Fall of Adam & Eve

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Artist's Summary 1 Michelangelo's bold clarity was in use with the Fall of Adam and Eve and the Expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Note the compositions three pilasters, the fallen pair to the left, the pair expelled from Paradise to the right, and the anthropomorphized tree of knowledge with the striking female tempter in the center with her legs wrapping the tree of knowledge, join arms at the top to form the letter M in uncial script. The composition's rhythm flows from left to right. Eve grasps at the fruit boldly, Adam acquisitively, for they wanted perfection. God became secondary. To the left, the intimate expression driven by pride and disobedience seems of as great as the misfortune of shame and guilt in the expulsion, on the right. They know that through the fall, God, who was near, has become more inaccessible and remote. No longer worthy of the garden, humanity's truth will have to be learned in the desert of our destiny. Salient is the cherubim with the raised sword pointing the way out. Good and evil have divided. This fresco is full of mysteries, which have their parallels in the artistic and the structural. Everything connects in his designs, but the terms are visual and symbolic.

Summary Comments from The Anchor Bible StudyThe stage set, action and suspense, psychological insight and subtle irony, light and shadow is all achieved in two-dozen verses. The characterization is all the more effective for its indirectness. Everything is transposed into human terms. The serpent is endowed with mans faculties, and even God is pictured in subjective and anthropomorphic fashion. When Adam has been caught in his transparent attempt at evasion, Yahweh speaks to him as a father would to his child. For what J (Yahwist) has thus evoked is the childhood of mankind itself. The target is much more than just to tell a story. The J work is the record of a spiritual experience of a whole nation. The nation is made up of individuals, who have their ancestry all the way back in time. The experience is retraced and recorded, the result is also great literature. The many traditions provide the author with his raw material. The focal point is the tree of knowledge. The eating of its forbidden fruit imparts "knowing good and evil." The idiom here is the sense of possessing mental and physical powers. Motifs as sexual awareness, wisdom and nature's paradise are familiar from ancient sources. J made use of traditions in Primeval History that originated in Mesopotamia. As a whole the narrative is synthetic and stratified. The author's genius makes an unforgettable contribution.

The Collegeville Bible Commentary Summary Their nakedness is a symbol of their relationship to God. Only with the disruption of that relationship is their nakedness an embarrassment. The serpent is judged as being cunning. In Hebrew, cunning (arum) forms wordplay with naked (arummim). This wordplay stresses the fact that man and woman become aware of their nakedness because of the cunning of the serpent. The story of Genesis says nothing about the serpents motives in tempting the man and the woman. 4 Indeed, the source of evil itself is left a mystery. It does tell us is that the presence of evil in the world is due to humanitys decision to oppose Gods directive. The author portrays both man and woman as listening to the serpent. The fact that woman is presented first may simply be a literary device that keeps the story moving. The temptation scene has all the characteristics of a universal depiction of temptation. This is the way every human being is tempted. The serpent, with an opening question, insinuates that God has some ulterior motive for the command, that God is keeping something from humanity. The woman jumps to Gods defence, but the serpent has succeeded in attracting her attention and proceeds with three half-truths (1) you will not die; () your eyes will be opened; () you will be like God, knowing good and evil (vv. 4-5). Humanity violated the limit imposed by God and appropriated the knowledge. Now humanity exists in the position of deciding for itself. It defines itself in rebellion against the Creator. Humanity does become like God in a sense that now it makes its own decisions, but it makes decisions as creature, without the breadth and depth of wisdom or vision of the Creator. In spite of sin and its consequences, life goes on. Yahweh's care for humanity continues. He makes them garments "covering up" their guilt and shame. Yet, humanity is unable to seize the Deity's prerogative of immortality.

My Reflection The painter knew how to blend forms and colours into harmony. Man and woman have come to know evil and the first way it shows initially is in their own bodies. The inner harmony is broken and concupiscence raises its head. Original justice has now destroyed the harmony they found in themselves. The control of spiritual faculties and the man-woman union is now subject to tensions and apprehensions. Relations become marked by lust and dominion. Harmony with creation is broken. Spiritual death and eventual death makes an entrance into human history.

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My reaction to the fresco is one of deep sadness, and then great anger. I'm sad and hurt that man, who was graced with immortality, upright (very good) and blessed as a friend in relationship with God, has the audacity to doubt God's truthfulness and yields to his own very selfish sensual appetites. I'm angry just thinking of the consequences of being expelled from the garden. I'm also scared and humiliated that my very own nakedness is my place in history as it emerges from humanity's expulsion from the garden. It is scary and intimidating to see our own frailty and weakness that is revealed in our own, very human nature. However, it is especially reassuring to know we have a God, who cares lovingly about our every need, whom did this for a mysterious greater good. Aside, what is striking in the fresco is the female serpent. 5

I choose these commentaries specifically since they mostly reflected my own thinking. So that you'll know, I agree whole-heartedly with both commentaries and summarized them in a manner that adds a foundation to my reflections. I apologize for my wordiness, longwinded I seemed unable to get it all in three pages. I suspect, I "bit off" to big a piece.

I am also greatly inspired by Aquinas' love of truth. In his Summa II-II, 180, 4, we contemplate the ultimate perfection of the human intellect is the truth of God. Other truths fulfil the intellect in view of the truth of God. This is the goal of human life as a whole. For the moment there is only of an imperfect contemplation of the truth of God.

