I
Familiarity has made us forget that one of lit the earliest, and no doubt most sacred, allegories of the world contains some mysterious, and tantalizing, features.
The history of Adam and Eve contains a mysterious object—a fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. The first prohibition law of the world was made by Jehovah to prevent history's first couple from touching the forbidden fruit of the mysterious tree. It was not obeyed as it should be. Enticed by the seditious serpent, fair Eve plucked the fruit of knowledge, took a guilty bite and, afraid to face the consequences alone, got her husband to do the same. The punishment which the good Lord meted out to them was death, together with excruciating pain at childbirth for Eve, and hard labor for Adam. John Milton referred to the event, in Paradise Lost:
"Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our, woe.. "
It is the story of a great calamity in the history of mankind.
Of course there are several ways to look at this story. Some of our Christian friends regard it as authentic history; they have a good right to do so if they want to. Others regard it as a great allegoric story, with significance either for the people of ancient time, or for the people of all ages. Not a bad idea either.
Throughout the ages, interest has been shown in the question: What kind of fruit, or tree, can this be? Religious teachers have been con tent to explain this as a lesson in obedience and punishment, and let it go at that. Popular exegesis in English speaking countries today claims that it was an apple. Why not? It is not a bad explanation; the apple is a delicious, whole some, and very tempting fruit. There is only one little difficulty. Never has an apple been known to bring death to anybody yet. In the past, other fruits and trees had been speculated upon as the Tree of Knowledge — hazel, mountain ash, rowan, almond, etc. But in each case, if the fruit was capable of bringing death to any person who ate, it, it was never delicious and tempting enough; and if it was delicious and tempting, it was incapable of doing more harm to the eater than a little bellyache or allergic reaction. Furthermore, the question must be asked in each case: what has it got to do with knowledge?
The fact of the matter is: the Tree of Knowledge is an allegorical tree. No real harm is done if we identify it with an apple tree. What Adam and Eve ate no doubt was as fragrant, delicious, and tempting as the best of apples can be. But there is no sound justification, historical, literary, or religious, for such an identification. The calamitous tree was an allegorical device called the Tree of Knowledge, and the only justified inquiry is: What kind of knowledge could this be?
Generally speaking, knowledge is one of the most precious gifts enjoyed by mankind. The possession, or utilization, of ample knowledge has elevated Man above all other members of the animal kingdom, and made us what we are today. To impart knowledge, we build and maintain schools, and spend a substantial part of our national income each year. Why then should a taste of knowledge be punished, as it was in the Old Testament story, by death?
It is true there are death-dealing knowledges today. The knowledge of atomic and hydrogen bombs has brought death to many thousands of people, and will bring it to millions more. But it certainly does not kill the man who first tastes, or acquires, this knowledge; it will kill mostly those who have no knowledge of it. Likewise in ancient Israel, such a knowledge of atomic and hydrogen bombs did not exist. Therefore our question remains: what could the unknown author or authors of the Old Testament story have in mind, when he talked about the Tree of Knowledge? What poisonous knowledge could it have been? Of sin, crime, or gross immorality?
II
I am reviving this old question, because there is a Chinese Buddhist myth that suggests an answer to it. The Pilgrimage to the West is a masterpiece in Chinese literature that combines the best qualities of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, Cervantes' Don Quixote, and Butler's Hudibras. Of a number of myths in the Pilgrimage to the West, one deals with the subject of what we may call "virgin manhood" and death. The holy priest Tang Hsuan-chong was immortal if he was able to keep his "virgin man hood" intact, i.e. undefiled by carnal contact with woman, which would, if permitted to touch him, bring death and perdition to him in course of time. But evil spirits in female form one and all sought to share his bed and destroy his immortality. On the other hand, friends and champions, or guards, of the holy man fought brilliantly, and most entertainingly, to make it possible for him to elude the grasp of his enemies. Successfully he overcame all the difficulties in his way, and his guard-champions vanquished all his foes. Finally they arrived, joyfully, at the West Heaven, the abode of the Buddhas and Buddhisatvas, and became beloved members of that sacred congregation. It is a noble, edifying, as well as hugely entertaining story.
Why should death figure so prominently in this and other stories? Because as the destroyer of man's most important possession, life, it came to our ancestors in terrifying forms. Sometimes it came from violence, at the hands of their natural enemies, wild beasts or fellow men. This was a form which they soon learned they could evade by caution and vigilance. But when it came, inexorably and inevitably, as the result of fatal sickness or, in rare cases, of old age, it must appear as mysterious as it was frightening. Why must there be in our life such a disagreeable thing as death? The problem of death and its cause was no doubt one of the first problems to haunt the mind of our ancestors.
What had Man done to deserve death? I can imagine the seers of antiquity asking themselves, and one another, this sad question and shaking their troubled heads in perplexity, because a satisfactory answer was hard to find.
