According to our Western mythology, Adam and Eve were the first humans. And they managed to spoil all our chances for paradise – says the saga. Because they were too greedy and consequently the devil camouflaged as a snake was able to seduce them. As far as I remember, that is how I learned the story at school.
A short time ago, I heard a nice joke about the same topic:
Person A: Where would we be if Adam and Eve had been Chinese?
Person B: Dunno.
Person A: We would still be in paradise!
Person B: Why?
Person A: Because they would have eaten the snake and left the apple to rot
(Adam would have caught the snake and Eve would have cooked it). …
Unfortunately, the punch line is almost too obvious …
To make up for it, I can actually see something positive in the “Adam and Eve” story from this perspective. Isn’t it a nice metaphor for surprisingly simple and still very effective solutions?
All you have to do is do the right thing at the right time!
And it also tells us that greed is always a bad motivation.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
I took the picture from the Wikipedia page (Wikipedia-Seite). Here is the note you find there about the picture: Adam and Eve (Maarten van Heemskerck, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg). Note the highlighting of the gender difference through the use of different incarnates.
P.S.1
A good friend of mine (female) in my own age-group told me that, for her, the topic “Adam and Eve” and more of the same religious stuff was finished when she was in second grade in elementary school, i.e. when she was twelve. That is when she told the RE teacher about having heard humans were descended from apes. She then asked very innocently how that could be reconciled with Adam and Eve.
And she was rather surprised when, as a reply, she got a rather intense cuffing. Ever since that day, her interest in Religious Education was gone.
I am better off: after all, I learned as a child in Religious Education that only the New Testament should be taken seriously. The rest is rather doubtful. Intuitively, I then put Adam and Eve into the Old Testament.
Loading ...