Hebrew Myths

by Robert Graves

  (k) Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden on the First Friday, the day in which they had both been created and had sinned. On the First Sabbath, Adam rested and prayed God for mercy. At its close he went to the Upper Gihon, strongest of rivers, and there did seven weeks’ penance, standing in midstream with water to the chin, until his body turned soft as a sponge.144

  (l) Afterwards an angel came to Adam’s comfort, and taught him the use of fire-tongs and a smith’s hammer; also how to manage oxen, so that he should not fall behindhand in his ploughing.145

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  1. Some elements of the Fall of Man myth in Genesis are of great antiquity; but the composition is late, and even in places suggests Greek influence. The Gilgamesh Epic, the earliest version of which can be dated about 2000 B.C., describes how the Sumerian Love-goddess Aruru created from clay a noble savage named Enkidu, who grazed among gazelles, slaked his thirst beside wild cattle and sported with dolphins—until a priestess sent to him by Gilgamesh initiated him into the mysteries of love. Though wise as a god, he was now shunned by the wild creatures; and the priestess therefore covered his nakedness, using part of her own garment, and brought him to the city of Uruk, where he became blood-brother to the hero Gilgamesh. Later, Gilgamesh went in quest of the herb of immortality. He entered a gloomy tunnel twelve leagues long, and emerged in a paradise of jewel-hung trees owned by Siduri, Goddess of Wisdom. Declining the Sun-god’s invitation to remain, Gilgamesh pressed on, until he learned from Utnapishtim (the Sumerian Noah) that the desired herb—a plant resembling buckthorn—grew deep under the sea. Gilgamesh tied stones to his feet, plunged down, found the herb and brought it safely back; but a serpent stole it from him when he visited a fresh-water spring. He sadly resigned himself to death.

  2. Adam calls Eve ‘the Mother of All Living’, (Genesis III. 20) a title of this same Love-goddess Aruru, or Ishtar; and she confers wisdom on him, just as Aruru’s priestess did on Enkidu. Since, however, the Babylonian legend of Marduk as Creator had, centuries before, succeeded the Sumerian legend of Aruru as Creatrix, the Hebrew Creator is made to punish Eve for enlightening the innocent Adam.

  3. Another source of the Genesis Fall of Man is the Akkadian myth of Adapa, found on a tablet at Tell Amarna, Pharaoh Akhenaten’s capital. Adapa, son of Ea, the Babylonian god of Wisdom, was attacked in the Persian Gulf by a Storm-bird while catching fish for his father’s priests, and broke its wing. The bird proved to have been the South Wind. Ea summoned Adapa to explain his violence and warned him that, having displeased Anu, King of Heaven; the gods would offer him the food and drink of death, which he must refuse. Anu, however, learning of this indiscreet disclosure, foiled Ea by offering Adapa the bread of life and the water of life and, when he refused them at his father’s orders, grimly sending him back to earth as a perverse mortal. This myth supplies the theme of the Serpent’s warning to Eve: that God had deceived her about the properties of the forbidden fruit.

  4. Another possible source of the Genesis Fall of Man is an ancient Persian myth: Meshia and Meshiane at first live on fruit alone, but are then persuaded by the Demon Ahriman to deny God. They lose their purity, fell trees, kill animals, and commit further evil.

  5. According to a Cretan myth quoted by Apollodorus and Hyginus, and a Lydian myth quoted by Pliny, serpents possessed a herb of immortality.

  6. The Genesis story, in which agricultural work is represented as a curse laid upon man because of Eve’s inquisitiveness and disobedient mischief, mythically expresses the age-old Mediterranean point of view which regards physical labour (symbolized and exemplified by tillage of the soil) as an unmitigated and unavoidable hardship. This view continues to be shared in the Middle East, not only by the nomads who regard fellahin as ‘slaves of the soil’, but by most of the agricultural population itself. It was held, even before the Creation story received its final shape, by a bitter Greek farmer, Hesiod, who was the first writer to regard agriculture as an evil laid upon mankind by ruthless gods. An entirely different view is expressed by the Greek myth of Triptolemus: whom Demeter rewards for his father’s sake by initiating him into the mysteries of agriculture, which he rides out through the world to teach, mounted on a serpent-drawn chariot.

