Birth After Death
therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out; Genesis 3:23-24a NASB
Sent/Drove – If your Bible has chapter and section headings, then it probably says something like this before you even begin to read Genesis 3: “The Fall of Man.” Of course, with that heading, we think that the story of Genesis 3 is all about the terrible disaster of sin. We think that the general theme of this chapter is falling. And, of course, if you’re falling, then you basically have no control over what happens next. Falls are about injury, losing your balance, being out of control—and that’s the sense of the Christian idea of the Fall. Something terrible happens that affects all the rest of Mankind; something that can’t ever be undone. From this point on, accordingly, only God can rescue us from our horrid mistake.
Interestingly, Jewish thinking doesn’t put much emphasis on “the Fall.” What happened in the Garden has a different emphasis, perhaps because Jewish thinking is more in line with the reaction of the original audience. Let’s try to recall the impact of this story for the children of Israel recently rescued from slavery.
One of the important elements of religious belief is its explanation of what’s happening. Virtually all religions have some story that explains why the world is the way it is and what its eventual destiny will be. Sometimes the answer is just a big circle. We go around, another generation follows, life continues to recreate itself. But Hebrew thinking isn’t like this. Hebrew thinking invented history, that is, the sense that there is progress toward a goal, not just a return to the beginning. When the children of Israel came out of Egypt, they needed to know why they had been rescued and why they experienced such terrible conditions before that rescue. The Garden story tells of the original harmony of creation, and the human and divine relationship that was disrupted through disobedience. It also tells the story of God’s intention to bring restoration, not of the original Garden bliss but of a world that needs the serious effort of both God and Man. What Israel learns from this tale is this: actions have consequences far beyond the initial participants; the Garden is no longer a possibility, God and Man must work together, but—it’s going to be very hard. In other words, we fell into captivity because the world is a broken place; God is still active and has rescued us, and now we have to get to work following Him in the restoration process. As you can see, the “Fall” doesn’t play a big part in this reading. Zornberg has this to say:
“Does eating the fruit of such knowledge constitute a ‘Fall,’ as the Christian tradition largely views it? While Rabbinic tradition in general avoids the vertical idiom, it does sometimes occur in midrashic sources. In the biblical narrative, however, the vertical imagery of falling is entirely absent. Instead, an outward movement expels Adam and Eve from the Garden: ‘And the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden . . . He drove the man out’ (Gen. 3:23-24). This is not a fall but, in a sense, a birth. Paradise is lost, but a larger, if more agitated life looms.”[1]
Expulsion from the Garden is the birth of contemporary Man, a being who must now participate in the divine work of restoration. Expulsion is the necessary step to current humanity. It is the initiation of a call to active obedience. It’s where we put our feet on the ground and get going.
The “Fall”? Well, maybe it’s not such a big deal after all. Maybe the Church needs the Fall in order to justify its claim that we are all sinners from birth rather than teaching us to be human after death (Genesis 2:17).
Topical Index: Fall, drove, Genesis 2:17, Genesis 3:23-24
[1] Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious, p. 17.
