Narnia as a Supposal of the Bible

The Magician’s Nephew is a Supposal of the Creation Myth in the Old Testament, but a few incongruencies exist.

In the Magician’s Nephew, Aslan the Lion’s role shifts from that of a Christ-figure to that of the Old Testament God. The book is the story of how Narnia was created. From nothingness, Aslan created light. (Lewis 100). The story follows very closely with the Old testament version of the creation myth. Aslan creates a firmament between heaven and earth, then light is created. Water runs through the land, and soon trees and grass are growing, next animals are there, and lastly some of the animals are given the gift of speech. A few incongruence exist, however. The children, the cabby, and the witch all exist before the beginning of Aslan’s world. They are there in the nothingness. Man was created last in the bible, and created in God’s image. Man in Narnia is not created in the image of Aslan.

The most vitally different part of the Narnia creation story is Lewis’s removal of some of the unpleasantness of the story of Eden. The original sin never actually occurs in Narnia. Digory falls to temptation in Charn. “Strike the bell and bide the danger” says the inscription “or wonder ‘til it drives you mad” Digory can’t resist striking the bell (Lewis,50). He claims that it was the inscription that had him under a spell just as Eve blames the snake: “The serpent deceived me” says Eve (Genesis, 2:13). Digory places blame not on himself, but on temptation. In Narnia, however, Digory admits to Aslan that he was only pretending he was enchanted by the inscription. Falling to temptation was his own fault (Lewis, 135)

The Witch is the only one who eats forbidden fruit. Digory does not fall to the witch’s temptation a second time. The Witch eats the apple off of the tree of life, not the tree of knowledge. (Lewis, 161) In the biblical story, the reason Adam and Eve must be expelled from the garden is that if they eat from the tree of knowledge they have the capacity to do evil, and if they had then eaten from the tree of life, they could be doing evil forever.