graceful, was a fit companion for God's masterpiece, and, apart
from the serpent, the animals had no faculty of speech. All
therefore that Adam could do, as they passed before him, was
to name them, as a lord names his vassals. But here arises a
difficulty. How came Adam by the requisite insight and power
of observation? For as yet he had not snatched the perilous
boon of wisdom. Clearly the Paradise story is not homogeneous.
3. How the Animals were named.---Some moderns, e.g. von
Bohlen, Ewald, Driver (in Genesis, p. 55, but cp. p. 42),
have found in ii. 19, 20 an early explanation of the origin of
language. This is hardly right. The narrator assumes that
Adam and Eve had an innate faculty of speech.6 They spoke just
as the birds sing, and their language was that of the race or
people which descended from them. Most probably the object of
the story is, not to answer any curious question (such as, how
did human speech arise, or how came the animals by their names?),
but to dehort its readers or hearers from the abominable vice
referred to in Lev. xviii. 23.7 There may have been stories
in circulation like that of Ea-bani (sec. 8), and even such as
those of the Skidi Pawnee, in which ``people'' marry animals,
or become animals. Against these it is said (ver. 20b)
that ``for Adam he found no helper (qualified) to match him.''
4. Three Riddles.---Manifold are the problems suggested
by the Eden-story (see EDEN; PARADISE). For instance, did
the original story mention two trees, or only one, of which
the fruit was taboo? bn iii. 3(cp. vv. 6, 11) only ``the
tree in the midst of the garden'' is spoken of, but in ii.
9 and iii. 22 two trees are referred to, the fruit of both
of which would appear to be taboo. To this we must add that
in ii. 17 ``the tree of the knowledge of good and evil''
appears to have the qualities of a ``tree of life,'' except
indeed to Adam. This passage seems to give us the key to the
mystery. There was only one tree whose fruit was forbidden;
it might be called either ``the tree of life'' or ``the tree
of knowledge,'' but certainly not ``the tree of knowledge
of good and evil.'' 8 The words ``life'' and ``knowledge''
(= ``wisdom'') are practically equivalent; perfect knowledge
(so primitive man believed) would enable any being to
escape death (an idea spiritualized in Prov. iii. 18).
Next, which of the trees is the ``tree of life''? Various sacred
trees were known to the Semitic peoples, such as the fig-tree
(cp. iii. 7), which sometimes appears, conventionalized, as
a sacred tree.9 But clearly the tree referred to was more
than a ``sacred tree''; it was a tree from whose fruit or
juice, as culture advanced, some intoxicating drink was
produced. The Gaokerena of the Iranians 10 is exactly
parallel. At the resurrection, those who drink of the life-giving
juice of this plant will obtain ``perfect welfare,'' including
deathlessness. It is not, however, either from Iran or
from India that the Hebrew tree of life is derived, but from
Arabia and Babylonia, where date-wine (cp. Enoch xxiv. 4)
is the earliest intoxicant. Of this drink it may well have
been said in primitive times (cp. Rig Veda, ix. 90. 5, of
Soma) that it ``cheers the heart of gods'' (in the speech
of the vine, Judg. ix. 13). Later writers spoke of a ``tree
of mercy,'' distilling the ``oil of life,'' 11 i.e. the
oil that heals, but 4 Esdr. ii. 12 (cp. viii. 53) speaks
of the ``tree of life,'' and Rev. xxii. 2 (virtually) of
``trees of life,'' whose leaves have a healing virtue (cp.
Ezek. xlvii. 12). The oil-tree should doubtless be grouped
with the river of oil in later writings (see PARADISE).
Originally it was enough that there should be one tree
of life, i.e. that heightened and preserved vitality.
A third enigma---why no ``fountain of life''? The references
to such a fountain in Proverbs (xiii. 14, &c.) prove that the
idea was familiar,12 and in Rev. xxii. 1 we are told that
the river of Paradise was a ``river of water of life'' (see
PARADISE). The serpent, too, in mythology is a regular symbol of
water. Possibly the narrator, or redactor, desired to tone
down the traces of mythology. Just as the Gathas (the ancient
Zoroastrian hymns) omit Gaokerena, and the Hebrew prophets
on the whole avoid mythological phrases, so this old Hebrew
thinker prunes the primitive exuberance of the traditional myth.
5. The Serpent.---The keen-witted, fluently speaking serpent
gives rise to fresh riddles. How comes it that Adam's ruin
is effected by one of those very ``beasts of the field''
which he had but lately named (ii. 19), that in speech he is
Adam's equal and in wisdom his superior? Is he a pale form
of the Babylonian chaos-dragon, or of the serpent of Iranian
mythology who sprang from heaven to earth to blight the ``good
creation''? It is true that the serpent of Eden has mythological
affinities. In iii. 14, 15, indeed, he is degraded into a
mere typical snake, but iii. 1-5 shows that he was not so
originally. He is perhaps best regarded, in the light of
Arabian folk-lore, as the manifestation of a demon residing in
the tree with the magic fruit.13 He may have been a prince
among the demons, as the magic tree was a prince among the
plants. Hence perhaps his strange boldness. For some unknown
reason he was ill disposed towards Yahweh Elohim (See iii.
