
, created by YHWH, the God of the ancient Hebrews
. Adam
and Eve
ate fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, causing their expulsion from the Garden of Eden
.
"It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner." - Genesis 2:18
The language of sexuality and gender distinction is not used explicitly until the woman is created in Genesis 2:22-24.
Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principle one was that they escaped teething.
Adam and Noah were ancestors of mine. I never thought much of them. Adam lacked character. He couldn't be trusted with apples. Noah had an absurd idea that he could navigate without any knowledge of navigation, and he ran into the only shoal place on earth.
“Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived.” It is a pity that this is still the only knowledge of their wives at which some men seem to arrive.
Adam, man's benefactor — he gave him all he has ever received that was worth having — Death.
Adam was but human — this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.
After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.
Ever since Eve gave Adam the apple, there has been a misunderstanding between the sexes about gifts.
It all began with Adam. He was the first man to tell a joke — or a lie. How lucky Adam was. He knew when he said a good thing, nobody had said it before. Adam was not alone in the Garden of Eden, however, and does not deserve all the credit; much is due to Eve, the first woman, and Satan, the first consultant.
Let us be thankful to Adam our benefactor. He cut us out of the 'blessing' of idleness and won for us the 'curse' of labor.

, created by YHWH, the God of the ancient Hebrews
. Adam
and Eve
ate fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, causing their expulsion from the Garden of Eden
.
Man and woman
"It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner." - Genesis 2:18
The language of sexuality and gender distinction is not used explicitly until the woman is created in Genesis 2:22-24. Before the creation of woman, Adam is in a sense not yet specifically male. Therefore, 'Adam could be seen as both an individual and a collective human. The connection of men and women is thus affirmed, by the making of the woman from the part of the man.[2:21-22] The man expresses this connection in a jubilant poem: "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, ( 'ishshah ) for out of Man ( 'iysh ) this one was taken."[2:23] The names "man" ( 'iysh ) and "woman" ( 'ishshah ) are considered a wordplay. The man’s affirmation of the woman corresponds to Genesis 1:31, "God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good." Where individual elements of creation were "good", the whole is very good, perfectly corresponding to God's intention. The man "clings to his wife, and they become one flesh"[2:24] alludes to the sexual union of the two, reflecting the connection God created between men and women.
The Fall of Man
The Serpent, "slyer than every beast of the field," tempts the woman to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, telling her that it will make her more like God, and that it will not lead to death. After some thought, the woman decides to take from the tree and eat it. She then gives the fruit to the man, who eats also, "and the eyes of the two of them were opened." Aware now of their nakedness, they make coverings of fig leaves, and hide from the sight of God. God asks them what they have done, and man and woman defer responsibility. The man blames the woman for giving him the fruit, but implies a sentiment that God is also at fault for making the woman in the first place ("The woman Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree, and I ate"), while the woman blames the serpent for seducing her to disobedience ("The serpent beguiled me and I ate"). God curses the serpent "above all animals," making it lick dust and go on its belly all its days and to be an enemy of the human race. God then passes judgment for the disobedience of the man and woman, condemning the man to a life of toil and the woman to create new life through painful childbirth, and banishes them from the Garden. The woman is given the name Eve (Heb. hawwah) "because she was the mother of all living [Heb. hay]," and Adam receives his name when the text drops the definite article from the word for "the man," changing "ha-adam" to "Adam".
Eve/woman is also established as subordinate to Adam/man, ending the unity between the sexes. God then posts two cherubim, with flaming swords, at the entrance to the Garden of Eden in order to block the way to the Tree of Life, "lest he put out his hand .. and eat, and live forever."
Offspring
Chapter four of Genesis tells of the birth of Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve's first children, while chapter five gives Adam's genealogy further. Later came Seth, and "other sons and daughters" (Genesis 5:4, NIV). Adam lived for 930 years and Eve lived for 929 years.
Textual notes
- "Let us make man..." - The plural "us" (and "our" in the phrase "in our image") is used. Recent scholarship is that it reflects the common Middle Eastern view of a supreme god (referred to in Genesis 1 by the generic noun "Elohim", god, which is itself in a plural form, rather than by his personal name of YHWH) surrounded by a divine court, the Sons of God (Heb. bene elohim).
