In the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, there is a story involving a snake and a plant. Gilgamesh loses his best friend, Enkidu, to death and in his grief he begins to fear his own mortality. In an effort to find immortality, he travels to the home of the Babylonian Noah, Utnapishtim. Before he leaves, Utnapishtim reveals the secret of the gods: a specific plant from the sea that had restorative properties, including the power to make an old person youthful again.

Gilgamesh heads for home, carrying the precious plant, anticipating its use and its revitalizing power. He plans to give it to one of the elders to eat. Not very far along in the journey, he stops for the night. Seeing a pool of refreshingly cool water, he lays the plant down and takes a bath. While Gilgamesh is so preoccupied, a snake slithers silently to the plant and carries it away. Grief-stricken, Gilgamesh realizes he has lost the opportunity he had been given to obtain perpetual rejuvenation.

Like the story of Genesis 3, a snake is responsible for the loss of access to immortality via a plant. In the biblical story, the plant is the Tree of Life to which God bars access with a flaming sword and cherubim after he sends the first human beings away from their original home. Just as Gilgamesh carelessly failed to guard his plant, so the woman and man of Genesis 3 carelessly fail to heed the warning that eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil would bring death.

Important differences may also be found between the two stories. Unlike Gilgamesh, who seeks to avoid death, the biblical woman and man are in a deathless state to begin with. They neither fear it nor need to seek a means of escaping it. Whereas Gilgamesh must protect his plant as food from external attacks, the biblical woman and man are not to eat the fruit of a specific tree. Finally, whereas Gilgamesh is merely careless, the woman is taken in by the serpent, who tricks her by telling her the opposite of what God had said.

The part of the biblical story we often neglect is that which is most central to it: a conversation that takes place between the serpent and the woman. Unlike the serpent in the Epic of Gilgamesh, whose stealth is silent, the biblical serpent sneaks into the woman’s mind with words calculated to undermine her trust in God. First, he questions God’s warning in a way that invites ambiguity: "Did God say, you shall not eat of any (or all) of the trees of the garden?" Such an open-ended question invites response and the woman immediately attempts to defend God. In the process the original warning is changed to something of a threat—a twist that serves the serpent all too well. He states a complete reversal of God’s warning: "You will not surely die."

A person cannot have it both ways. "You will surely die" and "You will not surely die" cannot both be true. Either God or the serpent is lying. This very fact suggests that one or the other cannot be trusted. One of the chief bases for healthy relationships is the ability to trust the truthfulness of the partners in the relationship. Once we find someone’s words to be false, our relationship to them changes to suspicion and distrust. If the woman believes the serpent, she will distrust her Creator.

The serpent goes on to share secret information (not unlike Utnapishtim sharing with Gilgamesh the secret of the gods): "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Gen. 3:5 NRSV). The implications of the serpent’s final thrust increase the possibility for human relationships with God to deteriorate further: God is selfishly hiding this knowledge from you; in doing so he has power over you and the best way to keep him from abusing you is to defy his commands.

A superficial reading of Genesis 3 makes disobedience the essence of the fall. If we peel the layers of the story, however, we can see that the whole story has to do with relationships. By believing lies about another person, whether a friend, neighbor, or God, we change the way we relate to them. We ourselves change as we engage in hurtful attitudes and behaviors in response to perceived lack of trustworthiness in another.

Many of the ingredients of unhealthy relationships can be found in the woman’s and man’s responses to having eaten the fruit, symbolic of their having accepted the false lines of the serpent about God. When God comes to seek them, they run from him in fear. They no longer trust him and perceive him as someone who will hurt them. They discover that they are naked—now vulnerable to manipulation and unwarranted distrust. In the text, a play on words exists between the words naked and the word crafty (qualifying the serpent). It suggests that the serpent would use his cunning to strip the self-worth, individuality, identity, and even life itself from the first humans.

Thus, much more happens in Genesis 3 than merely a failure to obey. Lives are forever changed. Realities have become twisted and perverted. Sin has to do with how we think, not merely what we do. Once caught up in a web of deceit, the first humans blame others for their choices. They seek to hide their shame and nakedness beneath something they make.

When God reaches them, he works with them where they are. He does not counter their accusations, exposing them to themselves. Rather, he puts a curse on the serpent instead of placing it on them. What God outlines in the futures of the woman and man are the results of the changes taking place in human beings from the knowledge of good and evil. The effects of distrust in God will be reflected in the painful creation of new lives, in the toilsome work to grow food, and in unhealthy relationships between women and men. The first woman and man will create two new lives who will work out the same principles of manipulation, distrust, and false blame in their own relationship with one another to the point of murder and death.

After Gilgamesh’s loses the plant to the serpent, he weeps bitterly. Finally, he gives up his search for immortality and heads for home. Arriving at Uruk, he seeks solace in examining the city’s walls, it foundations, and its size. Thus he relies on human ability to make a lasting monument that will endure after his death. Gilgamesh’s ultimate solace comes when Enkidu’s spirit is allowed to return to him, but Enkidu has nothing to report except the miseries of the dead.

In the biblical story, by contrast, though the first parents will die, as will many of their descendants, hope is found—not in city walls or fig leaves sown together—but in God’s own promise of grace. One of the woman’s descendants will crush the serpent’s head, thus breaking the power of his lies about God and setting his captives free to trust their Creator and one another once again.

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