and adamu may come from the same Semitic root meaning ``to
make.'' Certainly Adamu (if it is not more convenient to
write ``Adapa'') was not regarded as the progenitor of the
human race, like the Hebrew Adam. He was, however, certainly
a man--one of those men who were not, of course, rival
first-men, but were specially created and endowed. Adamu or
Adapa, we are told, received from his divine father the gift
of wisdom,20 but not that of everlasting life. He had a
chance, however, of obtaining the gift, or at least of eating
the food and drinking the water which makes the gods ageless and
immortal. But through a deceit practised upon him by his divine
father Ea, he supposed the food and drink offered to him on a
certain occasion by the gods to be ``food of death,'' ``water
of death,'' just as Adam and Eve at first believed that the
fruit of the magic tree would produce death (Gen. iii. 4, 5).
The second story is that of Ea-bani,21 who was formed by the
goddess Arusu (=the mother-goddess Ishtar) of a lump of clay (cp.
Gen. ii. 7). This human creature, long-haired and sensual, was
drawn away from a savage mode of life by a harlot, and Jastrow,
followed by G. A. Barton, Worcester and Tennant, considers this
to be parallel to the story which may underlie the account of
the failure of the beasts, and the success of the woman Eve,
as a ``help-meet'' for Adam. This, however, is most uncertain.
The third is that of Etana.22 Here the main points are
that Etana is induced by an eagle to mount up to heaven,
that he may win a boon from the kindly goddess Ishtar.
Borne by the eagle, he soared high up into the ether, but
became afraid. Downward the eagle and his burden fell,
and in the epic of Gilgamesh we find Etana in the nether
world. According to Jastrow, this attempted ascension was an
offence against the gods, and his fall was his punishment.
We are not told, however, that Etana had the impious desire
of Ezekiel's first man, and if he fell, it was through his
own timidity (contrast Ezek. xxviii. 16). But certainly the
myth does help us to imagine a story in which, for some sin
against the gods, some favoured hero was hurled down from the
divine abode, and such a story may some day be discovered.
To these illustrations it is unsafe to add the scene on a
cylinder preserved in the British Museum, representing two
figures, a man (with horns) and perhaps a woman, both clothed,
on either side of a fruit-tree, towards which they stretch
out their hands.23 For the meaning of this is extremely
problematical. Some better monumental illustration may some day be
found, for it is clear that the Babylonian sacred literature had
much to tell of offences against the gods in the primeval age.
The student may naturally ask, Whence did the Israelites (a
comparatively young people) obtain the original myth? It is most
probable that they obtained it through the mediation either of
the Canaanites or of the North Arabians. Babylonian influence,
as is now well known, was strongly felt for many centuries
in Canaan, and even the cuneiform script was in common use
among the high officials of the country. When the Israelites
entered Canaan, they would learn myths partly of Babylonian
origin. North Arabian influence must also have been strong
among the Israelites, at least while they sojourned in North
Arabia. From the Kenites, at any rate, they may have received,
not only a strong religious impulse, but a store of tales of
the primitive age, and these stoties too may have been partly
influenced by Babylonian traditions. We must allow for stages
of development both among the Israelites and among their tutors.
9. Biblical References to the Adam-story.---It is remarkable
how little influence the Adam-story has had on the earlier
parts of the Old Testament. The garden of Eden is referred
to in Isa. li. 3, Ezek. xxxvi, 35. Joel ii. 5; cp. Ezek.
xxviii. 13, xxxi. 8, 9, 16, 18, all of which are later. And
it is mostly in the ``humanistic'' book of Proverbs that we
find allusions to the ``tree of life'' (Prov. iii. 18, xi.
30, xiii. 12, xv. 4), and to the ``fountain of life''--perhaps
(see sec. 4) an omitted portion of the old Paradise story
(Prov. x. 11, xiii. 14, xiv. 27, xvi. 22),--the only other
Biblical reference (apart from Rev. xxi. 6) being in that
exquisite passage, Ps. xxxvi. 9. One can hardly be surprised at
this. The Adam-story is plainly of foreign origin, and
could not please the greater pre-exilic prophets. In late
post-exilic times, however, foreign tales, even if of mythical
origin, naturally came into favour, especially as religious
symbols. If even now philosophers and theologians cannot
resist the temptation to allegorize, how inevitable was it
that this course should be pursued by early Jewish theologians!
10. Incipient Reflexion on the Story.--Let us give some
instances of this. In Enoch lxix. 6 we find the story of
Eve's temptation read in the light of that of the fallen angels
(Gen. vi. 1, 2, 4) who conveyed an evil knowledge to men,
and so subjected mankind to mortality. Evidently the writer
fears culture. Elsewhere eating the fruit of the ``tree of
wisdom'' is given as the cause of the expulsion of the human
pair. In the Wisdom of Solomon (x. 1, 2) we find another
view. Here, as in Ezekiel, the first man is pre-eminently wise
and strong; though he transgressed, wisdom rescued him, i.e.
taught him repentance (cp. Life of Adam and Eve, sec. sec. 1-8).
Elsewhere (ii. 24; cp. Jos. Ant. i. 1, 4) death is traced
to the envy of the devil, still implying an exalted view of
Adam. It is held that, but for his sin, Adam would have been
immortal. Clearly the Jewish mind is exposed to some fresh
foreign influences. As in the Talmud and the Jerusalem
Targum, the serpent has even become the devil, i.e.