  7. Eden as a peaceful rural retreat, where man lives at his ease among wild animals, occurs not only in the story of Enkidu but in Greek and Latin legends of the Golden Age, and must be distinguished from the jewelled paradise which Gilgamesh and Isaiah’s Helel visited (see 8. a). The terrestrial paradise represents a jaded city-dweller’s nostalgia for simple country joys, or a dispirited labourer’s for the fruit-eating innocence of childhood; the celestial paradise is enjoyed in a schizophrenetic trance, induced either by asceticism, by glandular disturbance, or by use of hallucinogenetic drugs.

  8. It is not always possible to judge which of these causes produced the mystic visions of, say, Ezekiel, ‘Enoch’, Jacob Boehme, Thomas Traherne and William Blake. Yet jewelled gardens of delight are commonly connected in myth with the eating of an ambrosia forbidden to mortals; and this points to a hallucinogenetic drug reserved for a small circle of adepts, which gives them sensations of divine glory and wisdom. The Gilgamesh reference to buckthorn must be a blind, however—buckthorn was eaten by ancient mystics not as an illuminant but as a preliminary purgative. Soma, the Indian ambrosia, is said to be still in secret use among Brahmans.

  9. All gardens of delight are originally ruled by goddesses; at the change from matriarchy to patriarchy, male gods usurp them. A serpent is almost always present. Thus, in Greek myth, the Garden of the Hesperides, whose apple-trees bore golden fruit, was guarded by the Serpent Ladon, and had been Hera’s demesne before she married Zeus, though her enemy Heracles eventually destroyed Ladon with Zeus’s approval. The jewelled Sumerian paradise to which Gilgamesh went, was owned by Siduri, Goddess of Wisdom, who had made the Sun-god Shamash its guardian; in later versions of the epic, Shamash has degraded Siduri to a mere ‘ale-wife’ serving at a near-by tavern. Indra, the leading Aryan god, appears to have borrowed a new form of soma from the variously named Indian Mother-goddess.

  10. A paradise whose secrets have lately been revealed is the Mexican Tlalócan—a picture of which Heim and Wasson reproduce from the Tepantitla fresco in Les Champignons Hallucinogènes du Mexique. It shows a spirit, branch in hand, weeping for joy on entering an orchard of fantastically bright fruit-trees and flowers, watered by a river, full of fish, flowing from the mouth of a divine toad. This is the God Tlalóc, who corresponds closely with the Greek Dionysus, and whom his sister Chalcioluthlicue has made co-ruler of her paradise. In the foreground lie irrigation canals over which four mushrooms meet to form a cross denoting the cardinal points of the compass. Behind the spirit rises a spotted serpent—Tlalóc in another aspect; a flowery dragon and huge coloured butterflies hover aloft. The hallucinogenetic drug inducing this vision was a toxic mushroom, still ritually eaten in several provinces of Mexico. Psilocybin, the active agent, is now ranked by psychiatrists with lysergic acid and mescalin as among the leading psychodelotics—‘revealers of man’s inner self’.

  11. Hallucinogenetic mushrooms are common throughout Europe and Asia. Some varieties, which do not lose their toxic qualities when cooked, seem to have been introduced into sacred cakes eaten at Greek Mysteries; and also at Arabian Mysteries, since the Arabic root ftr occurs in words meaning ‘toadstool’, ‘sacrificial bread’, and ‘divine ecstasy’. Perseus went to the jewelled Garden of the Hesperides aided by Athene, goddess of Wisdom and, according to Pausanias, later built and named Mycenae in honour of a mushroom found growing on the site, from which flowed a pool of water. That the Indian paradise closely resembles these others suggests that soma is a sacred mushroom disguised in food or drink—not, as most authorities hold, a variety of milkweed; and the ancient Chinese reverence for a ‘Mushroom of Wisdom’ may have its origin in a similar cult.

  12. The fervent love between Enkidu and the priestess, though omitted from the Genesis story, has been prese
rved by a Talmudic scholiast who makes Adam wish for death rather than be parted from Eve. Yet the myth of the Fall licences man to blame woman for all his ills, make her labour for him, exclude her from religious office and refuse her advice on moral problems.

  13. Ambrosia-eaters often enjoy a sense of perfect wisdom, resulting from a close co-ordination of their mental powers. Since ‘knowledge of good and evil’, in Hebrew, means ‘knowledge of all things, both good and evil’, and does not refer to the gift of moral choice, the ‘Tree of Life’ may have once been the host-tree of a particular hallucinogenetic mushroom. For example, the birch is host to the amanita muscaria sacramentally eaten by certain Palaeo-Siberian and Mongol tribes.

