The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve

by Stephen Greenblatt

  Illustrations

  1. From the catacombs in Rome, one of the earliest surviving images of the Bible’s first humans. Adam and Eve, third century CE, fresco.

  Photo PCSA Archives.

  2. The fallen Adam and Eve on the sarcophagus of a Roman Christian. Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus (detail), c. 359 CE.

  3. Adam with some of the animals whom he names. Adam in the Garden of Eden, fifth century.

  4. The scenes on these bronze doors form an elaborate storytelling program, with scenes from Genesis on the left panel carefully paired with scenes from the gospels on the right. Bernward Doors, c. 1015.

  5. A famous problem: who is the person looking on? The Creation of Eve (detail from the Bernward Doors).

  6. Adam blames Eve, Eve the serpent, and God all three. The Judgment of Adam and Eve by God (detail from the Bernward Doors).

  7. God himself pushes Adam and Eve, carrying the implements they need for labor, out of paradise, twelfth century.

  8. The twelfth-century figure of Eve, from the portal of the Cathedral of Saint-Lazare, seems suspended between penitence and provocation. Gislebertus, The Temptation of Eve, c. 1130.

  9. As in this thirteenth-century crucifix, the head beneath the bleeding feet of Jesus is traditionally thought to be Adam, c. 1200.

  10. Here God has only begun to turn the rib, taken from the sleeping Adam’s side, into the woman.

  © 2017 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Lat. 5697 fol. 16r. (detail of God creating Eve from Adam’s rib), fifteenth century, reproduced by permission of Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, with all rights reserved.

  11. Eve, in the company of Jews, brings death into the world, while Mary, holding the crucifix, offers redemption to the Christian faithful. Mors per Evam, vita per Mariam, c. 1420.

  12. In Paradise, Dante and Beatrice see all of salvation history, from the Fall to the Annunciation to the Crucifixion. Giovanni di Paolo, The Mystery of Redemption from Paradiso Canto VII, c. 1450.

  13. In the seventeenth century, long after they were painted, Masaccio’s Adam and Eve were given fig leaves that were only removed in the 1980s. Masaccio, The Expulsion (from a photograph taken c. 1980, before its restoration), 1424–1428.

  14. Masaccio emphasizes the nakedness and abject misery of Adam and Eve. Masaccio, The Expulsion, 1424–1428.

  15. Adam and Eve seem to stand in their niches as if they were fully, eerily alive. The scene above Adam depicts the offerings of Cain and Abel; that above Eve depicts the murder of Abel by Cain. Jan and Hubert van Eyck, interior of left and right wings of the Ghent Altarpiece, 1432, oil on panel, Saint Bavo Cathedral, Ghent.

  16. Dürer’s depiction of the final moment of innocence, captured as if by a camera with a very fast shutter speed, became almost immediately famous. Albrecht Dürer, Adam and Eve, 1504.

  © Museum Associates/LACMA.

  17. In this preparatory study, Dürer plays with the idea that Adam himself plucks the fatal fruit. Sheet of studies for the hand and arm of Adam and for rocks and bushes for the engraving of Adam and Eve, 1504.

  © The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved.

  18. Dürer’s fascination with the nakedness of Adam and Eve extends here to his own body. Albrecht Dürer, Self-Portrait in the Nude, 1505.

  19. Eve is a sly seductress, while Adam is a rotting corpse. Hans Baldung Grien, Eve, the Serpent, and Death, c. 1510–1515.

  20. Bosch shows Adam rapt in contemplation of Eve, while creatures in Eden eat each other. Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Delights (detail), 1504.

  © Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado.

  21. While a beautiful woman—perhaps Eve—looks on, the spark of life seems to be passing from God’s finger to Adam’s. Michelangelo, The Creation of Adam, 1508–1512.

  22. Adam is already enervated by the fall. Jan Gossart, Adam and Eve, c. 1520.

  © Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth.

  23. A baffled Adam accepts the half-eaten apple from Eve. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Adam and Eve, 1526.

  24. Is Adam attempting to restrain or to support Eve as she reaches for the forbidden fruit offered by a cherubic serpent? Titian, Adam and Eve, c. 1550.

  © Museo Nacional del Prado.

  25. The Virgin Mary and her son together crush the snake. Caravaggio, Madonna dei Palafrenieri (detail), 1605–1606.

  26. With unnerving frankness, Rembrandt depicts the aging, all-too-human bodies of Adam and Eve. Rembrandt van Rijn, Adam and Eve, 1638.

  27. Lelli’s hyper-realistic figures of Adam and Eve were made from wax applied to human bones. Ercole Lelli, Anatomical waxes of Adam and Eve, eighteenth century.

  28. The fruit Eve seems to be offering Adam is her breast. Max Beckmann, Adam and Eve, 1917.

  29. Based on surviving footprints, this imaginary scene of Lucy and her mate seems to invoke Adam and Eve exiled from Paradise. “Lucy” (australopithecus afarensis) and her mate, reconstruction by John Holmes under the direction of Ian Tattersall.

