In the last post I described the standard Christian notion of fallen Adam as a glorious, slightly-tarnished creature, the near-pinnacle of God's artistry. I also described the pre-Flood generations as being, in Christian conceits, corrupted progressively so as to deserve--infants and all--to be wiped from the face of the earth. Of course, if the "boundlessness" I described as intrinsic to theological musings were applied broadly, one would conclude that all generations ever deserved such wiping-out. As we will see, the portrayals of moral scenarios in Jesus' teachings are meant to have emotive import regardless of dimension or proportionality. In the gospels, the widow with her pittance to donate confronts a moral landscape as sweeping as that which engulfs the contemporary Herod with his wealth, his might, and his marital dramas.
So also must Adam be viewed as a mere mortal among others. Innumerable are the Christian fantasies of burgeoning evils spawned over the centuries since "sin entered the world" at the Fall--as though Satan, Eve, and Adam are not identifiable from the very first as ignoble creatures--but such fever-dreams rely on the unwarranted assumption that Adam possessed after the fruit-eating an essentially undisturbed set of faculties, mental and otherwise. Yet we are confronted by the tragi-comedy of the crown of creation (being as well the first patriarch) reduced to a cowering imbecile, imagining that he could hide his physique from his maker.
Indeed, Adam presents in full flower the consistent evil twins of humanity's un-progressing progress--preoccupation with the flesh and a lack of occupation with proper care for the young who spring from that flesh. (In these dual tendencies one might find the most potent arguments that this is truly a man's world--if such arguments are worth making.) Adam fell to the temptations of the fruit in Eve's presumably exquisite hands, joining in transgression with that perennially-youthful and perennially-enjoyable assemblage of flesh and bone that entranced him so. Only then do we begin to read of the advent of Adam's offspring--innocents born to become eternally-damned souls (or, that is, most of them, though the tragedy would be no more or less if all but one were damned or all but one were saved. Such is the nature of anything boundless.)
In the nearer view to the storied Fall, Adam's parenting--of course--disturbs from the outset the theologians' musings about progressively decaying generations. Adam sires himself a murderer. Cain betrays the brother toward whom he should show more-or-less fatherly care, and then Cain goes off to thrust himself upon some kinswoman. Much is made in folk theology of the evil offspring of Cain (such as the two-wived Lamech who kills a male described unsurprisingly as a youth), but we cannot know but that the line of Cain's youngest brother Seth merely benefitted from Seth's exposure to his elder's examples. And at last the condemnation of humanity pre-Flood is decidedly general--though not before we must suffer through the theologically-indecipherable story of lustful "sons of God" appropriating desirable "daughters of men" and producing lusty "men of renown." If only out of nausea, we might indeed welcome the account of the Deluge.
And so the scriptures would seem to present the respite of admirable Noah, "perfect in his generations." Then we read of Noah getting naked drunk and cursing innumerable generations of Ham's son because Ham told his two brothers that their father had gotten naked drunk. Why it was wrong for Ham to go to his two brothers, and why the matter could not be kept among the three of them, the account does not say--one might as well try to figure out why Canaan was cursed, not his father Ham. Yet here we are again, with the snares of the flesh entrapping generations from the very start, and effectively cursing younger generations--it has ever been so.
One might with nausea trace these themes through the biblical eons--Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the sons of Jacob called Israel--the grim story never ends. Nothing is more important to the preachers (nor was more important to the authorities of Jesus' day) than the notion of a righteous past to which the present might be compared unfavorably--and nothing is less true. The very origin story of Judea in Jesus' day was remembrance of the Exodus and Conquest--when a mythical righteous generation could exult in dispossessing the unrighteous and inheriting what once belonged to others--a veritable rhapsody of houses and fields and vines and fig trees and rent, bloodied crotches of orphaned twelve-year old virgins. Such things might be too much to recount, were they not in their glossing-over the means by which so much happens still under color of religion.
Of course, Christianity has its own particular brand of self-delusional ancestor-worship. It is not surprising that the Gospels cannot escape entirely unnecessary claims that Jesus was a descendant of David (nor escape the critics' jibe that Jesus was not even a son of Joseph. Throw in female or male-female lines and virtually every Jew was a "son of David.") I say "unnecessary" because Jesus himself had little patience for prating about the Messiah as the Son of David (and, given the accounts of David as an adulterer, a murderer, and a lousy father, we might join H. G. Wells in wondering who indeed would want to claim David as an ancestor.)
In the teachings of Jesus, however, are to be found elements of analysis that can throw an important light on just how humanity can fall into condemnation. The untaught and un-catechized infant is a resident of the kingdom of God. The pre-Flood generation, so often taken as embodiments of entire evil, are humanized like us, and are like us in "being evil." The long-dead of Nineveh and of Sodom and Gomorrah have testimonies yet to give.
We must revisit Adam and Eve on the wrong side of the flaming sword.
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