Adam as bridge and ladder

From Laeth's latest batch of aphorisms:

the only bridge the Lord ever built was Adam. but really he was more of a ladder. though of course a ladder is a vertical bridge, and a bridge a horizontal ladder. i do wonder if trolls also live behind ladders.

Laeth reads here, so not all the parallels with things posted here will be coincidences. I'm sure the troll reference was influenced by the recent discussion of the Billy Goats Gruff, and the idea of a ladder as a vertical bridge was likely influenced by Bill's comment identifying the Great Tower with a (vertical) bridge.

Rama's bridge, which I first posted about in "A non-Hindu interpretation of Vishnu crossing the water," is also known as Adam's Bridge because of an Islamic legend about Adam crossing it after his expulsion from Eden. I didn't mention this in any of my posts, but it's one of the first things anyone would discover if they looked up the backstory behind that picture of monkeys building a bridge.

The idea of a man as a ladder is biblical. In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus alludes to the story of Jacob's ladder but replaces the ladder itself with the son of man (literally "son of Adam" in Hebrew and Aramaic):

And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it (Genesis 28:12).

And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man (John 1:51).

I've posted on this connection, but it was a while back, in my 2019 "Notes on John 1."

Laeth connects this ladder used by angels with a bridge used by goats -- an unusual mapping, since goats more often represent devils, but it fits. I had posted about the Billy Goats Gruff in the context of a poem by Conrad Aiken about how "all good goats will go to heaven" by ascending a hill and later "peacefully stroll home to stall," implicitly going back down the hill, like the angels on their human ladder.

A human ladder! What an arresting image. "Like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down."