Apples & fig leaves

Ask any Christian what Adam and Eve ate that caused mankind to fall, and they will probably say an apple. Ask the same person how Adam and Eve tried to cover themselves, and you will be told with fig leaves. Everyone associates the two items with Adam and Eve, but they are not named in the Bible. Recently I discovered both mentioned (only one time each) in Paradise Lost first published in 1667. It is a beautiful epic poem, full of good logic and thought, and the parts where Scripture is exact, Milton did not contradict. It is good historical fiction, even good science fiction, but it’s still fiction. What I find interesting is that such fictional ideas come to us hundreds of years later, and we don’t even know from where they come. No one asks; the ideas are just accepted without going to the source. I see no harm in this example, and maybe they WERE apples and fig leaves, but there can be harm in attributing to either Scripture or science that which is someone’s speculations, not actually there in the source. Historically, any differences between Scripture and science have been based on one group or both buying into some assumptions handed down until they became as sacred as the real source. Examples include spontaneous generation, the underground water cycle , and an earth-centered universe. I believe it is true today concerning the theory of evolution. More people need to be looking at the facts from both sources.

This entry was posted on December 15, 2006 at 12:06 am and is filed under Science and faith. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.