In the beginning there was just one person living on the earth and he was named Adam. He was a very happy and well-adjusted fellow because there was no one around to say otherwise and also because he never had to contend with any traumatic childhood memories whatsoever. In fact, he never even had a childhood, but rather began life as a fully functioning adult. Even so, he began with more childlike wonder than anyone who has ever lived, just as surely as he was forced to carry a great deal more regret than the worst villain in any story. Such is the stuff of which fascinating tales are made, however, and it's about time someone got this particular story straight once and for all.
Now as the first human, Adam was designed and then brought into existence by Creator, who has over time acquired more different names than anyone could ever need. It might be best if we just stick with Creator here, I think.
Creator, as the name implies, really, really, really enjoys making things. And while the things he makes seem simple enough from a distance, nearly everything Creator creates is very precise and extremely complicated. So complicated, in fact, that the smartest people who have ever lived with the help of the biggest computers ever built and using some of the coolest machines ever manufactured still cannot figure out how and why Creator's creation works the way it does. So even though much of creation (that's what we call Creator's designed and finished product - "creation") is simple enough for most people to understand, some parts will apparently always remain just beyond human ability to really explain to anyone's lasting satisfaction. Gravity, bumblebees and wave-particle duality come to mind here.
To keep Adam safe and occupied with making healthy life choices, Creator gave his very first human a lovely green garden in which to live. It was stocked with mostly friendly animals, scenic vistas and plenty of vegetation, much of which was delicious to eat year round. Creator was overly generous and even let Adam name all of the animals absolutely anything he wanted ("gnu," in case you were wondering, is an acronym). However, and this part is rather integral to the story, Adam was instructed that he could eat just about anything that grew in the garden except for the fruit of one particular tree called "the tree of good and evil." That was the one exclusive part of the rather sizable garden area where Creator told Adam to stay away. You will quickly observe that the garden was a pretty simple setup for the first man. Enjoy yourself and your surroundings every day you are here, but whatever you do, do not eat from that one tree over there in the corner. What could possibly go wrong?
I'm joking, of course, but wouldn't you think the name of the forbidden tree alone would have been enough to put just about anyone off eating from it? I mean, if your lunch menu choices are hamburger, hot dog, pizza, or the sandwich of good and evil, it is pretty obvious that the proprietor of that eating establishment doesn't want you to select that last item. And let's face it, when the waiter conspicuously smirks at an inquiry regarding whether the G&E sandwich comes with fries, well, most of us would probably just go with the burger.
Adam lived the good life, stayed away from the you-know-what tree, and everything went well for him for a nice long stretch of time. It is not clear exactly how long that was, but there is not even one animal today without a moniker of some kind, so do the math and calculate how long it would have taken to tag them all with a different name.
Early on, Adam made no stupid choices, had plenty of fun locating and naming all the animals (buffalo were originally called boffalu, by the way, although the reason for the change isn't really all that interesting) and in the cool of the evening when things settled down a bit, Creator would show up mostly just to hang out with Adam and give him some instructional information and positive reinforcement. Every day he would patiently explain to Adam how everything worked the way it did and sometimes would let Adam in on some of the secrets of creation that even the angels couldn't figure out.
In case you didn't know it already, angels are beings just like people only they don't have bodies, which sort of makes them nothing at all like people, I guess. But they surely are like us in that they can choose to do things however they decide on their own and it must be said that far too many of them chose rather poorly. Now these bad choosing angels saw that Adam was receiving special treatment from Creator and they became very jealous. Plus, they all agreed that the name "serpent" was stupid and insulting. They spent much of their time trying to figure out how to bring unhappiness to Adam. Their leader, a particularly unlikable fellow called Lucifer, kept saying they needed "just the right angle" to overcome Adam's obvious love and respect for Creator, but the other angels were a bit dim and thought he was really meaning "just the right angel." Needless to say, they weren't much help and Lucifer was forced to come up with a plan for Adam's downfall mostly on his own. Alas.
One morning Creator realized that Adam needed someone to live with who was more like himself because all of his other sentient creations had mates, while poor Adam was the only human in existence. Sure, he was happy enough, but Creator knew he could be even happier still if he had a little companionship. Also, Creator had some minor improvements and modifications on his whole human design concept and he was quite eager to try them out! Enter Eve.
Eve was beautiful. Eve was smart. Eve was decisive. Eve was soft and cuddly. But mostly, Eve was someone with whom Adam could have a meaningful relationship. That is, the monkeys (temporarily referred to as "banana biters" early on) were great fun for Adam to run and swing with, but Creator had made Adam - and then Eve also - using something he referred to as his "likeness." This meant that anyone in the creation called by the name of human would always be more interested in trying to learn about the true meaning of things than they would in the far simpler approach of taking things as they readily appeared to be. So while the more spontaneous and less judgmental monkeys rarely feel the need to add much additional thought to the world that greets them each morning, humans always want to ask why.
Our story turns sad now, I'm afraid.
Remember that unappealing angel named Lucifer? Well, he had the nerve to show up in the body of a serpent and somehow was able to get Eve (some say he tricked her into it, but that's not really accurate) to eat the fruit of the tree of good and evil. And then she in turn got Adam to eat some also. Can you believe it? Adam and Eve had it made living there in that lovely green garden and they threw it all away on a piece of fruit that probably didn't even taste that good at the time they were eating it.
Today everyone now knows that Creator is the sort who says what he means and then means what he says. Not just sometimes, but all the time! So Adam and Eve had to leave the garden and live with their newfound knowledge of good and evil. Bad news for them and even worse news for their offspring. The truly sad part of this story is that such hard won insight into "good and evil" never served any real value to them or to any of their billions of children. In fact, all that most people have ever done through the years since is to argue over what exactly is good and precisely what is evil. How ironic is that?
Naturally, there is more to the story of Adam and Eve. How they had two sons and one kills the other, thus wiping out 25% of the world's population. How they had to work so hard just to live. How their own attempts to create others like themselves is necessarily accompanied by a whole lot of pain, suffering, blood, sweat and tears. The list of harsh things coming out of their one really poor jointly made decision is far too lengthy to review now, that's for sure.
Still, the story of the first two humans isn't all completely bad, although to be fair, it's surely more bad than good. Creator did leave some real joy for humans to experience during their lives, so that helps some. There never seems to be quite enough of it to go around, which is a difficult distraction for many humans, but this joy we children of Adam and Eve can still possess comes from that "likeness" ingredient consistently used in creating all of the people who have ever been created, including you and me.
Essentially, this means that the story of Creator and man isn't officially over yet and that there may well be good reason to presume it has an acceptably nice ending. As it did with Adam and Eve, however, the ending very much depends on whom we choose to believe.
Of course, that last thought is for the most part a completely different story, so that means that this one which I am telling you now must have come to....
THE END.
David Douglas Ford is an author of books, plays and essays and has long been preoccupied with the story of Adam and Eve. Ford has written a play and a novel starring the first human couple and this obsession (as well as some of his less troublesome behavior) can be further explored at http://www.daviddouglasford.com/
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