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🦋 Flight from Eden

Book II of Eve's writings describes Eve's and Adam's flight from Eden, their first experiences of Earth. By and large I have found it easy to follow. They discover thirst, they drink, they experience cold and are warmed by the fire that Eve steals from the Angel who guards the gate of Eden (I str this is the Angel of Death?); they experience night and day, and sleep; Eve invents cooking in a dream. Eve touches Adam and luxuriates in the feel of his skin, although they do not yet have genitalia -- I think sex will come in Book IV and V.

I am wondering about how this compares with Canon. I have always assumed Adam and Eve had sexual characteristics in Eden, and that these characteristics were the nakedness of which they were ashamed after eating the apple. Paintings show Adam and Eve with genitalia although I'm not sure from memory how explicit they are. My memory is that Eve's punishment was to suffer in childbirth, but I'm not at all clear on whether she had the ability to procreate before the Fall. I think so? But then why are her children only post-Fall? Need to do some research.

I am finding this passage from the very beginning of II§7 confusing (and enjoying the passing reference to Aristophanes' speech from the Symposium):

Éramos en parte de aparencia animal por las apestosas pieles de bestias con que nos había cubierto el Trueno y los cascos en los pies. Teníamos pezuñas. Nuestras uñas eran como las de los equinos y las cabras que nos auxiliaban con la empinada cuesta del áspero Monte Divino. La memoria nos recuerda conscientes de nuestros cuatro cascos, los dos del varón, los dos de hembra, yo, y que los cuatro eran cascos idénticos. No "de hembra" ni "varoniles", neutros, como lo éramos nosotros.

¿O será que nos supimos desnudos porque, previo a morder la manzana, una cutícula pulida nos recubría; una que cayó con la primera mordida? ¿Nos envolvía cuando vivíamos allá, y tal vez por eso yo no oía, no sentía, no veía, no escuchaba, no percibía? Eran las pezuñas el remanente de esa cutícula?

Será verdad que habíamos sido antes una sola persona de cuatro piernas, un solo ser con el rostro de mujer al frente y el de varón mirando hacia atrás, recubiertos sus dos cuerpos distintos en una cutícula común, unidos por la espalda?

Hm, interesting... Very first article I happen on in my searches asserts that Cain was contrary to Canon, conceived and born before the fall. Which confirms my thinking that Eve's children are traditionally thought to have been born after the Fall, and also introduces a new bit of detail...

And the command "Be fruitful and multiply" (Gen. 1:22) certainly implies that Adam and Eve were able to procreate, though there is nothing specifying that it would be done with genitals and womb as it is post-Fall.

posted morning of Thursday, December third, 2020
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