Eden's Sacred Stage
Setting the scene for the Fall
Matt and I are studying the sacred and the profane by looking at many of the major stories throughout the Bible. We believe Jesus perfectly walks the line between the sacred and the profane and His life stands in stark contrast to the other stories of the Bible, where characters attempt to walk the line but fail. To start, we'll be looking at the Fall of Man in the story of Adam and Eve (Genesis 2:15-17 and 3:1-19). To understand the story of the Fall, we need to understand the Garden itself and the people within it.
The Garden is located on a mountain (Ezekiel 28:13). In the ancient Near East, such places linked heaven to earth. Michael Heiser expands this view and describes it as the gathering place for God and His heavenly council, divine beings who serve Him (The Unseen Realm, 75). God wasn't simply above the Garden in the heavenly realm but used the Garden as a central part of the governance of the cosmic order.
God’s presence and the presence of His council in the Garden show why it was such a lush paradise, flowing with streaming waters. Catherine McDowell says this is evidence of God’s blessing upon it (McDowell, The Image of God in the Garden of Eden, 38). This blessing extends to Adam, who God appoints to cultivate the soil (Genesis 2:15). McDowell compares the creation of Adam (and thus his purpose in the Garden) to ancient Mesopotamian practices, where priests crafted clay figures and performed rituals which they believed gave them life. Adam is shaped from the dust and breathed into, just like these idols. However, instead of it being a priest who shapes him, he is instead shaped by God (Genesis 2:7; McDowell, 24) and is given the life (the breath) of God himself. Because Adam's soul is given to him by God, he is tied to the life of God. As with the idols, when the image, the idol, was consecrated (given a soul in the minds of the Mesopotamians), it changed “in its status from profane to sacred.” (McDowell, 11)
Eve is formed from Adam’s “bone and flesh” (Genesis 2:23), and she joins him as a partner, a union McDowell describes as sacred harmony (McDowell, 3). They bear God’s image from Genesis 1:26-27, reflecting a kinship with God (McDowell, 2). Together, they work to maintain the cosmic order set up by God and to maintain the harmony of heaven and earth.
Nathan French argues that this harmony relies on obedience to a single command, that they must avoid the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:17; Theocentric, 97-98). In the story, the tree is the boundary between the sacred and the profane. If Adam and Eve obey, then the cosmic order stays safe and life flourishes. If they disobey then the cosmic order shifts toward death, and chaos erupts.
This is the setup for the story, which we will explore next.
Citations
French, Nathan. A Theocentric Interpretation of הדעת טוב ורע. Religion Und Literatur Des Alten Und Neuen Testaments series.
Heiser, Michael S. The Unseen Realm. Lexham Press, 2015.
McDowell, Catherine. The Image of God in the Garden of Eden. Eisenbrauns, 2015.
Scripture quotations from the English Standard Version (ESV).