Adam and Eve
- "Adam" and "Eve" redirect here. For other uses, see Adam (disambiguation) and Eve (disambiguation).
According to the Book of Genesis in the Christian Bible and Judaism's Torah, and to Islam's Qur'an, Adam was the first man created by God. Adam's mate, Eve (or Hawa) was either created from his rib (Genesis 2.21-22), or created at the same time (Genesis 1.27) as Adam, depending on which part of Genesis is read and how it is interpreted. Depending on which tradition is believed, she may or may not have been the first woman, or Adam's first wife.
Adam—אָדָם in Standard Hebrew, ʾĀḏām in Tiberian Hebrew, and آدم (ʾĀdam) in Arabic—means "man," "earthy," or "red." Eve—חַוָּה (Ḥavva) in Standard Hebrew, Ḥawwāh in Tiberian Hebrew, and حواء (Ḥawwāʾ) in Arabic—means "living." In Aramaic (חיויה,חיווי,xywy)— means snake. In the Kazakh language Adam means human, and Adamshylyk is humanity.
Adam in Genesis
"God created man [i.e. Adam] in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." According to this account, Adam was absolutely the first man whom God created. He was formed out of the dust of the earth (hence his name, which means "red earth"), and God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and gave him dominion over all the lower creatures (Gen. 1:26; 2:7).
The story is in Genesis, chapters 2 and 3. After his creation, Adam was placed in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it, and to enjoy its fruits under this one prohibition: "Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."
The first recorded act of Adam was his giving names to the beasts of the field and the fowl of the air, which God brought to him for this end. Thereafter, the Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon him, and while in an unconscious state took one of his ribs, and closed up his flesh again; and of this rib he made a woman, whom he presented to him when he awoke. Adam received her as his wife, and said, "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." He called her Eve (Hebrew: Chava "life"), because she was the mother of all living. Being induced by the serpent (whom later tradition made into Satan) to eat the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, for "the serpent said unto the woman, 'Ye shall not surely die.'" (Genesis 3:4), Eve persuaded Adam, and he also did eat. Until then they were nude, but now "the eyes of them both were opened" and they made aprons of fig leaves to cover themselves.
Adam was expelled from Eden to prevent him gaining access to the tree of life (Genesis 3), which if he ate from it would have given eternal life. At the east of the garden God placed Cherubim and a flaming sword, which turned every way. Eastern Orthodox tradition says that from the time Jesus was born, the flaming sword was removed from the Garden of Eden, making it possible for humanity to return to Paradise.
How long they were in Paradise is a matter of literalist conjecture; traditional Jewish sources assert that it was less than a day. Shortly after their expulsion, Eve brought forth her first-born child, and called him Cain. Only three of Adam's children (Cain, his brother Abel, and the lesser-known Seth) are named in Genesis, but it is said that he had other sons and daughters as well (Genesis 5:4). According to the text, he died aged 930 years (the interpretation of how long a "year" is meant to be interpreted is the subject of much debate). Judaism holds the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron as the traditional burial place of Adam and Eve.
Later tales
In the Book of Jubilees, a daughter (Awân) is born to Adam and Eve after the birth of Abel, Seth, a daughter named Azûrâ, and nine other sons who are not named. Cain later marries Awân and Seth marries Azûrâ. But according to Genesis Rabba and other later sources, Cain had a twin sister and Abel had two twin sisters or Cain had a twin sister named Lebuda and Abel a twin sister named Qelimath. In The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan, Cain's twin sister is named Luluwa, and Abel's twin sister is named Aklia.
There are a number of pseudepigraphical works about Adam and Eve:
- The Life of Adam and Eve in variant versions,
- The Testament of Adam,
- The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan,
- The Gnostic Apocalypse of Adam.
According to some traditions, Adam had an earlier mate, Lilith.
A tradition not found in the Bible text holds that the forbidden fruit was an apple. The larynx in the human throat has been called Adam's apple because of a notion that it was caused by the forbidden fruit sticking in the throat of Adam.
Some Biblical scholars have placed the Garden of Eden in what is now the Persian Gulf region. Others have suggested a location in Anatolia (Asia Minor)). Biblical geography had four rivers flowing from it: Tigris, Euphrates, Pishon and Gihon.
