n the beginning was the question.. Is there a purpose to the created world? Where do I find my single, most personal, meaning within life? Is this the same question as ‘what is the origin of things’? Is this the same question as ‘what is woman and man’? ... Do all men and women ask these things?


Haven't you yourself asked these things?

Have you ever dreamed of Paradise? Paradise may be the most popular and intensely meaningful idea ever to have gripped the human imagination. We find it everywhere. It fills our dreams and inspires us all. We seem to be born with it embedded in our unconscious mind. It is a theme of legends; stories that have been told at the hearth fires of our ancestors, going back to a time beyond human memory. The story of Paradise occurs all over the world. The Garden of Eden, the Greek Golden Age, The Australian Aborigines’ Dream time, and the Chinese Taoist Age of Perfect Virtue, are just some of its manifestations. In every tradition, the image of Paradise is derived from a story that dates back to the beginnings of human culture. The Genesis account of Adam, Eve, the Garden, and the Serpent, has inspired generations of theologians and scholars; it is a fundamental part of the art and culture of Western civilization. Eden is a place full of fruit bearing trees, gold and precious stones; it was the source of the earth’s sweet waters. A beautiful place is like a beautiful metaphor, both are full of wonder.

 

In order to understand the story of Eden, it is necessary to think in metaphor. The people of the past thought this way. Long before 'materialist science' arrived on the scene people did not dissect everything, they did not try to break everything up into tiny fragments. When they examined something, when they attempted to understand the world around them they did through the act of metaphorical thinking. They would approach a subject by finding it's simile or attempt to understand it through the act of understanding things that were similar to it. This way of thinking runs contrary to the way that we think today. It also reveals a past that we may not be able to comprehend in a fashion that makes sense to us. When one realizes the power of this way of thinking it sheds an entirely new light on the people of old times.

People love metaphor. Metaphor is poetry. Metaphor is song. Metaphor is myth.
Ancient and tribal peoples shared a love for metaphor. Our modern languages consist of thousand of words and expressions deriving form ancient metaphors. Moreover, the further back you go in time, the more metaphorical language becomes.

Now a metaphorical interpretation of a record does not necessarily rule out a historical one, especially when one considers that supernatural agency may be involved. However, it might also be said that, in some cases, a metaphorical interpretation of a story liberates meanings, and depths of understanding, that can not be seen in, or bound to, a historical event. Another way of saying this may be, since the metaphor is timeless, the history it is concerned with is always present. Some early Christians like those who authored the Nag Hammadi scriptures did not read Genesis as history with a moral, but as a myth with a meaning.

The Genesis text is the metaphorical combination of two separate accounts. In the first, man and woman were created together at the climax of creation. In the second, God make Adam first, and to relieve his solitude creates the rest of the creatures, including the first woman, Eve. Afterward the original couple lives naked and unashamed, in harmony with each other and with the animals. This is the basic cast, or form, of paradise accounts found in many cultures.

 

eginning in Genesis the original Hebrew writings described the oneness and equality of man an woman. The first creature called ha'-adam was not strictly male at all. Ha'-adam is a generic term for humankind and is used at the beginning of Genesis 2. Only when God takes a rib from ha'-adam are the sexes differentiated, and the change is symbolized by new terminology. The creature from whom the rib is taken is now referred to not as ha'-adam but as 'ish ("man"), and the creature fashioned from the rib is called 'ishshah ("woman") The very act of creating woman creates man. This is a love story; the rib is a symbol of intimacy. "Bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh." This early concept was that of a soul mate; and is referred to by Plato, who spoke of man and woman as like a split creature always seeking to rejoin the halves.

An originally binary, or sexually undifferentiated, adam (“earthling”) is split down the “side” (a better translation of Hebrew tsela than “rib”) to form two sexually differentiated persons. Marriage is pictured as the reunion of the two constituent parts or “other halves,” man and woman.