  14. An addition to the story of Adam’s penance occurs in the tenth-century Irish Saltair na Rann, based on an earlier Syrian Life of Adam and Eve evidently drawn from Hebrew sources: he fasts in Jordan, not Gihon, with water to his chin and, as a reward, God lets Raphael give him certain mystical secrets. According to this text, God created Adam at Hebron; which may be a pre-Exilic version of the myth. Some Byzantine writers make Adam repent only in his six-hundredth year.

  15. The Serpent is widely regarded as an enemy of man, and of woman (see 13 and 14).

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  SAMAEL’S REBELLION

  (a) Some say that the Serpent of Eden was Satan in disguise: namely the Archangel Samael. He rebelled on the Sixth Day, driven by an overwhelming jealousy of Adam, whom God had ordered the whole host of Heaven to worship. The Archangel Michael complied without delay, but Samael said: ‘I will not worship any lesser being! When Adam was made, I had already been perfected. Let him rather worship me!’ Samael’s angels agreed, and Michael warned them: ‘Beware of God’s anger!’ Samael replied: ‘If He show anger, I will set a throne above the stars and proclaim myself the Highest.’ Then Michael flung Samael out of Heaven and down to earth, where he nevertheless continued to scheme against God’s will.146

  (b) Others say that when all the angels had obediently fallen at Adam’s feet, Samael addressed God: ‘Lord of the Universe, You created us from the splendour of Your Glory. Shall we then adore a being formed from dust?’ God replied: ‘Yet this creature, though formed from dust, surpasses you in wisdom and understanding.’ Samael challenged Him: ‘Test us!’ God said: ‘I have created beasts, birds and creeping things. Go down, and set them all in line; and if you can name them as I would have them named, Adam shall reverence your wisdom. But if you fail, and he succeeds, you must reverence his.’

  In Eden, Adam did obeisance to Samael, whom he mistook for God. God, however, pulled him upright and asked Samael: ‘Will you be the first to name these beasts, or will Adam?’ He answered: ‘I will, being both elder and wiser.’ God thereupon set oxen before him, inquiring: ‘How are these named?’ When Samael stood silent, God removed the oxen. He fetched a camel, and afterwards an ass, but Samael could not name either.

  God then planted understanding in Adam’s heart, and spoke in such a manner that the first letter of each question pointed to the beast’s name. Thus He took oxen, saying: ‘Open your lips, Adam, and tell me their name!’ Adam answered: ‘Oxen.’ God next showed him a camel, saying: ‘Come, tell me the name of this!’ Adam answered: ‘Camel.’ Lastly God showed him an ass: ‘And can you name this also?’ Adam answered: ‘It is an ass.’

  When Samael saw that God had enlightened Adam, he yelled indignantly. ‘Do you yell?’ God asked. ‘How should I not,’ replied Samael, ‘when You have created me from Your Glory, and afterwards bestow understanding on a creature formed from dust?’

  God said: ‘O evil Samael, are you astonished at Adam’s wisdom? Yet he will now foresee the birth of his descendants, and give every one his own name, until the Last Days!’147 With that, He hurled Samael and his attendant angels from Heaven. Samael clutched at Michael’s wings, and would have dragged him down too, had God not intervened.148

  (c) Some allege that Satan was not Samael, but the oxlike Prince of Darkness who had opposed God’s creative will even before He commanded ‘Let there be light!’ When God said: ‘Away! I will create My world in light!’, the Prince asked: ‘Why not from darkness?’ God replied: ‘Beware, lest I subdue you with a shout!’ The Prince, loth to acknowledge himself God’s inferior, feigned deafness. Whereupon God’s shout subdued him, as He had threatened.149 Samael and his angels were banished to a dark dungeon, where they still languish, their faces haggard, their lips sealed; and are now known as the Watchers.150 In the Last Days, the Prince of Darkness will declare himself God’s equal, and claim to have taken part in Creation, boasting: ‘Though God made Heaven and Light, I made Darkness and the Pit!’ His angels will support him; but the fires of Hell shall quench their arrogance.151

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  1. ‘Samael’, though said to mean ‘Venom of God’, is more likely a cacophemism for ‘Shemal’, a Syrian deity. In Hebrew myth, Samael occupies an ambiguous position, being at once ‘chief of all Satans’ and ‘the greatest prince in Heaven’ who rules angels and planetary powers. The title ‘Satan’ (‘enemy’) identified him both with Helel, ‘Lucifer, son of Dawn’, another fallen angel; and with the Serpent who in the Garden of Eden plotted Adam’s downfall. Some Jews (Ginzberg, LJ, V. 85) also hold that he had planned to create another world, which identifies him with the Gnostic ‘Cosmocrator’ or ‘Demiurge’. The Orphic Greek Cosmocrator Ophion, or Ophioneus, was also a serpent (see 1. 10).