  Appendix 1

  A Sampling of Interpretations

  Over the centuries there have been innumerable interpretations of the story of Adam and Eve. Many of the most influential interpretations figure in this book. But it is impossible to convey the full richness, variety, cunning, and on occasion wildness of the vast archive that has accumulated and that continues to grow. What follows are a few attempts to conjure up, in modern idiom, some fragmentary pieces of this archive. The language for the most part is my own, but I have stitched each of them together from one or more original sources listed in the notes.

  WHEN EVE VIOLATED THE PROHIBITION and ate the forbidden fruit, Adam was not with her—some say that they had made love and that the man was taking a nap; others that he had gone off to conduct a survey of the Garden. The first sign he had that something was wrong was the fact that Eve had covered her genitals and her buttocks with fig leaves. At first Adam could not even understand what she had done—he thought that the leaves had stuck to her by accident. But then when he looked more closely, he realized that she had made small holes and threaded the leaves together with vegetable fibers.

  [Abba Halfon b. Koriah. Genesis Rabbah (fourth and fifth centuries CE), 19:3; The Book of Jubilees 9c. 100–150 BCE[?]), 3:22]

  THE FIRST HUMANS WERE perfectly beautiful and very wise, but they lacked one of the five senses on which fallen humanity most depends: sight. In their original state Adam and Eve were completely blind. They had no need to see, since they were in a world designed to meet their every need. If they wanted something to eat or drink, it was always there within their grasp. And when God brought the animals to Adam for him to name, Adam simply reached out and touched each of them, knowing from the touch what name to assign. Perhaps their happy blindness—happy, of course, because they did not know that they could not see—helps to explain their transgression, since it must have been difficult for them to distinguish the forbidden fruit from all others, particularly since the Enemy was bent on deceiving them. Their condition helps to explain their complete absence of shame, for it was only after their Fall that God removed the coating that had blinded their eyes. As soon as they could see, in the wake of their disobedience, they hastened to cover themselves: “And the eyes of the two were opened, and they knew they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves and made themselves loincloths.”

  [Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–c. 215)]

  THE NEWLY CREATED HUMANS were physically mature—God gave them the form and attributes of twenty-year-olds—and in many ways they were impressively accomplished. But they were also newborns, only beginning to accommodate themselves to the world. It was for this reason that God commanded them not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The fruit of that tree was not in itself poisonous. On the contrary, for a mature human it was the best of all possible nourishment, and God fully intended Adam and Eve to eat from it in due time. But as with all the foods we eat, some are appropriate to infant stomachs and some are not. Paradise was
unusual in having only a single fruit that was decidedly not appropriate, and God told the newborn humans that they could eat the fruit of every other tree. But Eve and Adam, deceived by the serpent into an act of rash impatience, tried to consume the fruit of the forbidden tree before they were ready for it. It was like an infant trying to gobble down a steak, and it is no surprise at all that the consequence to them was fatal.

  [Theophilus of Antioch (fl. second century)]

  EVE WAS HOLDING A BRANCH on which there was a ripe, red fruit, unmistakably the fruit of the forbidden tree. She said to Adam, “Take and eat.” He had some difficulty hearing her, as if her voice were coming from some distant place, or as if the voice and the language it spoke were not quite hers. He felt confused and baffled and, above all, drowsy. He remembered, of course, that God had told him not to eat of the fruit of that particular tree, but he could not quite recall why. He realized that, since he did not know the meaning of the word “die,” he had not really understood at the time what God was talking about. He could almost grasp the notion of a commandment—since the commandment to be fruitful and multiply had corresponded to his desire for Eve—but the notion of not doing something made no sense to him. He reached out languidly, took the fruit, and ate.

  [Cappadocian Fathers (fourth century CE)]

  WHILE EVE WAS OFF CONVERSING with the serpent, Adam had been staring intensely at the refulgent light of the heavens. Contemplating the glory of God—boundless, incomprehensible, and utterly overwhelming—was what filled his days and his nights. Everything was absorbed in this rapt contemplation, even his hours of sleep, his moments of calm sexual coupling with his wife, his simple breathing in and out, in and out. God was everywhere and everything. When Eve offered him the forbidden fruit, the fruit that God himself had warned them not to eat, Adam immediately took it and ate. Why? “I am exhausted,” he said to himself. “I want to return now to the clay from which I was made. I want to die.”

