In the seventeenth chapter of The Amber Spyglass, Dr. Mary Malone finally discovers the mystery behind Dust/Shadows and why it only appeared after a certain point in history. When she does, the mulefa reveal that she has an unknown purpose for coming to their world. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to read The Amber Spyglass.
CHAPTER 17: OIL AND LACQUER
I mean THE ANSWER WAS JUST SITTING THERE. HOW DID I MISS THIS??? I think that is–if I may pat myself on the back just a bit–half the fun of the pedantic method that I use for this process. I’m already thinking about how agonizing it must have been to have me toe right up to the line and not say, “Oh, Dust/Shadows occurred at the exact moment that Eve was tempted and everyone received Knowledge.” I basically danced around it for the past month. IT WAS RIGHT THERE.
I also imagine that quite a few of you (correctly) knew that I would flip my shit at every single revelation in chapter seventeen, most especially the way that Pullman sets up this dichotomy for knowledge and Authority. Oh, and the idea that EVERY SINGLE PARALLEL WORLD WAS TEMPTED AT THE EXACT SAME MOMENT.
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I’ve been enjoying The Amber Spyglass, but until yesterday’s chapter, I sort of felt like we weren’t getting that many HEAD EXPLOSIONS as the first two books, so this caught me completely off-guard. On top of that, I loved Mary’s scenes with the mulefa, but I was starting to wonder what they were for, in the sense that I knew they would relate to complete narrative, but I just wasn’t seeing how.
Pullman takes his time answering that question in this chapter, but even right from the beginning, I got the feeling we’d see a huge development here. If Mary was going to try to see if she could observe Shadows in this world, I imagined we’d learn something new about this alternate universe.
So Mary sets about building a mirror of sorts, inspired by a revealing conversation with a mulefa named Atal about Mary’s experiments in her own world. Like many things here in this universe, I love that Pullman always acknowledges that many basic concepts we take for granted are entirely foreign and strange here. As Mary tries to explain the concept of her research, her lab, the idea behind her experiments, and how she came to discover that these particles were actually conscious, she frets about the possibility that Atal will simply be unable to understand what she’s saying. The scientific method means nothing in Mary’s terms to the mulefa, though we have seen it acted out in a different way among these creatures.
…but Atal surprised her by saying, Yes–we know what you mean–we call it…and then she used a word that sounded like their word for light.
Mary said, Light?
Atal said, Not light, but…and said the word more slowly for mary to catch, explaining: like the light on water when it makes small ripples, at sunset, and the light comes off in bright flakes, we call it that, but it is a make-like.
Make-like was their term for metaphor, Mary had discovered.
It became incredibly obvious to me that all of these parallel worlds developed and evolved and adapted in such stark, varied ways, but we were now seeing that Dust/Shadows/Light appears to be in every world. My immediate question upon reading this: What else do these worlds have in common?
Sraf. That’s what they have in common. Atal explains that this is why the mulefa knew that they could inherently trust Mary. (I did laugh that Atal called her “bizarre and horrible,†and it’s not at all meant as an insult.) When Mary asks where it comes from, and Atal replies that it’s from the mulefa and the oil from the seedpods, a trillion lightbulbs started going off in my head. Apparently, the same thing happened with Mary, who starts to put together all of her ideas regarding the nature of the Shadows. She remembers what Lyra had told her about Dust, that it all has to do with The Fall and Original Sin, and that it all appeared at a very specific point in history.
She said to Atal:
How long have there been mulefa?
And Atal said:
Thirty-three thousand years.
She was able to read Mary’s expressions by this time, or the most obvious of them at least, and she laughed at the way Mary’s jaw dropped.
AHHHHHHHHH ALL OF THE WORLDS ARE THE SAME. But nothing could have prepared me for the origin story Atal tells, giving Mary the reason she knows why there have only been mulefa for 33,000 years. Long ago, a female creature with no name discovered a seedpod, and a visitor arrived once she started playing with it:
She saw a snake coiling itself through the hole in a seedpod, and the snake said–
The snake spoke to her?
