Adam and Eve

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Figures

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Adam, in most (but not all^[1]) Abrahamic mythology, was the first human created by God. He was made after the plants and animals and put on Earth as boss of all of them. In some extra-biblical sources, Adam was made at the same time as Lilith. Adam thought he was Lilith's master as well, but she refused to make love below him, saying they were made of the same earth at the same time and were equals. (Apparently Adam was unwilling to take a turn on the bottom.) Lilith flew off, married Samael Satan, and became the first vampire succubus, later promising to murder Adam's human children and rape him in the middle of the night to sire her demonic horde. Eve came a bit later, presumably because Adam was getting lonely and God wanted to reward his hard work with a fuck-free fuck-buddy. They were both naked and they didn't know what to do about that at first. He is also famous for liking pomegranates apples, although this seems to have caused some problems. Eve liked them as well. That’s according to God's blog, the book of Genesis (not the band).

Eve (חַוָּה‎) was the legendary first female human and Adam's wife. She was brought into being some time during Creation Week and initially lived in the Garden of Eden with her husband. After "the fall", the two were exiled from the Garden and settled somewhere to the east of Eden.

Eve has taken most of the blame for the Fall of Man, since she gave Adam the forbidden fruit of sin, allegorically "tempting" Adam with her sexual presence. Historically, this has given a theological justification for the poor treatment of women in many Christian countries.

The myths of Eve and the entire Garden were and remain important to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and the myth itself provides foundation for the way the Western and middle Orient societies have viewed women.

In the Quran, Adam is given the name by God known as the (Adam-I-Safi) or The Chosen One.^[2][3]

Navel[edit]

A famous rendition, with navel, by Albrecht Dürer

One curious question surrounding Adam, and Lilith Eve for that matter, is whether or not they would have had navels (belly-buttons). Obviously, as they weren't born in the conventional sense, they wouldn't have needed umbillical cords (and there are cases where people don't have belly buttons because they heal up perfectly, causing some interesting results that require the attention of photoshop,^[4] but we digress). More interestingly, as they were "born" fully formed, where did they get their basic knowledge of how to operate their bodies in the first place? Newborns — essentially the human equivalent of a laptop that's just had fdisk run on it — are notorious for being malcoordinated for several months.

Biblical myth[edit]

Genesis[edit]

A depiction of Eve by Eva Goltzius

The story of Eve is recounted in the second of the two Biblical accounts of Creation, in Genesis 2-3. God, having created all the world, has crowned his achievement with Adam, the first man. Adam is perfect and happy, enjoying an idyllic but solitary existence. He had no problems, except perhaps the mystery of his testicles ("What are these even for?")

To help Adam in his solitude, God obligingly created all of the animals and crammed them into the Garden of Eden with the First Man. Adam gave them all names ("There are how many species of beetles?!"), but it was not enough to cure his growing loneliness.

God finally determined to make a companion for Adam, and so he caused him to fall asleep, plucked out a rib,^{[note 1]} and used it to create a new creature. Adam called it a "woman," and her name was Eve.^{[note 2]}

All was well in Eden for a time. Adam and Eve are said to have been naked and unashamed, which many have interpreted to mean "celibate." They ate of the fruit of the trees, and occupied themselves with whatever is done by people who neither have sex nor cook.^{[note 3]} Unfortunately, a serpent (typically seen as Satan, although others have seen it as Lilith, coming back for vengeance) decided to interfere. There was a tree in the center of the garden that the couple had been instructed to leave alone — God had commanded them that they "must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

The serpent told Eve that God had forbidden this fruit because if the First Couple ate it, they would become like gods, full of knowledge about good and evil. And because the fruit was "good to the eye," and she was tempted by wisdom, Eve ate of the fruit. It is not listed what type of fruit it was, although it is popularly associated with the apple and pomegranate.

Eve also gave some of the fruit to Adam, and he ate it without hesitating. When they had both eaten from the forbidden fruit, knowledge came upon them, and they realized that they were naked and that this was shameful. They sewed fig leaves together to form garments^{[note 4]} to hide their nakedness.

16^th century depiction of Adam and Eve

God, curiously uninformed for an omniscient deity, was unable to find the humans when he went for a stroll in the Garden at twilight. God still strolled back then, having only recently been elevated from typical Bronze Age polytheism. He deduced that Adam and Eve had eaten of the forbidden fruit, disobeying his express command.

Greatly wroth, God cast the couple out of the Garden and cursed both them and the serpent. Eve was cursed with painful childbirth, and demoted from equal companion to submissive subordinate, and both she and Adam would now be mortal, subject to death and pain. God cast them out of Eden, and set an angel with a flaming sword to guard the entrance.

Adam and Eve went out into the hard world, began farming and copulating, and founded the human race. And having discovered both sandwiches and oral sex, they probably didn't feel all that much regret.

Apocrypha[edit]

In both the Jewish and Christian canonical scriptures, Eve's story ends without much fanfare. However, there are other references to her that have been written by Jewish and Christian authors, perhaps as blatant fiction or supposed fact. The Book of Jubilees mentions two daughters, Awan and Azura, who became the wives of Cain and Seth respectively in this explicitly incestuous variant of the story.^[5] In Genesis, it is unexplained who their wives were or where they came from.

