The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve

by Stephen Greenblatt

  111 in order that: My italics. Augustine does not deny that there might be a literal truth to the words of Scripture, but that literal truth is not what most matters. “Even if the real, visible woman was made, historically speaking, from the body of the first man by the Lord God,” he writes, “it was surely not without reason that she was made like that—it must have been to suggest some hidden truth.” God “filled up the place of that rib with flesh, to suggest by this word the loving affection with which we should love our own souls.” (On Genesis, 2.12.1, p. 83.) In some cases, the literal could come after the spiritual sense. Hence the blessing to “be fruitful and multiply” originated in a spiritual sense and then “was turned into a blessing of fertility in the flesh after sin.” (On Genesis, 1.19.30, p. 58.) On Adam’s labor as an anticipation of Christ’s stretching out of his hand, see On Genesis, 2.22.34, p. 94.

  111 was a mistake: Already by 393, only five years after the Refutation of the Manichees, Augustine was trying his hand, in a text he did not finish, at a more literal interpretation, one that treated the opening chapters of Genesis as a depiction of historical characters and events. All the same, he did not entirely abandon allegorical reading. It left its mark particularly strongly in the closing books of The Confessions. Why did God in Genesis 1:28 bid the first humans “to increase and multiply and fill the earth”? After all, He did not give the same commandment to the fish and the birds and trees, presumably because he expected them to reproduce anyway, without a specific order to do so. God’s commandment to the humans must therefore conceal a special meaning. “What mystery do these words contain?” Augustine asks God; “I see nothing to prevent me from interpreting the words of your Scripture in this figurative sense” (Augustine, Confessions, 13:24). The figurative sense in question reveals that the multiplying God has in mind for humans has nothing to do with sexual reproduction: “I take the reproduction of human kind to refer to the thoughts which our minds conceive, because reason is fertile and productive” (ibid., 13:24).

  111 Plunging into the project: He had immense confidence in his ability, with God’s help, to accomplish anything to which he set his mind. Consider the tone in this passage from The City of God: “Having disposed of the very difficult questions concerning the origin of our world and the beginning of the human race, the natural order requires that we now discuss the fall of the first man (we may say of the first men), and of the origin and propagation of human death” (The City of God, in St. Augustin: The City of God, and Christian Doctrine, p. 245).

  112 the most prolonged and sustained attention: “To hardly any other of his works did Augustine devote such perseverance, such care and circumspection” (Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis in On Genesis, p. 164). On the rejection of “riddling,” see The Literal Meaning of Genesis in Augustine, On Genesis, p. 183.) [Secundum proprietatem rerum gestarum, non secundum aenigmata futurarum.] On the urging of his friends, see Letter 38 (Ep. CLIX), from 415 CE, to his fellow priest Evodius, in which he alludes to “the suspense of anticipation” among his friends to see the book (St. Augustine Select Letters, p. 277).

  112 “more questions were asked than answers found”: “Revisions [Retractiones]” in On Genesis, 2.24.1, p. 167. When he encountered problems like God’s vocal cords, he took refuge in a principle he found himself forced to repeat: “If … in the words of God or of any person performing the prophetic office something is said which taken literally is simply absurd, then undoubtedly it should be understood as being said figuratively” (ibid., 11.1.2, pp. 429–30).

  112 lest he die: If you ask how he could know what “death” meant, Augustine wrote, you should remind yourself that you know many things intuitively, without direct experience of them (cf. On Genesis, 8.16.34).

  113 the literal sense of the Bible’s words: We may be confident, Augustine wrote, that the apples on the fatal tree were the same kind as the apples Adam and Eve had already found to be harmless on other trees. We know that real snakes cannot speak, but the real snake in the real Garden of Eden did not have to speak: “It was the devil himself who spoke in the serpent, using it like an organ” (Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis in Augustine, On Genesis, p. 449). Not all of the details needed to construct a literal reading were necessarily specified in the Scriptures, but we can fill in the gaps by conjecture. And since it would not do to think that the devil had any independent power to compromise either God’s power or the free will of the first humans, we should understand that his words would not have had any effect upon Eve if she had not already had a “love of her own independent authority and a certain proud over-confidence in herself.” (On Genesis, 11.30.39, p. 451.)

