Page Content (OCR)
16 serpents emanate—undoubtedly Enki (Fig. 6b). He is flanked on the right by a male whose sprouting branches are penis- shaped, and on the left by a female whose branches are va- gina-shaped and who holds a small fruit tree (presumably from the Tree of Knowing). Watching the goings-on is a menacing great god—in all probability an angry Enlil. All these texts and depictions, augmenting the biblical narra- tive, have thus combined to paint a detailed picture, a course of events with identifiable principal participants, in the saga of Divine Encounters. Nevertheless, scholars by and large persist in lumping all such evidence as "mythology." To them the tale of events in the Garden of Eden is just a myth, an imaginary allegory taking place in a nonexistent place. But what if such a Paradise, a place with deliberately planted fruit-bearing trees, had really existed at a time when everywhere else nature alone was the gardener? What if in DIVINE ENCOUNTERS Figures 6a and 6b