No, no! it is a make-like. The story tells that the snake said, “What do you know? What do you remember? What do you see ahead?†And she said, “Nothing, nothing, nothing.â€
And then my head exploded a trillion times over. GOD TEMPTED EVERY EVE IN EVERY WORLD. oh my god ads;klfjas as;klfjas;d fas;dlkfjasd;lk asd;lkfjasd ;lfkj as;dlfkjasdkl;fsdjklasfd
What I really like about this scene, though, is that it exemplifies my main problem with the Temptation and the Fall. There’s very little for us to work off of in the Bible, so Pullman does take liberties in giving us the part of the story where the snake speaks to this unnamed creature. (Well, unnamed due to lack of knowledge, which we’ll get to.) But I imagine there’s no other way to explain this state, even if it is metaphorical: without knowledge, the first humans (or creatures in any world) would know nothing. There would be no memory, no history, no future, no speculation, and, most important of them all, no context. We’re talking about theological zombies, in essence, humans without history or learning or foresight or anticipation, who merely drift the earth in some designed paradise of pure boredom.
The story of Eve and the story of the first mulefa are both identical in this sense. God tempts these beings. He does so with the full knowledge that they are absolutely unable to make a decision that is the slightest bit informed, and he then punishes the rest of the future of humanity for this, all the while fully aware that only out of sheer luck would Eve choose not to eat the apple from the Tree of Knowledge. And I use the word “luck†because Eve (and the first mulefa) do not have the capacity to even have a reason to choose one or the other. That requires knowledge and they have none.
It’s for this reason that Pullman paints the mulefa history as one that is entirely accepting and respecting of knowledge: that knowledge they gained helped them determine how to use the seedpods, how to name one another, and helped them teach their offspring how they were supposed to live as well. In the Bible, the Fall is mankind’s greatest error, and we’ve spent thousands of years believing that receiving knowledge of the world and ourselves was our worst mistake. I feel that Pullman is working towards a moment to explain just how absurd that notion is, but I I also think it’s still relevant 33,000 years later, as theocratic politicians the world round profess the same idea and legislate them into law. Is knowledge our worst sin?
Philip Pullman doesn’t think so, and there’s probably no better example of that than Mary’s construction of the mirror. Like the subtle knife forging scene, I was endlessly fascinated by the process, even if I was distracted by how complex it was and how difficult it was for me to visualize a lot of it. Mary’s mind operates completely in the pursuit of knowledge. She uses the same process the mulefa use for creating lacquer, which has the same properties as spar, in order to create some sort of mirror to view Shadows. Yet even that is a lot easier said than done, and she sets out on the prolonged journey to create this instrument. I like that it’s not something that she sits down and makes on a nice summer afternoon. It takes her days to complete it. She makes mistakes, she fails, but she doesn’t stop. She doesn’t have a silver backing to the mirror, so it doesn’t even work as she intended. She listens intently when Atal explains more about the lacquer’s property, and what she could use it for. She even comes up with the idea of sticking two sheets of glass against each other to see if it makes a difference when she views the world through it.
And through all of this, I noticed something very peculiar: aside from Atal, none of the mulefa cared what Mary was doing. Hell, Pullman even stresses how uninterested they are in her little project and, at one point, even Atal tires of this process. In that moment, when Mary puts aside her little experiment and the two spend some time grooming each other (SORRY THIS SCENE IS SO AMAZING AND AFFECTIONATE UGH I LOVE IT), it all comes together:
She held the two plates a hand span apart so that they showed that clear, bright image she’d seen before, but something had happened.
As she looked through, she saw a swarm of golden sparkles surrounding the form of Atal. They were only visible through one small part of the lacquer, and then Mary realized why: at that point she had touched the surface of it with her oily fingers.
THIS IS SPECTACULAR. Oh god, I would love to see this done on film, to see Mary view the mulefa world through this lens, to see Dust swirling over these creatures, or settling in around those who were older and had conquered knowledge.
Aaaaaannnd then everything gets weird for a bit.
So at last you can see, said Atal. Well, now you must come with me.
Mary looked at her friend in puzzlement. Atal’s tone was strange: it was as if she were saying, Finally you’re ready; we’ve been waiting; now things must change.
I can’t deny how unsettled I was by this, by reading how the mulefa start to assemble, by Atal’s gentle assurance that she will not be harmed, by Mary’s realization that this was clearly planned for a long time. What are they doing? Why are they meeting like this?
Mary is introduced to the oldest mulefa that she’s ever seen, Sattamax, whose cloud of Shadows “was so rich and complex that Mary herself felt respect, even though she knew so little of what it meant.†And Sattamax begins to speak, revealing that the entire group has been waiting for the moment when Mary had conquered some of their language and, more important than anything, could fully understand what sraf was. Having done so, Sattamax says, it’s time for her to help the mulefa.
