A Different View of Adam and Eve
William Blake, the Gnostic poet of the early nineteenth century, wrote of the differences between his view and the mainstream view of holy writ: 'Both read the Bible day and night; but you read black where I read white." The same words could have been uttered by Gnostic Christians and their orthodox opponents in the first three or four centuries A.D.
The orthodox view then regarded most of the Bible, particularly Genesis, as history with a moral. Adam and Eve were considered to be historical figures, the literal ancestors of our species. From the story of their transgression, orthodox teachers deduced specific moral consequences, chiefly the "fall" of the human race due to original sin. Another consequence was the lowly and morally ambivalent status of women, who were regarded as Eve's co-conspirators in the fateful deed of disobedience in paradise. Tertullian, a sworn enemy of the Gnostics, wrote to the female members of the Christian community thusly:
. . . you are the devil's gateway. . . you are she who persuaded him whom the devil did not dare attack. . . . Do you not know that you are each an Eve? The sentence of God on your sex lives on in this age; the guilt, necessarily, lives on too.
The Gnostic Christians who authored the Nag Hammadi scriptures did not read Genesis as history with a moral, but as a MYTH WITH A MEANING. To them, Adam and Eve WERE NOT ACTUAL HISTORICAL FIGURES, but representatives of two intrapsychic principles within every human being. Adam was the dramatic embodiment of psyche, or soul, while Eve stood for the pneuma, or spirit. Soul, to the Gnostics, meant the embodiment of the emotional and thinking functions of the personality, while spirit represented the human capacity for spiritual consciousness. The former was the lesser self (the ego of depth psychology), the latter the transcendental function, or the "higher self," as it is sometimes known. Obviously, Eve, then, is by nature superior to Adam, rather than his inferior as implied by orthodoxy.
Nowhere is Eve's superiority and numinous power more evident than in her role as Adam's awakener. Adam is in a deep sleep, from which Eve's liberating call arouses him. While the orthodox version has Eve physically emerge from Adam's body, the Gnostic rendering has the spiritual principle known as Eve emerging from the unconscious depths of the somnolent Adam. Before she thus emerges into liberating consciousness, Eve calls forth to the sleeping Adam in the following manner, as stated by the Gnostic Apocryphon of John:
I entered into the midst of the dungeon which is the prison of the body. And I spoke thus: "He who hears, let him arise from the deep sleep." And then he (Adam) wept and shed tears. After he wiped away his bitter tears he spoke, asking: "Who is it that calls my name, and whence has this hope come unto me, while I am in the chains of this prison?" And I spoke thus: "I am the Pronoia of the pure light; I am the thought of the undefiled spirit. . . . Arise and remember . . . and follow your root, which is I . . . and beware of the deep sleep."
In another scripture from the same collection, entitled On the Origin of the World, we find further amplification of this theme. Here Eve whose mystical name is Zoe, meaning life, is shown as the daughter and messenger of the Divine Sophia, the feminine hypostasis of the supreme Godhead:
Sophia sent Zoe, her daughter, who is called "Eve," as an instructor in order that she might raise up Adam, in whom there is no spiritual soul so that those whom he could beget might also become vessels of light. When Eve saw her companion, who was so much like her, in his cast down condition she pitied him, and she exclaimed: "Adam, live! Rise up upon the earth!" Immediately her words produced a result for when Adam rose up, right away he opened his eyes. When he saw her, he said: "You will be called 'mother of the living', because you are the one who gave me life."
In the same scripture, the creator and his companions whisper to each other while Adam sleeps: "Let us teach him in his sleep as though she (Eve) came to be from his rib so that the woman will serve and he will be lord over her." The demeaning tale of Adam's rib is thus revealed as a propagandistic device intended to advance an attitude of male superiority. It goes without saying that such an attitude would have been more difficult among the Gnostics, who held that man was indebted to woman for bringing him to life and to consciousness.
The Western theologian Paul Tillich interpreted this scripture as the Gnostics did, declaring that "the Fall" was a symbol for the human situation, not a story of an event that happened "once upon a time." Tillich said that the Fall represented "a fall from the state of dreaming innocence" in psychological terms, an awakening from potentiality to actuality. Tillich's view was that this "fall" was necessary to the development of humankind.
The Serpent of Wisdom
The sin of Eve, so the orthodox tell us, was that she listened to the serpent, who persuaded her that the fruit of the tree would make her and Adam wise, without any deleterious side-effects. It was Eve who then seduced the righteously reluctant Adam to join her in this act of disobedience, and thus together they brought about the fall of humanity.
A Gnostic treatise, The Testimony of Truth, tells a different story. While repeating the words of the orthodox version of Genesis, the Gnostic source states that "the serpent was wiser than all the animals that were in Paradise." After extolling the wisdom of the serpent, the treatise casts serious aspersions on the creator: "What sort is he then, this God?" Then come some of the answers to the rhetorical question. The motive of the creator in punishing Adam was envy, for the creator envied Adam, who by eating the fruit would acquire knowledge (gnosis). Neither did the creator seem quite omniscient when he asked of Adam: "Where are you?" The creator has shown himself repeatedly to be "an envious slanderer," a jealous God, who inflicts cruel punishments on those who transgress his capricious orders and commandments. The treatise comments: "But these are the things he said (and did) to those who believe in him and serve him." The implication clearly presents itself that with a God like this, one needs no enemies.
Another treatise, The Hypostasis of the Archons, informs us that not only was Eve the emissary of the divine Sophia, but the serpent was similarly inspired by the same supernal wisdom. Sophia mystically entered the serpent, who thereby acquired the title of instructor. The instructor then taught Adam and Eve about their source, informing them that they were of high and holy origin and not mere slaves of the creator deity.
What, one may ask, motivated the Gnostic interpreters of Genesis to make these unusual statements? Were they purely motivated by bitter criticism directed against the God of Israel, as the Church Fathers would have us believe? Many contemporary scholars do not think so. These contemporary scholars suggest that the unfavorable image of the creator contrasted with the favorable one of Adam, Eve, and even of the serpent alludes to an important issue not frequently recognized.
The orthodox interpreters, both Jewish and Christian, tend to emphasize the distinction between the infinite creator and his finite creatures. Humans and animals are on earth, while God is in heaven, and never the two will meet. The orthodox have held, with Martin Buber, that the human's relationship to God is always "I and Thou." In the Gnostic position one can discern a keynote that is reminiscent of the attitude of certain other religions, notably Hinduism, which rather declares: "I am Thou."
The Gnostics share with the Hindus and with certain Christian mystics the notion that the divine essence is present deep within human nature in addition to being present outside of it. At one time humans were part of the divine, although later, in their manifest condition, they more and more tended to project divinity onto beings external to themselves. Alienation from God brings an increase in the worship of deities wholly external to the human. The Gospel of Philip, another scripture from Nag Hammadi, expresses it well:
In the beginning God created humans. Now, however, humans are creating God. Such is the way of this world-humans invent gods and worship their creations. It would be better for such gods to worship humans.
The Genesis Factor
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