  [Gregory of Nyssa (c. 332–395)]

  HAVING FAILED TO FIND a suitable companion for the human among the creatures made out of clay, the Lord God decided to build one out of bone. He thought the human would find the whole process fascinating, so He let him watch as He deftly opened his side, removed a suitable bone with which to begin, and closed the wound He had made. He then set to work on the project, not modeling the new figure out of clay, as He had done with the first human and all the other animals, but rather constructing it as an architect might do: a vast network of veins, arteries, and nerves; a fabulously complex arrangement of internal organs able to interact with the environment, convert food to energy, regulate the creature’s metabolism, and excrete waste; a brain whose involuted material could perform calculations with dazzling speed; a tongue, larynx, and vocal cords suitable for speaking and singing; and finally a graceful exterior, quite similar to that of the first human but sufficiently varied to excite interest and designed to facilitate sexual reproduction. God looked at what He had done and saw that it was very good. But then He noticed that the human for whom He had done all this had a look of disgust on his face. Adam found the interior of the new creature, the tangle of blood and soft tissue and pulsing organs, nauseating. The idea of living with this creature, let alone mating with it, was unendurable. God had to destroy what He had made and to start again.

  [R. Jose. Genesis Rabbah (fourth and fifth centuries CE) 17:7]

  WHEN THEY HAD EATEN of the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve realized that, while they were doomed to die, the animals over which they held sway were, as things stood, going to live forever. They knew they had very little time, and so they began to rush everywhere, with the forbidden fruits in their hands, feeding each of the animals so that all would be mortal. Could they have explained why they were in such a hurry to doom all living creatures? Perhaps they were mindful of God’s earlier command and feared that, by failing to hold sway over the animals, they would be violating yet another divine edict. Perhaps they did not want anyone else, even simple brutes, to enjoy what they were condemned to lose. In any case, they succeeded in finding and feeding all of the cattle and beasts and birds—an astounding feat—with the exception of a single bird. That bird, the phoenix, still lives forever.

  [R. Simlai(?) Genesis Rabbah 19:5 (fourth and fifth centuries CE)]

  AND THE HUMAN SAID, “The woman whom you gave by me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.” And the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent beguiled me and I ate.” And Lord God called the serpent to Him, and the serpent uneasily stepped forward. And the Lord God took a sharp knife and cut off the serpent’s feet and legs. This is why from that day forward serpents crawl on their bellies.

  [George Syncellus (fl. eighth century)]

  THE IMMEDIATE EFFECT of his disobedience was to introduce into Adam for the first time the sensation of gloom. At the very moment that he ate the fruit, all his joy vanished and melancholy coagulated in his blood, just as radiance disappears when a candle is blown out, leaving the wick, glowing and smoking, to stink. And there was a further striking effect: Adam had once known the songs of the angels, and his own voice was sublimely tuneful. After his sin, however, there crept into his marrow an ugly wind that is now in every man. This wind in the marrow turned his blissful voice into the sounds of loud jeering and hooting. After bouts of great shaking laughter, tears would come to his eyes, in the same way that the foam of semen is expelled in the ardor of carnal pleasure.

  [Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179)]

  BEFORE THE FALL, Eve did not menstruate. It was only after sinning that all women became animals whose menstrual fluxes must be counted among the world’s monstrosities. For seeds touched with them will not germinate, trees will lose their fruit, iron will rust, bronze will grow black.

  [Alexander Neckam (1157–1217)]

  ADAM SAW PERFECTLY CLEARLY that his wife had been deceived and that the serpent had lured her into a trap from which she could not now escape. She will have to die, he thought, and God will offer to create a new companion for me, either from another one of my ribs or from some other source. But I do not want a new companion. I want this one and only this one. There is but a single way in which I can remain with her, and that is by conjoining my fate to hers. We will live—and when the time comes, we will rot—together.

  [Duns Scotus (1266–1308)]

  AND GOD BLESSED HIM, and God said to him, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and conquer it.” And the human said to God, “How am I supposed to be fruitful and multiply? I am a single creature, made in your image. All the other creatures, the fish of the sea and the fowl of the heavens and the cattle and the wild beasts and all the crawling things that crawl upon the earth, are in pairs, male and female distinct and separate from one another. I see them mate with each other, and through that act they are fruitful. But I am one, both male and female. How can I fulfill your command?” And God took a knife and split the human in half, as an apple is split, making two where there was once one. And God drew flesh over the wounds he had made and left on the belly of each half the mark called a navel as a sign of what he had done. And God said “Now you will be able to multiply and to conquer the earth.” After the cut was made, the two parts of the human, each desiring his other half, came together, and throwing their arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces. The man and the woman were fruitful and multiplied and conquered the earth. But they always felt the wound of their original division and the impossibility, even in their mutual embraces, of healing the wound completely.

  [Judah Abravanel (c. 1464–c. 1523)]

  GOD WAS EVERYWHERE AND EVERYTHING. All the more baffling then that when Eve offered him the forbidden fruit, Adam immediately took it and ate. Why? He could scarcely have put it into words, but if compelled, he might have said: An eternity in this condition is unendurable. I hate the contemplation of the One who made me. I hate the overwhelming debt of gratitude. I hate God.

  [Martin Luthe
r (1483–1546)]

  GOD NOT ONLY KNEW that Adam and Eve would violate his prohibition; He also actively and deliberately impelled them to do so. And if Adam had hesitated before he ate the fatal fruit, if he had dared to question the impulse that God Himself had planted in him, God would have rebuked him with these words: “O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor?”