The Garden of Eden

Index to this page by topic:

Yahweh and the Elohim. Two separate traditions.

The Yahweh School of Mythology

Conflict between the Yahweh prophets
and the Levitical Priests

Ideology of the Yahweh prophets
in the work of the Yahweh mythologists

Yahweh and Elohim - Two traditions

      The Bible opens with two accounts of creation, the famous high theology of the priestly poem that opens the book, followed by the story of the Garden of Eden. These are two separate stories, which differ in detail and conflict as history, because the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden and the priestly story of creation that opens the book of Genesis are two separate myths of origins that have been spun together in the opening sections of the Bible. The language of mythology has always been the language of religion. The knowledge of this is something that has often been lost in the Judeo-Christian tradition, where the language of myth has so often been replaced by the language of literalism. When myth becomes history not only is the language and meaning of myth lost, the Bible itself is held up to constant ridicule for its historical contradictions and errors of fact. This is a double loss, because the meaning of a myth is found in that it is a myth, and it has no meaning as history.

     The priestly version of the story of creation, with its allusions to the religious Sabbath tradition, I find less interesting as a myth than the parables which follow. For a comparison of the two stories as literal history, I have a short page which points out the irreconcilable inconsistencies between these two stories of creation when an attempt is made to treat them as literal history. Consult the page on the two stories of creation for a brief description of the historical problems that arise when comparing these two conflicting accounts. For a growing catalogue of critiques of the Bible as an historical document, you can consult both my Bible commentary pages and my Essay pages, not to mention innumerable other sites on the web which specialize in the task of debunking the Bible as a purely historical document.

     When it has been established that the Bible contains conflicts when treated as a book of history, and when it is acknowledged that the language of myth and story telling is the language of religion, and always has been, then the Bible can be examined for the mythological meanings found in the stories told by the various groups of people who shared the mythological symbols found on its pages. These myths and stories originated among diverse groups of people whose ideology spanned the spectrum from radicalism to extremely conservative reactionary backlash (the reform elements were probably original while the reactionary elements were added later, backlash always following reform in human history in a repeating pattern).

     The story of the Garden of Eden has little in common with the priestly story of creation that opens the book of Genesis as history, and it also belongs to an entirely separate tradition as regards its mythological content. The parable of the Garden of Eden belongs with a set of parables that are found in following chapters in the book of Genesis, and is also linked with traditions found scattered throughout the books that follow. The most obvious difference is that in the priestly tradition that opens the book the name of the deity is designated by the plural term ‘Elohim' and this is reinforced by the statement ‘let us make man in our image,' a phrase using a plural term in agreement with the plural name of the deity. The name of the deity in the Eden story is ‘Yahweh' in the singular, usually translated ‘YAHWEH' in the Bible, while the plural term ‘Elohim' is usually translated ‘God', but a strictly literal translation of the term would give us, ‘in the beginning the gods created the heavens and the earth...let us make man in our image.' Etc. In the creation story of Genesis chapter 1 and the Garden of Eden story of Genesis chapter 2, the names given to the deity can be separated, and the result is two separate stories, that conflict in historical detail. The same pattern emerges again and again when comparing ‘Elohim' stories and ‘Yahweh' stories. The story of Noah's Ark is one of the more famous examples, and separating Elohim from Yahweh reveals, once again, two historically conflicting stories that have been spun together on the pages of the Bible. (Consult the brief commentary on the two versions of the flood story and Noah's Ark.)

     The differences in naming conventions are not the only indication that two religious communities produced two different mythological stories. The remote, aloof, high theology of the priestly version of creation in Genesis chapter 1 can be contrasted with the anthropomorphism of the Eden story, also characteristic of other parables in the Yahweh series scattered throughout the books that follow. In chapter 1, the Elohim simply speak, and their word is done. There is a suggestion of omnipotent power and an all knowing understanding and knowledge. In chapter two, Yahweh goes strolling in the Garden of Eden, and can't find Adam and Eve. When he does find them he must ask them what they have been up to. Yahweh appears to have lunch with Abraham, and then suggests a trip to Sodom of Gomorrah to check out whether or not the sins of the place are as bad as the rumors going around. While the Elohim are all powerful and majestic, Yahweh is often jealous, often at wits end trying to find ways of dealing with the precocious humans.

