Matins Texts of The Expulsion of Adam & Eve (10)

This is the final blog in this series quoting and commenting on hymns from the Sunday before Great Lent which commemorates the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise.   The first blog in the series was entitled The Expulsion of Adam & Eve from Paradise (Hymns).  The blog immediately preceding this one is Matins Texts of The Expulsion of Adam & Eve (9).

The Matins Canon for the Sunday commemorating the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise sets a tone for all of Great Lent and gives meaning to Lenten abstinence and fasting.  Adam and Eve’s lack of self control proved disastrous for all creation: the very beings that God appointed to have dominion over creation and to be His mediator with creation fell from their exalted post.   The humans created to have dominion over the rest of creation, listen to a created animal about how to become like God, instead of listening to the Creator!  They freely and willfully submit themselves to creation rather than exercising dominion over it.  The end result is the humans become subject to their own physical limits and to death.   The humans attempted to grasp hold of divinity, but fell from their highly exalted closeness to God and ended up just being one more part of God’s created order – mortal like all other creatures and unable to lift creation up to God, except in sacrifice!

ADAM CRIED LAMENTING: WOE IS ME! 

THE SERPENT AND THE WOMAN HAVE DEPRIVED ME OF MY BOLDNESS BEFORE GOD,

AND I HAVE BECOME AN EXILE FROM THE JOY OF PARADISE                     

THROUGH EATING FROM THE TREE.

WOE IS ME!  I CAN NO MORE ENDURE THE SHAME!

I ONCE WAS KING OF ALL GOD’S CREATURES ON EARTH;

NOW I HAVE BECOME A PRISONER,                           

LED ASTRAY BY EVIL COUNSEL.                           

I WAS ONCE CLOTHED IN THE GLORY OF IMMORTALITY,   

NOW I MUST WRAP MYSELF IN THE SKINS OF MORTALITY,           

AS ONE MISERABLE, AND CONDEMNED TO DIE.               

WOE IS ME!  WHO WILL SHARE MY SORROW WITH ME?         

BUT, LORD AND LOVER OF MANKIND,                       

YOU HAVE FASHIONED ME FROM THE EARTH AND ARE CLOTHED IN COMPASSION://

CALL ME BACK FROM THE BONDAGE OF THE ENEMY AND SAVE ME!

Adam and all of humanity cannot lift themselves to heaven – even repentance cannot achieve that end.  The Fall of humanity through willful disobedience stripped humans of what enabled them to be in God’s presence.   Unable to save themselves, humans who wished independence from God found themselves in complete need of God’s mercies.  Great Lent is that time in which we commemorate our fall and experience our fallen condition through fasting, self denial, humility, forgiveness, repentance, begging for God’s mercy, through charity and through the symbols and imagery of exile, nakedness, shame, dependence on God and the cross. 

“But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us”  (Romans 5:8).

Keeping Great Lent neither earns nor maintains God’s love for us.  Rather it reveals to us the true nature of our condition, in order to humble us, for only then do we realize the true extent of God’s love for His creation and the meaning of God’s grace.

Reading Noah and the flood through the Source Theory Lens (b)

See:  Reading Noah and the flood through the Source Theory Lens (a)

The entire selection of God Questions His Creation: The Story of the Flood is also available as one PDF document rather than a series of blogs

In rearranging the stories this way we are not denying the inspiration of either story, nor are we denying the inspiration of the editor who wove the two stories together.  Following Source Theory can simply help us deal with some of the logical and narrative inconsistencies in the story.    The reason the details in Genesis 6-9 seem disjointed at points or inconsistent is that they actually were derived from two different stories.  What is also significant is that the final editor of the Bible did not see a need to totally harmonize the two stories – but did weave them together even though their details do not seamlessly correlate.  By not harmonizing the two stories, he left us plenty of clues to the existence of both stories – perhaps he did this intentionally as He found both stories inspiring and revelatory.  He wanted to have the Scripture read as one narrative, but then kept details from each story which cannot be reconciled.   Apparently he had no divine direction to eliminate the differences in the details. So we need to ask ourselves why do set out to harmonize the differences when the inspired editor of the Bible did not?

