14 passagesc. 1st century CEHebrew / Aramaic / GreekPublic Domain
Individual passages from Life of Adam and Eve, indexed for close reading, source verification, and myth source-checking.
The bite taken. The realization dawning. But what happened next? The familiar reading skips ahead to the consequences, the exile, the shame. In Penitence of Adam, an Armenian versi...
It starts with Satan approaching the serpent with a proposition. "Arise and come to me," Satan says, "I will tell you something that will serve you well." Flattery gets you everywh...
When Eve went into labor for the first time, there were no books, no doctors, and no one alive who had ever given birth before. Penitence of Adam (20:3-21:3a) tells us that Adam, o...
The story goes that one night, long after leaving Eden when Cain and Abel were young men, Eve was shaken awake by a horrific vision. As The Penitence of Adam (22:2:1-23:3:2) tells ...
Eve dreamed of blood. Her son's blood. Pouring into the mouth of his brother. After their expulsion from Paradise, Adam and Eve journeyed eastward toward the sunrise and settled th...
A dying man asked his wife and son to walk to the edge of Paradise and beg for mercy. They came back with a prophecy -- and a death sentence. Adam lay groaning on his bed, the seve...
Satanael refused to bow. The Life of Adam and Eve imagines the scene on the sixth day of creation. God has formed Adam, breathed life into him, and placed him before the angels. Th...
The serpent did not act alone. Behind the serpent stood a jealous angel -- and behind the angel stood a grudge older than humanity itself. Eve gathered all her children and grandch...
The serpent wept for her. That was the cruelest part. It pretended to grieve for her ignorance while plotting her destruction. "May God live!" the serpent said to Eve, its voice dr...
God pronounced three curses. One for the man. One for the woman. One for the serpent. And with those three curses, the world as it had been ended forever. To Adam, God said: "Since...
One such story, preserved in Vita Adae et Evae (The Life of Adam and Eve), tells of a remarkable vision. It's a bit obscure, not as well-known as other heavenly journeys like Enoch...
A dying man's last request was simple: pray for me. What happened next was something no human eye had ever seen. "Guard yourselves from transgressing against the good." While she s...
The seven heavens opened. The sun and moon went dark. And every angel in creation wept for the first man who ever died. Seth rose from his father's body and went to his mother. "Wh...
Six days. That was how long the archangel Michael had said it would take. And on the sixth day, exactly as foretold, Adam died. When Adam felt the hour of death closing in, he gath...