The Yahweh School of Mythology

     There are other indications that the Yahweh traditions come from a separate source than the Elohim traditions, and which also indicate that we are dealing here with mythology in the most obvious sense of the word, myth makers who knowingly employed the language and symbol of myth in parables to raise religious questions and make theological points. One obvious sign of the mythological nature of the Yahweh parables is the constant play on words by the author. The word ‘adamah' (meaning ‘soil') is played off against the word ‘adam' (who was created from the soil). ‘Adam' also means ‘human being' and can be found used in the Bible as a proper name, or as a generic term, such as in Genesis chapter 5 where we read that "when God created human beings (adams), they were created in the likeness of God, male and female they were created and they were called human beings." In the following verse the term Adam is again used as a proper noun when we are told how long Adam lived before, in a mimicry of the verse previous Adam became the father of a son ‘created in his own likeness' (sharing then in the creative powers of the Elohim, the gods of this particular verse, which echoes Genesis chapter 1). ‘Edom resembles ‘Adom (red) and this is also employed as a play on words in the story of Esau selling his birthright for some red soup. The word Eve, the mother of all living, plays off the word ‘living'.

      Another example, that works well in English as well, is found in the tradition of the tower of Babel. The word Babel plays off the word for ‘confused' and in English the word play between Babel and a babble of different languages also works. The terminology and language used also allow us to date the composition. The reference to Babel is a reference to Babylon, where the Jewish people went into exile. There are common language and terminology found in the set of Yahweh parables, the Garden of Eden story, the story of Able and Cain, the Ark story, the Babel story, the Yahweh and Abraham stories, which has been catalogued by scholars of the original Hebrew. Eden is a cognate of the Babylonian word ‘edinu' which means "plain" or "desert". The story of Noah's Ark is a retelling of an earlier Babylonian flood myth, including what appear to be some ironic twists in the story, as Yahweh replaces the Babylonian god in retelling the myth (commentary being made here on the differences between Yahweh and the gods of Babylon).

      One can also keep in mind that language is constantly evolving, and that the time period of the writing can be determined by the characteristics of the language at that time. Think of the English of Shakespeare and compare modern English, or for even more divergence compare Chaucer . The language of the Yahweh parables is not the early language of Israel, but is the language of the period of the time of the Babylonian exile, something that should not be surprising when you consider the references to Babylon and to Babylonian myths in the parable sequence. The vocabulary used is unique in the Bible, and is characteristic of the late wisdom tradition. This vocabulary is found in these parables , and the only other books of the Bible using the same vocabulary are the books of the late wisdom tradition, the book of Ezekiel and the book of Job. The references to Babylon and the late dating of the vocabulary of the stories allows us to date the material to a time approximate to the time of Jewish exile to Babylon (Ezekiel is familiar with the story of Eden, and this suggests that the stories were told just before the time of exile when the power of Babylon was rising, and the Babylonian empire was expanding and engulfing the countries of the region and bringing them into a single empire. Note the reference in the Babel parable to unity among the people of the world in a single empire, and also the decision by Yahweh to stop the empire building, by shattering the unity and scattering the people into different nations. Using the language of myth, political commentary is being made here on events that were contemporary to the time of the story tellers.)

Conflict between the Yahweh prophets
and the Levitical Priests

     The Genesis Yahweh parables also give indications of familiarity with the messages and images of the prophets of Yahweh, most of whom preached in the centuries previous to the Babylonian conquest of the Jewish people. Since the Yahweh prophets and the Yahweh story tellers and myth makers belonged to the same tradition, this is not something that should be surprising but rather is what you would expect to find.

     The prophets of Yahweh were often at logger heads with the priesthood, and so it is not surprising to find conflicts between the priestly story of creation and the Yahweh Garden of Eden story which follows in Genesis Chapter 2 and 3. The conflicts between the priestly tradition and the Yahweh tradition went deeper than simple discrepancies in historical detail, but the two traditions were also deeply divided in ideological outlook. For example, the priestly book of Leviticus consists in almost half of traditions surrounding the sacrifice of animals in the fire as a rite of propitiating the gods. We are told that Moses instituted the Levitical priestly religion on explicit commands from the deity during a visit to the mountaintop. Speaking of these animal sacrifices, the priests wrote in Leviticus that these sacrifices were,

"their due forever throughout their generations. This is the law of the burnt offering, of the cereal offering, of the sin offering, of the guilt offering, of the consecration, and of the peace offerings, which YAHWEH commanded Moses on Mount Sinai, on the day that he commanded the people of Israel to bring their offerings to YAHWEH, in the wilderness of Sinai." (Leviticus 7:35)