Satan. The period of syncretism has fully come, and
Zoroastrianism in particular, more indirectly than directly,
is exercising an attractive power upon the Jews. For all
that, the theological thinking is characteristically Jewish,
and such guidance as Jewish thinkers required was mainly given
by Greek culture. On this subject see further EVE, sec. 5.
11. Growth of a Theology.---Let us now turn to the Apocalypses
of Baruch and of Ezra (both about 70 A.D.). Different views
are here expressed. According to one (xvii. 3, xix. 8, xxiii.
4) the sin of Adam was the cause of physical death; according
to another (liv. 15, lvi. 6), only of premature physical
death, while according to a third (xlviii. 42, 43) it is
spiritual death which is to be laid to his account. Of these
three views, it is only the second which harmonizes with Gen.
ii.-iii. In one of the two passages which express it we are
also told that each member of thc human race is ``the Adam
of his own soul.'' Adam, like Satan in Ecclus. xxi; 27, has
become a psychological symbol. Truly, a worthy development
of the seed-thoughts of the original narrator, and (must we
not add?) entirely opposed to any doctrine of Original Sin.
In 4 Ezra, too, we find no real endorsement of such a
doctrine. It is true, not only physical death (iii. 7), but
spiritual, is traced to the act of Adam (iii. 21, 22, iv.
30, 31, vii. 118-121). But two modifying facts should be
noticed. One is that Adam is said to have had from the first
a wicked heart, owing to which he fell, and his posterity
likewise, into sin and guilt. All men have the same seed of
evil in them that Adam had; they sin and die, like him. The
other is that, according to iii. 7-12, there are at least two
ages of the world. The first ended with the Flood, so that any
consequences of Adam's sin were, strictly speaking, of limited
duration. The second began with righteous Noah and his
household, ``of whom came all righteous men.'' It was the
descendants of these who ``began again to do ungodliness
more than the former ones.'' Doubtless the problem of evil
is most imperfectly treated, even from the writer's point of
view. But it would be cruel to pick holes in a writer whose
thinking, like that of St Paul, is coloured by emotion.
At this point we might well make more than a passing reference to
St Paul (Rom. v. 14; 1 Cor. xv. 22, 45, 47), whose doctrine of sin
is evidently of mixed origin. But we cannot find space for this
here. In compensation let it be mentioned that in Rev. xii.
9 (cp. xx. 2) the ``great dragon,'' who persecuted the woman
``clothed with the sun,'' is identified with ``the old serpent,
that is called the Devil and Satan.'' The identification is
incorrect. But it may be noticed here that the phrase ``the
old serpent'' sheds some light on the Pauline phrases ``the
first man Adam'' and ``the last Adam'' (1 Cor. xv. 45, 47).
The underlying idea is that the new age (that of the new
heaven and earth) will be opened by events parallel to those
which opened the first age. As the old serpent deceived
man of old, so shall it be again. And as at the head of the
first age stands the first Adam, whose doings affected all
his descendants to their harm, so at the head of the second
shall stand the second Adam, whose actions shall be potent for
good. There is reason to suspect that the expression ``the
second Adam'' is the coinage either of St Paul or of some one
closely connected with him (as Prof. G. F. Moore has shown),
for there is no proof that such terms as ``the last,'' or
``the second Adam,'' were generally current among the Jews.
12. Jewish Legends.---The parallelism between the first and
second Adam in 1 Cor. xv. 45 is a parallelism of contrast.
Jewish legends, however, suggest another sort of parallelism.
The Haggadah gives the most extravagant descriptions of the
glory of Adam before his fall. The most prominent idea is that
being in the image of God--the God whose essence is light--he
must have had a luminous body (like the angels). ``I made
thee of the light,'' says God in the Book of Adam and Eve
(Malan, p. 16), ``and I willed to bring children of light from
thee.'' Similarly in Baba batra, 58a, we read, ``he was of
extraordinary beauty and sun-like brightness.'' So glorious
was he that even the angels were commanded through Michael
to pay homage to Adam. Satan, disobeying, was cast out of
heaven; hence his ill-will towards Adam (Life of Adam and
Eve, sec. sec. 13-17; cp. Koran, xvii. 63, xx. 115, xxxviii. 74).
It only remains to give due honour to one of the most
beautiful of legends, that of the deliverance of Adam's
spirit from the nether world by the Christ, the earliest
form of which is a Christian interpolation in Apoc.
Moses, sec. 42 (cp. Malan, Adam and Eve, iv. 15,
end). We may compare a partly parallel passage in sec. 37,
where the agent is Michael, and notice that such legendary
developments were equally popular among Jews and Christians.
AUTHORITIES-- On the apocryphal Books of Adam, see Hort,
Dict. of Chr. Biography, i. 37 ff. In English we have Malan's
translation of the Ethiopic Book of Adam (1882), and Issaverden's
translation of another Book of Adam from the Armenian (Venice,
1901). In German, see Fuchs's translations in Kautzsch's Die
Apokryphen, ii. 506 ff. For full bibliography see Schurer,
Gesch. des jud. Folkes, ed. 3, iii. 288 f. On Jewish
and Mahommedan legends, see Jewish Cyclopaedia, ``Adam.''
On the belief in the Fall, see Tennant, The Sources of the
Doctrine of the Fall and Original Sin (1903). (T. K. C.)
1 The English Bible gives ``the LORD GOD.'' This,
however, does not adequately represent the Hebrew.
2 See commentaries of Gunkel and Cheyne. As in
v.10, the oceanstream is meant. (See EDEN.)
