To start, reading through Genesis 1-3 was a mission of patience that I do not often extend to literary works. I love reading, and I do try to read a book a month, but if it does not hook my attention within the first chapter, I will donate it and try again with another–such is the nature of debilitating ADHD, which I was diagnosed last year at the tender age of 32.
Fun fact, many people assigned female at birth–women, trans men, non-binary individuals, etc.–are overlooked when diagnosing developmental disorders as children, and that adult-diagnoses are surging now more than ever… of course, after the damage and trauma have already been done. But that’s a topic for a different reflection, I fear.
All the same, with many a scoff due to being the raging skeptic and atheist that I am, I made it through Genesis 1-3 and no further, thanks to the disdain left over from being raised within a strict roman catholic household; certainly ‘twas a blast from the past but no thank you. I did my time.
That said, dissecting the story of Genesis from a skeptic’s point of view and how the nature of desire is expressed in the story was a bit fun. Firstly, God just decided to make the world, so there must have been some desire to do so, at least, I would think so. In my mind’s eye, I picture a cartoon old man in a bedsheet toga deciding for some reason to stop lazing about in the black void of nothingness, do a few stretches, and start popping things into existence before resting on the seventh day. Do you think he desired a nap that day? I might relate to God for once because I, too, desire a nap on a Sunday when the work is done.
That’s a joke, I work in food service, so I have no idea what a Sunday off looks like.
Continuing on, when applying the nature of desire to Eve’s choices, it seems clear if one does not look at the story of Genesis as a literal interpretation of historical events, and that it is merely a depiction of her conscious thought. Of course, I think of Genesis 1-3 as a story written by men to explain the world as they know it–likely after taking some type of ancient hallucinogenic or another–while scratching the ever-present itch to make a woman the scapegoat to all of their problems, but I’d like to look at it as an act of agency on Eve’s part.
The snake in Genesis is Eve’s conscious thought, weighing the pros and cons of eating the fruit. It–the snake–symbolizes Eve’s desire to be like God, to have her ‘eyes opened’, and to ‘know good and evil’. Stretch it a bit further and one could say it is Eve’s desire for autonomy for both herself and Adam, autonomy to act as they wish and know more about their existence.
However, I am still a skeptic, and therefore, I am glad Eve is not actually real, and that autonomy might not have been her goal because the joke is so very obviously on her.
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References
King James Bible. (2008). Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1769)
Baldung, H. (1545). Eve, the Serpent and Death. artrenewal.org. https://www.artrenewal.org/artworks/eve-the-serpent-and-death/hans-baldung/21031
ma guarda quante stelle nel cielo 