Thread by @queenofbithynia

you could write a book about genesis 2:19-20 and somebody must have. not that I would read it
(I mean the invention-of-narcissism part where Adam is unwilling to take for Friend & Companion anyone or anything that was not a literal piece of himself)

p.s. Eve has Adam's pre-split memories, right? she must have. so we must say Adam's early choices were hers also.
& so as far as eve knows, this is a Prestige situation. from her perspective, she is hugh jackman looking at second hugh jackman wishing she had a pistol on her

I disclaim all religious feeling & education, as usual, but I still am upset by the part where god parades the lynx & the ibex &c. in front of lonely Adam Prime & says Aren't these neat, you can make friends with any of em, what do you say, "a boy and his dog," is that anything

[this is textually not a wife-catalogue! just friend-shopping!]
& Adam says No, thank you for showing me the whole Hall of Mammals such as they have in the Natural History Museum, they are not good enough. make me a second Me, just like Me, will you, and order it to like me

--I don't think this thylacine respects me enough.
that's "canon" as they say
so we are all descended from an original prelapsarian unitary parent who could have chosen some kind of Battle-Cat as eternal companion but didn't want to. the original original sin

sitting here reading ziolkowski's LURE OF THE ARCANE and

"[O]ne might look back as far as Eve and the serpent to find the world's first conspiracy." (the necessary conditions for conspiracy theory he defines as at least 3 people, one convinced the other 2 are plotting)

what arrant nonsense

that is the second conspiracy at best. at best!! the first (by Ziolkowski's definition) is certainly Adam & God against Eve, not Eve & anybody against anybody. Eve is a born conspiracy theorist, or would be if she had been born. there are even--

--there are even theologians who assume from Genesis that God never speaks to Eve directly, only to Adam & only when she's not there, and she is to take Adam's word about various prohibitions & rules w/o hearing herself from the source. talk about conspiracies

imagine a world where I'd taken a bible-as-literature course as an 18 yr old and handed all this shit in to some poor professor as a paper, all at once, and you'd never had to hear a word about it

well, we don't live in that world, we live in this one

what do you call the heresy where you understand Eve to be the child of the dysfunctional heterosexual marriage btwn Adam & God (who canonically takes a small & painless physical contribution from Her husband & makes a whole person out of it for the two of them to order around)

I am too wise & old to credit myself with inventing new heresies but the ones I reinvent are the best ones
anyway that's why God doesn't recap the Eden tree situation to Eve Herself, just says Go bother Adam, he's home all day, I'M working, I don't have time for this

and Adam conveniently doesn't tell Eve that "they" were never ordered to leave that tree alone, just him. that is why Eve gets kicked out for politely offering him an apple, not for eating one herself, which was allowed.
the Serpent could have told her this, but did not want to

very "don't let your brother watch too many cartoons, you know it makes him unmanageable"
& then Eve, pissed bc she's the younger one, why is she responsible for him? sits him in front of the TV so she can go sit on the overpass & smoke or whatever. no one on earth can blame her

this is the reading I always revert to bc as the second of two children of a grouchy single mother, it is the truest to life. I know a parable about my own childhood when I see one
Lilith is fine and all but she has ineffable big-sister energy. so I am, as they say, all about Eve