Oh, Pullman. I was so unprepared.
I’m not sure what it all means, but Sattamax tells Mary how three hundred years earlier, the trees carrying their seedpods began to die. Surprisingly, there are now creatures in this world without Dust, the tualapi are working to destroy the mulefa, and they all desperately need a cure to the sickness that affects their trees, or they will all die.
And this is where Dr. Mary Malone comes in. Mary must come up with a cure, and she agrees. And I’m guessing that this is all directly related to the Authority in some way. If the Gallivespians had human agents of the Authority to deal with, and there’s the Magisterium in Lyra’s world, or the Specters….what is happening in this world to threaten the lives of the mulefa?
But Pullman doesn’t leave us with this happy moment, choosing to give us a brief glimpse at Father Gomez, who is still traveling through Cittágazze, heading towards the mountain where Mary found the door to the world she is in now.
GREAT. AWESOME.
———-
Remember to enter the BridgeToTheStars contest to win a copy of The Amber Spyglass, and to visit this week’s spoiler thread!
Chapter 17 Epigraph!
<img src="http://www.bridgetothestars.net/misc_gallery/albums/Extras/TAS-Epigraphs/scan0050.jpg">
Oh, I really like this one. The unfilled circle in place of a period reminds me of an ouroboros since the epigraph is about a snake, like the way the symbol for the sun was used in the epigraph about the sun. The ouroboros would fit in with the idea of cyclical temptations and falls, since Lyra is the new Eve, and the idea that all of the universes were tempted with knowledge as one.
And you arent even half way through the book
I KNOW. oh god.
Ah, finally, some information I really care about! The idea of Dust is so interesting and central to the main points of these books, all of them, and I'm finally getting some answers. I don't care about the intention craft or about a lot of the other stuff we've been focusing on. I think that's one of my problems with TAS, although I like ensembles, I feel like I'm spread too thin over everything. I just want Pullman to sit down and concentrate on a few characters for a while.
I wonder how angels would look to the mulefa since they can see Dust. Would they look like gold light swirls? Would they be shaped like mulefa? Also, I think the golden light Dust is why there is gold confetti on my copy of TAS. I still don't really like it, but at least at this point in the story, it makes sense. The only image yet unexplained is why a young Matt Smith look alike (I guess he's supposed to be Will) is racing through the gold and blue confetti.
That sounds weird. What edition do you have?
Well, my cover looks like this:
<img src="http://var.pulist.net/the-amber-spyglass-his-dark-materials-book-3-1312645444.jpg">
And the spine is cut from this, an image I just found in it's entirety today (linked because, even though there are no specific spoilers, there are pictures of things we will see). Basically, it's the section under "The Subtle Knife" title. I probably didn't realize the spine was part of a whole picture because my copies are different editions, which does bother me, but I can't justify buying a new set right now.
The fact that the Mulefa inherently understand that the story of the first mulefa and the snake and the seed pods is a METAPHOR is amazing to me. It's funny, because I was just listening to a story on NPR this morning about evangelical Christianity and the divide that's currently going on. There are some scientists at Christian universities that are positing that, no, of course we could not all be descended from two persons, especially not in the time frame of several thousand years that a literal interpretation of the Bible posits, and that yes, we did descend from primates. Whereas other scientists are fighting back and saying that the new scientists are completely wrong (and, in my atheistic view, positing the theory that Jesus is, in fact, magic).
Anyway, just kind of funny that the story was airing the morning after I read the chapter about the Mulefa and their personal genesis myth.
I loved that part, too. "Sheesh, Mary. Don't be silly, it's a story." I also really like that using metaphors and probably other figures of speech seem to be universal to intelligent creatures.
And here's the story you mentioned in case anyone wants to read or listen to it.
I remember back when I got confirmed into the Catholic Church, my group was very confused by the fact that, after Eve, it takes ages for any other women to be mentioned, but we got "guy, son of older guy, son of even older guy, son of super old guy, son of Adam." So we brought it up to the priest during pre-Confirmation confession and he said he didn't think we were supposed to take the story literally, because all these guys were not procreating with Eve. Ever since then, I've always taken my Bible stories with a very generous dash of salt.
