The Life of Adam and Eve

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The Life of Adam and Eve, is a Jewish apocryphal group of writings. It recounts the lives of Adam and Eve from after their expulsion from the Garden of Eden to their deaths. It provides more detail about the Fall of Man, including Eve's version of the story. Satan explains that he rebelled when God commanded him to bow down to Adam. After Adam dies, he and all his descendants are promised a resurrection. There are many variants and version of this text that have survived. While the surviving versions were composed from the early 3rd to the 5th century AD, the literary units in the work are considered to be older and predominantly of Jewish origin. There is wide agreement among scholars that the original was composed in a Semitic language  in the 1st century AD. The main theological issue in these texts is that of the consequences of the Fall of Man, of which sickness and death are mentioned. Other themes include the exaltation of Adam in the Garden, the fall of Satan, the anointing with the oil of the Tree of Life, and a combination of majesty and anthropomorphism in the figure of God, involving numerous merkabahs and other details that show a relationship with 2 Enoch. The idea of resurrection of the dead is present and Adam is told that God's son Christ will come at that time to anoint all who believe in him with the Oil of Mercy, a fact that has led many scholars to think part of the text at least is of Christian origin. The Life of Adam and Eve is also important in the study of the early Seth traditions. Parallels can also be found with some New Testament passages, such as the mention of the Tree of Life in Revelation 22:2. The more striking resemblances are with ideas in Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians: Eve as the source of sin (2 Corinthians 11:3), Satan disguising himself as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14), the location of the paradise in the third heaven (2 Corinthians 12:2). In addition, there are parallels between Jesus' forty days in the desert and Adam and Eve's forty days in the rivers. No direct relationship has been yet determined between the New Testament and the Life of Adam and Eve, but the similarities suggest that Paul the Apostle and the author of 2 Enoch were near contemporaries of the original author of this work and moved in the same circle of ideas. The theme of death is also central to the text. While Adam is dying, Seth asks what it means to be ill, as he has no concept of it. Adam must explain to his children what dying and death means, and what to do with his body when he dies. In this reading and commentary by Dr Daffern he explains the main theological and intellectual challenges in interpreting this important text.