A Poem about a Pomegranate Tree in Paradise
I meant to write a poem about an apple tree in Eden.
But I found out it was probably a pomegranate Adam
and Eve ate because they didn’t grow apples then.
I wanted to make Eve real sexy…Big boobs, blue eyes,
long blonde hair flowing to the back of her butt…
Sex stuff gets a lot of laughs at poetry readings.
However, I learned Myth Eve, the one who according to
Genesis 3:20 was named Eve because she was
the mother of our species, wasn’t bio-Eve.
According to scientists—those nasty fellows who revealed
earth revolved around sun, not vice versa— Mitochondrial Eve,
also known as mt-Eve, was the woman from whom ALL
humans descended in an unbroken line through their mothers
and the mothers of those mothers, back until all lines converge
on one woman who was born and lived around 200,000 years ago
in a region around Lake Victoria which is Africa’s largest lake
and whose waters flow into the Mediterranean Sea
through our planet’s longest river, the Nile.
When I attended Bob Jones University, I believed evolution was
a myth and the first three chapters of Genesis history.
It never occurred to me then why a narrative of a talking snake
with legs, belonged more to a fairy tale than a history book.
Nor did I see it as a contradiction that during the six days
of creation, both wild and domesticated animals were
created on the same day, the sixth which coincidentally
was the same day God created humans in his image.
But as time passed and more fossil evidence was discovered
confirming the theory of evolution while telescopes showed that
the farthest stars in the universe were billions of light years away,
not thousands as fundamentalists who believed the world
was created close to 10,000 years ago, it became harder
and harder to hold on to the faith of my Bible Belt fathers.
My Systematic Theology teacher at Fuller Theological Seminary was no
young earth creationist like my science teacher at Bob Jones.
He said the disobedience of Adam and Eve to God’s forbidden
fruit prohibition was a fall into history.
Just because a story is fiction doesn’t mean it never happened, right?
And Aristotle told us that art is a lie that tells the truth.
Joel Baden, Yale Professor of the Hebrew Bible, said original sin
does not exist in Genesis.
The whole story of Genesis 2 & 3 is not to focus on the paradise
which was lost but on the reality we see around us.
Why is it that we have to work the ground to get food?
Why is there pain in childbirth?
Why don’t we live forever?
Dr. Baden also said that according to archeological
and historical evidence, the Israelites were not slaves in Egypt
nor was there an Exodus and conquest.
But maybe Exodus fell into history also when after escaping
slavery, Harriet Tubman (or "Moses", as she was called) made
some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 slaves, including
her family and friends by using the network of antislavery activists
with safe houses they called the Underground Railroad.
But what do I know?
I am only a Bible Belt born and bred teacher who taught
an 8th grade U.S. History class in a Los Angeles middle
school before retiring over 20 years ago and becoming
a Bible Belt born and bred poet.
One thing I know for damn sure—pomegranate seeds
in my oatmeal are a hell of a lot juicer than sliced apples.
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