Today, the question must be put by us in a slightly different way. Our task is to find out what did the writer of the Old Testament story think Man had done to deserve death. As no, source material, either historical or biographical, is available to guide us to a suitable answer, we must seek the solution by a different approach. What culpable skulduggery could Man, perpetrate in ancient Israel? *
The answer is: There are not many choices available when we try to compile a list of ancient Biblical shenanigans. The Israelites were, after all not very bad people actually, and the Ten Commandments and the denunciations of doleful prophets seem to cover the ground very well. Theft, prevarication, impiety, murder, sodomy, etc. —that is all, and none of them seems to fit the forbidden fruit. Furthermore, the Knowledge in question is perplexingly described in the Old Testament as "knowledge of good and evil," thereby seeming to eliminate all these simple, downright evil-doings of the Commandments and denunciations. The fact that a young lady of good breeding like Eve shared in the sin with Goodman Adam also seems to confirm this view. The sinful knowledge in question was not of the heinous kind enjoyed by the ordinary wrong-doers of today or of ancient Israel.
At this point, I wish to make the suggestion that the knowledge of the Tree of Knowledge was, in the mind of the author of the Old Testament story, probably carnal knowledge, and that the myth of the forbidden fruit was probably an allegory that linked sex to death.
III
As the implications of my suggestion may, if established as correct, assail the sanctity of the first book of the Bible, I am aware that my suggestion is apt to be received with shocked incredulity and bitter opposition. It is not going to be an easy matter to support and justify views so obviously sacrilegious and subversive. But I have a few good reasons for the stand I am taking.
First, in the Old Testament, the acquisition of knowledge was punished by death, and the punishment was a deferred one. If the allegorical lesson concerned the punishment of disobedience or audacity, why shouldn't the culprits be stricken dead at once, or as soon as their sin was discovered. This feature of deferred punishment indicates that it was an allegory to explain the origin of death. However, as a punishment, death was simply too severe for the sin, or crime, of disobedience, audacity, or theft of knowledge. But as an allegorical lesson, carnal knowledge finally leading to death made sense to the people of primitive times, as an answer to the question of why there should be such an ugly thing as death at all.
Secondly, in the Bible story, the culprits drew another punishment beside final death, hard labor for Goodman Adam and excruciating pain at childbirth for poor Eve. It certainly was a very severe addition, and presented the good Lord in an unfavorable light. Why should He be so harsh, so cruel? The only sensible answer is that it was an allegorical explanation of marital hardships. With a growing family to support, Goodman Adam's lot was hard labor, without which his family would starve. And the laudable task of child-bearing was accompanied not by delightful rewards, as a reason able Lord unruffled by man's transgressions should normally decree, but by sorrow and pain.
Thirdly, venturesome Eve and her mate acquired, after their transgression, a new sense of shame for their nakedness, and began to wear clothes. This is most interesting and significant. Before this, Eve and Adam were fond, and proud, of each other enough. They fell in love with each other as they were, i.e. naked; they found each other quite attractive in that condition. Why should a knowledge of good and evil suddenly make them ashamed of the God given naked comeliness, or comely nakedness. When one comes to think of it, it must be clear that this was entirely unreasonable. Obviously it was an allegorical explanation of clothing, probably in a warm and comfortable climate, where no protection against the rigors of nature was needed. But why should handsome folks like Eve and Adam, unmarred by any physical defects that we know of, suddenly feel ashamed of their naked beauty, and resort to clothing to hide their embarrassment? Again only one explanation is possible—the discovery of carnal knowledge or dalliance, and its attendant circumstances.
Fourthly, an ordinary knowledge of good and evil can harm no one; indeed it is essentially wholesome and beneficial. As I said above, it certainly did not require or justify a death penalty. But carnal knowledge under certain circumstances could, and did, lead to death. The Buddhist myth cited earlier in this article in the Pilgrimage to the West, indicates that in oriental mythology, carnal knowledge was linked with death. * It is therefore not entirely unreasonable to suppose that the clues described above point to the possibility that the Tree of Knowledge myth probably referred, at some time or other, to carnal or sexual knowledge.
The mysterious and extraordinary way in which the Tree of Knowledge story appears in the Book of Genesis indicates that it was an allegorical device employed to symbolize some significant experience in the history of ancient man. But the calamitous knowledge was not a heinous crime or downright evil-doing like murder, robbery, or sodomy, but a gentler and much less crude, or wicked, matter. In Old Testament times, the range of human experiences having an educational or historical value that could justify inclusion in an important work like the Bible, was no doubt a narrow one. Eating, sleep, hunting, cultivation of the soil, medication, etc.
The list is easily exhausted, and most of the items are commonplace and humdrum. Of all these experiences, none could be more exciting, significant, yet fraught with danger, and there fore educational, than the discovery of light-hearted carnal knowledge and its grave consequences. To the young people of any century, sex is, when made known for the first time, always a startling discovery. Can it then be any wonder that it should become the subject of an important allegory in the Old Testament? Today, sex and death are still close neighbors, and the lesson contained in the Book of Genesis has not lost any of its freshness and significance.
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* I hope my reader will not condemn this as a frivolous question. It is the only approach possible in an unorthodox inquiry like the present one.
*A search of ancient Hebrew mythology and its relatives may throw further light on the subject.
* * * *
To get rich is something which all people desire. To have children is also something which all people desire. Although it is desirable to have children, it must be remembered that childbirth is painful and dangerous. From this we may know that the enjoyment of an easy and happy life can only come through hardships and difficulties.