The Bible According to Mark Twain

"Mark Twain is no Augustine or Milton, but he’s wonderfully wry and funny and touching. His imaginary diaries give you access to the whole Enlightenment push against the biblical origin story. One of the themes in my book is that under the impulse of Augustine, the characters of Adam and Eve are made more and more real. As in the story of Pinocchio, the strings are eventually cut, and the figures, ceasing to be mere puppets, seem to be actual agents in the world. This is another way of saying they become more like great characters in fiction—Hamlet, or Dorothea Brooke, or Isabel Archer. “Under the impulse of Augustine, the characters of Adam and Eve are made more and more real.” In both ‘Eve’s Diary’ and ‘Adam’s Diary,’ Mark Twain is playing, very delicately and beautifully I think, with that development into fiction. He imagines what the consequences are of treating them as real, and he is trying to provoke both an ironic laughter at these characters and also anger at the kind of God that would expose them to terrible danger without trying to protect them. Samuel Clemens was perfectly capable of ridiculing the Bible. My point is that he isn’t Voltaire. Mark Twain’s is a different kind of project, more playful, funnier, and more poignant. Not in my country! Notwithstanding the endless New Yorker cartoons, a large segment of the population of the United States has an astonishing reverence for the story of Adam and Eve and has embraced the Augustinian literalism. In truth, the story is very hard to get rid of, and I’m not sure that getting rid of it would be a great triumph. Not until we come up with a more convincing account of human responsibility. “It’s confusing and confounding, but the way Kafka stories are confusing and confounding” The story is a myth about taking responsibility for what happens to you. In some ways, that’s a monstrous idea. You think of little children getting cancer, and you wonder, ‘Did Augustine really think this is because they are sinful as a consequence of the sin of Adam and Eve?’ (The answer is yes, that is really what he thought.) Nonetheless, the story explores deep questions that our contemporary scientific culture has not by any means addressed adequately. The ancient story remains good to think with: it’s confusing and confounding, but the way Kafka stories are confusing and confounding."