There was still something that didn’t quite fit together, but I couldn’t figure out how to articulate it.
Ishmael told me to take my time.
After I’d sweated over it for a few minutes, he said, “Don’t expect to be able to work it all out in terms of our present knowledge of the world. The Semites at this time were completely isolated on the Arabian peninsula, cut off in all directions either by the sea or by the people of Cain. For all they knew, they and their brothers to the north were literally the whole race of man, the only people on earth. Certainly that’s the way they saw the story. They couldn’t possibly have known that it was only in that little corner of the world that Adam had eaten at the gods’ tree, couldn’t possibly have known that the Fertile Crescent was only one of many places where agriculture had begun, couldn’t possibly have known that there were still people all over the world living the way Adam had lived before the Fall.”
“True,” I said. “I was trying to make it fit with all the information we have, and that obviously won’t work.”
17
“I think it’s safe to say that the story of Adam’s Fall is by far the best-known story in the world.”
“At least in the West,” I said.
“Oh, it’s well known in the East as well, having been carried into every corner of the world by Christian missionaries. It has a powerful attraction for Takers everywhere.”
“Yes.”
“Why is that so?”
“I guess because it purports to explain what went wrong here.”
“What did go wrong? How do people understand the story?”
“Adam, the first man, ate the fruit of the forbidden tree.”
“And what is that understood to mean?”
“Frankly, I don’t know. I’ve never heard an explanation that made any sense.”
“And the knowledge of good and evil?”
“Again, I’ve never heard an explanation that made any sense. I think the way most people understand it, the gods wanted to test Adam’s obedience by forbidding him something, and it didn’t much matter what it was. And that’s what the Fall essentially was—an act of disobedience.”
“Nothing really to do with the knowledge of good and evil.”
“No. But then I suppose there are people who think that the knowledge of good and evil is just a symbol of … I don’t know exactly what. They think of the Fall as a fall from innocence.”
“Innocence in this context presumably being a synonym for blissful ignorance.”
“Yes … It’s something like this: Man was innocent until he discovered the difference between good and evil. When he was no longer innocent of that knowledge, he became a fallen creature.”
“I’m afraid that means nothing at all to me.”
“To me either, actually.”
“All the same, if you read it from another point of view, the story does explain exactly what went wrong here, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“But the people of your culture have never been able to understand the explanation, because they’ve always assumed that it was formulated by people just like them—people who took it for granted that the world was made for man and man was made to conquer and rule it, people for whom the sweetest knowledge in the world is the knowledge of good and evil, people who consider tilling the soil the only noble and human way to live. Reading the story as if it had been authored by someone with their own point of view, they didn’t stand a chance of understanding it.”
“That’s right.”
“But when it’s read another way, the explanation makes perfectly good sense: Man can never have the wisdom the gods use to rule the world, and if he tries to preempt that wisdom, the result won’t be enlightenment, it will be death.”
“Yes,” I said, “I have no doubt about that—that’s what the story means. Adam wasn’t the progenitor of our race, he was the progenitor of our culture.”
“This is why he’s always been a figure of such importance to you. Even though the story itself made no real sense to you, you could identify with Adam as its protagonist. From the beginning, you recognized him as one of your own.”