  113 Far better had she clung: The City of God in St. Augustin: The City of God, and Christian Doctrine, p. 271. Augustine writes that Adam too erred in presuming God’s forgiveness. He was not deceived by the serpent or by his wife, but “he was deceived as to the judgment which would be passed on his apology.” Presumably, he did not expect the death sentence for what he thought was a venial sin. In Paradise Lost Milton powerfully represents a distraught Adam making the same error.

  114 the sight aroused them: Augustine, “A Letter Addressed to the Count Valerius, on Augustin’s Forwarding to Him What He Calls his First Book ‘On Marriage and Concupiscence’ ” in “Extract from Augustin’s ‘Refractions,’ Book II, Chap. 53, on the Following Treatise, ‘De Nuptiis et Concupiscenta’ ” in St. Augustin: Anti-Pelagian Writings, p. 258.

  114 they had lost their freedom: “Must not this bring the blush of shame over the freedom of the human will, that by its contempt of God, its own Commander, it has lost all proper command for itself over its own members?” (Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence, in St. Augustin: Anti-Pelagian Writings, p. 266). On the rise of shame, see Kyle Harper, From Shame to Sin. On the psychological and somatic experience of shame, see Michael Lewis, Shame: The Exposed Self.

  115 male sexual arousal: On Marriage and Concupiscence, p. 266. On a few occasions he recognized that the woman’s sexual experience might be different. He knew, for example, that for the man the release of seed is deeply pleasurable, but whether “such pleasure accompanies the commingling of the seminal elements of the two sexes in the womb,” he wrote, “is a question which perhaps women may be able to determine from their inmost feelings; but it is improper for us to push an idle curiosity so far” (On Marriage and Concupiscence, p. 293).

  115 “acts against its will!”: On Marriage and Concupiscence, p. 266. In City of God, Augustine remarks on the weird unreliability of arousal: “This emotion not only fails to obey the legitimate desire to beget offspring, but also refuses to serve lascivious lust; and though it often opposes its whole combined energy to the soul that resists it, sometimes also it is divided against itself, and while it moves the soul, leaves the body unmoved” (The City of God, in St. Augustin: The City of God, and Christian Doctrine, p. 276).

  115 “Does it not engage the whole soul and body?”: “And does not this extremity of pleasure,” Augustine continues, “result in a kind of submersion of the mind itself, even if it is approached with a good intention, that is, for the purpose of procreating children, since in its very operation it allows no one to think, I do not say of wisdom, but of anything at all” (Saint Augustine Against Julian, p. 228). On the theological issues with which Augustine is grappling, see Peter Brown, The Body and Society.

  116 a crucially important difference: Sexual reproduction was not the only difference. The Pelagians argued that death, being part of what it meant to be human, would inevitably have come to Adam and Eve as well. Augustine vehemently disagreed: the first humans had the possibility, by means of the Tree of Life, to be immortal. Adam would not have grown old if he had not sinned: he “was supplied with sustenance against decay from the fruit of the various trees, and from the tree of life with security against old age” (Augustine, A Treatise on the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants, in St. Augustin: Anti-Pelagian Writings, p.16). Had
they not sinned, they would not have grown decrepit and would not have died. Though he was less certain of this, Augustine also doubted that the offspring of Adam and Eve, had they remained in Paradise, would have suffered the extreme helplessness all infants now experience. Natural scientists, in the ancient world as now, recognized that prolonged infancy was a hallmark of our species. Augustine believed it was punitive. The issue was not one of size: the constraints of the womb, he understood perfectly well, would have required that infants be very small. But if the first humans had not sinned, their offspring might at once have attained physical and mental competence. After all, he observed, many brute creatures, even when they are newborns, “run about, and recognize their mothers, and require no external help or care when they want to suck, but with remarkable ease discover their mothers’ breasts themselves” (ibid., p. 43). A human being, by contrast, “at his birth is furnished neither with feet fit for walking, nor with hands able even to scratch; and unless their lips were actually applied to the breast by the mother, they would not know where to find it; and even when close to the nipple, they would, notwithstanding their desire for food, be more able to cry than to suck” (ibid., p. 43). This miserable state, he concluded, was almost certainly penal, the consequence of the Fall.

  117 “relaxed on his wife’s bosom”: The description of sex in Paradise is worked out in detail in book 14 of The City of God.

