Tristan Hughes

Is there anything else we should then mention on divinity itself in the story of Adam and Eve and how God is portrayed?

How do you think this would then align with figures like Moses, you know, the big prophets who also then seem to be a bit more special in the fact that they are communicating with God and always have a divine element to them?

I'm always going to ask a big question to summarize all those themes that we've talked about there, Dylan.

So how would you argue someone who heard the Adam and Eve story in the first millennium BC, how do you think, and I appreciate it would differ depending on whether they were a priest or a king and so on, or a scholar, a scribe and so on.

How do you think they would have primarily interpreted the narrative of the story of Adam and Eve if they're not going away thinking straight away, oh, this is about original sin entering the world?

Well, let's explore a few other key parts of the story and the amazing links they do have, because I've got a few more that I really want to ask about.

The first one is this whole setting of a garden.

So, Dylan, the Garden of Eden, how clear an influence is there from the gardens of ancient Mesopotamia, of the Assyrian rulers, of the Babylonians?

I might think of the hanging gardens of Babylon and so on.

Very much so.

I think of those we'll release from Nineveh and so on of Ashurbanipal.

The underground river as well.

I know I'm bringing us back near the start, but I don't want us to finish this episode without mentioning the underground river because that's startling in its own right.

And do we think this is also potentially be like an underworld link, a catholic link linking the underworld to the Garden of Eden at all?

Book of the Dead and so on, which actually is nice.

I'm glad I said that.

To also ask about influences from ancient Egypt with the story of Adam and Eve, because you've already mentioned earlier the story of the snake linked to snatching the plant of eternal life from Gilgamesh.

So a clear Mesopotamian link there.

But when I think of snakes, I also think of them as a divine symbol of Peronic Egypt and the pharaohs.

Could there be a clear Egyptian link in the story of Adam and Eve?