The Garden of Eden corresponds literally to the ideas of peace and beauty. Those streams of water which are described as flowing through the Garden were rivers, the courses of which have since been changed by volcanic action within the earth. They correspond to notions of fertility. Adam and Eve answer to two distinct nations which became associated ultimately, forming a single nation in the interior of Asia. The Tree of Knowledge corresponds to the undeveloped embryo of perfection and intelligence. The terms good and evil are used to express the proper fruits thereof—evil being the gross, imperfect, undeveloped, and good being the same things raised into a perfect state. That serpent which is represented as being more subtile than any other beast of the field, corresponds to the secret, imperceptible progress of an unfavourable mental development. Eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge represents an experience of the fruits of the good, which at once begets a knowledge of evil. Thus it is that experience begets knowledge, and had the inhabitants of earth not seen the very lowest degrees of evil and wretchedness, succeeding nations would not have known and appreciated that which stands in contradistinction to these.
After this manner the associated nations, as above
mentioned, entered into a knowledge of good and evil, which knowledge corresponds to having their eyes opened. Becoming thus aware of their evil dispositions, they endeavoured to conceal them by making external garments, the aprons answering to fearful secretiveness and a dread of having corrupted characteristics openly manifested.1 This again corresponds to depravity, and in this sense the people conversed deceitfully with each other. Having lost their original high grade of purity and innocence, as the consequence of an evil and vitiating situation, they continued to sink further. There came, however, a period when out of these associated peoples there sprang two new nations, designated as Cain and Abel in the primitive history. The former were distinguished for external show and highmindedness, while the latter were meek and unsophisticated, with principles corresponding to the innocence of sheep. All that war and devastation which arose after many ages—or after they had become great peoples—signify the predominance of ignorance and folly over peace and goodness. The Land of Nod answers to barrenness, while the multiplicity of the nation which sojourned in that portion of the earth corresponds to the prevalence of universal artificiality over all that is naturally pure and righteous.
We discover in this manner that the conceptions of Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, the Fall of Man and original sin are more or less mythological and parabolical.2 They were traditional among Eastern peoples, and so continued for several ages, without any particular modification, but were ultimately introduced, in an exceedingly altered form, into the writings of primitive history.3 The Jewish knowledge concerning the Fall
was due to Persian manuscripts, translated into Hebrew during the captivity at Babylon.1 The tradition became venerated in Israel as the symbolical representation of something substantially true. The conception of an evil spirit or devil may be traced in like manner to the magi of Persia, who deified the principle of evil, but even so late as the first Christian writers the terms devil and Satan were not used to signify any definite and established principle of being, but rather an influx or impersonal spirit of wickedness—a notion precisely similar to the primitive belief of mankind. It was all that which interfered with peace and tranquillity of mind. So also the terms Sheol, Hades and Gehenna, which are rendered by us in the summary designation of hell, were employed metaphorically in the sacred writings of the Jews to signify a local burning abyss, but subsequently a condition of darkness, death and the grave. In no case do the terms used in the Bible describe a fount of evil and sin. Symbolically, hell connotes all things that are opposed to the light of investigation. There is, finally, the doctrine of a general resurrection and judgment. Without dwelling upon beliefs which prevailed hereon among various sects of Jews and Persians, for long centuries prior to the time of Christ, it will be sufficient for the present purpose to point out, in respect of both notions, that in the New Testament these also are used in a symbolical manner—as, for example, by Christ
Himself—to represent states of mind, in order that hearers, with the Eastern world generally, might understand the teachings presented. Neither general resurrection nor judgment is taught in any page of the Bible.