16. Adam’s Diary – The Snake

Stone pictograph from
Adam's Diary.

Continuing with Adam’s Diary (translated from Adam’s original hieroglyphics by Mark Twain) …

TUESDAY — She has taken up with a snake now. The other animals are glad, for she was always experimenting with them and bothering them; and I am glad because the snake talks, and this enables me to get a rest.

FRIDAY — She says the snake advises her to try the fruit of the tree, and says the result will be a great and fine and noble education. I told her there would be another result, too — it would introduce death into the world. That was a mistake — it had been better to keep the remark to myself; it only gave her an idea — she could save the sick buzzard, and furnish fresh meat to the despondent lions and tigers. I advised her to keep away from the tree. She said she wouldn’t. I foresee trouble. Will emigrate.

Commentary:
Twain’s imaginative Diary correctly reflects that Adam was not deceived by the Serpent about the forbidden fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Twain also makes it sound as though the Serpent fooled Eve.

Stone pictograph from
Adam's Diary.

This is also what Scripture teaches. Adam was not deceived. He sinned knowingly, but Eve was deceived. (1 Timothy 2:14; 2 Corinthians 11:3)

Adam’s priority in creation and Eve’s deception are the reasons that Scripture assigns to men the responsibility for authority and teaching in the church and home.

Twain’s Adam was correct that death would be the result of eating the forbidden fruit.

Contrary to the Diary’s indications, the buzzard would not have been sick and the lions and tigers would not have been despondent in the pre-Fall world.

Before the advent of sin, all the animals would have been operating as they were created to live–enjoying the plants they were designed to eat with no desires for raw meat. Those desires came after the entry of death through sin.

Read the prequels in this series on Adam’s Diary:
1. Adam’s Diary – A New Creature
2. Adam’s Diary – Naming the Animals
3. Adam’s Diary – Garden of Eden
4. Adam’s Diary – “We”
5. Adam’s Diary – Sunday
6. Adam’s Diary – Eve
7. Adam’s Diary – Niagara Falls
8. Adam’s Diary – Escape
9. Adam’s Diary – Mark Twain I
10. Adam’s Diary – Mark Twain II
11. Adam’s Diary – Mark Twain III
12. Adam’s Diary – Mark Twain IV
13. Adam’s Diary – Mark Twain V
14. Adam’s Diary – Mark Twain VI
15. Adam’s Diary – Rib

Read the sequel:
17. Adam’s Diary – Catastrophe

©William T. Pelletier, Ph.D.
Tuesday June 1, 2010 A.D.

But I am afraid, lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.
(2 Corinthians 11:3)
But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being quite deceived, fell into transgression.
(1 Timothy 2:12-14)