     The prophets of Yahweh were in constant conflict with the Levites of the Jerusalem priesthood. (One should note that the books of the prophets, who were radicals and rebels, were edited later by the Levite scribes and priests, and thus are found to contain sources of a reactionary nature, characteristic of reactionary conservative backlash. Consult the page on sources in the books of the prophets or the short piece a Levite scribe pretends to be Jeremiah for more detail.) A classic example of the war between the prophets and the Levite priesthood is found in the following brief synopsis of the preaching of the prophet Jeremiah (radical Jeremiah, the prophet of Yahweh, and not the ‘reactionary Jeremiah edited later in the book by the Levite priests). Jeremiah wrote:

"Thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel: "Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat the flesh yourselves. For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices ... but they did not listen and proceeded ahead with their own plans with the most stubbornly wicked and evil hearts...truth has perished from their lips, and now it is no longer heard in the land ... why are these people so perpetually backsliding? They stubbornly refuse to repent and return. The stork in the heavens knows the time to migrate, but now my people do not know the requirements of Yahweh. How can you say, ‘we are wise, for we have the laws of Yahweh,' when behold, the lying pen of the scribes has worked falsely. Their leaders are dismayed, for they have been trapped and snared, but they rejected the word of Yahweh, so what kind of wisdom did they have?" (Jeremiah Chapter 7 verse 21, Jeremiah chapter 8 verse 6)

     There are many other examples of the same sort of radical protest. For example, the Gospel of Mark carried on this radical tradition of Jewish prophecy, accusing the scribes and the priesthood of nullifying the teachings of the prophets for the sake of their human commandments (found in such priestly books as Leviticus). See the short piece on a summary of the Gospel of Mark (a rebel and a radical) for a brief introduction to the radicalism of the early churches.

Ideology of the Yahweh prophets
in the work of the Yahweh mythologists

     Both the vocabulary used in the Yahweh Genesis parables and the references to Babylonian times and Babylonian myths date the material in Genesis to the time of the late wisdom tradition, perhaps just previous to, or contemporary with the time of the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel. The Garden of Eden is not referenced in the Bible until the time of the latter prophets, being mentioned in Ezekiel and then again during the time of the last prophets of the Isaiah school who spoke of the return of the Jewish people from exile in Babylonian using the metaphor of the reappearance of the Garden of Eden to describe the event. The fact that earlier references to the parable are not found is a further indication of the late time period in which the Genesis parables of the Yahweh mythologists were composed. The Yahweh story tellers who wrote the parables were familiar with the protests of the Yahweh school of prophets, and thus it is not surprising to find allusions to the preaching of these prophets in the mythological parables of these story tellers, and this allows us to use the language and ideology of the Yahweh prophets to interpret the meaning of such parables as that of the Garden of Eden in Genesis.

     Adam and Eve lived in a paradise in the Garden of Eden, and there was only one instruction they had to obey to maintain their idyllic existence. Do not eat the fruit of that tree of ‘the knowledge of good and evil' which, we are told, was found sitting at the center of the Garden. The tree was deadly and its fruit was poisonous. Shortly thereafter a snake showed up in the tree and assured the couple that if they ate the fruit they would become ‘wise like Yahweh' and come to know ‘the knowledge of good and evil' and it was just jealousy, the snake suggests, that caused Yahweh to wish to prevent the couple from becoming knowledgeable in divine wisdom. The couple did want to become wise, and saw how desirable it would be to eat such powerful fruit. They ate it, and promptly noticed, for the first time, that they were naked and required fig leaves over their exposed genitals, the first result, the story tellers assure us, of eating that fruit. Next they became fearful of Yahweh, and when Yahweh came ‘strolling through the Garden of Eden' the couple could not be found for they were hiding in the trees. "Did you eat that fruit I had already told you not to eat," Yahweh asks them, and they blame the snake for tricking them. Yahweh clothes them in animal skins, as the prophets were reputed to have worn, and then dispatched from them from the Garden with the assurance that they would slave away but would produce nothing but thistles and thorns.

     Now the promise of the fruit is that it taught "the knowledge of good and evil." We are also told that the forbidden tree was ‘sitting in the center of the Garden" and that Yahweh had commanded the people "do not eat that fruit." A snake however promised them that eating the fruit would bring great wisdom and make the couple "wise like Yahweh." However, it seems, about the only thing that fruit accomplished was to make the couple slap a couple of fig leaves over their crotch and then become paranoid and fearful of Yahweh, and from that time on they would produce ‘thistles and thorns.' Now if we keep in mind that these were Yahweh mythologists at work here, and if we keep in mind both the teachings of the Levite priesthood and the radical protests of the Yahweh prophets, this information should be enough to give us a template to interpret the intended meaning of the Yahweh school of ancient Israel when they were composing this mythological parable of the Garden of Eden..

     The radical prophets of Yahweh protested against the commandments of the Levitical priesthood found in the books of the Torah. Understandably, the Levites felt differently about the matter. According to the priestly writings these commandments came down to Moses on the mountain, and following them would make one wise like God.