3b), which has suggested to some that he may be akin to the
great enemy of Creation. To Adam and Eve, however, he is not
unkind. He bids them raise themselves in the scale of being
by eating the forbidden fruit, which he declares to be not
fatal to life but an opener of the eyes, and capable of
equalizing men with gods (iii. 4, 5). To the phrase ``ye shall
be as gods'' a later writer may have added ``knowing good
and evil,'' but ``to be as gods'' originally meant ``to live
the life of gods--wise, powerful, happy.'' The serpent was
in the main right, but there is one point which he did not
mention, viz. that for any being to retain this intensified
vitality the eating of the fruit would have to be constantly
renewed. Only thus could even the gods escape death.14
6. The Divine Command broken.---The serpent has gone the
right way to work; he comprehends woman's nature better than
Adam comprehends that of the serpent. By her curiosity Eve is
undone. She looks at the fruit; then she takes and eats;
her husband does the same (iii. 6). The consequence (ver. 7)
may seem to us rather slight: ``they knew (became sensible)
that they were naked, and sewed fig-leaves together, and
made themselves girdles (aprons).'' But the real meaning is
not slight; the sexual distinction has been discovered, and
a new sense of shame sends the human pair into the thickest
shades, when Yahweh-Elohim walks abroad. The God of these
primitive men is surprised: ``Where art thou?'' By degrees,
he obtains a full confession---not from the serpent, whose
speech might not have been edifying, but from Adam and Eve.
The sentences which he passes are decisive, not only for
the human pair and the serpent, but for their respective
races. Painful toil shall be the lot of man; subjection
and pangs that of woman.15 The serpent too (whose unique
form preoccupied the early men) shall be humiliated, as a
perpetual warning to man--who is henceforth his enemy---of
the danger of reasoning on and disobeying the will of God.
7. Versions of the Adam-story.--Theologians in all ages have
allegorized this strange narrative.16 The serpent becomes the
inner voice of temptation, and the saying in iii. 15 becomes
an anticipation of the final victory of good over evil--a view
which probably arose in Jewish circles directly or indirectly
affected by the Zoroastrian eschatology. But allegory was
far from the thoughts of the original narrators. Another
version of the Adam-story is given by Ezekiel (xxviii. 11-19),
for underneath the king of Tyre (or perhaps Missor)17
we can trace the majestic figure of the first man. This
Adam, indeed, is not like the first man of Gen. ii.-iii., but
more iike the ``bright angel'' who is the first man in the
Christian Book of Adam (i. 10; Malan, p. 12). He dwells on
a glorious forest-mountain (cp. Ezekiel xxxi. 8, 18), and is
led away by pride to equalize himself with Elohim (cp. xxviii.
2, 2 Thess. ii. 4), and punished. And with this passage let
us group Job xv. 7, 8, where Job is ironically described as
vying with the first man, who was ``brought forth before the
hills'' (cp. Prov. viii. 25) and ``drew wisdom to himself''
by ``hearkening in the council of Elohim.'' No reference is
made in Job to this hero's fall. The omission, however, is
repaired, not only in Ezek. xxviii. 16, but also in Isa. xiv.
12-15, where the king, whose name is given in the English
Bible as ``Lucifer'' (or margin, ``day-star''), ``son of
the morning,'' and who, like the other king in Ezekiel,
is threatened with death, is a copy of the mythical Adam.
The two conceptions Of the first man are widely different.
The passages last referred to harmonize with the account
given in Gen. i. 26, for ``in our image'' certainly suggests
a being equal in brightness and in capacities to the
angels---a view which, as we know, became the favourite one
in apocryphal and Haggadic descriptions of the Adam before the
Fall. And though the priestly writer, to whom the first
Creation-story in its present form is due, says nothing about
a sacred mountain as the dwelling-place of the first-created
man, yet this mountain belongs to the type of tradition
which the passage, Gen. i. 26-28, imperfectly but truly
represents. The glorious first man of Ezekiel, and the
god-like first men of the cosmogony (cp. Ps. viii. 5) who held
the regency of the earth,18 require a dwelling-place as far
above the common level of the earth as they are themselves
above the childlike Adam of the second creation-narrative
(Gen. ii.). On this sacred mountain, see COSMOGONY.
8. Origin of the Adam-story---That the Hebrew story of the
first man in both its forms is no mere recast of a Babylonian
myth, is generally admitted. The holy mountain is no doubt
Babylonian, and the plantations of sacred trees, one of
which at least has magic virtue, can be paralleled from the
monuments (see EDEN). But there is no complete parallel
to the description of Paradise in Gen. ii., or to the story
of the rib, or to that of the serpent. The first part of
the latter has definite Arabian affinities; the second is
as definitely Hebrew. We may now add that the insertion
of iii. 7 (from ``were opened'') to 19---a passage which
has probably supplanted a more archaic and definitely
mythological passage---may well have been the consequence
of the change in the conception of the first man referred to
above. Still there are four Babylonian stories which may
serve as partial illustrations of the Hebrew Adam-story.
The first is contained in a fragment of a cosmogony in
Berossus, now confirmed in the main by the sixth tablet of the
Creation-epic. It represents the creation of man as due
to one of the inferior gods who (at Bel's command) mingled
with clay the blood which flowed from the severed head of
Bel (see COSMOGONY). The three others are the myths of
Adapa,19 Ea-bani and Etana. As to Adapa, it may be mentioned
here that Fossey has shown reason for holding that the true
reading of the name is Adamu. It thus becomes plausible to
hold that ``Adam'' in Gen. ii.-iii. was originally a proper
name, and that it was derived from Babylonia. More probably,
however, this is but an accidental coincidence; both adam
