Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve are foundational figures in the creation narratives of the Abrahamic religions, which include Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. According to these traditions, Adam is created by God from dust, while Eve is formed from Adam's rib to provide companionship. They initially inhabit the Garden of Eden, living in harmony with God until they disobey His command by eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This act leads to their expulsion from paradise, a pivotal event often referred to as the Fall, which introduces themes of sin and human struggle into the narrative. Their descendants are said to propagate the Earth, but their wickedness culminates in widespread violence, prompting God to send a flood that spares only Noah’s family. The story of Adam and Eve has had a profound cultural and theological impact, influencing doctrines and rituals across centuries and serving as a lens through which to understand human nature, morality, and relationships. Additionally, the narrative has inspired countless artistic interpretations and discussions, making it a significant part of both religious and secular discourse.
On this Page
Subject Terms
Adam and Eve
Within the divine-creation narratives of the Abrahamic religious traditions, Adam and Eve are the first human beings. God creates Adam from dust and divine breath, and Eve is created from Adam’s rib. Together they live in harmony with God in a garden paradise until they disobey His prohibition against eating fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This development is called the Fall narrative, where God expels Adam and Eve from paradise and condemns them, and all of their descendants, to hard agricultural and child-bearing labors. Adam and Eve’s children grow and begin to populate the Earth, but their wickedness leads to widespread violence and polygamy until God drowns all but one family in a great flood. The Abrahamic religions, which include Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, all operate on a global scale and include over half of the world’s population. Over thousands of years, billions of people have looked to the story of Adam and Eve to learn what it means to be human. The influence of Adam and Eve is thus so enormous that it reaches beyond religious discourse to appear in numerous forms of popular art and culture. Seen as the parents of all humanity, Adam and Eve are widely considered prototypes for human behavior in its moral range between good and evil.
Background
The story of Adam and Eve derives from a pre-historic Hebrew oral tradition of creation narratives that achieved their current written form approximately 2,500 years ago and became known as Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Bible. The book of Genesis is composite and relates two distinct creation stories.
Chapter 1 starts the P or priestly narrative, where God creates a "very good" universe over six days. On the sixth day He creates humanity "male and female" in His image and gives them the newly created Earth. "And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth" (1:28). With this blessing they are very prolific and go on to bear an extended line of long-lived descendants.
A longer version of the creation story focusing on humanity’s Fall is presented in the J or Yahwist narrative of Genesis chapters 2–4 and 6. Adam is created to live in the Garden of Eden, but it is "not good" for Adam to be alone so God creates a helper from Adam’s rib. Adam rejoices, saying "this is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh" (2:23–2:24). Both husband and wife are naked and not ashamed, but when the serpent informs the woman that she will not die from eating God’s forbidden fruit, that instead they will become "as Gods," she eats and shares with Adam. They quickly see their nakedness and feel shame so they sew clothing and attempt to hide. In response to God’s questions, Adam blames his wife and she blames the serpent. God punishes each of the three and all of their progeny: the serpent is cursed to crawl and eat dust, woman is condemned to painful child-bearing and her husband’s rule, and Adam must sweat and toil to raise food. Knowledgeable and fallen, Adam now names his wife Eve "because she was the mother of all living," and both are driven from the Garden (3.20–3.24). Their children and their many descendants go on to do evil and spread violence and corruption so God drowns all but Noah’s family in a great flood.
Impact
The impact of Adam and Eve extends globally across thousands of years. Widely regarded as the revealed word of God, their story serves as the leading frame of the Bible, which holds the Guinness World Record for the best-selling book of all time. Translated into hundreds of languages with billions of copies not simply printed, distributed, and read but also devoutly studied and actively incorporated into billions of lives, it would be difficult to find a story with greater impact. Within the Judeo-Christian religious traditions, the relationships between God, Adam, and Eve provide the basis for defining doctrines such as monotheism or creationism, and important rituals like marriage. In contemporary theology Adam and Eve remain essential figures; for instance, St. John Paul II’s Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body (2006) cites Genesis to explore divine aspects of gender. In the West, even outside of religious communities and even when Adam and Eve are not directly cited, the basic patterns of their story, such as human domination of the Earth, humanity’s difficulty obeying God, or men’s rule over women, are so foundational that they are frequently considered inherent parts of human nature rather than cultural beliefs and practices. Modern scientific consensus discounts the story of Adam and Eve, noting that a single pair of common ancestors cannot account for humanity’s genetic diversity.
The themes introduced in Genesis have been extensively developed and reacted to in a spectacular range of religious and secular art forms for millennia. Artistic representations are interpretations of Adam and Eve, not simple reprints, so they all necessarily expand and contract elements of the story in accord with the artist’s purpose and vision. From among thousands of examples, Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes (1512) stand out as masterworks, and in poetry John Milton’s famous epic Paradise Lost (1667) amplifies the story of the Fall with more than 10,000 verses. Adam and Eve remain extremely popular with modern artists. In the early twentieth century, Mark Twain wrote a successful novel called Extracts from Adam’s Diary (1904), and in 2008 Disney Pixar’s Academy Award-winning animated film WALL-E featured a robot named EVE. Many works are critical of the values communicated in Genesis, as with Miriam Schapiro’s lithograph/collage "Adam and Eve" (1990) depicting Adam in what may be a striped prison uniform. Whether approached with reverence or criticism there is no doubt that Adam and Eve will continue to serve as important archetypes for centuries to come.
Bibliography
Arthur, George, and Elena Arthur. The Mythology of Eden. Lanham: Hamilton, 2014. Print.
Best Selling Book of Non-Fiction. Guinness World Records. n.d. Web. 6 Dec. 2015. http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/best-selling-book-of-non-fiction.
Charberek, Michael. Catholicism and Evolution: A History From Darwin to Pope Francis. Kettering: Angelico, 2015. Print.
Farris, Joshua, and Charles Taliaferro, eds. The Ashgate Companion to Theological Anthropology. Burlington: Ashgate, 2015. Print.
John Paul II. Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body. Trans. Michael Waldstein. Boston: Pauline, 2006. Print.
King James Bible. King James Bible Online. n.d. [1611] Web. 6 Dec. 2015. www.kingjamesonline.org.
Madeume, Hans, and Michael Reeves, eds. Adam, The Fall, and Original Sin: Theological, Biblical, and Scientific Perspectives. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2014. Print.
Michelangelo. Sistine Chapel Ceiling. 1512. Sistine Chapel, Rome. Vatican Museums. Web. 6 Dec. 2015. http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/sistina‗vr/index.html.
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2005. Print.
Schapiro, Miriam. Adam and Eve. 1990. Fullerton College Art Gallery, Fullerton. Fullerton College Art Gallery. Web. 6 Dec. 2015. http://acg2.fullcoll.edu/artcollection/htmlPAGES/PrintHTML/schapiroM.htm.
Twain, Mark. The Diaries of Adam and Eve. San Francisco: Fair Oaks, 2002. Print.
Walton, John. The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2–3 and the Human Origins Debate. Downers Grove: Intervarsity, 2015. Print.