Nah, the nakedness was meant to symbolize humanity gaining self-awareness, which separates them from the purity and innocence of other animals. After Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, they realize they're naked and feel instinctively ashamed of that (as most people would, but regular animals wouldn't), so they cover themselves with leaves. In fact IIRC, the fact that they're covering themselves up is what tips off God that they ate the fruit.
Which begs the question what the actual intention behind the allegory was.
I suspect that pursuing knowledge is bad and you should not do it and trust in god instead? It fits with the church's then (and partially now) stance I suppose.
God said do/don't do a thing. Person didn't listen. Person is punished.
Respect mah authoritay!
Because people are inheritly sinful
"The Church" isn't a part of this. This was Judaism. Christians inherited this.
It’s a much older story than the Catholic Church tho. Obviously older than Christianity as a whole right? It’s one of the oldest parts of the Torah/Old Testament. It did change over time, but I believe it has much more religious implications than political.
In any case, I believe it’s a story to explain our difference from animals, our apparent separation from creation while also being a part of it. An attempt, within the metaphysics of early Semitic religions, to answer one of the most fundamental questions humans always had: what are we and what are we doing here?
I also like some of the more esoteric interpretations, so idk
According to World History Encyclopedia, the story is adapted from non-Israelite, near eastern myths.
... the concept of a “garden” of a god(s) was a very common metaphor in the ancient Near East of where the god(s) resided. For the narrator of Genesis, the “Garden in Eden” was imaginatively constructed for an etiological (origin or cause of things) purpose, not as a divine residence, but of the first man and woman on earth – Adam and Eve. As generally accepted in modern scholarship, Genesis 1-11 is labeled as the “Primeval History,” which includes mythologies and legends that were very common not just in Israel, but throughout the ancient Near East. These myths and legends are not Israelite in origin but were adapted by the biblical writers for either polemical or rhetorical purposes.
I've heard a theory that it was a myth based on the transition from hunter gatherers to farming. In the Euphrates and Tigris triangle, living conditions were very favourable for humans and may have seemed like paradise in hindsight. Then population pressure triggered the transition to farming, i.e. toiling "by the sweat of your brow".
It's the other way around. Agriculture was easier, not harder, it allowed rapid population growth with much less risk and improved survivability, making enough food for more people more easily, which led to a demographic explosion and the rise of cities. It's the exact period of about 2~3000 years where population centers grew from hundreds of people, to thousands of people, to tens of thousands, having to build communal centers to store all the food to give out to those who can't work.
While agriculture allowed for vastly larger supplies of food and surpluses large enough to sustain cities (and even non-working ruling classes) it wasn't "easier" per se. If we look at modern day hunter-gatherer groups they expend about the same calories as they bring in, but they typically work fewer hours per day than do agricultural peoples, leaving them with more leisure time. A combination of sedentism and the ability to produce a surplus of food and probably some factors we are just not privy to in the historical record made agriculture more appealing, and it absolutely made it more capable of supporting cities and empires. But easier isn't really a good descriptor.
Easier on average, still. Of course the labor was different - more long lasting strain and stress that we can see in the bones and the teeth, but with less everyday danger from going out. One hunter-gatherer may have more free time, but half of the population of a city can straight up do something else for a living. I'm no expert in why hunter-gatherers couldn't do the same, probably something to do with storing food all year round without rotting, but the massive difference in how many people could be fed with a lesser fraction of people doing the works, mathematically shows that agriculture was more energy efficient per head over the years. The population jump from hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands in cities like Eridu then Uruk during that period is insane.
. In fact IIRC, the fact that they're covering themselves up is what tips off God that they ate the fruit.
You mean the all knowing all seeing deity didn't know about it until they got dressed?
They also successfully hid from Yahweh in the garden, and he had to search for them.
I think that's more about they disn't come out to greet him. Like if you got home from work and your dog doesn't come out wagging, you immediately know something is up.
Of course, it still ignores precognition, but then God as described in the bible is literally impossible in so many ways, so...
Children also don't feel shame about being naked until they gain the knowledge of sexuality. Parents would probably notice a child covering themselves up after an encounter of that nature.
I'm also assuming the story would be altered in a number of ways to change the meaning to the biblical one.
I think you are confusing what OP is saying with what the Bible says.
I took it more along the lines of “this story existed and was originally meant to teach young girls not to be tempted” and then the writers of the Bible came along. They used a common story to help with the point they were trying to get across.
This is not too far off from what is commonly known about pivoting the pagan ritual for the winter solstice and dressing up a pine tree. Now know as Christmas tree.
(as most people would, but regular animals wouldn’t)
Yeah, but it's religion that makes people ashamed. Don't get me wrong. I'd prefer not to see your asshole. But other than that, it's probably learned shame more than anything.
. . . they realize they’re naked and feel instinctively ashamed . . . as most people would . . . .
For the sake of readers less familiar with cultures outside those heavily influenced by Abrahamic traditions we might add “in that community”[^1] since their notion of the inherent sexual shame of nudity was an outlier in broader antiquity where mores re: nakedness were more often related to decorum or social status rather than morality or “sin.”
[^1]: That community by modern estimates was a group of Judean captives in Babylon (near Baghdad) c. 540 BCE who began compiling the oral traditions (ancestral folk tales) that had been preserved in exile.
How would an omniscient, omnipotent Deity not know what happens in their own garden?
It was an update of Prometheus.
He gave fire to humans
Lucifer (the lightbringer) brought humans the knowledge of agriculture. And humanity left behind the "garden". Which was an allegory for hunter/gather society.
Which led to the concept of land ownership, vasly increases how much personal property someone could accumulate, and was pretty shit for the average human.
Having them be naked was more to make people think of pre-agriculture as pre-human.