- "man" - Though the word for "man" is in the singular, when in the text a pronoun is used, it is rendered by the plural "them", indicating that the word is used generically to cover "man and woman", and that a rendition of "mankind" or "human beings" is not out of place.
- "...in our image" - The phrase image of God has had many interpretations, although something more than the simply anthropomorphicAnthropomorphismAnthropomorphism is any attribution of human characteristics to animals, non-living things, phenomena, material states, objects or abstract concepts, such as organizations, governments, spirits or deities. The term was coined in the mid 1700s...
seems intended. Elsewhere in the ancient Near East kings were called the "image of god", symbolising their rule by divine appointment: the phrase may therefore indicate that mankind is God's regent on earth.
- "...a living being" - God breathes into the man's nostrils and he becomes nefesh hayya. The earlier translation of this phrase as "living soul" is now recognised as incorrect: "nefesh" signifies something like the English word "being", in the sense of a corporeal body capable of life; the concept of a "soul" in our sense did not exist in Hebrew thought until around the 2nd century BC, when the idea of a bodily resurrection gained popularity.
- "...tree of knowledge of good and evil..." - The tree imparts knowledge of tov wa-ra, "good and bad". The traditional translation is "good and evil", but tov wa-ra is a fixed expression denoting "everything," rather than a moral concept.
- "...you shall surely die" - Adam is told that if he eats of the forbidden tree the consequence will be moth tamuth, "die a death", indicating not merely death but emphatically so. As Adam does not in fact die immediately on eating the fruit, some exegetes have argued that it means "you shall die eventually," so that Adam and Eve would have had immortality in the Garden, but lost it by eating the forbidden fruit. However, the grammar does not support this reading, nor does the narrative: Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden lest they eat of the second tree, the tree of life, and gain immortality. Another explanation is that Adam will undergo "a spiritual death". The 2nd century Book of JubileesJubileesThe Book of Jubilees , sometimes called Lesser Genesis , is an ancient Jewish religious work, considered one of the pseudepigrapha by Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox Churches...
(4:29–31) explained that "one day" is equivalent to a thousand years and thus Adam died within that same "day"; the Greek Septuagint, on the other hand, has "day" translated into the Greek word for a twenty-four hour period.
- "...a rib..." - Hebrew tsela` or sela can mean side, chamber, rib, or beam. The traditional reading of "rib" has been questioned recently by feminist theologians who suggest it should instead be rendered as "side," supporting the idea that woman is man's equal and not his subordinate. Such a reading shares elements in common with AristophanesAristophanesAristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete...
' story of the origin of love and the separation of the sexes in Plato's Symposium.
- "Eve" - The Hebrew word for Eve is hawwah, deriving from a word for "life" or "living". "Eve" probably resulted from corruption of the Hebrew phonemes, roughly pronounced CHA-vah, as the stories of the ancient Israelites spread into Greece and Rome.
Jewish traditions
The Sibylline Oracles, dating from the centuries immediately around the time of Christ, explain the name Adam as a notaricon composed of the initials of the four directions; anatole (east), dusis (west), arktos (north), and mesembria (south). In the 2nd century, Rabbi Yohanan used the Greek technique of notarichon to explain the name אָדָם as the initials of the words afer, dam, and marah, being dust, blood, and gall
.
According to the Torah
, Adam was formed from "dust from the earth"; in the Talmud
(Tractate Sanhedrin 38b) of the first centuries of the Common era
he is, more specifically, described as having initially been a golem
kneaded from mud
.
Even in ancient times, the presence of two distinct accounts of the creation of the first man (or couple) was noted. The first account says male and female [God] created them, implying simultaneous creation, whereas the second account states that God created Eve subsequent to the creation of Adam. The Midrash Rabbah - Genesis VIII:1 reconciled the two by stating that Genesis 1, "male and female He created them", indicates that God originally created Adam as a hermaphrodite
, bodily and spiritually both male and female, before creating the separate beings of Adam and Eve. Other rabbis suggested that Eve and the woman of the first account were two separate individuals, the first being identified as Lilith
, a figure elsewhere described as a night demon.