And having graduated with a history degree, focusing on the Holocaust, I've studied Jewish history and religion quite a bit (in addition to my Catholic upbringing), which naturally leads to a lot of debate with all kinds of believers (a label I would apply to myself, although I don't really identify with any specific church or ideology). And it might also explain why I get so frustrated when people take the Bible literally without regards to historical context or even to Biblical context, but that's a conversation for another day. People can believe what they want to, but I do like to debate with them and would appreciate it if they at least considered my points.
Also, about the magical thing, I remember in my Ancient and Medieval Jewish Civilizations class, when we reached Christianity, we were reading documents about other people who had "magical" powers who lived during the same time period. There were a few examples, but the only one I remember is Honi the Circle-Drawer. Apparently, around the time we switched from BC/BCE to AD/CE was a very magical time. But the magic was shared between several different religions and whatnot.
"Then who is Cain's wife?" was a question strongly discouraged in my Sunday-school classes, as I dimly recall.
Exactly. I haven't read the exact verses in ages, but I seem to remember reading the Bible that it kind of assumed there were other people around, because Cain and Abel clearly married somebody and it wasn't their sisters (and it wasn't angels, although as I recall there were mentions of human-angel pairings.)
The Bible is also full of contradictions. It says that God created man and woman at the same time, and then it says that it was just Adam and Eve was created from Adam's rib. (The Sandman has a really interesting section that notes this contradiction, but I won't go into it since I know Mark's reading that eventually.)
"It says that God created man and woman at the same time, and then it says that it was just Adam and Eve was created from Adam's rib."
When I read that in the Bible I was like "…what?" because it made no sense to me at all. I even told my mom about and she said that she needed to look into or whatever.
Doesn't it also say that God created Day and Night on the third day? That just completely breaks my brain.
Mm, it doesn't look like it.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that [it was] good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
First thing God did was to separate light from dark and create day/night. Although interestingly, water was already there.
In the Muslim version of the story, Cain and Abel both had twins. Cain was supposed to marry Abel's twin Jumella and Abel was supposed to marry Cain's twin Aclima, but Cain also preferred Aclima and the hence the quarrel.
This showed up in the Sandman spin-off, The Dreaming.
If you've read Madeleine L'Engle's Many Waters (why yes, most of my knowledge of religion does come from fiction, why do you ask?), she basically says that the women just weren't mentioned in the Bible because they were considered less important than the men.
There's nothing that says God didn't create more people AFTER Adam and Eve, though, right? Just because we only get one family tree doesn't mean there weren't others.
I think this chapter is the reason I always picture the mulefa world as bathed in golden light.
Yay! You made it to the amber spyglass! Iceland spar is mentioned in this chapter, and after I finished these books, I read Against the Day and Iceland Spar and double refraction comes up in that story, so it was an odd coincidence. And George Stokes (in our world) examined the polarization of light, so maybe in Lyra's world that gave rise to the idea of multiple worlds and the Barnard-Stokes heresy? These books are so much fun!
I don't know if it would be boredom for them if the creatures had no concept of history or foresight. They would just blissfully flit from one thing to another, and not understand their surroundings enough to be bored. It's sad.
Well, basically they would be like animals– eat, sleep, procreate, and that's the whole extent of their lives. :/
"he knew that there was a chance that Eve would disobey him"
Of course there's a chance – I'm just saying, you said that God tempted Eve when it was actually Satan in disguise. (I mean in the context of the story, not that I actually believe it happened.)
That's the freedom of choice – the only thing that separates us from animals (or the Mulefa from the grazing herds in their world). That's what gives us the choice to believe in God or not, the choice to be any religion or none at all.
And now I can tell you that HDM fans (some of them, at least) call themselves Sraffies.
Brilliance.
And the HDM wiki is called srafopedia, right?
Where do you find that?
(no work today, so I can comment! YAAAAAY!)
HNNNNNNNG, I LOVE THIS CHAPTER.
Okay, okay, now that I've got that out of my system, let me continue. To start, I already love reading books where a character of another species or world tells an alternate version of one of Humanity's best known stories or fables. I especially enjoy this when the alternate story turns the original meaning on its head. Atal's story of the Mulefa's Eve was amazing for me to read, because after so many years of hearing that gaining knowledge was the worst thing to happen in human history, reading another world's version in which it is viewed as not only positive, but the best possible thing that could have happened, was a very catharthic experience. As someone who values knowledge, I never understood as a child why knowing about the world was so bad in the first place.