We of course cannot know if there were any parts of the original two stories that he simply deleted.  We also cannot know if any parts of the story were in total agreement and therefore he could pick either of the two to include in his final blended version.  Source Theory takes seriously every word of the text.  It however does not try to find a way to show all the sentences are literally consistent with each other.  Sometimes the only way to read the text absolutely literally requires the reader to do “violence” to the text – change its plain meaning so much so that the differences in the story appear not to be differences.  It seems in some literal interpretations one has to do mental gymnastics to force the text to be literally consistent.   The final editor of the biblical text did not attempt to rid the story of its differences and inconsistencies.  So why do we think we should explain them away or eliminate them by forcing an interpretation on them which unnaturally does away with the literal differences?  They were left in the text by a man inspired by God, and for a purpose.  Let us recognize that, and deal with all of the verses, all of their variations and all of their implications.

The Four Evangelists

Since the story of the flood is given as one continuous story in our Scriptures, we will most often read it that way.  The story was not handed down to us in the form of two parallel stories, but rather different pieces of the two stories were contiguously placed to have us read it as one “chronological” narrative. The differences in the stories have certainly given Scripture commentators much to comment on as they attempted to harmonize the differences in the stories, and these efforts have given many great insights into both the Scriptures and into the nature of God.  The same happens if we read the text as two distinct stories which have been woven together.   Since the Patristic writers always assumed that every detail of the Bible is important for gaining wisdom and understanding, they might have found the insight of Source Theory to be one more layer of depth to the Scriptures.  Reading the story of Noah and the Flood as two distinct stories is really no different than reading the 4 Gospels as a basic telling of the same story from 4 distinct perspectives (as sometimes the details of the Gospel according to the 4 evangelists do not agree).  

Next:  Reading Noah and the flood through the Source Theory Lens (c)

Matins Texts of The Expulsion of Adam & Eve (9)

Expulsion of Adam & Eve from Paradise

In this series of blogs I will be quoting and commenting on hymns from the Sunday before Great Lent  which commemorates the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise.   The first blog in the series was entitled The Expulsion of Adam & Eve from Paradise (Hymns).  The blog immediately preceding this one is Matins Texts of The Expulsion of Adam & Eve (8). 

The Matins Canon for the Sunday commemorating the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise frequently mentions an ancient Patristic and Jewish idea that when Eve and Adam ate the forbidden fruit they lost the glorious garments of light with which God had clothed them and suddenly saw themselves as naked – a condition of which they were previously unaware.

LORD, I HAVE DISOBEYED YOUR COMMANDMENT IN MY WRETCHEDNESS.

WOE IS ME!  I HAVE BEEN STRIPPED OF GLORY,

FILLED WITH SHAME AND CAST OUT FROM THE JOY OF PARADISE!

I HAVE BEEN JUSTLY DEPRIVED OF YOUR BLESSINGS:

BUT TAKE PITY ON ME IN YOUR COMPASSION AND MERCY.

While in some forms of modern thinking Adam and Eve would have been nude and innocent in Paradise (which feeds a notion that the original sin was sex), ancient writers thought of nudity in God’s presence as indecent, and imagined instead the first humans being clothed by God in garments of light which enabled them to be in God’s presence.   It is interesting to note that the New Testament also follows this notion that salvation is not a  return to some stated of innocence in nudity.  For example, in the Gospel of Luke 24:49, Jesus tells His disciples after His resurrection  “stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high.”  The coming of the Holy Spirit will clothe the followers of Jesus, not strip them of clothing:  we are not trying to escape our bodies, nor to attain some form of nudity, but to be clothed with power form on high.   As St. Paul writes in  2 Corinthians 5:2-4:    “For in this tent we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling—if indeed, when we have taken it off we will not be found naked.   For while we are still in this tent, we groan under our burden, because we wish not to be unclothed but to be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.”   As we sing in the baptismal service, “As many as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27).  We clothe ourselves in Christ as in a garment.

LORD, WE WERE BANISHED ONCE FROM PARADISE

THROUGH EATING FROM THE TREE;

BUT YOU HAVE LED US BACK AGAIN

THROUGH YOUR CROSS AND PASSION, MY GOD AND SAVIOR.

AT THE INTERCESSIONS OF YOUR MOTHER,

THROUGH YOUR CROSS GIVE US STRENGTH TO KEEP THE FAST IN HOLINESS,

AND TO WORSHIP YOUR DIVINE AWAKENING:

THE PASSOVER OF SALVATION!

A Great Lenten theme is that through eating we were exiled from Paradise, and so thus we now embrace fasting as a didactic method of discipleship – so that we might learn to obey God.  The price of our disobedience – of our eating the forbidden fruit – is the Cross of the Savior and His death.  He bore the discipline—He suffered the pain—which is meant to correct our sinfulness.

Next:   Matins Texts of the Expulsion of Adam & Eve (10)