Genesis does not tell for how long Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, but the 2nd century BC Book of Jubilees, provides more specific information. It states (ch3 v17) that the serpent convinced Eve to eat the fruit on the 17th day of the 2nd month in the 8th year after Adam's creation. It also states that they were removed from the garden on the new moon of the fourth month of that year (ch3 v33). Other Jewish sources assert that the period involved was less than a day.
According to traditional Jewish belief Adam and Eve are buried in the Cave of Machpelah, in Hebron
.
Christianity
The story of Adam and Eve forms the basis for the Christian doctrine of original sin: "Sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned," said Paul of Tarsus
in his Epistle to the Romans
, although Chapter 3 of Genesis does not use the word "sin" and Genesis 3:24 makes clear that the couple are expelled "lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever". St Augustine of Hippo (354–430), working with a Latin translation of the epistle, understood Paul to have said that Adam's sin was hereditary: "Death passed upon (i.e. spread to) all men because of Adam, [in whom] all sinned". Original sin, the concept that man is born in a condition of sinfulness and must await redemption, thus became a cornerstone of Western Christian theological tradition; the belief is not shared by Judaism or the Orthodox churches, and has been dropped by some post-Reformation churches such as the Congregationalists and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Orthodox, however, do hold to the similar concept of ancestral sin
: that is they accept the doctrine that Adam and Eve's sin has affected all humanity, and that human death is an inheritance from Adam caused by the sin, but the doctrine of ancestral sin does not include the notion of an inheiritance of guilt.
Because Eve tempted Adam to eat of the fatal fruit, some early Fathers of the Church held her and all subsequent women to be the first sinners, and especially responsible for the Fall. "You are the devil's gateway," Tertullian
told his female listeners in the early 2nd century, and went on to explain that they were responsible for the death of Christ: "On account of your desert (i.e. punishment for sin), that is, death, even the Son of God had to die." In 1486 the Dominicans
Kramer and Sprengler used similar tracts in Malleus Maleficarum
("Hammer of Witches") to justify the persecution of "witches".
Over the centuries, a system of uniquely Christian beliefs has developed from the Adam and Eve story. Baptism
has become understood as a washing away of the stain of hereditary sin in many churches, although its original symbolism was apparently rebirth. Additionally, the serpent that tempted Eve was interpreted to have been Satan
, or that Satan was using a serpent as a mouthpiece, although there is no mention of this identification in the Torah and it is not held in Judaism. A Christian basis for this identification can be found in Revelation 12:9 and 20:2 where Satan is called the "Old Serpent".
Gnostic and Manichaean traditions
Gnostic Christianity discussed Adam and Eve in two known surviving texts, namely the "Apocalypse of Adam
" found in the Nag Hammadi
documents and the "Testament of Adam
". The creation of Adam as Protanthropos, the original man, is the focal concept of these writings.
The Manichean conception of Adam and Eve is pessimistic. According to them, the copulative action of two demons, Adam and Eve were born to further imprison the soul in the material universe.
- "Mani said, 'Then Jesus came and spoke to the one who had been born, who was Adam, and … made him fear Eve, showing him how to suppress (desire) for her, and he forbade him to approach her… Then that (male) ArchonArchonArchon is a Greek word that means "ruler" or "lord", frequently used as the title of a specific public office. It is the masculine present participle of the verb stem ἀρχ-, meaning "to rule", derived from the same root as monarch, hierarchy, and anarchy.- Ancient Greece :In ancient Greece the...
came back to his daughter, who was Eve, and lustfully had intercourse with her. He engendered with her a son, deformed in shape and possessing a red complexion, and his name was Cain, the Red Man.'"
Another Gnostic tradition held that Adam and Eve were created to help defeat Satan. The serpent, instead of being identified with Satan, is seen as a hero by the Ophites
. Still other Gnostics believed that Satan's fall, however, came after the creation of humanity. As in Islamic tradition, this story says that Satan refused to bow to Adam due to pride. Satan said that Adam was inferior to him as he was made of fire, whereas Adam was made of clay. This refusal led to the fall of Satan recorded in works such as the Book of Enoch
.
Islamic tradition

h al-Baqara (2)
:30-39, al-A'raf (7)
:11-25, al-Hijr (15)
:26-44, al-Isra (17)
:61-65, Ta-Ha (20)
:115-124, and Sad (38)
:71-85.
