man (with horns) and perhaps a woman, both clothed, on either side of a fruit-tree, towards which they stretch out their hands.[1] For the meaning of this is extremely problematical. Some better monumental illustration may some day be found, for it is clear that the Babylonian sacred literature had much to tell of offences against the gods in the primeval age.
The student may naturally ask, Whence did the Israelites (a comparatively young people) obtain the original myth? It is most probable that they obtained it through the mediation either of the Canaanites or of the North Arabians. Babylonian influence, as is now well known, was strongly felt for many centuries in Canaan, and even the cuneiform script was in common use among the high officials of the country. When the Israelites entered Canaan, they would learn myths partly of Babylonian origin. North Arabian influence must also have been strong among the Israelites, at least while they sojourned in North Arabia. From the Kenites, at any rate, they may have received, not only a strong religious impulse, but a store of tales of the primitive age, and these stories too may have been partly influenced by Babylonian traditions. We must allow for stages of development both among the Israelites and among their tutors.
9. Biblical References to the Adam-story.—It is remarkable how little influence the Adam-story has had on the earlier parts of the Old Testament. The garden of Eden is referred to in Isa. li. 3, Ezek. xxxvi, 35. Joel ii. 5; cp. Ezek. xxviii. 13, xxxi. 8, 9, 16, 18, all of which are later. And it is mostly in the “humanistic” book of Proverbs that we find allusions to the “tree of life” (Prov. iii. 18, xi. 30, xiii. 12, xv. 4), and to the “fountain of life”—perhaps (see § 4) an omitted portion of the old Paradise story (Prov. x. 11, xiii. 14, xiv. 27, xvi. 22),—the only other Biblical reference (apart from Rev. xxi. 6) being in that exquisite passage, Ps. xxxvi. 9. One can hardly be surprised at this. The Adam-story is plainly of foreign origin, and could not please the greater pre-exilic prophets. In late post-exilic times, however, foreign tales, even if of mythical origin, naturally came into favour, especially as religious symbols. If even now philosophers and theologians cannot resist the temptation to allegorize, how inevitable was it that this course should be pursued by early Jewish theologians!
10. Incipient Reflexion on the Story.—Let us give some instances of this. In Enoch lxix. 6 we find the story of Eve’s temptation read in the light of that of the fallen angels (Gen. vi. 1, 2, 4) who conveyed an evil knowledge to men, and so subjected mankind to mortality. Evidently the writer fears culture. Elsewhere eating the fruit of the “tree of wisdom” is given as the cause of the expulsion of the human pair. In the Wisdom of Solomon (x. 1, 2) we find another view. Here, as in Ezekiel, the first man is pre-eminently wise and strong; though he transgressed, wisdom rescued him, i.e. taught him repentance (cp. Life of Adam and Eve, §§ 1-8). Elsewhere (ii. 24; cp. Jos. Ant. i. 1, 4) death is traced to the envy of the devil, still implying an exalted view of Adam. It is held that, but for his sin, Adam would have been immortal. Clearly the Jewish mind is exposed to some fresh foreign influences. As in the Talmud and the Jerusalem Targum, the serpent has even become the devil, i.e. Satan. The period of syncretism has fully come, and Zoroastrianism in particular, more indirectly than directly, is exercising an attractive power upon the Jews. For all that, the theological thinking is characteristically Jewish, and such guidance as Jewish thinkers required was mainly given by Greek culture. On this subject see further Eve, § 5.
11. Growth of a Theology.—Let us now turn to the Apocalypses of Baruch and of Ezra (both about 70 A.D.). Different views are here expressed. According to one (xvii. 3, xix. 8, xxiii. 4) the sin of Adam was the cause of physical death; according to another (liv. 15, lvi. 6), only of premature physical death, while according to a third (xlviii. 42, 43) it is spiritual death which is to be laid to his account. Of these three views, it is only the second which harmonizes with Gen. ii.-iii. In one of the two passages which express it we are also told that each member of the human race is “the Adam of his own soul.” Adam, like Satan in Ecclus. xxi; 27, has become a psychological symbol. Truly, a worthy development of the seed-thoughts of the original narrator, and (must we not add?) entirely opposed to any doctrine of Original Sin.