Adam in Islam
The Qur'an tells the story of Adam and Eve mainly in 2:30-39, 7:11-25, 15:26-44, 17:61-65, 20:115-124, 38:71-85. Eve is not mentioned by name in the Qur'an, but referred to as Adam's spouse; however, her name is given in Islamic tradition as Hawwa, as in Hebrew. Commentators on the Qur'an have greatly expanded on this account since early times, using claimed hadith (statements of Muhammad) and Jewish traditions (so-called isra'iliyyat).
While Adam is regarded as the first human in Islam, he is also seen as a prophet, in the sense that he was one of the people to whom God spoke. In the Qur'an, Allah (God) creates Adam of clay, and then told him "Be!" and he was. The important early commentator Tabari adds a number of details to the account, saying that when it came time to create Adam, God sent Gabriel, then Michael, to fetch clay from the earth; but the earth said "I take refuge in God from you, if you have come to diminish or deform me", and the angels returned empty-handed until God sent the Angel of Death, who took clay from all regions, thus giving mankind a variety of appearances. According to Tabari's account, Adam remained a dry body for 40 days, then gradually came to life from the head downwards, and when he had finished coming to life, sneezed and said "All praise be to God, the Lord of all beings".
When God had announced his intention of creating Adam, the angels expressed dismay, asking why he would create a being that would do evil. But when He "taught Adam the names," they saw that he knew more than they, and learned from Adam. The names in question have been a matter of speculation among Muslim commentators; various theories say they were the names of all things animate and inanimate, the names of the angels, or the names of his own descendants.
When God orders the angels to bow to Adam, the jinn Iblis (approximately equivalent to Satan) refuses due to his pride and is summarily banished from the heavens. However, he promises God that he will lead as many humans astray as he can, to which God replies that those who will it will follow Satan, while those who will it will follow God. Tabari explains Iblis' pride with the following report: Prior to Adam's creation, the earth had been inhabited by the jinn, who angered God with their sins and fighting, and were therefore banished to its remotest reaches by a heavenly army led by the as yet unfallen Iblis, whose victory filled him with conceit. (The Shia commentator al-Qummi relates a similar tradition.)
The creation of Eve is not mentioned in the Qur'an. However, Tabari recounts that Adam was lonely, so God created a mate for him from his left rib; he named her Hawwa (Eve, from a root resembling the Arabic for "live") because she was created of a living thing.
Adam and Eve were sent to live in the Garden of Eden. They were allowed to live as they pleased there, but not to taste the fruit from a certain tree. Commentators differ on the identity of the fruit: Wahb ibn Munabbih reports, on Jewish authority, that it was wheat, while others say it was the grape or the fig. (No answer is accepted as authoritative). However, they both eventually succumbed to the temptation of Satan, who promised them immortality if they ate from it, and ate; they then saw their nakedness and covered themselves with leaves. (Tabari, after Wahb ibn Munabbih, says that, as in the Bible, Eve ate first, tempted by Satan in the form of a four-legged serpent, then handed it to Adam). God punished them by sending them out into the earth amid mutual enmity, but then took mercy upon them; warning them not to follow Satan, he promised them that all would be well for those who followed God's guidance, while those who rejected it would suffer hellfire. The early Shia commentator al-Qummi says that Adam came down to Earth on Safa and Eve on Marwa, both peaks just outside Mecca; there Adam remained weeping for 40 days, until he repented and God rewarded him by sending down the Kaaba and teaching him the hajj.
The Qur'an also describes the two sons of Adam (named Qabil and Habil in Islamic tradition, but not mentioned by name in the Qur'an) that correspond to Cain and Abel. Islamic traditions also hold that Adam's Peak in Sri Lanka has an enormous footprint of Adam.
Liberal movements within Islam have used God's command to bow before Adam as a means of supporting human rights.
Art
Early Renaissance artists used the theme of Adam and Eve as a way to represent female and male nudes in a then morally acceptable way. Sometimes a fig leaf covered their genitals.
Sources
- Mahmoud Ayoub, The Qur'an and its Interpreters, SUNY: Albany, 1984.
See also
- Similarities between the Bible and the Qur'an
- Mitochondrial Eve
- Y-chromosomal Adam
- Creation narrative
External Sources
External links
- First Human Beings (Library of Congress)
- Adam and Even (allaboutcreation.org)