Relocating To Elfland

The Genesis narrative stands in contrast to the myths by reason of the historicity that it attributes to evil. The whole biblical conception of evil, we dare suggest, is inextricably linked with this unique feature. Nowhere else is evil denounced with such a tireless zeal, intransigence, horror and indignation. It is the disorder that finds no justification, the enemy and the work of the enemy. Nowhere else is the problem of guilt placed in such a central position. Nowhere else do you find such a clear insistence on the conversion of the human heart, that heart from which evil emerges and which must turn away from it. This ‘nowhere else’, which is plain for all to see, has an explanation, which we shall now disclose. Since elsewhere evil is inherent in the original being of reality and is part of the very definition of humanity, then elsewhere it must be excusable because it belongs to fate, and as such it must be invincible. There can therefore be no voice raised in protest against it. The myths and the philosophies that spring from them inevitably stifle the innate sense of the intolerable nature of evil, whether it is the evil one commits or the evil one suffers. But the Bible can stand as accuser and can awaken this sense, because it knows that evil was not there in the beginning, but arises from a subsequent, historical use of human freedom. (Henri Blocher, In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis, p. 167)