Keep them and do them (the laws of the Torah); for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these laws, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.' (Deuteronomy 4:6 )

"Do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded you; turn not from it to the right hand or to the left ... This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it ... then you shall have good success." (Joshua 1:7)

     This was the priestly view of the Torah laws, and it was completely rejected by the Yahweh prophets. The Yahweh myth makers also followed the prophets on this matter, and it is this school of thought that informs their parables such as the parable of the Garden of Eden. The parable borrows images and metaphors from the Yahweh prophets, and the later prophets in this school in turn borrowed images and metaphors from the Yahweh myth tellers. The tree at the center of the Garden represented the Torah. The snake, and poisonous fruit, were metaphors used by the prophets to describe the Jerusalem priesthood, and the metaphor of a Garden (a vineyard) that was abandoned to thistles and thorns comes from the early Isaiah school of prophets, who blamed the thorns and thistles on the leadership in the temple and their allies in the monarchy. Indeed the metaphor of a garden being destroyed by the priesthood appears repeatedly in the writings of the Yahweh prophets. The reference to eating the fruit and then requiring a fig leaf, would seem to be a reference to the sexual paranoia and the idea of filth and uncleanness for sexual acts found in books such as Leviticus (those who had sex, according to Leviticus, were filthy and unclean for a period of time, and thus, required a fig leaf, and even such normal functions as menstruation and childbirth required sacrifices, were a source of filthy uncleanness, and the priesthood responded by banishing women, seven days isolation for menstruating, thirty days for the foul filthiness of childbirth.) As for becoming afraid of Yahweh and ‘hiding in the trees' anyone familiar with the genocidal, homicidal fury of the priestly god of the Torah could understand why such a thing might happen once such a violent superstition took hold, being so hostile to humanity, so full of bloodshed, cruelty and violence as the portrait of God in the priestly documents proves to be. It should be noted here, in the interests of fairness, that the Yahweh school did not hold to a single ideology over time, and while there was an anti-war school of the Yahweh prophets, Yahweh was also a war god according to certain sects. For example, in the book of Judges Chapter 3 verse 1 we are told that Yahweh kept a few Canaanites around to be used as target practice for the purpose of 'training future generations of Israelites in the art of warfare, that is, all those who had not learned it before.' Similar views of Yahweh as victorious war god appear scattered throughtout books like the Psalms. However, it was Levite priests who were responsible for editing the manuscripts into their final form, and it would be hard to imagine a more hostile deity than the pro_Aaron portrayal of the deity in the book of Numbers.

     You can find allusions to the elements of the parable of the Garden of Eden scattered throughout the protest writings of the Yahweh prophets in the Bible. Speaking of the issue of the knowledge of good and evil, the prophet Hosea attacked the Jerusalem priesthood for spreading around ignorance, while, of course, as would be expected, claiming to make the people ‘wise like God'. Hosea, like Jeremiah, rejected their substitution of superstitious, dogmatic laws about burnt offerings and sacrifices, and instead demanded genuine knowledge.

"There is no faithfulness or kindness, and no knowledge of God in the land ... My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me ... you have forgotten the law of your God ... For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God, rather than burnt offerings." (Hosea Chapter 4 verse 1, 6; Hosea Chapter 6 verse 6)

     The Yahweh prophets frequently used the metaphor of consumption as a metaphor for the rules and regulations of the priesthood. In the following example, rather than using poisoned fruit as in the Garden of Eden parable, the Isaiah school of prophets used the consumption of wine as a metaphor for the behavior of the priesthood and to mock the following of their Torah regulations. They mock the promise of receiving knowledge from such ‘drunken' priests to whom everything is just a list of rules in their Torah, and this allusion to the promise of knowledge is echoed by the Yahweh mythologists in the Garden of Eden parable.. In an allusion similar to that of the snake in the Genesis parable, and like the prophet Jeremiah, the Isaiah prophet also accuses the priesthood of being liars.

