The gate of the year

Mosaic dating to about 400 A.D., probably from a Church at Maaut el Naaman, in Northern Syria, now in the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, USA.
The scene shows Adam and Eve exchanging the forbidden fruit and cover themselves with big leaves. The reference is to the Book of Genesis (3, 7): “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves”. The interpretations of the biblical narrative of the expulsion of the first man and woman from the Garden of Eden, developed by the Church Fathers since the first centuries of Christianity, tend to see in Adam and Eve’s sin the origin of all human calamities. The Jesus of the Gospels never affirms having come to cancel the consequences of the sin committed by the progenitors of humankind, while Saint Paul attributed to him just this function. Eve’s fault was interpreted as essentially the temptation of sexuality, which originates in the woman and contaminate man. Saint Ambrose, for instance, accused Eve to be the source of every sin, having induced Adam into deception, so much so that the woman was regarded as the true cause of man’s fault: viro culpae auctor est mulier (Flasch 2007, p. 47). According to Augustine, the fact that God had created man as male and female should be understood spiritually (spiritualiter). God’s command, “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis, 1, 28) does not refer to carnal fecundity, but to the production of intellectual and immortal fruits. Before the fall, there had been no carnal intercourse, as there will be no one after resurrection. The Scripture, in Augustine’s interpretation, teaches to despise carnal generation (Flasch 2007, p. 48).
From this point of view, the dominant ideology in Christianity marks a clear break with the religions of the Ancient World, for which sexuality and fertility were fundamental elements, since prehistoric times. The pre-Christian myths and rituals contained often explicit references to sexuality, understood as a general energy determining the regeneration of life and manifesting both at the human level and at the level of the entire cosmos.

[Image: http://library.artstor.org]




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Mosaic dating to about 400 A.D., probably from a Church at Maaut el Naaman, in Northern Syria, now in the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, USA. The scene shows Adam and Eve exchanging the forbidden fruit and cover themselves with big leaves. The reference is to the Book of Genesis (3, 7): “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves”. The interpretations of the biblical narrative of the expulsion of the first man and woman from the Garden of Eden, developed by the Church Fathers since the first centuries of Christianity, tend to see in Adam and Eve’s sin the origin of all human calamities. The Jesus of the Gospels never affirms having come to cancel the consequences of the sin committed by the progenitors of humankind, while Saint Paul attributed to him just this function. Eve’s fault was interpreted as essentially the temptation of sexuality, which originates in the woman and contaminate man. Saint Ambrose, for instance, accused Eve to be the source of every sin, having induced Adam into deception, so much so that the woman was regarded as the true cause of man’s fault: viro culpae auctor est mulier (Flasch 2007, p. 47). According to Augustine, the fact that God had created man as male and female should be understood spiritually (spiritualiter). God’s command, “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis, 1, 28) does not refer to carnal fecundity, but to the production of intellectual and immortal fruits. Before the fall, there had been no carnal intercourse, as there will be no one after resurrection. The Scripture, in Augustine’s interpretation, teaches to despise carnal generation (Flasch 2007, p. 48). From this point of view, the dominant ideology in Christianity marks a clear break with the religions of the Ancient World, for which sexuality and fertility were fundamental elements, since prehistoric times. The pre-Christian myths and rituals contained often explicit references to sexuality, understood as a general energy determining the regeneration of life and manifesting both at the human level and at the level of the entire cosmos. [Image: http://library.artstor.org]