Chapter 1: The Greek Life of Adam and Eve as Literature

The Story in Outline

Israel’s storytelling begins in Eden—and shortly afterwards in relative squalor east of Eden. Israel’s story of Adam and Eve, in short, is a tale of loss, a brooding epic of exile that mirrored Israel’s own experiences of loss and displacement. Nowhere is such devastating and disturbing loss more poignantly portrayed than in four Greek manuscripts that Constantin von Tischendorf, in the mid-1800s, wrested from obscurity. Imaginatively construed and painted in vivid detail, these stories, which reconfigure Genesis 1-5, are known now as the Life of Adam and Eve (LAE). They comprise a tantalizing tale of brother-murder (1.1-5.1), a heroic but failed quest to retrieve the oil of mercy from paradise to alleviate human pain (5.2-14.2), two autobiographical accounts of temptation and fall (7.1-8.2 and 14.3-30.1), and a vivid depiction of divine forgiveness (31.1-43.4).

LAE is preserved in several versions (see below), and its purpose differs according to which version is read. The dominant purpose of the Greek Life of Adam and Eve (GLAE) is to re-tell the stories of Adam Eve, Cain and Abel, and Seth in order to provide hope for its readers by presenting Adam as a forgiven sinner who endures the pain of existence, faces death with uncertainty, but receives mercy after death. GLAE can be divided into four neat sections, each of which can be encapsulated in a word:

• patrimony

• pain

• parenesis

• pardoning

Patrimony (1.1-5.1; retelling Gen 4:1-5:5). Long after the births of Cain and Abel, in a dream—a nightmare, really—Eve learns of the murder of Abel by Cain. Patrimony, however, does not belong to Cain, to whom Adam must not, God commands, reveal the mystery that Adam knows. God promises instead that Seth will be born to replace Abel. As life goes on, Adam—he is given credit, not Eve—bears thirty sons and thirty daughters. After these births, Adam falls into an unknown condition and gathers his children around him in traditional testamentary fashion.

Pain (5.2-14.2). After having explained to his son Seth the nature of his condition as illness, Adam proposes that Seth and Eve should travel to paradise, beg God to send an angel into paradise to retrieve the oil of mercy, and return with the oil to alleviate Adam’s inscrutable suffering. This story (6.1-2; 9.1-3; 13.1-14.2) is interrupted twice, first by Adam’s autobiographical recollection of the first sin (6.3-8.2), then by a wild animal, which attacks Seth and accuses Eve of initiating, with her greed, the rebellion of the wild animals (10.1-12.2). The scene concludes when the archangel Michael denies Seth’s request. At this point in some Greek manuscripts, though not most, Michael, after denying their request, promises Seth eschatological resurrection. Seth and his mother return incapable of relieving Adam’s duress.

Parenesis (14.3-30.1; retelling Gen 3:1-24). After Seth and Eve return from paradise, Adam again indicts Eve, providing an occasion for her to reveal her own perspective on the first sin in what might be called Eve’s Testament. Eve recounts, in a flourish of biblical and unbiblical elements: the envy of the devil; the entrance of the serpent, the devil’s tool, into paradise; Eve’s inability to resist the devil’s trickery, as he speaks through the serpent; Eve’s taking of the fruit; Eve’s ability to persuade Adam to eat; God’s awesome entry into paradise on a chariot; the sentencing of Adam, Eve, and the serpent; and the expulsion of the first pair from paradise, despite angelic pleas for mercy.

Eve’s autobiography functions as parenesis, as ethical instruction. Eve ends her testament: “Now therefore, my children, I have disclosed to you the way in which we were deceived. And you yourselves—guard yourselves so as not to disregard what is good” (GLAE 30.1). Yet Eve does more than simply warn her children. She adopts the same framework to depict the process of deceit, with five identical steps, in the case of the serpent, herself, and Adam. In each case

• the deceiver approaches and arouses desire (16.1; 18.1; 21.1);

• the deceiver invites the soon-to-be deceived to follow (16.3; 18.1; 21.3);

• the soon-to-be-deceived hesitates, saying, “I fear lest the Lord God be angry with me” (16.4; 18.2; 21.4);

• the deceiver responds with the words, “fear not,” accompanied by a part-truth intended to allay fear (16.5; 18.3-4; 21.4); and

• the deceived capitulates (17.1; 19.3; 21.5).

This pattern is repeated with variations to reinforce, as parenesis or ethical instruction, how Eve’s children can resist evil and hold to what is good. The deception of the serpent outlines the basic elements in the process of deception (GLAE 16). The deception of Eve exposes the inner turmoil of the process (18-19). The deception of Adam, marked by brevity, indicates how easily an unguarded victim falls prey to deception.

Pardoning (31.1-43.4). Following Eve’s Testament, Adam attempts to assuage Eve’s anxiety by promising her a shared destiny with him. Eve then confesses her sin repeatedly and is subsequently instructed by an angel to watch Adam’s ascent. While she is watching, God’s chariot arrives in paradise, replete with an entourage consisting of angels, the sun, and the moon, which fail to give light. Seth explains to Eve what she sees, including the inability of the sun and moon to shine in the presence of God. The story continues with the burial of Adam’s body and the sealing of his tomb until the burial of Eve should take place. Eve is then buried, and the archangel Michael delivers final instructions about burial to Seth.

Cementing these sections are references to pain and disease. It would be a mistake to mention the segments of GLAE that neatly fall into place without recognizing the contribution of pain and disease to the literary whole—not just within each major section but connecting each major section. At each juncture between these scenes, there occurs a reference to pain and disease:

A poignant quality of GLAE rises from the ashes of pain and disease. That it should feature even in the seams is entirely appropriate for a story that is keen to plumb the depths, not only of eternal destiny, but also of quotidian realities, including the pain that pursues the human body.1

While this commentary will at times be granular, with an emphasis upon discrete words, particular cultural contexts, and the details of narrative analysis, it is essential, too, to step back and survey the whole, particularly with respect to pain and disease. GLAE contains the story of pain, of grief, of groaning, and, in so doing, offers a mirror, even, of our own pain a trillion heartbeats later. Siddhartha Mukherjee, in his memoir, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, tells us that “medicine … begins with storytelling …. Patients tell stories to describe illness; doctors tell stories to understand it. Science tells its own story to explain diseases.”2 The Greek Life of Adam and Eve is not a clinical analysis...