It also fascinates me that the Mulefa can see Dust/Shadows/Sraff. If we had Mary's mirror, what would we see in our world? Would only humans have Sraff, or would other intelligent creatures such as great apes (which also display a sense of self awareness) or even dolphins have some too? Would we relates to one another better and value each other more if we could see the beautiful particles of consciousness that connect us? These are the questions that this chapter makes me ask and I love it.
"The story of Eve and the story of the first mulefa are both identical in this sense. God tempts these beings. He does so with the full knowledge that they are absolutely unable to make a decision that is the slightest bit informed, and he then punishes the rest of the future of humanity for this, all the while fully aware that only out of sheer luck would Eve choose not to eat the apple from the Tree of Knowledge."
I'm a little confused by your statement – it was my understanding that God told Adam and Eve NOT to eat from the tree of knowledge, but Satan (in the form of a serpent) tempted Eve, who then told Adam to eat as well. Therefore the "punishment" is due to the fact that they disobeyed God.
Its just, the way you stated it makes it seem like God said, "I'll tempt Eve to eat this apple. Maybe she will, maybe she won't. But if she does, I shall punish humanity for all of time!"
But God did do this. He created the Tree of Knowledge, he knows what it means, he knows what it stands for, he knows the context of its history and stake in the grand scheme of creation. He knows EVERYTHING there is to know about it, and I have a hard time accepting the idea that he would drop these two humans in the garden with this tree, tell them NOT to eat it, and then expect that there would be no temptation to ever happen ever. He knew it would be inevitable, he knew that there was a chance that Eve would disobey him, and I'm certain that this was specifically meant as a test.
If not, the entire concept is one of the great acts of absurdity imaginable, even beyond the story itself. The punishment is only "due" because God stacked the cards most ruthlessly against his own creations, and I really can't see how it makes any sort of sense at all. I mean, the Old Testament is riddled with God making his creations take "tests," so I don't see why it's such an averse thought to say he did this right from the start.
Ack! I accidently put my reply as its own comment below!
That's ok! I'll reply down below.
The idea that the serpent was Satan and not an actual serpent is generally considered apocryphal.
I love the part in this chapter where Mary "struggled not to become incoherent" – that's basically Mary keysmashing right there in her brain.
Not that I don't entirely agree with you in not being able to comprehend any sort of sense out of the concept of the Fall (seriously, you expect these simple people with no knowledge of good or evil to grasp that eating some fruit is bad? They are NOT INFORMED TO MAKE THAT CHOICE I mean you're supposed to be all-knowing…) but I've been studying Genesis a lot this year and I'm pretty sure that it wasn't God tempting Adam and Eve. It was a serpent (which the New Testament retroactively decided was actually Satan acting THROUGH the serpent – Satan/devils aren't mentioned once in the Genesis narrative) who tempted Eve. I haven't got my NRSV decent translation with me but I've got the NIV which isn't entirely horrific and it says in the middle of Genesis 3:
The woman said to the serpent 'We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say 'You must not eat fruit fro the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'
'You will surely not die' the serpent said to the woman 'For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.'
So God told them specifically not to but because they don't understand and can have no conception of what death is living in a magical eternal garden and all, the serpent finds it easy to trick them, hence the rage of God later and the serpent being cursed to slither on its belly forevermore. (Which raises the question of what did serpents look like before the Fall? Did they have legs?)
It seems like God is the one doing the tricking here, since he lied that the fruit would kill them, and it doesn't.
well, you know, not directly. But Adam and Eve do die one day eventually.
Is it implied that they would have been immortal if they hadn't eaten the fruit?
I always took it ["eating the fruit=you die"] as either "you no longer have immortality" or more of a spiritual metaphor-you're dead because you are no longer innocent, if that makes sense. And eating the fruit brought about sin and etc. More or less opened Pandora's box. So, if you interpret it that way, the fruit did kill.
Yay, another Mary chapter! 😀 It feels like it's been ages since we checked in with her, so it's nice to be back. I continue to be fascinated by the mulefa, and love how Mary interacts with them. Also, you've now reached the actual amber spyglass! Woohoo! And I knew that reveal would make your head explode, mwahahaha.
