Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 13.pdf/227

 Rh

CHAPTERS

FROM THE

BIBLICAL

LAW.

THE CASE OF ADAM AND EVE. BY DAVID WERNER AMRAM. THE story of Adam and Eve as recorded have it; and I look into it for the purpose oí in the beginning of the Book of Genesis discovering what light it can throw upon the is generally conceded to be not the record of views of law and justice held by the people an actual occurrence, but a primitive account among whom it arose and by whom it was of the origin of human life on earth. It is told as well as by him who finally reduced it one of a number of legends well known to to writing. Every man unconsciously testifies, in the student of folk-lore, in which men in the early stages of civilization, without the aid every statement that he makes, to his life of science and under the influence oT poetic and surroundings, to the state of society, the imaginative faculties, told the story which degree of civilization, the nature of the laws, attempted to account for the beginning of and to all other influences bearing upon him. things. It is testimony similar to that which the hand No man, unless he be controlled by strong writing expert and graphologist finds in the theological bias, or unless he be under the lines and angles and variations of a signa spell of ignorance, believes the story of ture, and in its general character and pecu Adam and Eve to be other than an imagin liarities, from which he reaches conclusions ative account of an event that never took not only as to the genuineness of the signa place. On the other hand, no man who lays ture, but also as to certain personal charac the slightest claim to education or culture teristics of the writer. can fail to be impressed with the literary There are two accounts given of the crea tion of Adam and Eve. The first account and poetic beauties of this tale. I am not aware that the story of Adam is in the first chapter of Genesis, verses and Eve has ever been considered from the twenty-six to thirty-one. In this account, lawyer's point of view, nor do I know of there is nothing said about the garden of any attempt ever having been made to con Eden, and according to it Adam and Eve sider the legal aspects of it, although it is are created at the same time. The second true, as I shall point out hereafter, that some account is given in the second chapter of of the Talmudists have deduced the existence Genesis, beginning with the fourth verse, of certain laws, from some verses in the and continued to the end of the third chapter. Biblical account of the story of Adam and It is the story as given in the second and Eve. I shall consider the entire story, ior third chapters, to which we shall direct our the purpose of inquiring into the views of attention. In the first place, let us consider the facts law and justice that are reflected in it. Lest I be misunderstood, in spite of the above of our case. "The Lord God formed man prefatory remarks, I wish to say that I do of the dust of the ground, and breathed into not believe that it is a record of actual oc his nostrils the breath of life; and man be currences; nor do I desire to apply the came a living soul. And the Lord God scalpel of criticism to it, to destroy its poetic planted a garden eastward in Eden; and beauty. I take it to be a legend, told ages there he put the man whom he had formed." ago, centuries, perhaps milleniums, before it And the man was put in charge of the gar was written down in the form in which we den, "to dress it and to keep it. And the