On Adam and Eve, the Suspension of Disbelief, and the Power of Stories
I’ve been doing a lot of research into ancient mythologies lately. One of the most interesting books I’ve come across in this is Merlin Stone’s When God Was a Woman. It looks at the Goddess religions that were widespread in the ancient world, the cultures that worshipped these female supreme deities, and when and how they were replaced by the patriarchal cultures that eventually evolved into the religions of the present day.
There’s a lot of interesting stuff to unpack in this book, and I highly recommend it for anyone who’s interested in ancient mythology, specifically as a way to gain insight into the culture that developed it. One of the details that’s stuck with me the most is Stone’s breakdown of the Adam and Eve story as a kind of pre-Christian propoganda against the Goddess.
Some of this was done with imagery. Snakes were associated with divine knowledge in the Goddess religion, as were fruit trees, specifically fig trees, which were planted at their sacred altars. While we think of Eve as eating an apple now, it’s likely the Forbidden Fruit was a fig in the original version (probably from the same tree as the leaves Adam uses to hide his nakedness). For ancient readers, the message here would have been clear: the Goddess’ sources of divine knowledge led mankind astray into suffering.
The story’s plot points were shots fired against the Goddess, too. Adam is created first and Eve made from his flesh, inverting the natural reality of women as the source of life and, in the process undermining the Goddess’ role as creator and ancestress. Once created, Eve disobeys the Divine Father, rising above her station by eating the Forbidden Fruit, and condemns all of humankind to die as punishment. This, says the story, is what happens when you follow women.
Religions worshipping the Goddess known as Ishtar/Inanna (or Au Set, Isis, Astarte, and a plethora of other variations) were still very much active in Canaan, Egypt, and elsewhere when the Adam and Eve account was written. No one’s quite sure when that was, exactly, but scholars widely believe it’s at least as old as the 1st century AD, and it may date back as far as 1400BC (though it’s likely at least a few centuries more recent than that). Throughout that broad time span, the Goddess religion coexisted with early precursors to the monotheistic Abrahamic faiths, most of which were still poytheistic but had a male deity at the helm. In many places, the followers of the God religion were the conquerers of the original Goddess-worshipping inhabitants.
Or the would-be conquerers, at least. Worship of the Goddess endured, and with it the custom of matrilineal kinship. A female kinship line often meant women in these societies had far more autonomy and power than in the cultures with God religions, something they were understandably reluctant to give up. In the book, Stone suggests stories like the Adam and Eve creation were written to reinforce and justify the God religion by discrediting the Goddess and women in general. Their intent was political as much as it was spiritual, a targeted attack against a current threat. It was only later it became the official creation account of Christianity.
Even if there were an Adam and Eve, or a similar couple who lived in a garden paradise at the beginning of time, the creation story that features them is at the very least a fictionalized account (or you can think of it as a metaphor, if you’re uncomfortable putting the word “fiction” to Christian mythology). It’s impossible to know how the original authors meant it to be understood—if they intended their followers to take it as truth, or to interpret it as a moral tale; if they only wanted to root out the Goddess religion that opposed the Levite and Aryan invaders, or if they planned for this story and others like it to result in the subjugation of an entire gender.
What we can see is the effect that the Adam and Eve story has had. At some point, it became adopted as truth—a moral truth, in some cases, and to others a factual account of makind’s origins. Generations of women across Europe and the Middle East were viewed as the sources of original sin, the reason humans were kicked out of paradise and the cause of all suffering. Sexuality was vilified along with women, which was perhaps even a more stunning accomplishment. Sex was sacred in the Goddess religions, understood as a generative act that created life, temporarily imbuing those involved with the life-giving powers of the deities. Post Adam and Eve, nakedness became shameful, and sex along with it. It is a powerful story that can convince a sapient species that the act of procreation, the very thing that continues their existence on the planet, is a sin.
Even to the present day, many Christians believe in the story of Adam and Eve. Archaeological expeditions have sought to discover the location of Eden; some think Adam’s physical, real skull is buried under Mount Golgotha, and while others disagree on the location, they still believe Adam was a real person who left remains.
And, taking a broader view, this phenomenon is not singular to Adam and Eve. Many other world religions have their own mythologies and histories, taken as truth to one extent or another by those who follow them. This happens outside of religion, too. Think of the famous War of the Worlds radio debacle that whipped people into a panic because they believed it was a real alien invasion. Thousands of people flock to Lock Ness every year for a sight of its famed monster, while others devote their lives to finding Bigfoot; for centuries, expeditions have been sent in search of El Dorado, the Fountain of Youth, Atlantis, or Shangri-la. Whether or not the original authors of these tales intended them to be taken as true is immaterial. Thousands of years later, long after the authors themselves are forgotten, there are people who believe each of the things mentioned above are factual truth, and will die on that hill.
For modern fiction writers, the big lesson here is, I think, that humans are credulous by nature. We want to believe, and more so when that belief will bring us some benefit. For the ancient Levites in Canaan, that benefit was the triumph of their God religion over that of the Goddess. For modern cryptid-hunters, the benefit may be the joy of discovery, or seeking the satisfaction of saying “I told you so” to doubters. Sometimes, the benefit is to give some order, intention, and purpose to an otherwise chaotic world.
Whatever the motivation, when you tell someone a story that they want to believe, they’ll do whatever mental gymnastics it takes to justify that belief. On a political and social stage this has disturbing implications, but for fiction writers there’s a more positive takeaway. Most of us aren’t trying to convince our readers that our stories are true—we only want them to accept the reality we’ve created for as long as they’re reading, achieving a suspension of disbelief where they stop questioning and simply immerse themselves in the story’s world. This can feel daunting for new writers but the truth is, getting a reader to suspend their disbelief isn’t hard. It doesn’t matter how fantastical or absurd the content is. As long as you stick to your story and give readers a reason to believe it, you’ll activate that credulous part of the human consciousness.
The more disturbing thing is that it’s shockingly easy to push that belief beyond the confines of the story and into a real-world truth. Think of any time you’ve jumped at shadows after watching a horror movie. I couldn’t be alone with my TV for weeks after watching The Ring. For a span of time, the filmmakers had made me believe ghosts would climb out of my television screen, and it took a surprising amount of time for me to shake it.
I wonder if a similar thing happened for the women living in Canaan when the Adam and Eve story first hit the press. The male followers of the Goddess stood to benefit by accepting this new version of creation, so it’s no surprise they jumped on board. For the women, I imagine it was more of that post-horror-movie feeling, that dissonance of logic-brain telling you something’s just not true and feelings-brain being unable to shake the lie.
See similar posts: