Nov 12– From "Paradise Lost" by John Milton (1667)

 This song should take about the same amount of time to read as the selection.

Nov 12– From Paradise Lost by John Milton (1667)

Summary: The fruit makes Adam and Eve bone and then feel guilty about being naked. Also, Milton loves ribs.

Commentary: This is the section of Paradise Lost that deals with Eve eating the fruit (I included the end of the snake convincing her), sharing it with Adam, the two of them screwing, and then being embarrassed about being naked.

I've always found the tree/fruit's existence one of the most bizarre parts of the entire Bible. God (all knowing, powerful, good, etc.) appears to make humanity without the knowledge of good and evil (maybe they only know good?) which makes them either completely amoral or "perfect" automatons. Kind of boring either way. But, he chooses, for whatever reason, to make a tree/fruit that will ruin everything, knowing they'll eat it, and doesn't prevent them from doing so. All of humanity is literally set up for failure, because God chooses to create the tree/fruit, decides it will doom us, and then doesn't do anything to prevent them from eating it. It's fabulously shitty. If you put a toddler in a room with poison, and then told them not to eat it but they did, everyone would say you were a shitty parent. But it's the entire basis of Christianity.

Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she eat!

Earth felt the wound; and Nature from her seat,

Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe,

That all was lost.

I thought this part was weird originally, since I thought animals could die, but not man. This appears to not be the consensus (all animals ate "green things") so I guess it makes sense.

Adam talks about losing another rib, which would make him symmetrical at least.

Adam and Eve get horny for the first time, but, "And elegant, of sapience no small part" at least Adam likes that Eve is smart.

There's a reference to Samson and Delilah, does that count as foreshadowing?

I think it's interesting that the first two things the fruit is depicted as doing is making Adam and Eve fuck (I always assumed they had before hand, just not in a horny way) and then be ashamed of their nakedness. Pre-Fall sex appears to be up in the air (in the traditional Christian way of sex being good in a small set of very specific circumstances and bad in others). The sex doesn't appear at all in the Bible (Genesis 3:6- Adam and Eve eat, 3:7- fig leaves) which means the literal first "bad" thing they do after eating the fruit is realizing they were naked and making clothes.

Does that make being ashamed of being naked Sin #1 (eating the fruit is #0)? That means that, technically, being naked isn't the issue, but being ashamed of it is. The implication is that humanity is now stupid-horny teenagers who need a dress code, but it's interesting that I think a lot of modern Christians would treat nudity itself as a sin, rather than the resulting lust or whatever.

The selection ends with: 

She first his weak indulgence will accuse.

Thus they in mutual accusation spent

The fruitless hours, but neither self-condemning;

And of their vain contest appeared no end.

The real evil is turning into a judgey douchebag. You know, like God.