The following is from a manuscript by David Jones Returning to Eden copyright 2004.
As a pastor, I get a lot of questions about the Eden story from children.
As adults, we have heard it so many times, we have become over-familiar, and our curiosity has rusted. Not so with children. Read this story to a group of children, from the Bible or a children’s Bible, and questions will abound.
“Where were the dinosaurs? Did God make the dinosaurs before or after Adam and Eve? Why didn’t a dinosaur crush that snake?”
“Was there poison ivy in the garden? Why would God make poison ivy? What about mosquitoes?”
“Did Adam and Eve have to live in the garden without any clothes? Was it a rule or was it optional? What did they do in the winter? Did they freeze?”
“In the story, the snake is cursed to crawl on the ground. What did the snake use before it crawled? Did it have legs?”
“How could God punish the rest of the world for all time because two people ate from one tree? That’s like making everybody get out of the pool because one kid ran on the side.”
Yes, it is much easier to teach adults. They have so few questions. If you stay with the children long enough, this over-arching question about the truth of the story will likely arise. I’ve heard it many times.
The conversation usually has gone something like this.
“Is the story of Eden a true story?”
To which I reply, “Yes, definitely.”
“So you think there was an actual Eden? That the world began with two people? Their names were Adam and Eve?”
“Oh, no,” I reply, “it’s not that kind of truth.”
The Greater Truth of Eden
So, just what sort of truth is the Eden story?
The truth of Eden is similar to the truth I found in Daniel Wallace’s novel, Big Fish. In Big Fish, Wallace writes tall, mythic tales about his father.
In the book, the son confronts his father about all his, certainly untrue, tall tales (an understanding of story that makes me cringe). The son says, “…that’s a story, Dad. I don’t believe it for a minute.”
With a response any storyteller would love, his father replied, “You’re not necessarily supposed to believe it. You’re just supposed to believe in it.”
Eden isn’t a story to believe. It is a story to believe in.
The type of truth the Eden storytellers were trying to convey was not historical truth, not a factual account of an actual event. Here are two clear indicators from the story.
They used the word Adam. Adam in the story is a Hebrew word best translated ‘man’. Adam is not a proper name. In my retelling of the story, I followed the example of the Jerusalem Bible and The New English Bible which avoid the use of Adam as a proper name but see it as it was intended, a categorical name for humans. They spoke of the creature as ‘the man’ because they were not writing about one man and woman but all men and women. Adam is the representative person. Adam describes the predicament of all people.
The use of adam is a subtle linguistic clue. There is greater linguistic evidence. You be the judge. (I mean the real judge. Go ahead, take your place behind the bench. I will make my case.)
My evidence is the tale itself, specifically, ‘the serpent’. I would like to ask you to read the tale again. Pay special attention to this verse. (Genesis 3:1) The serpent speaks, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” It’s not what the serpent says which shows the storytellers’ intentions – it is that the serpent speaks at all! In this story, the serpent talks! This use of speech is not made notice as being unique nor does the animal lose that ability later on.
In a similar fashion, George Orwell described Animal Farm a property infested with speaking animals, and A.A. Milne wrote The House at Pooh Corner with stuffed animals who walked and talked. I am confident the tellers of the Eden tale no more sought to describe an actual garden any more than George Orwell sought to describe an actual farm or A.A. Milne sought to describe an actual talking teddy bear named Pooh. In a similar fashion of these other great storytellers, the author’s of the Eden tale were clearly not speaking of a one time event, but sought to address something greater. The talking serpent character in the story shows their intention – to tell not of one man or woman but all men and women.
When the story was canonized, elevated to Holy Scripture, and placed in Genesis, even then it wasn’t seen as an historical event. It was placed back to back with the story in Genesis one. Read Genesis chapter one. Make a list of the order of creation. In chapter one, creation takes place in six days. Beginning with an ocean, God makes the world, then animals, then humans. In Genesis two there is a different order. Beginning with a desert, God makes a person, then a garden, then animals, then another person in what seems no more than a long day. In these two chapters we have two different stories. Neither is concerned with the order. They are both about God, humanity, and our place in the world – clearly a different sort of truth than historical truth.