Possible roots[edit]

Sumerian[edit]

Like many of the Genesis stories, the story of the Garden of Eden, and specifically Eve's role in ticking off the god, possibly has its roots in the story of Ninhursag, a Sumerian myth that preceded the Biblical tale.^[6] In the Sumerian version, the goddess Ninhursag^{[note 5]} and her husband Enki happily lived in Dilmud (modern-day Bahrain), but their daughter complained that there was no available water. Enki was given the task to draw water up, but began to obsess over sex and raped his daughter and their incestuous offspring. Enraged, Ninhursag took the semen out of them and planted it in the ground, causing eight plants to grow. Enki ate them, impregnating himself in eight of his body parts. Ninhursag saves him by taking the semen into her body and giving birth to eight children, including one (Ninti) who grew from Enki's rib.

Another Sumerian myth that parallels the story of, specifically Adam as there is no wife, is that of Adapa. The first man and priest on Earth and founder of civilization, Adapa was made mortal by Enki and was warned by him not to consume the food and water offered in Heaven, which would kill him. One day, Adapa broke the wing of the south wind following an accident, angering the sky god An. Adapa's reputation changes in front of An, who offers him the food and water of immortality as a reward, which he refuses due to Enki's instructions. An is angered again, and sends Adapa, having blew his chance for immortality, back to Earth.

The parallels are obvious. It's also obvious that the Sumerians went forward in time and copied the divinely-inspired true story of the Jews. Crafty Sumerians!

First woman?[edit]

Jews, Christians, and Muslims maintain that Eve was the first woman created by God according to the Bible. However some Apocryphal writings have another version of the fable. In the Babylonian Talmud (generally believed to be written between 400BCE and 200 BCE, which can be compared to the dating of the Hebrew canon around 600 BCE, and the scrolls upon which the creation story was originally invented which might be as old as 1200 BCE), God first creates a woman named "Lilith". Babylonian myths seem to associate Lilith to a race of demons. However, there are arguments made (both from the "Women ruled the world once" crowd of Eisler's fame, and the more realistic arguments made by religion scholars that have documented the demonization of female figures throughout mythic and factual history) that women who held roles of power — either mythic or real-world power — were demonized as matriarchal cultures became more patriarchal. Nevertheless, the myth of Lilith exists in several non-Biblical, Abrahamic sources such as Song of the Sage, a book found among the Dead Sea Scrolls,^[7] suggesting she might have been part of the mythic stories about Eve to explain the existence of people other than the Israelites.

Eve as symbol[edit]

Scapegoat[edit]

To many, the biblical story of Eve has had a single purpose: to blame woman for the fall of mankind. Eve caused original sin by acceding to temptation and eating the forbidden fruit, and then brought Adam into her sin by offering some to him. Eve was foolish and sinful, and by extension so are all women. Thus, a fanciful myth becomes the justification to subjugate an entire gender.

It is important to note two things about this scapegoating of poor Eve:

1. In the actual story from Genesis, Eve is not a great temptress. In fact, she does no tempting at all; she just hands Adam the fruit. The idea that she is a "temptress" comes predominantly from oral tradition and later interpretation, which sought to put the greatest possible blame on the "inferior" woman.
2. Despite this, God does blame Eve and specifically relegates her to secondary status. The injustice comes right from the top.

Eve is blamed for the Fall of Man and has been depicted throughout time in a historical dualism as the "evil" side of woman, with Mary (Mother of Jesus) as the "good" side of woman. Why Eve should get the blame doesn't make much sense, as until she ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, she couldn't possibly be held accountable for her actions, as she did not yet know good and evil. The God of the Old Testament has a lot to answer for. YHWH is, indeed, "arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully," according to Richard Dawkins in his book, The God Delusion.

Temptation[edit]

The figure of Eve has long had connotations of temptation, in keeping with her traditional role in the story. In part, Eve represents the dark side of women and the sinful nature of man, as the first sinner.^[8] But even further, she is a dichotomy unto herself as the embodiment of both sides of a false duality that has been established for women: the choice between ingenue and fallen woman. For much of history, women were seen in one or the other of two roles:

1. virginal Eve in the Garden, a figure of virtue and innocence rivaled only by Jesus' mother Mary
2. sinful Eve in the dust of the earth, a "used" woman whose own New Testament parallel would be Mary Magdalene

This duality resonates throughout literature, and became embedded in the social structure of Western and Middle Eastern society, justified by myth. A woman's value was defined by her sexual status.

Gender confusion[edit]

In contrast to the clear dichotomy of traditional male and female roles in the Fall, we find:

In both the Bible and the platonic doctrine of the androgyne, Eve appears as an excision of the first being, which integrated sexual duality.^[9]

Mitochondrial Eve[edit]

There was a very real sort of "Eve," called the Mitochondrial Eve, who lived around 150,000 years ago. Every living human can trace their matrilineal ancestry to her, although this is more of an artifact of genetics than any mark of personal importance for this anonymous ancestor. She probably lived in Kenya in the Great Rift Valley.^[10] It should be borne in mind that there is nothing lastingly special about her, as the identity of the Mitochondrial Eve inevitably changes over time with changes in population (specifically in our DNA).

Y-chromosomal Adam[edit]

In genetics, Y-chromosomal Adam is the most recent male human who all living male humans are patrilinearly descended from. He is the male counterpart to Mitochondrial Eve.

See also[edit]

• Garden of Eden
• Original sin
• Omphalos hypothesis

External links[edit]

• The Brick Testament: The Garden of Eden

Notes[edit]

References[edit]