cajela

Yeah, Our Lady Queen of Heaven is Mary. But blessing the moment the apple was taken implies that it was a good thing, so Eve did good.

It's a pretty song and slightly subversive of standard Xianity. Fun. There's a 4 part arrangment of it in the Oxford Book of Carols, at least the old obne edited by Vaughan Williams. I'm not sure if it's in the Rutter update.

Therese

Cool, I'll have to look it up, I love chamber music

andrewcriddle

The idea that the fall, although in itself evil, was ultimately a source of good goes back IIUC to St Augustine.

Google on Augustine and "felix culpa"

Andrew Criddle

Therese

The crucifixion is viewed by some christians in the same way.

Thomas II

I don't know if she was evil, but she was wearing the pants...

cajela

Oh, yes! that reminds me of more carols. The rather freaky Joys of Mary:
The next good joy our Mary had,
It was the joy of six;
To see her own son, Jesus Christ,
Upon the crucifix:

or alternatively
The thyrd joy was ful of myght,
Whan Goddes son on rood was pyght,
Deed and buryed, and layd in syght,
Surrexit die tercia.

Thats' a joy?

Joan of Bark

The Gnostics were there first.

Personally, I've always admired Eve (in a fictional way). The fact that she ignored God's order (whether she heard it or not) is the sign of a good rebel; a legacy humanity needs.

Incidentally, if Eden was perfect, where did the serpent come from?

gregor

The argument presented by Segal, "Life After Death" (and I'm sure other scholars) is that Westerners are looking at the Adam and Eve story to be a consistent narrative, rather than its original intention as an explanatory myth. Further, it wasn't intended to introduce concepts of original sin and the need for God's redemtive power (that was introduced by Xianity).

Rather, like other ANE myths, the story was intended to explain why life as an adult is hard and tenuous. The answer is that in exchange for being a knowledgeable adult, knowing right from wrong, you have to accept your mortality. In other myths (e.g. Gilgamesh) characters take some action to gain wisdom, but in return must accept that they will receive the frailties of being a human, including mortality.

Segal argues that Eve was more intelligent in the story than Adam, but her act is not 'evil.' Similarly, the serpent is not evil - as it told the literal truth to Eve (as opposed to God who lied and said that upon eating from the tree they would immediately die).

So the authors focused on the explanatory power of the myth - why do humans currently have the tough lives they do and what do you lose by gaining wisdom - rather than the consistencies of the narrative (i.e. is the narrative logically connected).

John A. Broussard

Maybe there's no moral attached to it at all. Doesn't it really sound like a story told around a campfire on a cold desert night? It was just entertainment to while away the lonely hours and was eventually written down when the nomads became literate.

I think I'm almost as bothered by "interpretations" of myths as I am by a literal belief in them.

gregor

JB

While I'm certain there is much entertainment value as well, when juxtaposed with other ANE myths of the trade-off between one thing and another, I read it as having some moral. Segal gives some examples in his book about how certain mythical people, some semi-divine, some human received some positive feature, but with it had to accept a negative.

With the Adam and Eve myth, I can see it being explained around a council fire in response to "how come life is so tough - wouldn't a pastoral existence be wonderful?"