story of God creating order out of chaos and establishing a place where humans could live, be fertile, and enjoy the earth. The work is utopian. God does the heavy lifting—all the lifting, really.
 
“Creation II,” our focus today, took shape because the world of “Creation 1” was not the world experienced by Israel, and later thoughtful Israelites pondered on the difficult lives they were living century after century. As Catholics, we have the consolation of life beyond the grave where our sufferings and injustices are blessed, healed, and rewarded. Life and consolation after death was not an Old Testament belief until just before Jesus; see 2 Maccabees 12:38-46. And in Jesus’ day only the Pharisaic Jews believed in the concept of life after death.
 
The second creation account is man oriented. Adam is created first, then is invited by God to name the animals as God created them. “To name” something was an idiom of power. God understands that Adam needs a helpmate,” and thus he creates Eve. The USCCB online bible points out that “the language suggests a profound affinity between the man and the woman and a relationship that is supportive and nurturing.” Eve is not subservient to Adam. By the end of chapter two, it is hard to imagine that the world thus created could or should go off the rails.
 
THE SEEDS OF DESTRUCTION
 
All of us little tots in Catholic school learned that bad things began to happen when a talking snake entered the Bible tale. We knew, of course, that the snake was really the devil in disguise, and we were totally untroubled by the fact that the Bible never says this. Genesis 3:1 flatly states: “Now the snake was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made.” We are forced to admit that “cunning” [evil] was part and parcel of the creation package. The snake’s assertion in 3:5 that “God knows well that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, who know good and evil” does not sound particularly terrible until one examines the fallout from the act. This is best done by examining the curses that God showers down upon the three actors.
 
To start with, a serpent was frequently invoked as a phallic symbol in much of the ancient world and consequently employed in public pagan fertility rites throughout the ancient world. Idolatry among the Hebrews was often a recourse to fertility gods and rites, as if the God of Abraham would not fulfill the need for human fertility. When the Israelites in the desert were plagued by poisonous snakes, Moses ordered the creation of a bronze serpent that the population must gaze upon for a deliverance from this affliction. In the apocalyptic outlook of Isaiah, a day would come when a small child could play next to the cobra’s den safely. Even Jesus, in Matthew 3:8, uses the term “brood of vipers” to castigate hostile opponents.
 
The snake, then, is the perfect foil for the crisis in the Garden of Eden, and the first readers of this text would see trouble on the horizon. This leads the author to the main points of its inclusion: what is this creature doing here, and why would God create such a “cunning” creature in the first place? The first question is easy enough to answer: the snake lives there, along with zebras and red-breasted robins. [One can easily imagine this tale set in my neighborhood in Central Florida where nonstop housing construction is pushing coral snakes—relatives of the cobra—onto my street.]
 
Commentaries on Genesis report that in earlier times snakes were believed to walk upright. In fact, the giant pythons migrating north nowadays into Central Florida have vestiges of feet if you know where to look. I stick to the photographs on that bit of biology. God’s curses on the snake—that he would slither and not walk, and that he was reduced to eating dirt—are fitting enough, but it would be wrong to brand the snake as the originator of sin. What the text does signify is the pervasive nature of evil and imperfection throughout nature, man, and beast. Those of you who pray Compline at home may recall St. Peter’s imagery of the devil as “a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” Or, for that matter, the microscopic monster called Covid. From creation, the world is set against itself. Why this is so is a massive mystery that has troubled the earliest philosophers and continues as we witness the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
 
MORE THAN JUST A SNAKE
 
But by observing the punishment of the snake, we get an insight into the nature of the sin of Adam and Eve and their subsequent curses. When Christopher Columbus landed in the New World in 1492 and discovered a population of generally happy and productive people, he reported to Ferdinand and Isabella that he had come upon what today would be called a “prelapsarian culture.” The term means “before the fall” or what the Garden of Eden was like, the operative indicator being naked. Nakedness was innocence, and for Columbus, a navigator and not a theologian, nakedness equated to a childlike purity that could be spoiled by “knowledge,” or what one might call “the real world.” This seemed to be the sentiment of the Creation 2 author. Columbus did not hold the innocence idea very long; when he returned in 1493 his remaining crew had been killed.  
 
The serpent had told Eve that eating the fruit would “open her eyes” and that like the gods, she would know “what is good and what is bad.” Having eaten the fruit along with her husband, the first thing they realize is their nakedness, the end of their childhood purity, so to speak, and they scurry to put together loincloths and tunics from fig leaves. Is this an analogy to emotional and genital sexual awareness? It is hard to imagine that sexuality would come under fire as the primordial sin when the Israelite nation depended upon fertility for its very survival.
 
A better answer is found by looking at God’s interrogation of each party: Adam, Eve, and the snake. When God asks Adam “who told you that you are naked?” Adam replies, “the woman whom you put here with me.” This is a double whammy: it’s the fault of the woman and you who created her.” When God turns to Eve, she replies that the serpent “tricked me into it, so I ate it.” Every man/woman/snake for himself/herself/itself. No Kumbaya at the cobra’s den tonight.
 
What can we say? Creation is plagued with brokenness almost from the moment of its first existence. Why this brokenness in what is God’s crown jewel of creation remains both a mystery and a truth. Adam and Eve suddenly become sullen, betraying strangers. Eve’s curse is twofold: the pain and potential lethality of childbirth, and “yet your urge shall be for your husband….” Adam is cursed to pass from a nurturing life in the Garden to a daily life of thorns and thistles to produce his food. At the very least, Creation 2 is a philosophical-theological reflection which puts forward the curses of human existence. It tries to explain why the world is the way it is to people who are very weary of it.
 
The inability to live in harmony is bad enough. Human violence--physical and psychological—is a curse which visits us in Genesis Chapter 3 and in a remarkable novel [and later, movie] about brother versus brother, in a post entitled “Cain’s Mutiny” later this week on this stream.