  2. Adam’s naming of the beasts is a tale derived perhaps from a myth of how the alphabet was invented: the first and third Hebrew letters being aleph and gimmel, namely ‘ox’ and ‘camel’.

  3. That darkness (hoshekh) had existed long before Creation not as a mere absence of light, but as a positive entity, was believed by all Middle Eastern and Mediterranean peoples. The Greeks spoke of their ‘Mother Night’; the Hebrews of their ‘Prince of Darkness’, relating him to Tohu (see 2. 3), and placing him in the north. The shout with which God overcame this Prince recalls Pan’s when, according to Apollodorus, he subdued Typhon: a monster whose wings darkened the sun, and who also lived in the north, on Mount Saphon (see 8. 3).

  4. ‘Watchers’ (egrēgorikoi in Greek), the name given to Satan’s angels in the Second Book of Enoch, seems to be a rendering of two Aramaic words: irin, applied to angels in Daniel IV. 10, 14, 20; and qaddishin, ‘holy ones’. A nearer translation would be ‘guardian angels’, which agrees both with their functions and the meanings of their names. According to Midrash Tehillim on Psalm I, ir refers to the deity Eloah.

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  THE BIRTHS OF CAIN AND ABEL

  (a) Some say that Samael disguised himself as the Serpent and, after vengefully persuading man to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, fathered Cain upon Eve; thus defiling all the offspring of her subsequent union with Adam. Only when the Children of Israel stood beneath Mount Sinai and received the Law at Moses’s hands was this curse finally lifted. It still taints the other nations.152

  (b) According to some accounts, Samael never lay with Eve before Adam had done so. God at first intended Samael to rule the world, but the sight of Adam and Eve coupling, naked and unashamed, made him jealous. He swore: ‘I will destroy Adam, marry Eve, and truly rule.’ Having waited until Adam had lain with Eve and fallen asleep, he took Adam’s place. Eve yielded to him, and conceived Cain.153

  Soon, however, she repented of her faithlessness and cried tearfully: ‘Alas, Adam, I have sinned! Banish me from the light of your life. I will go westward, there to await death.’ Three months later, having reached the Ocean, Eve gathered branches and built a hut. When the pangs of labour overcame her, she prayed God for deliverance, but fruitlessly, and could only beg the Sun and Moon to tell Adam of her plight on their next eastward circuit. This they did. Adam hastened to Eve’s side and, finding her still in labour, joined his prayers with hers. God sent down twelve angels and two Virtues, led by Michael, who stood at Eve’s right hand, stroking her face and breast, until she gave birth.154

  (c) Since the infant Cain�
�s face shone angelically, Eve knew that Adam had not been his father and, in her innocence, exclaimed: ‘I have gotten a man-child from Yahweh!’155

  (d) Others account for Cain’s name by saying that he stood up as soon as born, ran off and brought back a wheat straw, which he gave to Eve; who thereupon called him Cain, which means ‘stalk’.156

  (e) Afterwards Eve bore a second son, whom she named Abel, which means ‘breath’ or, some say, ‘vanity’ or ‘sorrow’, foreseeing his early doom.157 This knowledge came to her in a dream: she saw Cain drinking Abel’s blood and refusing his mournful plea to be left a few drops. When Eve told Adam her dream, he said: ‘We must part our sons.’ Cain therefore grew up as a husbandman, and Abel as a shepherd; each living in his own hut.158

  (f) Some, however, believe that Cain was Abel’s twin, begotten on Eve by Adam; their conception being one of the miraculous happenings which occurred on the Sixth Day. In the first hour, God collected Adam’s dust; in the second, Adam became an inert clod; in the third, his limbs were stretched out; in the fourth, God breathed a spirit into him; in the fifth, he stood upon his feet; in the sixth, he named the beasts; in the seventh, God gave him Eve; in the eighth, ‘two went to bed, and four came out’—since Cain and Abel were twins, immediately conceived; in the ninth, Adam was forbidden to eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge; in the tenth, he sinned; in the eleventh, he was punished; and in the twelfth, cast out of Eden.159

  (g) Others again hold that the first act of love between Adam and Eve produced at least four children: Cain with his twin sister, Abel with his; or even with two twin sisters.160