In the Bible, the Fall is mankind’s greatest error, and we’ve spent thousands of years believing that receiving knowledge of the world and ourselves was our worst mistake. I feel that Pullman is working towards a moment to explain just how absurd that notion is, but I I also think it’s still relevant 33,000 years later, as theocratic politicians the world round profess the same idea and legislate them into law. Is knowledge our worst sin?
It really is absurd, isn't it? I don't doubt that it's behind all the anti-intellectualism over the centuries, that's been really rearing its ugly head so prominently over the last decade or so. The people that don't really care about educating kids, whatever they say about believing in the importance of it, who want to push creationism into science textbooks, and stuff like that. This past weekend, I went with my sister and young nephew to a science center oriented towards children, and when I talked to her about an exhibit I looked at about how rainbows work, she asked me if it said where rainbows come from. I mentioned the actual scientific cause for them, and then she said something about "After the flood…" and I just wanted to bang my head against the wall. I changed the subject real fast, all the while reeling about how she seriously thought a scientific exhibit would mention what the Bible says. Of course, I shouldn't have been that surprised, considering she's also one of those young earth types and thinks that science can't prove anything and that the Bible itself is… proof of itself as being true. o.0 But still, that's the kind of mindset we're dealing with here: the desire to have Biblical explanations for scientific things in science class, in textbooks, in museums. To decry and discredit science, to try and suppress it (bans on stem cell research, anyone?). I'm not even all that good at science, I'll admit, but that doesn't stop me loving it and believing in the importance of it, and being scared of people like that. I don't believe that knowledge is a sin, and Pullman examining why the "fall" and the exit from the Garden of Eden is such a bullshit story is a part of why I love these books. It's as you say, Mark: the notion that gaining knowledge of ourselves and the world around us was a sin, was our biggest mistake, is completely absurd.
Ugh, I completely agree. I seriously cannot comprehend why anyone would demonize knowledge and learning, but…
One interesting thing here is that, well, you don't really see this in Judaism, even though this story is pretty much exactly the same in both religions. In fact, Jews place a lot of emphasis on studying and learning; you're supposed to spend your time studying and learning the Torah and all the other religious stuff, and the word "Rabbi" actually means "Teacher"!
Like I mentioned in a previous comment, the churches that demonise knowledge are not representative of all Christians. Rabbi does indeed mean teacher, as far as I'm aware – it's what they called Jesus. Or sometimes Rabboni, which I *think* is Aramaic.
Some of the Christians I know are also among the most thoughtful, learned, and interested-in-the-world people I have ever met. One chap I know who was studying to enter the C of E church as a minister already had a doctorate in Geography. Despite what some of the worst excesses of Christianity might have you believe (and sadly I've seen plenty of them too), not all churches think that turning one's brain off at the door isa requirement.
"The story of Eve and the story of the first mulefa are both identical in this sense. God tempts these beings. He does so with the full knowledge that they are absolutely unable to make a decision that is the slightest bit informed, and he then punishes the rest of the future of humanity for this, all the while fully aware that only out of sheer luck would Eve choose not to eat the apple from the Tree of Knowledge."
I always thought Eve's temptation was a simple obedience test.
the lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
I know God could've stopped the serpent. Ins't that the whole purpose of a test? Only you can take the test with no help or guidance. No one to intervene.
Don't eat the fruit. Eat of the thousands of plants and trees in the garden but don't eat the fruit or you will die. Simple right?
Guess who did intervene to make the choice harder for her? That damn snake.
I also think that Adam and Eve had some reason about somethings like death and wisdom.
The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.
Can someone enlighten me please?
God, I wish we could have good movies of the HDM trilogy, just for scenes like when Mary finally gets the spyglass to work. Is there fanart of this scene? It seems like there should be.
I really wish Sraf were rot13 for Dust.
(Also, Mark, you really need to come see me in Pint Sized Plays because you will love God/Satan/Beer.)
I TOTALLY WILL. i got the invite! I can't go on the 15th or the 30th, but otherwise I AM DOWN.
Genesis 1:29
And God said, 'Look! I give you every seed-bearing plant and every fruit-bearing tree on the face of the earth to be yours for food.'
I read this from The Brick Testament and it doesn't really make sense to me because God says that but yet tells Adam and Eve they can't eat from the Tree of Knowledge and Evil. Maybe I'm just taking it the wrong way.
