Genesis as Prophecy

Fundamentalists claim the Book of Genesis is history, plain, simple and with an exact and accurate timeline. The more liberal in the Judeo-Christian community suggest a more allegorical approach to interpretation is appropriate. That even given Genesis as the 'Word of God', it was provided to followers in terms comprehensible to those without knowledge of telescopes, geothermal activity or climate.

What if they are both wrong?

What if Genesis is not history, but prediction?

That the entire planet could be Eden would have seemed far fetched a few thousand years before air travel, efficient and reliable global trade routes, and the myriad life-support and comfort-support technologies we take for granted today. But in today's world, barriers to a Utopian existence are primarily self-imposed.

If we re-think Genesis as prediction, an exercise that precludes literal interpretation, the early passages are interesting food for thought.

Genesis 1 - In the Beginning

Without debating too heavily against the fundamentalist interpretation, let us simple suggest an all-knowing Creator would not have provided an explanation of the origin of what we know as the universe based on genetics and quantum-physics to our agrarian ancestors. Interpreted as metaphor, Genesis 1 is decidedly accurate. From light as the beginning through planetary and solar formation, the beginning of life in the slippery stratas of clay, to the myriad species we know of today, the narrative holds.

There's a bit of an issue with humanity, stating first that men and women were created together (Gen 1: 27-28) and chapter two's more detailed interpretation suggesting a more misogynistic approach. However if we are able to widen our perspective and accept an interpretation of “let there be light” as the Big Bang, the simultaneous appearance of Adam and Eve representing early humankind is not a stretch.

Genesis 2,3 -The Warning

If we now accept the first chapter and a half as description without underlying references of Earth's metamorphoses to the point of human appearance, we can look at the rather dire warning of Genesis 2:17 as prediction.

“But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”

Note that examination of the tree is not forbidden, nor apparently would be harvesting the fruit to plant further similar trees. Only eating is outlawed.

Since the only use of the fruit of trees would have been eating, we may safely interpret the passage to suggest there is a certain body of knowledge which humanity may examine and understand but not utilize.

That body of knowledge is genetics.

Using the understanding of genetics and DNA we now have, rudimentary and incomplete as it is, enables us to “be as gods” as the serpent promised Eve.

Humanity's genetic creations comes from the 'tree of the knowledge of good and evil' and not from 'the tree of life'. While many have interpreted the pain of child birth as Eve's curse and the difficulties of farming as Adam's, it is more likely we ain't seen nothin' yet.

One can hardly call the vast plains of North America as we found them in the nineteenth century cursed. Many other parts of the global garden are as abundant.

But the as-yet-unknown effects of genetically engineered plants and other organisms released into the environment may well be destructive and cataclysmic on the level suggested by Genesis 3: 17-19.

Thanks to Monsanto and friends, serpents all.