These days, I’ve been thinking about the famous tale of Adam and Eve which is one of the first stories of the Bible. You can look at this story metaphorically, which is a very interesting approach. It has a lot of wisdom hidden in it. According to the book of Genesis, the story of Adam and Eve goes like this:
God has decided to create the world. At the first day, he had created light. At the second day, he created a firmament (Some kind of an invisible field) which was dividing our world from the sky. At the third day, he gathered the water of the world into one place so that land would appear. He also created all of the plants and the vegetation of the world. At the fourth day, he created the greater light to rule the day (The sun) and the lesser light to rule the night (The moon). At the fifth day, he created the great sea monsters and all living creatures that would inhabit the seas. At the sixth day, he created all of the land animals and the beasts of this world.Finally, He created the man from dust. This man was created in the image of god and he was called Adam. However, Adam was feeling lonely and he needed a companion. Then, God creates Eve from one of the ribs of Adam. Adam was delighted to see her and he welcomed her into the Garden of Eden. They were both living harmonically in this world and there was no violence in it, as all living things were vegetarian. Adam and Eve were permitted to eat from all trees, except from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
One day Satan in the form of a serpent, approaches Eve and tempts her to eat one of the forbidden fruits of the tree of knowledge. Then Eve gives some to her husband who also eats willingly. When they do this they find out about good and evil. They become aware of everything. They learn about envy, greed, hypocrisy and every evil thing of this world. When God finds out about this, he is enraged and he curses all three of them. The man was doomed to live a lifetime of hard labour followed by death, the woman to the pain of childbirth and to subordination to her husband and the serpent to go on his belly and suffer the enmity of both man and woman. Adam and Eve are also banished from heaven permanently. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_and_Eve#Hebrew_Bible_narrative)
This was the tale of Adam and Eve. There’s another chapter to this story, but we are not interested in this part. We will focus on this segment of the story. Initially, Adam and Eve were pure and innocent. They were living in a very beautiful world and everything was ideal. But at some point things had changed. They ate from the fruit of knowledge and they became aware of everything. They learned about good and evil. Afterwards, God cursed them and expelled them from heaven. I think that’s a very beautiful story and you can interpret it in any way you like. You can think of it as a true story or as a metaphor that that has some wisdom in it. This story has many similarities with my life actually.
At first when I was born, I was also pure and innocent just like Adam and Eve. My life was very beautiful and I was one of the most carefree beings on the planet. However, this lighthearted way of living didn’t last for long. At some point, things had changed. I started getting slapped by life. This went on for quite some time, until I saw the full picture. I saw the evil of this world. The stench that it was hiding. So in a sense “I ate an apple from the tree of knowledge”. Hence, I stopped living in “paradise”, since the truth was revealed. You could say that “I stopped living in heaven” just like Adam and Eve. If you look at the story in a metaphorical way, it resembles a lot the lives that we live. Which is why this could simply be a metaphor that describes the harsh realities of this world.
What do you guys think? Do you agree with this view? Let me know in the comments!
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