Is there fanart somewhere of what Mary's amber spyglass looks like? I can Google for "amber spyglass" of course, but most of the book covers I'm seeing there just have it looking like a regular spyglass/telescope, and that seems a bit more…refined than what I've pictured Mary making.
Is there a reason why people assume that forbidden fruit was an apple? Oh, I looked it up on wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple#The_Apple_in_t…
Really, maybe it was more like a mango or something like that.
My understanding is that it was a mistranslation somewhere down the line; that the original version just said "fruit" but it was kind of an all-encompassing word, and when somebody translated it into English they went with "apple" because that was the more common fruit…? Something like that.
Yeah, I believe the actual original word is fruit. A lot of Jews view it as a pomegranate, rather than an apple. Apples don't even grow in Israel!
And that ties nicely into the Persephone myth!
Stop stealing my ideas! 😉
But they're so gooooooood. 😉
Um, yeah they do. But they originated in Western Asia so there's no reason to suppose that apples would be a common fruit/familiar/important to the Jews in regards to Genesis.
However, apples are used in some traditional Jewish passover foods I believe, and there are certainly apple growing regions in Israel. It's my understanding that apples are so widespread partly because they are relatively easy to grow, and there are so many varieties that most countries would manage to find one at least that suited, although a quick Google for news says that last summer Israeli apple production was hit by the heatwave.
But yeah, apples grow in Israel.
ETA: "Israeli farmers produce about 110,000 tons of apples per year, according to the Agriculture Ministry."
from http://thejewishchronicle.net/view/full_story/925…
ETA again, cos I just remembered – I think this is something I picked up from QI, apparently one of the ways apples spread was that traders working the silk route bought them in Kazakhstan, then spat the pips out wherever they ate the apples they had bought, spreading the apple trees as they went.
I like that it mentions the pomegranate at that link. Brings up an interesting parallel with the story of Persephone eating the pomegranate and then having to stay in Hell for part of every year.
Also, the translators were fond of puns. The Latin word for "evil' and "apple" are very similar/the same.
It's a little like the "three kings" thing that is so prevelant. The bible actually just mentioned wise men or magi and says they brought three gifts. The information in the text itself, therefore, says "more than two" and nothing more, but you ask most people how many wise men/kings visited Jesus, and they will say three, with absolute confidence.
One way to look at the Adam and Eve story is to see God as Providence. Providence puts you in a situation in which there is something that you know you should not do. You haven't done the thing yet, so you don't really know WHY you should not do it. You just have an idea that it's dangerous. Maybe your parents told you it was dangerous, or something.
The fact that you don't fully understand the danger is unavoidable. You can't understand it unless you've done the thing itself. It's a catch 22.
The story is brilliant because it's so true to life. We've probably all experienced this scenario before. Every time a teacher or parent told you not to do something you'd never done before, you probably didn't fully understand why, precisely because you hadn't done it. In order to understand, you do it. Only then do you get it, and then you understand why you were told not to do it in the first place. That's why kids do things their parents tell them not to.
With respect, complaining that God rigged the scenario is a bit pointless, because it's like complaining about the way the world works. Of course the scenario is rigged. That's the way innocence and experience works.
One of the disturbing things about the story to me is that Eve and Adam are adults, yet God has kept them in this childlike state of ignorance. They are deprived of the thing that must eventually come to every adult- knowledge. They say 'ignorance is bliss', but really I believe that knowledge is the essence of humanity- sure it is often disheartening, but I think that the knowledge of adulthood-morals, death, complexity in people, sex- is essential to any feeling of completeness I may have a chance at.
"The fact that you don't fully understand the danger is unavoidable. You can't understand it unless you've done the thing itself. It's a catch 22."
"That's the way innocence and experience works."
With all due respect, you understand completely why you shouldn't run out in front of a bus or shoot a group of your work-mates, and it didn't take getting killed by the bus or lifetime imprisonment to make you understand. You're an adult. You have the capacity for comprehension of such things. Because you're human, and it's wonderful, and that's what Philip Pullman points out. God shouldn't have punished them. The attaining of knowledge is a cause for celebration, not despair. 🙂
This reminds me, I remember having a book as a kid that was the Adam and Eve story, but when they ate the fruit God was proud and smiled and said something like 'you're ready to go out into the world now'. It was brilliant. Anyone know of it?