So, just what kind of truth were the Eden tellers trying to convey? They sought to convey what Danish physicist Niel Bohr called greater truth. Bohr said, “There are two kinds of truth, small truth and great truth. You can recognize small truth because its opposite is a falsehood. The opposite of a great truth is another great truth.” The opposite of a small truth is a falsehood. For example, Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth. Prove than it wasn’t Booth that shot Lincoln and you prove what was thought was truth is false. The opposite of a greater truth is an even greater truth. For a physicist it might be the lesser truth that light moves in photons, then replaced by the greater truth that light moves in photons and waves. In Biblical terms, for thousands of years God has been spoken of as King. In many ways God is like a King, yet Jesus came and provided an even greater truth, God is like a parent.
The Use of Story
Like great teachers before and after their time, the teachers who created the idea of Eden sought to speak greater truth through the best means possible, a story. Why a story? Two reasons:
Stories describe life in an approachable fashion, in a way that only storytellers and poets can.
Imagine you opened an encyclopedia and read about an eagle. You might read facts about average size, life expectancy, speed of flight. But nothing in that report would give you a sense of the life or majesty of an eagle. Let a poet use his words and you gain a great sense of what an eagle is like.
Eagle Alfred, Lord Tennyson
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
Is Tennyson writing of an actual eagle’s flight he witnessed or is he capturing a broad understanding of many eagle flights? As I read the poem, I think Tennyson was capturing not just a single eagle flight of a particular eagle, but the essence of every eagle’s flight, and what’s more, he was capturing the essence of majesty which he represents in the eagle.
Repeatedly in story after story and poem after poem, a single, seemingly historical event, is used to describe much more.
In Big Fish, which I referred to before, Daniel Wallace used story to describe more than just his legendary father, but spoke of other life aspects common to all people in relationship. Take for example this story of his father’s birth. See if you can see what Wallace reveals about all significant relationships.
He was born during the driest summer in forty years. The sun baked the fine red Alabama clay to a grainy dust, and there was no water for miles. Food was scarce, too. No corn or tomatoes or even squash that summer, all of it withered beneath the hazy white sky. Everything died, seemed like: chickens first, then cats, then pigs and then dogs. Went into the stew, though, the lot, bones and all.
One man went crazy, ate rocks, died. Took ten men to carry him to his grave, he was so heavy. Ten more to dig it, it was so dry.
Looking east people said, Remember that rolling river?
Looking west people said, Remember Talbert’s Pond?
The day he was born began as just another day. The sun rose, peered down on the little wooden house where a wife, her belly as big as the country, scrambled up the last egg they had for her husband’s breakfast. The husband was already out in the field, turning the dust with his plow round the black and twisted roots of some mysterious vegetable. The sun shone hard and bright. When he came in for his egg he wiped the sweat from his brow with a ragged blue bandanna. Then he wrung the sweat from it and let it drip into an old tin cup. For something to drink, later on…
The day he was born someone spotted a cloud over thataway, with something of a darkness to it. People gathered around to watch…
The only person in the whole town not cloud-watching was the wife. She had fallen to the floor, breathless with pain. So breathless she couldn’t scream. She thought she was screaming – she had her mouth open that way – but nothing was coming out. Of her mouth. Elsewhere, though, she was busy. With him. He was coming. And where was her husband?
Out looking at a cloud…
The day he was born all the people of the town gathered in the field outside his house, watching the cloud. Small at first, then merely respectable, the cloud soon turned huge, whale-size at least, churning strikes of white light within it and suddenly breaking and burning the tops of pine trees and worrying some of the taller men out there; watching, they slouched, and waited.
The day he was born things changed.
Husband became Father, Wife became Mom.
