The Earth and the Earthling

Thoughts on Genesis 2-3

Abstract

The Jahwist’s narrative of the earth and the earthling’s fall in Gen 2–3 depicts the ideal state of humankind s time in a well-kept garden and does so from the vantage point of a paradise lost. This story offers an inspiring vantage point that may be seen in relation to Native American traditions and their understanding of humankind. The Jahwist refers to the first human as a being made out of clay, conceiving of the ideal-typical humankind semantically and ontologically as an “earthling,†using the Hebrew term ‘adam, a cognate of “earth†(‘adamah). While grammatically masculine, this being is at the outset not gendered and receives a full gender-identity as male only after the fall in the curse (3:17–19). The Jahwist’s story about the first humans in the garden offers a perspective on the life of humankind in the garden as the ideal-typical couple of a not fully gendered “earthling†made of clay and the “woman†as “helper.†This essay focuses on Yahweh’s tender compassion for the humans in the roles of a potter and a gardener in the garden, and still after the fall (I); the fragile nature of the state of affairs in the garden (II); and finally reflects on the hierarchical, fully gendered world order after the fall, as the curses the fall, as the curses the fall, as the curses (Gen 3:14–19) describe it (III).