Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden by Jane Ray

Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden  Jane Ray Date: 2006-05-01   —   9.99   —   Book product page Rating:

Okay, we're on the second week of my own version of Preschool Catechism*, and we've reached Adam and Eve, a story that is, in my mind, frought with pitfalls - none of them probably evident from a child's perspective.  Ray's illustrations are lovely - colorful and luminous, with gilded touches to make everything everything in Eden seem newer, shinier, and more wondrous.  Certain pages are framed with smaller, detailed pieces including maps, old-fashioned line drawings from scientific illustrations, and pieces of musical scores - that give them the appearance of sophisticated story quilts.  Ray's people and animals are a wonderful example of the naive art style. 

The story follows Adam's creation, the formation of the Garden, the creation of the animals as (not entirely satisfactory) companions for Adam, Eve's creation, and then the Fall and exile Adam and Eve's separate punishments are lumped together and made less sexist and more palatable:  "Now you will learn what it is to be sad as well as happy," God said.  "You will work your fingers to the bone growing food to eat and raising your children.  And when you die, you will return to the earth from which you are made." 

Interestingly enough, the book's final illustrations make Adam and Eve's eventual fate look not as bleak as traditionally pictured with the two of them venturing off into a dull, dusty earth and making a respectable home of it for themselves - a garden outside of the Garden or a piece of Home - a redemptive task in and of itself.  

Adam and Eve are nude - and funkily enough, tattooed - throughout (except in the final pages), but they blend in naturally with the varied patterns and coloration of the numerous animals surrounding them.  Perhaps I myself fall a little on the laissez-faire side as regards nudity, but I think any parent who gets upset at the tiny peek we get at Eve's nipple here has perhaps a few issues to work through.

In any case, Max likes it and I think it's beautiful and well told, so thumbs up from us. 

Rachel's thoughts on this scripture:

I've always thought this story was problematic.  Even before I became a parent, I could have told you that tell any child that something is off-limits, and that immediately makes whatever is specified that much more appealing.  It almost seems like God's engaging in entrapment here.  I wonder how long Adam and Eve held out against temptation before the serpent appeared on the scene.   

The passage with Eve's specific punishment, pain in childbirth and submission to her husband, has always seemed like justification for misogyny to me.  Adam's punishment is pretty hard as well, but at least he doesn't have to be ruled over.  And why should he be the ruler?  He meekly eats the fruit Eve gives him despite his being the one God told in person not to eat it.  Eve has to be pursuaded.  Adam just does it.  But he gets the leadership role here.  That makes sense.  This has always rankled me, and then while I was preparing this lesson I read the following in Rabbi Joseph Telushkin's Biblical Literacy:  

"Although this is often cited as a biblical mandate for men dominating their wives, the Bible never says or implies that this punishment is intended to apply to Eve's descendents.  Why should it?  Eve alone sinned.  All that the text declares is that her husband will rule over her, presumably as punishment for her having led him to sin."  [pg. 9]

Telushkin also cites Shlomo Bardin's most interesting explanation for Eve's actions which can be found online here.  Suffice it to say I'd never considered that as an explanation.  

This story of the Fall is the passage behind the Christian doctrine of Original Sin .  The more I consider this doctrine, the more problematic it becomes for me.  It makes much more sense to me that we human beings of the present sin and fall short because we have the same free will and sin nature as Adam and Eve and not because human nature was fundamentally transformed by something they did [ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil].  The former is the Jewish way of looking at it - we sin because we are flawed as Adam was flawed.  Does this make me a Pelagian?

Needless to say, I'm not passing along any of this to Max.  He can grow up and suffer through his own doubts and quibbles with Scripture when he gets to adolescence and his twenties.  It'll be good for him.

*First week: creation illustrated by Pauline Baynes in Let There Be Light. 

tags: childrens books  books  biblical story books  bible stories