Accounts of Adam and Eve in Islamic texts, which include the Quran and the books of Sunnah
(Hadith
), are similar but different to that of the Torah and Bible.
Eve is referred to by Allah as Adam's spouse, and Islamic tradition refers to her by an etymologically similar name, .
Having been created, Adam, the first man, is described as having been given domination over all the lower creatures, which he proceeds to name. As one of the people to whom God is said to have spoken directly, Adam is seen as a prophet in Islam
.

have viewed Allah's commanding the angels to bow before Adam as an exaltation of humanity, and as a means of supporting human rights
, others view it as an act of showing Adam that the biggest enemy of humans on earth will be their ego.
"And We said, 'O Adam, dwell, you and your wife, in Paradise and eat therefrom in [ease and] abundance from wherever you will. But do not approach this tree, lest you be among the wrongdoers. But Satan caused them to slip out of it and removed them from that [condition] in which they had been. And We said, "Go down, [all of you], as enemies to one another, and you will have upon the earth a place of settlement and provision for a time." (Quran - 2:35-36)
"Then Satan whispered to him (Adam); he said, "O Adam, shall I direct you to the tree of eternity and possession that will not deteriorate? And Adam and his wife ate of it, and their private parts became apparent to them, and they began to fasten over themselves from the leaves of Paradise. And Adam disobeyed his Lord and erred". (Quran - 20:121-122)
As the above verses indicate (20:121 - 122), Adam initiated the eating of the fruit and that both Adam and Eve (Hawa) ate the forbidden fruit
, for which Allah later forgave them. A Prophetic Hadith recalls that after leaving Eden, they searched for each other, and finally found each other at the Plain of 'Arafat (near Mecca
), which means recognition. Al-Qummi records the opinion that Eden was not entirely earthly, and so, having been sent to earth, Adam and Eve first arrived at mountain peaks outside Mecca; Adam on Safa
, and Eve on Marwa
. In this Islamic tradition, Adam remained weeping for 40 days, until he repented, at which point Allah rewarded him by sending down the Black Stone
, and teaching him the hajj
. The Hadith
(the prophetic narrations) and literature shed light on the Muslim view of the first couple.
The Qur'an also describes the two sons of Adam (named Qabil and Habil in Islamic tradition) that correspond to Cain and Abel.
The concept of original sin does not exist in Islam and Eve was not to blame for the consumption of the forbidden fruit. Even though Adam initiated the eating of the fruit, Allah simply blames both of them for the transgression as they both had eaten the fruit. However, there are hadiths– which are contested – saying the Prophet Mohammed (narrated by Abu Hurrairah) designates Eve as the epitome of female betrayal. “Narrated Abu Hurrairah: The Prophet said, ‘Were it not for Bani Israel, meat would not decay; and were it not for Eve, no woman would ever betray her husband.’" (Sahih Bukhari, Hadith 611, Volume 55) An identical but more explicit version is found in the second most respected book of prophetic narrations, Sahih Muslim. “Abu Hurrairah (May Allah be pleased with him) reported Allah's Messenger (May peace be upon him) as saying: Had it not been for Eve, woman would have never acted unfaithfully towards her husband.” (Hadith 3471, Volume 8). The verses from the Quran in the previous paragraph, (20:121-122) are the reason the authenticity of the Hadiths are challenged. As the Quran never blamed Eve for the sin that they both (Adam and Eve) committed together. To condemn all the women in the world for a sin that Eve committed is against a basic Quranic teaching which states that no soul is accountable for the sins of another, "Say, is it other than Allah I should desire as a lord while He is the Lord of all things? And every soul earns not [blame] except against itself, and no bearer of burdens will bear the burden of another. Then to your Lord is your return, and He will inform you concerning that over which you used to differ." (Quran - 6:164)
In science
In terms of human genetics, the concept that all humans descended from two historical persons is impossible. Genetic evidence indicates current humans descended from a group of at least 10,000 people, and to account for the observed human genetic variation
it would take an impossibly high mutation rate
if all humans descended from two individuals several thousands of years ago as Young Earth creationism
supposes. This has caused some religious practitioners to distance themselves from a literal interpretation and belief in the Adam and Eve creation myth. Other practitioners hesitate to abandon what they see as a fundamental religious belief
.