  117 “his body’s integrity”: There was obviously no physical equivalent in the male to the hymen, but just as Augustine imagined that the woman must have an equivalent to the stirrings of the erection, so too he imagined that the man must have a bodily integrity that is violated in sexual intercourse as we experience it.

  118 without a trace of involuntary arousal: Would this public coupling in front of whoever wished to watch have been pleasurable? Augustine was not quite sure. It would, he was certain, have been without “carnal concupiscence,” that is, without involuntary arousal. Cf. Augustine, Marriage and Concupiscence, in St. Augustin: Anti-Pelagian Writings, p. 288: “For why is the especial work of parents withdrawn and hidden even from the eyes of their children, except that it is impossible for them to be occupied in laudable procreation without shameful lust? Because of this it was that even they were ashamed who first covered their nakedness. These portions of their person were not suggestive of shame before, but deserved to be commended and praised as the work of God. They put on their covering when they felt their shame, and they felt their shame when, after their own disobedience to their Maker, they felt their members disobedient to themselves.”

  Chapter 7: Eve’s Murder

  121 the Qur’an depicted: The Qur’an does not depict Eve eating the fruit before Adam, nor does it depict Adam laying the blame on Eve. Eve—in Arabic, Hawwa’—is not mentioned by name in the Qur’an; she is called Adam’s “spouse” and is jointly guilty with her husband for the disobedience that led to their expulsion from Paradise. See Kvam et al. Eve & Adam, esp. pp. 179–202, 413–19, 464–76; Karel Steenbrink, “Created Anew: Muslim Interpretations of the Myth of Adam and Eve,” in Bob Becking and Susan Hennecke, ed., Out of Paradise: Eve and Adam and their Interpreters (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2011); Concise Encyclopedia of Islam, entries on Hawwa’ and Adam. Post Qur’anic legends in Islam reflect many of the rabbinic and Christian traditions.

  As for the Jewish tradition, even when some Jews became interested in human culpability in the Genesis story, they tended to focus not on Eve but on Adam. Thus, for example, 4 Ezra 7.118:

  O Adam, what have you done?

  For though it was you who sinned,

  the fall was not yours alone,

  but ours also who are your descendants.

  4 Ezra, also called 2 Esdras or the Apocalypse of Ezra, was a work composed to help its readers cope with the disaster of Jewish history in the wake of the destruction of the temple in 70 CE.

  121 “the morals of a bitch”: Citations of Hesiod are to Hesiod, “Works and Days” and “Theognis.” There is a rich discussion of the afterlife of the story in Dora and Erwin Panofsky, Pandora’s Box: “Curiously enough, the Fathers of the Church are more important for the transmission—and transformation—of the myth of Pandora than the secular writers: in an attempt to corroborate the doctrine of original sin by a classical parallel, yet to oppose Christian truth to pagan fable, they likened her to Eve” (11). See also, more recently, Stephen Scully, Hesiod’s “Theogony.”

  123 woman’s incorrigible vanity: Tertullian, De Cultu Feminarum, trans. Sydney Thelwall, 1.1.14. The expression of outrage at women’s ornaments is altogether typical. See, for example, Tertullian’s contemporary Clement of Alexandria: “For as the serpent deceived Eve, so also has ornament of gold maddened other women to vicious practices, using as a bait the form of the serpent, and by fashioning lampreys and serpents for decoration” (Paedagogus, in Clement of Alexandria, The Anti-Nicene Fathers, vol. 2, Fathers of the Second Century: Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and Clement of Alexandria, 2.13).

  123 “in spite of the wrinkles of age”: “To Marcella,” in Jerome, St. Jerome: Select Letters, p. 163. For marriage as “the forbidden tree,” see p. 165.

  124 “Keep therefore as you were born”: “To Eustochium,” in Jerome, Select Letters, p. 93. Perhaps to emphasize the harshness of marriage for women, Jerome made a significant change in his translation of Genesis 3:16. Where the Hebrew reads, “And for your man shall be your longing [Heb. teshukah], and he shall rule over you” [Alter, Five Books of Moses], Jerome writes, “And you shall be under (the) power of the man, and he shall be lord over you” (sub viri potestate eris et ipse dominabitur tui). There is no linguistic basis for translating the Hebrew in the way that Jerome does, and modern Catholic versions correct it.

