What is "Genesis" really about?

This is a bit of a recap of a fascinating book, "Eve's Seed", by Robert McElvaine. 2001.

I read this about a year after it was out...because there was an excerpt written for the WaPo editorial section the sunday after 9/11. That little bit was weird enough an idea that I got the whole book.


What's Genesis about? Not what you thought...

It is of course a mythology about the origin of humanity. An allegory for some things. Interesting things. But *not* about Adam, Eve, a serpent and an apple.

That story is putatively about "the fall of man", but really it's about "the fall of men", which is a subtle distinction. A fall from grace, yes. Beginning when...

Eve ate a fruit from the tree of knowledge.

What knowledge?

Now for the anthropology history aspects: early humankind are of course wanderers. Hunter/gatherers. As are most "higher" animals. Cows are not, they just eat grass. Chimps are gatherers. Humans are omnivorous, so some hunting and some gathering. Can't be otherwise, because we know too little to do anything else, and besides, food is reasonably plentiful--lots of trees produce fruits and nuts, you can watch what other animals eat and do the same, and occasionally you eat of them.

Gathering of things that fall from trees. Hunting the occasional large beast.

That hunting might actually take a couple of days, days of wandering, finding, shooting, following, and then dragging the thing back to camp. That requires upper body strength, so it's the men doing it. Women are doing the gathering. When you "exhaust" an area, you move on.

When you wander into the area that has A LOT of stuff, you end up staying for a while, because you can't exhaust the area. Men go out to hunt. Women stay behind, with babies, kids. And trash.

When the time comes that they stay in one area for a number of years, what happens? The women are in the same place every day, and have the opportunity to observe something: things they eat have seeds. Seeds which they have thrown away. Seeds sprout in the ground. Sprouts become new plants. New plants eventually make more food.

Hoorah! We can grow it ourselves! Let's dig in the dirt and plant seeds and have more food and stop having to wander all over tarnation.

Eve has eaten from the Tree of Knowledge. Knowledge of agriculture. Men (upper body strength again) now have to do the backbreaking work of tilling and harvesting--they have fallen from grace.

Women must be punished for this. And have been ever since. Because I was once a hunter, but now I'm a slave. A slave to the fields. And my johnson.

All the chatter you read here/there about "it was the tree of knowledge about good and evil" is baloney. The origin of the story is pre-history, when humans went from hard wandering, to find the "garden of eden, where food was plentiful". Good. And then to farming. Evil.

So the story was invented where the snake tempted Eve with knowledge of seeds, of planting, of growth and harvesting.

The book is fascinating, and well worth your time to read. Unless of course you are a bible literalist, in which case it might make your head explode.

- - - -

So why did I encounter this in WaPo? Well, there was the excerpt variant by the author, written as an Editorial essay. About Muslims, for the most part; appropriate a few days post-9/11.

Why do the men grow beards? Why did it become a religious requirement? Because women can't. And therefore having a beard proves that one is "not-a-woman". 

Read the book. Fascinating. I can't hardly do it justice here.