Quotes about Adam

When our father Adam came into the garden of Eden, he came into it with a celestial body, and brought Eve, one of his wives, with him.

In Genesis, and indeed for much of the Old Testament, the controlling image for death is exile. Adam and Eve were told that they would die on the day they ate the fruit; what actually happened was that they were

The Bible says that Eve was deceived, it does not say that Adam was deceived; consequently Adam is far more responsible than Eve because he sinned deliberately.

The Adam story, then, is not simply about the past. It's about Israel's present brought into the past—even as far past as the beginning of the human drama itself.

Adam in primordial times plays out Israel's national life. He is proto-Israel—a preview of coming attractions. This does not mean, however, that a historical Adam was a template for Israel's national life. Rather, Israel's drama—its struggles over the land and failure to follow God's law—is placed into primordial time. In doing so, Israel claims that it has been God's special people all along, from the very beginning.

Seeing the similarities between these two stories should discourage us from expecting the Adam story to contribute to contemporary scientific debates about human origins (let alone guide those debates). Likewise, the similarities between Genesis and Atrahasis suggest that the biblical account cannot be labeled "historical," at least not in any conventional sense of the word.

This is the point of the story: the choice put before Adam and Eve is the same choice put before Israel every day: learn to listen to God and follow in his ways and then—only then—you will live. The story of Adam and Eve makes this point in the form of a myth. Proverbs makes it in the form of wisdom literature. Israel's long story in the Old Testament makes it in the form of historical narrative.

The story of Adam and Eve is a preview of Israel's long journey in the Old Testament as a whole.

Here's a simpler explanation: there were other people living outside of the Garden of Eden all along, even if the story doesn't explain it. Which leads to this: maybe the story of Adam and Eve isn't about the first human beings. Maybe it's about something else. And that something else is this: The Adam story is a story of Israel in miniature, a preview of coming attractions.

Another angle, one often taken by Christians in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, is to read the Adam story as being not about a fall down from perfection, but a failure to grow up to godly wisdom and maturity.

The man gave names to all the livestock, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found.

And the man and his wife were both naked, and they were not ashamed.