temnein, from the Indo-European tem-, to cut.

Used of animals it means "to cut up, cut in

pieces, to slaughter, sacrifice."(1)

Temenos, also from the Indo-European tem-, was

"cleared and holy ground around a temple, for

sacrifice, divine service, or divination."(2)

Adam, from the Hebrew word for earth, adamah.

The atom, once thought to be indivisible, now threatens a catastrophic division, its fissionability able to be the means of an absolute desecration, an apocalyptic destruction of the earth, of the very ground of being, individual and collective. If this atom is also Adam, however, then the "post-nuclear age" repeats the time of the Fall.

Toni Morrison's Beloved both resists and affirms the fearsome repetition of the Fall's mythic origin. For the novel recognizes in the disaster that inaugurates the Judeo-Christian account of human history the means of representing a...