Can you imagine how hard it was to convince people to work 10-14 hours a day for someone else's profit when for thousands of years their ancestors had a much easier life?
Do you have any sources to back this up? I'm genuinely curious.
On a surface level this is an interesting interpretation. However, agriculture predates Abrahamic religions in that part of the world by thousands of years. As far as I know agrarian societies (and the concept of land ownership) were already well established.
The story of Prometheus doesn't even predate the earliest forms of Genesis by very much.
Also, if they meant Christianity conquered the Celts. No. That was mostly Julius Caesar, who slaughtered at least a quarter of them, enslaved another quarter and the remainder were tricked into shit land deals for wine and Roman weapons(just like their French, Spanish and British descendants would to most of the rest of the world ~1500-1700 years later.)
I feel like between agriculture and hunter/gather, a garden makes a lot more sense as an allegory for agriculture.
Well, the whole "garden" thing is after a lot of translations...
Don't focus on the name, focus on how it's described.
It's a pretty on the nose description of a hunter/gather lifestyle. Obviously idealistic, but all evidence of hunter gather lifestyles we have, is it was pretty chill the vast majority of the time. Especially compared to early agriculture which was basically slave labor.
People needed a reason not to dip out and go back to living in the forests until human population increased to the point that wasn't possible.
The Abrahmic religions were a great tool for that, especially since it replaced earlier pagan religions.
Being a hunter/gatherer was much easier than agriculture?
Going off modern analogs and historic evidence, they had to work about 20 hours a week or even less...
Look at pretty much any other animal, most of their time is hanging out resting while either being ready to run after food or run away so they're not food
With a low population density, it wasn't that hard for a tribe to get enough food for everyone.
Life was pretty sweet for everyone from what we can tell.
The adult life expectancy for hunter-gatherers was higher than that of adults for most of the modern era. Some developed nations with healthcare access returned to similar levels, but not until the mid 20th century. It is now on the downturn again in some of these countries.
Adult life expectancy does not measure how easy life is, but it is arguably a good proxy for quality of life as we know that people with hard lives statistically die younger.
Agriculture introduced a lot of health and social issues. It allowed humans to explode in number and territory, but that wasn't because they were living better lives. They were sickly and stunted. Just like today, population expansion was likely enacted for the benefit of the top actors on the hierarchy chart (tribal leaders then, business leaders now). Strongly vertical hierarchies and the inequality associated with it do not appear to have regularly occurred prior to agriculture. Neither did widespread slavery. In 2023 there were still 50 million+ people enslaved in the world, even though slavery is now illegal virtually everywhere.
Another data point that backs up these trends is the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and Europe's subsequent Dark Age. Migration patterns changed, hierarchies were flattened, average quality of life and adult life expectancy went up.
Again, the ease of a life is a hard thing to judge. But many things that ail the common person to this day, did not exist prior to agriculture. I would say "the case can be made" that hunter/gatherer life was easier than agriculture, but I'm not sure how that would be established objectively (except through imperfect proxies such as adult life expectancy).
Somebody worked out that hunter/gatherers only averaged 4-5 hrs of work a day. I think I'm pulling this from a recent episode of 'No Such Thing as a Fish'
when for thousands of years their ancestors had a much easier life?
There was no such thing as an easy life pre-1900
No, it's pretty arguable that the first nations of the "Pacific North West" had it ridiculously good for a hunter-gatherer society.
Which is why they didn't progress into "more advanced" tools or housing; they didnt need to. For example, Western Red Cedar is very close to a perfect wood. Grows quickly, grows very straight, little to no knots, easily split and can be turned into fibers for clothing, but its also fairly strong and can be made into structural housing. And it's naturally rot resistant.
Hell, they made ocean capable dugout canoes from them, as well as everything else from homes to totem poles, artwork, furniture and clothing. Then for food they had rudimentary agriculture for some items, but most of the coastal diet was Pacific Salmon, caught though spears or nets.
As far as I understand it, the only aggressive culture in the region was the Haida because they lived on relatively small chain of islands. Everyone else basically just lived and partied.
Associating the original sin with sex is how you get people to confess and "donate" at collections, and it way overassumes what actually happened.
The original sin was theft, then lying about said theft, then blaming god for his (Adam's) own mistakes.
God asked them to baby make before all this. They did not try for baby until after all this went down.
I thought the original sun story was a story about how the evil overlord of the universe forbade humanity from the knowledge of good and evil and a nice snake showed us the path to the truth
I’ve wondered about this before, but it seems like a coincidence.
As I understand it, serpent type monsters are one of the oldest surviving concepts from ancient myths and stories, and are usually more associated with evil or chaos than sex.
As an atheist who has barely read the bible, this explanation makes a thousand times more sense to me than "smart girl gets punished for seeking knowledge also there is a snake who is the devil for some reason, don't ask questions, it makes perfect sense"
Also knowing that "the devil" is a more modern invention that was barely in the original bible or the new testament, I was always confused why people assume this snake was the devil.
I looked at it as an unintended evolution story, but your take is far better.
Man's happily swinging through the trees, picking fruit, easy life. Then he gets smart. Now babies have huge heads, causing miserable childbirth. Now man is aware of his mortality, something many animals don't understand.
Since we're no longer foraging, we have to farm, toil for our food. And we gotta wear clothes.
Can’t be farming with no clothes on man.
Even them Cahokia dudes wore a little belt thing when they hoeing that maize.
The problem with interpretation is that, if you can make a convincing argument about why something should be seen a specific way, youll have people see it that way. Same thing here. I agree that it's a possible interpretation, but it also just depends on who you're talking to. Point being others in the comments with wildly differing views, but with justifications that are equally as valid. Who knows what's the right interpretation, your guess is as good as anyone's.
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.