The day Edward Bloom was born, it rained.[1]
Obviously there is no factual historical truth in this story. Could a man eat so many rocks it took ten men to bury him? Of course not. Could a dehydrated man in a drought wring enough perspiration from his brow to fill a cup? Never. Could the birth of a child bring rain? No, certainly not. As far as lesser truth, this is a false story. There is no truth to it. However, it is full of greater truth. Think back through your life. Think of the people you met along the way who not only changed you, but changed how you experienced the world. I think back to my ‘best friend’ in second grade, Greg Chambers. He was my constant companion. Into a dry boring summer he brought the rain of joy and adventure. I think of Jeff Wilson in high school, who gave me courage to come out from under the radar and live in high school. I think of my wife and children, each have changed my world as I know it. Like in the story of Edward Bloom, each has changed me. I too watched myself change from man to husband and husband to father. The change was every bit as dramatic as in the birth of Edward Bloom. Do I believe this story? No. Do I believe in this story? Yes. I believe this greater truth of how our experience of life is greatly changed by the presence of others.
Reflection
Divide the history of your life into thirds. In each third, answer these questions:
1. Who was a person whose arrival in your life changed your experience of life?
2. How did your life change?
3. How did you change?
Stories communicate greater truth in a way that only storytellers and poets can.
Anthony de Mello wrote, The shortest distance between a human being and Truth is a story.”[2] Like Wallace in Big Fish, the Eden storytellers used story to speak of greater truth and to bridge the distance between truth and their listeners. And like Wallace, what we see in the Eden story is that the earliest tellers of this tale were not trying to describe an actual man and woman, but every man and woman. More than trying to relate a tale of something that happened, they were trying to speak of human life and describe the way things are. In the words of German novelist Thomas Mann, this type of story is best understood as a story “of the way things never were but always are.” Or as a Native American storyteller said, “Now I don’t know if it happened this way or not, but I know this story is true.”[3] That’s true of much of the Bible just as it is of the Eden story. The tellers and writers sought to speak truth and the best way to speak truth is story.
Legend has it, that when God was trying to select a nation to carry God’s message to the world, God called all the nations to send a representative to a great convocation. The representatives were charged with making a case to God why their nation should be chosen to be the presenter of God’s message to the world.
The first representative that came and stood before God was the Egyptian. “Wondrous Creator, choose us as your nation to carry your message. We are great builders and we can build magnificent monuments to shine your glory to the world.” God thanked the Egyptian and then called for the Roman representative.
“Mighty One, we are a powerful nation bringing order to the world. We can offer you a great empire to carry forth your truth.” God thanked the Roman and then called for the Greek.
“Source of all wisdom, we seek truth. We can fathom wonderful intricate systems of thought to give shape to your truth for human understanding.” God thanked the Greek representative and then called the Jew.
“Great I am, YOU who cannot be named, we cannot offer you great monuments, a powerful nation, or lofty systems of thought, but we are storytellers. Yet, what better carrier can there be of your message of love and hope for the world than a story? There is no better housing for reflections on your majesty and mystery than a simple story.”
God chose the storytellers, for stories last longer than all monuments, are more powerful than any nation, and can relate the mysteries of God and human existence in a timeless way beyond all systems of thought.[4]
The Bible storytellers used story because stories are powerful, bearers of truth. In the Bible, story is more than a method. Story is sacred. Through stories the teller and listener expected to encounter God. As Will Willimon and Stanley Hauerwaas wrote, Story is the fundamental means of talking about and listening to God, the only human means available to us that is complex and engaging enough to make comprehensible what it means to be with God.[5]
The tellers of Eden sought to use their story to talk about and listen to God. The church today could use a reorientation toward story. It is not doctrine which is sacred for the church, but story. William White, editor of one of my favorite story collections, said, …story, not doctrine is the Bible’s main ingredient. We do not have a doctrine of creation, we have stories of creation. We do not have a concept of the resurrection; we have marvelous narratives of Easter.[6]
The tellers of Eden sought also to not just talk about and listen to God but to make comprehensible what it means to be with God. That was the goal of many of the storytellers whose efforts later became scripture. They, like the Eden storytellers before them, sought to speak of greater truth. We forget that when we approach the stories of scripture. We get so caught up in the details that we miss the important question of these stories – what greater truth is the writer/teller trying to convey?
