Cain in Garden of Eden

Adam and Eve had a pretty brief honeymoon in the Garden of Eden, or so the Bible seems to say. They went around naked without shame, naming the animals and eating anything as long as they avoided the forbidden fruit--and with no youngsters underfoot.

But if a Jewish scholar’s discovery about Hebrew grammar is correct, the biblical story says that the first humans already had their first-born, Cain, in tow when God expelled the couple from paradise.

Ziony Zevit, professor of biblical literature and Northwest Semitic languages at the University of Judaism in Sepulveda Pass, recently published findings that he said should prompt new translations of certain storytelling verses in the Bible.

Zevit has challenged a century-old scholarly tenet that declares that ancient Hebrew grammar lacked a way to say someone “had done” something earlier in the midst of a story that is moving chronologically. For example, textbooks say early Bible writers could not say, “He did this, then he did that, but she had done some other thing earlier.”

Hebrew did not develop a full range of past tenses until centuries later.

“No other known language in the world lacks that ability,” Zevit said, and so he began digging into the issue.

Zevit said he eventually found more than 100 examples of prior-action verses in the Hebrew Bible.

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The most dramatic example may be in the Eden story in Genesis, Zevit said. “It is clear that Adam and Eve came together and bore Cain prior to indulging in the forbidden fruit and before they were expelled from the garden.”

The usual reading of those verses suggests that everything happened in chronological order (3:23-4:2). God expels Adam and Eve from the garden and posts angels as guards. The very next verse, using a euphemism for sexual intercourse, says: “Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain.”

But Zevit said that the sentence should read: “But the man had known Eve, his woman, and she had conceived and birthed Cain.”

The Bible text then switches to its usual chronological, or sequential, way of narrating, saying next that Abel was born to Eve, presumably after the family was kicked out of Eden.

Does such an understanding of the story have any theological implications? Zevit declined comment, noting that Jewish and Christian interpretations of the biblical story of the fall from God’s favor are exceptionally complicated.

Typical of some other specialists who have not read Zevit’s book, W. Randall Garr of UC Santa Barbara said Friday, “I’m skeptical but intrigued.”

UC San Diego’s William Propp said Friday that he sides with Zevit on his grammatical solutions, adding that it was “very likely” that the biblical author meant to say Adam had sex with Eve before the expulsion.

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But Propp added that he was not convinced that the text says Cain was born in Eden or that Zevit has solved a problem of interpretation in succeeding verses leading up to Cain’s murder of his brother, Abel.

The text says that Abel became a sheepherder and Cain a farmer. Then, Genesis 4:3 says that Cain brought produce from his land as an offering to God and “Abel for his part brought the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions.”

God was pleased with Abel’s offering, but not with Cain’s--but why has puzzled biblical interpreters because the story gives no reason for God’s displeasure.

But Zevit said that the author’s use of “had,” in what grammarians call the past perfect tense, in Genesis 4:3 provides a possible reason. He said the verse actually says that “Cain brought from the fruit of the land a gift for God but Abel had brought from the first born of his sheep . . . “

Contrary to contemporary translations, which suggest that Cain’s gift was followed by Abel’s, Zevit’s version says younger brother Abel made the first offering.

“Cain was copying his brother, and the implication is that, as the older brother, Cain should have done it first,” Zevit said.

Zevit said the past perfect tense also occurs in stories of Sarah, Jacob and Moses, among other biblical figures. The narrator of the Book of Exodus uses the device at 14:29 and 15:19 to make clear the sequence of the Israelites having crossed the Red Sea before the wall of water came crashing down on pursuing Egyptians, Zevit said.

Zevit, who has been on the faculty at the University of Judaism since 1974, was recently a research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and a visiting professor at UC San Diego.

His book, “The Anterior Construction in Classical Hebrew,” has drawn praise from some biblical colleagues sent advance copies. Avi Hurwitz of Hebrew University in Jerusalem called it “indispensable not only for strictly linguistic purposes but for biblical interpretations as well.”

However, biblical scholarship is both contentious and slow to respond to challenges. “I can’t imagine there won’t be opposition,” Zevit said this week in his office.

The scholar’s argument hinges on a recurring exception in biblical-era Hebrew. Normally, the Hebrew verb comes before the doer of the action, but Zevit concluded that when the doer precedes the verb--as in English--it indicates the author is referring to a prior past action.

When asked about Zevit’s conclusions, Joel Hunt, a newly arrived specialist in ancient Near East studies at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, said he doubted the thesis, though he has not read the book.

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Hunt said that he has felt the shift of subject before the verb in biblical Hebrew “was a way of marking a shift in the narrative,” that the storyteller was putting someone out of order to highlight the start of new material.

Agreeing basically with Hunt was Marvin Sweeney, who teaches Hebrew Bible at the Claremont School of Theology. “But I haven’t seen the book,” Sweeney added.

For Zevit’s part, he contended that all instances of this kind of subject-verb reversal in the Hebrew Bible occurred when use of the past perfect made sense for storytelling purposes.

“I became convinced that my new explanation was correct when I found additional examples in inscriptions written in two languages related to ancient Hebrew--Moabite and Phoenician,” he said.

“But the clincher came in 1993 and 1995 when two fragments of Aramaic inscriptions found in northern Israel contained a number of perfectly clear examples of what I was claiming existed in biblical Hebrew.” Aramaic is also related to ancient Hebrew.