The myths of the Fall are based on man's yearning for immortality. Due to the habit of certain species of snakes periodically shedding their skins, primitive man got the idea that serpents were immortal. The natural vanity of man told our distant ancestors that the gods had intended the gift of eternal life for humanity alone. So it was conceived that the serpent had stolen the precious prize from the human race. The biblical version of the Fall of Man is incomplete. The role of the serpent in not explained, and the Tree of Life is not given due prominence in the story. The original story, which we are able to piece together from fragments gathered from the mythology of many lands, reads as follows: God placed the first man and woman in a garden of delights. In this garden were two trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Death (called the Tree of Knowledge in the Bible). Man had the choice of eating the fruit of the Tree of life and becoming immortal, or of eating the fruit of the Tree of Death and becoming mortal. God sent the serpent to tell Adam and Eve to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Life, so that they might live forever, and to warn them against eating of the fruit of the Tree of Death, for if they should eat this forbidden fruit they would surely die, and this course would descend to their children from generation to generation. The wily serpent, however, reversed the message. He told the first human pair that they would obtain immortality by eating of the fruit of the Tree of Death. Unfortunately Adam and Eve believed the diabolical snake, ate the forbidden fruit, and as a consequence were expelled from Eden and became mortal. The sly reptile, on the other hand, helped himself to the fruit of the Tree of Life and gained immortal life for himself and his kind. For a masterly study of myths concerning the Fall of Man, the reader is referred to volume 1 of Sir James George Frazer's Folk-Lore in the Old Testament.10 Frazer holds that the Hebrews got their version, directly or indirectly from Africa:
Even if the story should hereafter be found in a Sumerian version this would not absolutely exclude the hypothesis of its African origin, since the original home of the Sumerians is unknown. ... In favor of the African origin of the myth it may be observed that the explanation of the supposed immortality of serpents, which probably furnished the kernel of the story in its original form, has been preserved in several African versions, while it has been wholly lost in the Hebrew version; from which it is natural to infer that the African versions are older and nearer to the original than the corresponding but incomplete narratives in Genesis.11
The hypothetical first man of the Bible is rightly named Adam, since the word Adam, which means "Man," was reputedly made out of Adamah, which means the "Ground" or "Earth." Similarly among the ancient Romans, man was called Homo, because he was supposedly made from Humus, the Earth. According to an ancient Egyptian myth, Knoumou, the father of the gods, moulded the earliest men out of clay on a potter's wheel. We are informed by the Chaldean priest, Berosus, that the great god Bel decapitated himself, and that the other gods mixed his blood with clay, and out of it fashioned the first man. In the Greek mythology, Prometheus is depicted as manufacturing men from clay at Panopeus.12