These also reel with wine and stagger with strong drink; the priest and the prophet reel with strong drink ... they err in vision ... Whom will he teach knowledge, and to whom will he explain the message? Those who are weaned from the milk, those taken from the breast? For it is rule upon rule, rule upon rule, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little ... Therefore hear the word of Yahweh, you scoffers, who rule this people in Jerusalem! Because you have said, "We have made a covenant with death ... for we have made lies our refuge, and in falsehood we have taken shelter ... The bed is to short for a person to stretch and the blanket is to narrow for a cover ... But Yahweh will arise and storm with rage to do what must be done." (Isaiah 28:7)

     You will recall from above how Jeremiah rejected the Torah and the claims of the priesthood to have been legitimized by Moses. These attacks on the priesthood and the Torah appear frequently in his writings. The allusion to the promise of ‘knowledge' and ‘wisdom' is found here again, tied together with Jeremiah's rejection of the Torah, equating it with wickedness and ungodliness, as well as the constantly reappearing image of the shepherds (the priests) trampling and destroying gardens (or in this case a pleasant vineyard), and once again you can find allusions to the same doctrines in the work of the Yahweh myth makers in the Garden of Eden parable.

"I make you this day a fortified city, an iron pillar, and bronze wall against the priests ... The priests did not say, ‘Where is YAHWEH?' Those who handle the law had no knowledge of Yahweh ... For both prophet and priest ply their trade through the land, and have no knowledge ... Both prophet and priest are ungodly; even in my house I have found their wickedness, says Yahweh ... Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard, they have trampled down my portion, they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness." (Jeremiah chapter 1 verse 18, chapter 2 verse 8, chapter 14 verse 18, chapter 23 verse 11, chapter 12 verse 10)

     The image of the destruction of a pleasant garden is also found in the work of the prophets of the Isaiah school, who also originated the image of the garden being turned over to thorns and thistles by Yahweh, an image borrowed directly by the Yahweh myth makers to describe the final state of the Garden of Eden. Both the Isaiah prophets and the prophet Amos also used the analogy of the Levite priests ‘poisoning' the people, and the image of the snake in the Eden parable is employed once again by the latter school of Isaiah prophets. They also allude to the separation of people from Yahweh (the metaphor of hiding in the trees) and blame this separation on lies and falsehood and employ the metaphor of a poisonous snake to explain this condition, and follow this with a metaphor of trying to ‘clothe oneself' with a lie, the metaphor of eating ‘a snake egg' and ‘dying', all these images appearing in the parable of the Garden of Eden and clearly connecting this prophecy with the work of the Yahweh mythologists.

"What more was there to do for my vineyard, that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? ... And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard ... I will make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and briers and thorns shall grow up ... but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God ... they speak lies, they conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity. They hatch adders' eggs, they weave the spider's web; he who eats their eggs dies, and from one which is crushed a viper is hatched. Their webs will not serve as clothing; men will not cover themselves with what they make ... we know our iniquities: transgressing, and denying YAHWEH, and turning away from following our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart lying words." (Isaiah 5:4 Isaiah 59:2)

     The prophet Amos also accused the priests of turning the Torah into poison, using the metaphor of poisoned fruit which would reappear later in the work of the Yahweh myth makers, and like Jeremiah, Amos denied that the sacrifice laws in the Torah came from Moses on orders of Yahweh, clearly connecting the metaphor of poisoned fruit with the priestly dogmas of the Torah. Amos sarcastically refers to the god of the priests using pagan names and predicts exile, the metaphor of being driven from the garden being a parallel to the exile to Babylon in Genesis chapter 2. The metaphor of ‘hiding in the trees from Yahweh' also appears in the writings of Amos.

"You have turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood ... Did you bring to me sacrifices and offerings the forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? You shall take up Sakkuth your king, and Kaiwan your star-god, your images, which you made for yourselves; therefore I will drive you into exile beyond Damascus," says Yahweh ... People shall say, "Hush! We must not mention the name of Yahweh ..." (Amos chapter 6 verse 12, Amos chapter 5 verse 25)

     There is a clear connection between ideology and imagery of the Yahweh mythologists and the ideology and imagery used for centuries by the Yahweh prophets, which should not surprise anyone, since they belonged to the same school of thought. The purpose of the Yahweh myth makers in composing the short parables we find in Genesis and scattered throughout other books of the Bible was to summarize the teachings of the Yahweh prophets using the metaphor and allusions of myth. The original meaning of such stories as that of the Garden of Eden have been lost, but then it is the case that throughout history we find that the message of the radical school of Jewish prophecy was also lost. The meaning of the story is lost through literal interpretion of myth, a terrible loss when the technique is applied to the story of Eden, and it is also lost through nullification. The teachings of the school of Yahweh prophets was replaced by Christian doctrines based almost exclusively on priestly Levite books like that of Leviticus, . The Eden parable, in its original context, belonged to the radical Yahweh school of prophecy in ancient Israel, and not to the Levite priests, who had their own books. It is only by retrieving and recognizing the lost message of the prophets that the parable of Eden can be reinterpreted through the lens of radical Jewish prophecy and the original intent of the authors, of the school of Yahweh, can once again be understood.