  125 First Epistle to Timothy: 1 Timothy 2.11–14 (KJV). Cited by Jerome in his work against Jovinian. Much disputed now, the verses were taken at face value. Jerome has some difficulty with the following verse: “Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.”

  126 “and the whole world was overthrown”: Guido de Baysio and Raymond de Peñaforte are both cited in Gary Macy, The Hidden History of Women’s Ordination, p. 123.

  128 Eva became Ave: On Eve and Mary, see Miri Rubin, Mother of God. esp. pp. 202–3, 311–12. A rich collection of images linking Eve and Mary is available in German in Ernst Guldan, Eva und Maria.

  128 in rapt wonder: Illustration of Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, Yates Thompson MS 36, c. 1445. The artist may have been Giovanni di Paolo.

  129 between synagogue and church: Breslau. Stadtbibliothek Cod. M 1006 (3v); in Guldan, plate 156.

  129 writhing snake: Caravaggio made the painting for the altar of the Archconfraternity of the Papal Grooms. He did not invent the motif; it appeared in an earlier painting by the Lombard Ambrogio Figino. But Caravaggio gave it unnerving intensity and strangeness, so much so perhaps that the Grooms, after briefly exhibiting it, sold it to Cardinal Scipio Borghese.

  129 a defective or mutilated man: Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1a.q.92 a. 1 ad 1. See Harm Goris, “Is Woman Just a Mutilated Male? Adam and Eve in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas,” in Out of Paradise.

  130 his frenzied attack: St. Peter Damian, quoted in Gary Macy, The Hidden History of Women’s Ordination, p. 113.

  131 “the air darkens”: Paucapalea, quoted in Macy, The Hidden History of Women’s Ordination, p. 114. Such was the considered opinion of this twelfth-century canon lawyer who wrote a Summa on the work of his distinguished teacher Gratian. The account was advanced to support the argument that women should not be allowed to visit a church during menstruation or after childbirth. Other churchmen strongly disagreed.

  132 eager to justify what they had done: The Hammer of Witches: A Complete Translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, trans. Christopher S. Mackay, p. 164.

  133 innate defectiveness of all women: On the vigorous refutations of this misogynistic a
ccount and the exoneration of Eve, see Alcuin Blamires, The Case for Women in Medieval Culture, esp. pp. 96–125.

  133 had no such excuse: Dialogue on the Equal of Unequal Sin of Adam and Eve (Verona, 1451), in Isotta Nogarola, Complete Writings: Letterbook, Dialogue on Adam and Eve, Orations, pp. 151–52.

  134 Christine de Pizan: The Book of the City of Ladies, I.9.3.

  135 “the priceless bounty of free choice”: Arcangela Tarabotti, Paternal Tyranny, p. 51.

  Chapter 8: Embodiments

  139 along the twisting paths of the catacombs: For a rich account of the complex shifts from one burial option to another, see Thomas Laqueur, The Work of the Dead.

  140 wall paintings of the naked Adam and Eve: I located no fewer than four representations of Adam and Eve in this site. I am grateful to my expert guide, the art historian Dr. Angela di Curzio, and to the Ispettore della Pontificia Commissione di Archeologia Sacra, Dr. Raffaella Giuliani, for granting me permission to visit parts of the catacombs not ordinarily open to the public.

  142 Other Christian sarcophagi: Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, The Iconography of the Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus. There are approximately thirty-four Adam and Eve figures on surviving early Christian sarcophagi.

  145 Bernward’s doors: See William Tronzo, “The Hildesheim Doors,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte: 347–66; Adam S. Cohen and Anne Derbes, “Bernward and Eve at Hildesheim”: 19–38.

  146 The rule of shame: For a sampling of images, see Sigrid Esche, Adam und Eva: Sündenfall and Erlösung. This is a very rough generalization to which exceptions, over such a long, iconographically complex period of time, may certainly be found. The famous early-sixth-century Vienna Genesis, for example, depicts a naked, upright Adam and Eve, but branches discreetly cover their genitals, and the figures are next depicted at the moment of expulsion, bent over in disgrace. See Imaging the Early Medieval Bible, ed. John Williams. For the new and surprising ways of representing nakedness exemplified here by Gislebertus’s Eve, see Alastair Minnis, From Eden to Eternity: Creations of Paradise in the Later Middle Ages.