21st Century Bible Hebrew -- summary of the Gan Eden episode

Now wait a minute.

 

Adam and Chavvah have been kicked out of the garden, still mortal, but still alive. What’s up with that?

 

Well, this is where due process comes in.

 

In Jewish law, the witnesses to a transgression cannot be relatives of each other.  Adam and Chavvah are married. They can’t testify against each other.

 

They are also their own relatives. They can’t testify against themselves. Jewish law NEVER takes evidence from the defendant. Jewish trials are about whether the witnesses know what they are talking about, not about what the defendant actually did.

 

Well, what about the serpent?

 

When a transgression against Jewish law carries the death penalty, people can only testify in the case if they have tried to stop the transgression from happening. That’s community policing. If you don’t get involved, you can’t get your 15 seconds of fame by testifying.

 

So the serpent promoted the crime instead of trying to stop it, and he is not a valid witness.

 

Well, but Gd knows everything!

 

Gd is the judge. Judges cannot step down from the bench and give testimony.

 

Now here’s the kicker. These are the only characters involved. Oral narratives rarely have a lot of characters in any given episode and if a cast of thousands is needed, they are usually turned in to a group. This is the case with Yosef talking and all his brothers listening; Mosheh and Aharon talking and all the Israelites listening.  You’ll see in the next episode that more people might have been alive at the time, but this episode ignores them. There’s a good reason for that, but it’s redundant because they are Adam and Chavvah’s kids, and the issue of relatives has already been dealt with.

 

This episode also illustrates an ancient legal concept that still applies today: qal va-chomer/chomer va-qal, what western cultures call a fortiori. If Gd issued a commanment about one tree, and the people ate from it anyway, all the more so they are likely to eat from the tree about which He issued no commandment. Gd evacuates and closes off the Gan to prevent this. Nicolas Whybray wrote that he thought the second tree was redundant – but he didn’t know much about how oral narratives or legal systems work so it was almost a given that he would miss the clues.

 

Torah originated as oral narratives teaching a culture how to operate in culture-related ways.. Axel Olrik and Ronald Abrahams both knew of the Fjoort culture reciting their oral tradition in connection with legal proceedings. Neither one realized that the Fjoort were rehearsing their version of the Federal Rules of Procedure.  Which is what we have here in this narrative.