Consider the story of Jonah. This rebellious prophet gets an assignment from God to carry God’s message to Nineveh, an Assyrian town. He refuses. He runs away from God heading to the place he was sure God was not – on the sea. Then a storm ravages the boat. In the storm, God was saying, “Hello, Jonah. Surprise!” The sailors throw Jonah overboard where a large fish swallows him. After a couple of days of this cruise, Jonah gives in. God causes the fish to vomit him onto the shore of his original destination.
Most of us get caught up in the details of the story – a man getting swallowed up by a large fish. For the original hearers of the story the fish was not the issue, the greater truth carried in the story was what mattered. What this story declared about God was this, God loves and cares about the people of Nineveh. The people of Nineveh, the Assyrians, were enemies of Israel. The first hearers of the Jonah story would not debate the fish at all, nor would they be offended by it. Mention that God loved people from Nineveh in the days of that tale’s origin and you might find yourself swimming with the fish very soon. For us reading the story today, we can make a mistake the original hearers never would. If we get caught up in the fish, we miss hearing how God loves our enemies and calls us to do the same. The original hearers would probably loved to have debated the fish and ignored the call to love their enemies.
Consider the virgin birth of Jesus. Unlike the Eden story, the authors of the gospels of Luke and Matthew were attempting to write history, but they weren’t ultimately concerned with history. Their concern was gospel, good news, good news for all people as the angel in Luke testifies, “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”
Did the writers of Matthew and Luke believe the virgin birth was an actual occurrence in history? Probably. Did it matter? Not as much as the greater truth that God had come among them in a unique way in Jesus. They were communicating not history, but gospel, truth that could change lives.
Even today, it is not the Christmas event that changes our lives. It is the Christmas story. Without story, there would be no thoughts of the event or an impact on the lives of children or adults.
William Carlos William wrote an insightful poem about poems as truth bearers. The same can be said of the stories in the Bible.
Asphodel, That Greeny Flower
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there
If you want history, the Bible is not the place. If you want greater truth, then the pages are full. Lots of stories to tell and retell – for people die every day for lack of what’s in those pages. That is why, for the Jewish and Christian studiers of scripture, we consider our stories sacred, as bearers of truth.
The Eden Truth
So just what greater truth are we exploring in the Eden story? Frederick Buechner summed it up well.
Despite all the profound differences between Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam, they agree with each other by and large and with Christianity on this one very general but very basic point: that human beings as they usually exist in this world are not what they were created to be. … the story of Adam is the story of each of us. We were created to serve God and each other in love, but each of us chooses instead to serve himself as God, and this means wrenching ourselves out of the kind of relationship with God and men that we were made for. Like Adam, we have all lost Paradise; and yet we carry Paradise around inside of us in the form of a longing for, almost a memory of, a blessedness that is no more, or the dream of a blessedness that may someday be again. All the great religions share this insight in one form or another, embodying it in different myths, and I believe that our own experience of ourselves confirms the truth of it. We hear much today of man's search for his own identity, and it seems to me that this is a nonreligious expression of very much the same reality. In other words, the self that each of us has to live with day in and day out under the most intimate circumstances possible is not entirely the self that we would have chosen to be tied to on such a long-term basis.[7]
The Eden story is a true story. It is a true story because it is our story full of greater truth. In the chapters ahead we’ll explore this greater truth of Eden. The story describes life as God intended. The story describes life as we experience it. The story pinpoints the source for our loss of the Eden life. The story shows us how to get back to Eden. Exploring the Eden story, like any great story, is an adventure for the hearer.
[1] Daniel Wallace, Big Fish, pp.5-8.
[2] Anthony de Mello, One Minute Wisdom, p.23
[3] Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, pp.50-51.
[4] adapted from William R. White, Stories for The Journey, p.32.
[5] Willimon and Hauerwass, Resident Aliens, pp.54-55.
[6] William R. White, Stories for Telling , p.32
[7] Frederick Buecher, The Magnificent Defeat, pp.90-91.