Casting Blame
The Junius Codex made me squirm. Not out of intimidation, but from a severe case of discomfort in which my mind kept going, “That’s not how it went!” Strangely enough, it was not the fact that the woman seemed to be the one being faulted or how pathetic God was portrayed in the text that bothered me, but the way in which the devil convinced the woman to eat the fruit. For awhile, it almost seemed as if subconsciously, I was jumping to the devil’s defense – which troubled me even more. However, the more I think about it, the more I see this text as a reflection of how fallen man can be. Despite the fact that this is a theological text meant to educate Christians of the 9th Century, there is a sense to which the writer is trying to make excuses for the fall of man by manipulating the way the devil deceived Adam and Eve. This text is a good representation of how mankind, being unable to accept that it was plain human greed and selfishness that caused the fall, has been trying (since creation until now) to lift the load off of man’s shoulders and place more of the responsibility on the devil.
Human beings don’t like to admit being wrong. That is obvious enough in Genesis 3 when Adam immediately blames “the woman you gave me” for eating the fruit first. Not only did he blame his wife, he was indirectly blaming God Himself. The writer of The Junius Codex takes this idea of not blaming Adam a step further. Instead of the silent, passive Adam in the Bible who failed to carry out his role as the spiritual leader, the Adam in The Junius Codex is a fully righteous, deeply rooted, strong man who resists the devil. The only reason He finally gave in is because his wife succeeded in talking him into it. So Adam is let completely off the hook here. It was Eve who caused him to sin.
However, Eve cannot be fully blamed either. Unlike the deception in Genesis where the devil never really spoke an outright lie, the Junius Codex devil is not only full of lies, but also threats and blackmail. In Genesis, the devil plants doubts in both Adam and Eve’s heads, causing them to second guess what God had told them. He tempts them and feeds their desire to know more and thus convinces them to eat the fruit. As much as it is the devil who is the source of the deception which leads to the fall, Adam and Eve are equally responsible for making their own conscious decisions. In The Junius Codex on the other hand, the devil not only tells Eve that he is sent from God, but sends her on a guilt trip, plays with her emotions, and tells her that God would be unhappy with her if she did not do as he bade.
The big difference between the Genesis account and the Junius Codex account is that in Genesis, the devil tempts Adam and Eve and, fully aware of their disobedience to God, they give in to him. Therefore the sin is upon their head and mankind is now stuck in a fallen state. In The Junius Codex, however, Eve is pressured into obeying the devil and is pretty much told that if she does not do as he says, she does not love God and will be sinning against God. He puts such a burden on her that it is almost as if she has no choice. So really, it was not really Eve’s fault; for she was doing what she thought was right. In other words, the author of The Junius Codex takes the responsibility off of Adam, places it in Eve, and then excuses Eve by putting the blame on the Devil. In an indirect but very wrong way, he seems to be telling his readers that humanity is fallen because the devil made them sin.
Works Cited
The Junius Codex. Christian Literature: An Anthology . Allister E. McGrath. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 2001. 142-150. Print.