The destiny of every human being seems to be decided by what goes on inside his skull while he is challenged with what goes on outside his skull. Each of us, instrumentally, designs his own life. Destiny shows that by diverse means we come to the same ends, and by similar means we come to diverse ends. We carry stuff in our heads telling us what to do and not do, we carry aspirations in images of the way we would like it to be, and among them, we put our shows on the road. These shows can correspond to the "good life" or they can become thwarted and distorted into shows of lovelessness, mindlessness or joylessness. How is it that the humanity with all its accumulated wisdom, self-awareness, and desire for truth can permit situations of pathos and self-deception? Is it because we have not evolved enough or grown up enough yet? There are certain bodily, mental and social functioning, which happen to man in spite of himself, that sort of slip out as it were, because they were programmed to do so. Some people don't know what they are doing to themselves and others. I guess to know what one is doing is the opposite of being programmed or scripted.

For me the artwork and the commentaries chosen culminate in a deep psychological game, the beginning of the game is the temptation and the end of the game is the expulsion consequences. The game also can be seen in a universal sense operationally in psychological terms as a manipulation or exploitation. It was looking through these game-centred eyes that I learned the most about games themselves.

In the quest for immortality, the tree of life, although not seen in the fresco, may have its origins from ancient materials. 6 We all play games because they are a rich source of strokes. By a stroke, I mean any form of attention or recognition. I believe the whole word is stroke-deprived, at least, to some extent. Games can be played hard or soft. Most games also occur outside of our awareness. Games are a way of filling time and advancing the action. Most games are soft and relatively harmless. However, the serpent's temptation game here is a very hard game since it results in tissue damage (eventual death) and spiritual damage (spiritual death). For these reasons I postulate that games are patterns of misguided attempts, which are motivated to get positive strokes that backfire, producing negative strokes that turn out wrong or badly. The serpent's game is such a pattern of manipulation or exploitation. It is a series of crooked ulterior operations moving to a well-defined pay-off. Crooked in the sense that they are not straight, direct, undiluted, simple and pure expressions. They are ulterior, since the serpent's operations are covert, hidden or concealed. The serpent has a hidden agenda. He cons. He pretends to be doing one thing while he is really doing something else. He cons with his opening question, "You shall not eat any tree in the garden?" On a social level this question seems innocent enough, however on the deeper psychological level it really challenges God. Please keep in mind, a confidence trick can only work if there is a weakness it can hook into, like a "gimmick" to get hold of in the respondent. In this case, the respondents are Adam and Eve and on a deeper psychological level their weakness is that they want perfection. They want to "be perfect." They fear death, but they want to be like God, immortal, eyes opened and knowing. So, how does the serpent "hook" his "mark"? He insinuates that God has some ulterior motive for His prohibition, that God is keeping something from humanity, which, of course, is exactly their weakness or the gimmick to get a hold on them. "You will not die." And now after the "mark" is hooked, he continues with a switch to get his pay-off. The switch is, "For God knows that when you eat… You will be like God, knowing good and evil." The serpent's pay-off is partly ostensibly impossible, for he wants to frustrate God's plan, and in part possible, to entice man into perdition. Adam and Eve collect their pay-off in bad feelings of shame and guilt followed by God's original justice.

I believe our major task is to embark on the painful search of our own games. No one should allow himself to use any form of deception or dissimulation. My goal is to be authentically honest, unswitching, aware of my own ulterior motives and be always willing to reveal them. The big question is not "Do I play games?" but rather "What games do I play?" We need to carefully analyze our own games and our unconscious life plans, so that we have an objective appraisal about our very own cons and gimmicks. With this knowledge, we can "calibrate" ourselves, that is, make the adjustments and compensations for our own exploitive and manipulative inclinations. God has given us the capacity, so we can recover our awareness in the here and now, so we can be spontaneous liberating ourselves from compulsion, and all through Him as the principle cause, we can be intimate with God and our neighbours. I feel a stronger growing interest in philosophy, religion and social action has given some new meaning to my life. I feel it also helps to understand what we have done and what others have done concerning their "soul" and "spirit" to free themselves from the slavery of manipulations and exploitations.

Bibliography and Notes

1. http//www.christusrex.org/www1/sistine/6b-fall.jpg. Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel from 1508 to 151, commissioned by Pope Julius II. The sixth scene in the chronological order of the narrative, The Fall and Expulsion from Garden of Eden, is depicted in the large field of the vault of the second bay, between the triangular spandrels. Picture enclosed.

. Spieser, E. A., The Anchor Bible Genesis Introduction, translation and Notes, Albright, W.F., Freedman, D.N., editors, Doubleday & Co. Inc Garden City, New York, 164, pages 0-8. This commentary seems more thorough and advanced with more textual and critical information.

. Viviano, Pauline A., The Collegeville Bible Commentary Based on the New American Bible, Old Testament, Bergant, Dianne, ed., The Liturgical Press Collegeville, Minnesota. 1, pages 4-45. This single volume has handy, relatively shorter, yet informative commentaries on individual books.

4. http//www.newadvent.org/www.nccbuscc.org/nab/genesis/genesis.htm. There is copy Genesis Chapter enclosed here.

5. Spieser, E. A., The Anchor Bible Genesis Introduction, translation and Notes, Albright, W.F., Freedman, D.N., editors, Doubleday & Co. Inc Garden City, New York, 164, page 6. Perhaps the artist's iconography was that found jointly in a single passage of the Gilgamesh Epic (Tablet I, column iv, lines 16ff., ANET, page 75), where Enkidu was effectively tempted by the temptress who marks his status by improvising some clothing for him (column ii, lines 7f, ANET, page77).

6. ibid., page 7. The tale of Adapa (ANET, pp. 101ff.) in the Epic of Gilgamesh makes use of a magic plant and a serpent in man's failed quest for immortality.

Creator God… help me to hear your word as I behold creation, the work of your hands. As I study created reality, help me to know that all this comes from you, and that the greater my understanding of creation, the greater the knowledge I will have of you, a Divine Creator. Thomas Aquinas

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