In 4 Ezra, too, we find no real endorsement of such a doctrine. It is true, not only physical death (iii. 7), but spiritual, is traced to the act of Adam (iii. 21, 22, iv. 30, 31, vii. 118-121). But two modifying facts should be noticed. One is that Adam is said to have had from the first a wicked heart, owing to which he fell, and his posterity likewise, into sin and guilt. All men have the same seed of evil in them that Adam had; they sin and die, like him. The other is that, according to iii. 7-12, there are at least two ages of the world. The first ended with the Flood, so that any consequences of Adam’s sin were, strictly speaking, of limited duration. The second began with righteous Noah and his household, “of whom came all righteous men.” It was the descendants of these who “began again to do ungodliness more than the former ones.” Doubtless the problem of evil is most imperfectly treated, even from the writer’s point of view. But it would be cruel to pick holes in a writer whose thinking, like that of St Paul, is coloured by emotion.
At this point we might well make more than a passing reference to St Paul (Rom. v. 14; 1 Cor. xv. 22, 45, 47), whose doctrine of sin is evidently of mixed origin. But we cannot find space for this here. In compensation let it be mentioned that in Rev. xii. 9 (cp. xx. 2) the “great dragon,” who persecuted the woman “clothed with the sun,” is identified with “the old serpent, that is called the Devil and Satan.” The identification is incorrect. But it may be noticed here that the phrase “the old serpent” sheds some light on the Pauline phrases “the first man Adam” and “the last Adam” (1 Cor. xv. 45, 47). The underlying idea is that the new age (that of the new heaven and earth) will be opened by events parallel to those which opened the first age. As the old serpent deceived man of old, so shall it be again. And as at the head of the first age stands the first Adam, whose doings affected all his descendants to their harm, so at the head of the second shall stand the second Adam, whose actions shall be potent for good. There is reason to suspect that the expression “the second Adam” is the coinage either of St Paul or of some one closely connected with him (as Prof. G. F. Moore has shown), for there is no proof that such terms as “the last,” or “the second Adam,” were generally current among the Jews.
12. Jewish Legends.—The parallelism between the first and second Adam in 1 Cor. xv. 45 is a parallelism of contrast. Jewish legends, however, suggest another sort of parallelism. The Haggadah gives the most extravagant descriptions of the glory of Adam before his fall. The most prominent idea is that being in the image of God—the God whose essence is light—he must have had a luminous body (like the angels). “I made thee of the light,” says God in the Book of Adam and Eve (Malan, p. 16), “and I willed to bring children of light from thee.” Similarly in Baba batra, 58a, we read, “he was of extraordinary beauty and sun-like brightness.” So glorious was he that even the angels were commanded through Michael to pay homage to Adam. Satan, disobeying, was cast out of heaven; hence his ill-will towards Adam (Life of Adam and Eve, §§ 13-17; cp. Koran, xvii. 63, xx. 115, xxxviii. 74).
It only remains to give due honour to one of the most beautiful of legends, that of the deliverance of Adam’s spirit from the nether world by the Christ, the earliest form of which is a Christian interpolation in Apoc. Moses, § 42 (cp. Malan, Adam and Eve, iv. 15, end). We may compare a partly parallel passage in § 37, where the agent is Michael, and notice that such legendary developments were equally popular among Jews and Christians.
Authorities.— On the apocryphal Books of Adam, see Hort, Dict. of Chr. Biography, i. 37 ff. In English we have Malan’s translation of the Ethiopic Book of Adam (1882), and Issaverden’s translation of another Book of Adam from the Armenian (Venice, 1901). In German, see Fuchs’s translations in Kautzsch’s Die Apokryphen, ii. 506 ff. For full bibliography see Schürer, Gesch.
- ↑ See Smith and Sayce, Chaldaean Genesis, p. 88; Delitzsch, Wo lag das Paradies? p. 90; Babel and Bible, Eng. trans., p. 56, with note on pp. 114-118; Zimmern, Die Keilinschr. und das A.T., ed. 3, p. 529; Jeremias, Das Alte Test. im Lichte d. Alten Orient. pp. 104-106.