"With all due respect, you understand completely why you shouldn't run out in front of a bus or shoot a group of your work-mates, and it didn't take getting killed by the bus or lifetime imprisonment to make you understand. You're an adult. You have the capacity for comprehension of such things."
Of course! I think you misunderstood me or I was unclear. Probably the latter! I wasn't arguing that we never know what something means unless we've done it. That would be absurd. That's why we have imagination, so we can think ahead and so we can understand something even if it's never happened to us, and so we can empathize with other people at all. After all, I've only lived my own life –if I wasn't able to imagine things that haven't happened to me, it would be impossible for me to empathize with anyone.
So I wasn't saying this catch 22 exists for all experiences in life. No! But if the story is trying to illustrate two states –one that is "innocence" and one that is "experience" –the catch 22 does exist between those two generalized, exaggerated states. It wouldn't make sense for the story to have Adam and Eve understand the consequences of the tree before the eat from it, because then the commentary about the difference between innocence and experience wouldn't work. Does that make sense?
In real life, there is no one overarching moment where we lose "innocence" and gain "experience". It happens gradually as we're growing up or whatever, we learn more about various topics and the world and about ourselves etc. But sometimes there are watershed events where you can probably remember something you were innocent/ignorant of but wanted to try. And maybe you don't understand how complicated that can be till you've tried it. It's simply the allure of having an experience we haven't had yet. And I think it's true to life that if you're somewhat innocent of whatever-it-is, you don't know what the experience is like, fully, until you've done it.
I actually do agree with you, by the way, that the attainment of knowledge is cause for celebration not despair. Oh man, yes.
I don't AGREE with the story of Adam and Eve.
I do think experience comes with weight, but also it comes with everything that's good and can make you wise. So my personal opinion the casting out should happen, because it makes sense for them to go out into the world and for that to be kind of scary and have downsides to it, but there should be a lot more about how good the knowledge is and how it's actually worth it. Basically, that picture book sounds awesome and why isn't the Bible like that?! 🙂
But I still don't think the story was wrong to have God put Adam and Eve in a situation where they had access to something dangerous and didn't know what it was. Cause I think part of the point the story is making, about innocence and experience (not about *all* dangers in life!) is that in the state of innocence, you don't understand. That's the "problem". It's like curiosity and the cat.
That's all.
Hahaha, also, as someone who HAS been hit by a car as a kid, I can tell you that I have a respect for huge, speeding pieces of metal on wheels that is a little different from before. Like, I knew those things were dangerous, no question. But I also had that vague sense of youthful invulnerability. Like, it would never *really* happen to me, right? 😛
Of course, you could just argue that I'm stupid. It's dumb to feel like you're invulnerable. But lots of kids do. And I guess it's a kind of innocence. Anything can happen to make you realize you're wrong.
The situation you mention, such as parents and teachers, depends on a former relationship of trust. You would not obey a person you could not trust, and it would be dangerous to do so.
Since Adam and Eve are newly created, they do not have this relationship of trust with God.
Even newborns are not expected to obey their parents right out of the birth canal. The parents nurture and care for the baby for a couple years before they expect any kind of "obedience", and by then the child has bonded with the parents, knows that the parents are the ones they get comfort and food from.
The creation story basically says- here are these newborns, they have no knowledge of anything, not even God. But still God, who has to know this, tells them about this fruit, and then tells them not to eat it. No other info, nothing.
If I expected this from my kids before at least 3 or 4 years I would be kidding myself.
I think this is the true beginning of shit getting real in this book… and I can't wait for your keysmashes and head explosions!!
FAVORITE CHAPTER.
Well, maybe there are future chapters I'll remember liking more when I get to them. But I love this one so much.
I skimmed the chapter, but I sure am enjoying reading these comments! 😉
Dammit Brad, you were the one waiting until we got to the titular Amber Spyglass! 🙂
OH! Is that what she was making!? Ha,ha,ha, I didn't even realize. What would I do without you, Notemily?
I just recently found the site and am reading through old books, and despite being so late to the party, just had to respond to this:
I think you may be overstating the chance that Adam & Eve won't eat the apple. After all, on any given day, they might say "no, I don't think we should do that". But the tree *is still there*. It isn't a one-time temptation. It's *right there*. And there's nothing to say the snake only came by the once, either. Sooner or later, it was GUARANTEED that Adam or Eve would go ahead and take a bite.