Art and literature
Adam and Eve were used by early Renaissance artists as a theme to represent female and male nudes. Later, the nudity was objected to and thus, more modest elements, such as the fig leaf, were added to older pictures and sculptures, covering their genitals. Depicting the fig is as a result of Mediterranean traditions that identified the unnamed Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil as a fig tree and according to Genesis, the fig leaves was used to cover Adam and Eve's nudity after their fall.The concept of Adam and Eve being created, fully grown, has spurred has led to the argument of depicting the first human couple without navel
s, known as the Omphalos theory
. The idea is that they did not develop in a uterus
, therfore could not have been connected to an umbilical cord
as are all born humans. Paintings have depicted them without navels, however, because it looks unnatural, some artists obscured that area of their bodies. They are sometimes depicted as covering up the lower torso
with their hand or some other intervening object.
John Milton
's Paradise Lost
is a famous 17th-century epic poem written in blank verse
which explores the story of Adam and Eve in great detail.
American painter Thomas Cole
painted The Garden of Eden (1828), with lavish detail of the first couple living amid waterfalls, vivid plants, and attractive deer.
Mark Twain
wrote humorous and satirical diaries of Adam and Eve.
Malaysian lyricist, the late Rosli Khamis (Loloq), wrote a song named "Cinta Adam dan Hawa" in 2007. It was sung by pop star Misha Omar
. The song tells about human romance is not as great as Adam and Eve.
See also
- Adam and Eve (LDS Church)
- Ask and EmblaAsk and EmblaIn Norse mythology, Ask and Embla —male and female respectively—were the first two humans, created by the gods. The pair are attested in both the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson...
- Balbira & KalmanaBalbira & KalmanaAccording to the Seder Hadorot, Balbira and Kalmana were the respective wives and twin sisters of Cain and Abel. In an effort to explain where Cain and Abel acquired wives, some traditional sources write that each child of Adam and Eve was born with a twin who became their mate...
- Mashya and MashyanaMashya and MashyanaAccording to the Zoroastrian cosmogony, Mashya and Mashyana were the first man and woman whose procreation gave rise to the human race.-Etymology:...
- Generations of AdamGenerations of Adam"Generations of Adam" is a concept in in the Hebrew Bible. It is typically taken as name of Adam's line of descent going through Seth. Another view equates the generations of Adam with material about a second line of descent starting with Cain in Genesis 4, while Genesis 5 is taken as the...
- LilithLilithLilith is a character in Jewish mythology, found earliest in the Babylonian Talmud, who is generally thought to be related to a class of female demons Līlīṯu in Mesopotamian texts. However, Lowell K. Handy notes, "Very little information has been found relating to the Akkadian and Babylonian view...
- Pre-AdamitePre-AdamitePre-Adamite hypothesis or Preadamism is the religious belief that humans existed before Adam, the first human being named in the Bible. This belief has a long history, probably having its origins in early pagan responses to Abrahamic claims regarding the origins of the human race.Advocates of this...
- Seven Laws of Noah
- Christian naturismChristian naturismChristian naturists are Christians found in most branches and denominations of Christianity who practice naturism or nudism. They find no conflict between the teachings of the Bible and living their lives and worshiping God without any clothing, believing that covering the body leads to its...
- Biblical narratives and the Qur'anBiblical narratives and the Qur'anThe Qur'an, the central religious text of Islam, contains references to over fifty people and events also found in the Bible. While the stories told in each book are generally comparable in most respects, important differences sometimes emerge....
- Conflict of Adam and Eve with SatanConflict of Adam and Eve with SatanThe Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan is a Christian pseudepigraphical work found in Ge'ez, translated from an Arabic original and thought to date from the 5th or 6th century AD....
External links
- Bible Genealogy
- First Human Beings (Library of CongressLibrary of CongressThe Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
) - The Story of Lilith in The Alphabet of Ben Sira
http://quran.com/4/1
- Islamic view of the fall of Adam (audio)
- 98 classical images of Adam and Eve
- The Book of Jubilees
- Adam and Eve in Medieval Reliefs, Capitals, Frescoes, Roof Bosses and Mosaics
- "Adam and Eve" in Christian Iconography
- Translation of Grimm's Fairy Tale No. 180, Eve's Unequal Children, a German Fairy Tale about Adam and Eve