The stakes of Eden

Theists want a loving god. Such a god will prefer his own theists.

If there be no such god, we are secular-humanists at best. We can perceive something better and we can aspire to it. Some humanists even dwell on the Right - in some cases, far to the Right. Still, secular humanists share that they believe themselves never to have experienced a fall and a return - or, if they did, it doesn't matter. We are as gods, to co-opt Genesis Two. To the extent theists disassociate themselves from secular humanists, they will be seeking out myths of the Fall.

Genesis Two belongs to a larger Book. That Book placed this story, not toward the narrow ancestors of the Jews, but immediately after Creation. It must apply to all mankind.

To avoid fundamentalism, the Garden of Eden myth which Genesis Two relates must be read as parable.

Dennis Prager teaches that the Bible's stories elsewhere react to ambient early-Semitic and Egyptian texts. Like The Peloponnesian War, the Bible - where it does not tell its own, southern Canaani stories - is revisionist.

Genesis Two is vital to all the Israelidic religions. If Christians don't understand it, they don't understand Christianity. Likewise, I hazard, for Jews and Samaritans. Muslims, whose Quran cites this story, need to return to reread it as well.