Adam

ADAM. - The first man created by God and father of the human race.

1. SACRED SCRIPTURE

Father of the human race. The name ádhám means "man"; it indicates both the human species (Gen. 1:26) and the first man, progenitor of the human family.

1. The etymology of ádhám is uncertain. The one given by Flavius Josephus (Antiq. Iud., I, 1, 2), later become common, from "red," because the first man would have been formed from red earth, is today discarded. Some philologists derive it from the Sumerian ada-mu "my father"; not a few link it to the Assyrian verb adamu "to make, to produce," or to the Sabaean adam "servant." The Bible connects the name with ādhāmāh "earth" (Gen. 2:5-7): Adam would therefore be he who by his origin, his existence and his destiny is in relation to the earth (v. ADAPA).

2. Creation of A

In Gen. two accounts present to us the creation of A. According to the first (1:26-31), A. is created by God on the sixth day, after the animals: he is the crowning of creation. God says: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" not because he takes counsel from the creatures, e.g. from the angels, as Origen supposes following Philo (Opific. 24), since the angels are not spoken of in the context. There can be no question of vestiges of polytheism, which is excluded by the whole account, characteristically monotheistic. God speaks to himself: the use of the plural ("of internal multiplication") supposes a fullness of being such that God can deliberate with himself. The mystery of the Trinity is not thereby revealed, but it is certainly its best explanation (cf. J. Lebreton, Les origines du dogme de la Trinité, 4th ed., Paris 1919, pp. 507-12). Here ādhām, without the article, indicates the human species. Full of wonder, the inspired author exclaims: "God created man in his image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them" (Gen. 1:27). The formation of man is expressed with the verb bārā used in the Hebrew forms qal and nif'al to indicate an action or direct intervention of God (v. CREATION).

Man's likeness to God is spiritual. God is a most pure spirit; and since man alone in visible creation is made in the image of God, this image is constituted by that which essentially distinguishes man from animals and plants, that is, by his rational and spiritual nature (v. MAN).

Transformism (v.), applied to man, presents itself in an absolute sense (materialistic) or in a relative sense (spiritualistic). The first denies the existence of the spiritual soul, explaining man by evolution alone on the scale of beings; for the second, the body, before being informed by God with the soul, would have been slowly prepared by way of evolution under the influence of secondary causes. The sacred text excludes absolute transformism and does not support the mitigated form; indeed it multiplies, one might say prudently (cf. v. 27), the data implying the idea of a direct and special intervention of God, both for the soul and for the body. The Fathers of the Church, not excluding St. Augustine (De Genesi ad litteram, IX, 16-18: PL 34, 404-408), and the theologians have always taught the doctrine of the creation or immediate formation of the body of man. The Biblical Commission, on June 30, 1909, declared that the literal historical sense cannot be called into doubt where the particular creation of man is spoken of. "As for knowing whether in fact... God made use of the body of an animal to make from it the body of the first man, this is a question that arises not from exegesis but from anthropology" (L. Pirot, in DBs., I ed. 64). Now, "the many investigations - Pius XII opportunely warned (AAS, 33 [1941], p. 506; Discorsi e radiomessaggi di S. S. Pio XII, Milan 1942, p. 273) - both of paleontology and of biology and morphology on problems regarding the origins of man, have so far brought nothing positively clear and certain." As for chronology (v.), it is readily admitted that anthropology, as regards the age of man, requires up to tens of millennia; since the Bible does not present an explicit or at least complete chronological system in its data, it is lawful for every Catholic to depart, for serious reasons, from the chronology that seems to be presented by the current sacred text, which assigns to the human race an age oscillating between 5700 years (calculation of the Hebrew text) and 6400 (calculation of the Alexandrian version); cf. R. Köppel, Homo Neandertalensis, in Biblica, 17 (1936), pp. 85-93, and V. Marcozzi, Il Sinanthropus Pekinensis, in La Civiltà Catt., (1942, 1), pp. 409-11 (v. EVOLUTIONISM; PALEONTOLOGY).

The phrase "male and female he created them" brings out that God created the two sexes. According to God's order, the plants were the food of men and of domestic animals (Gen. 1:20). Such an indication is of a general nature: only the primary sustenance is meant to be presented; it is evident that carnivorous animals existed from that time.

The second account of Gen. 2:5-7 abstracts from time, and concerns only the manner. It takes up the preceding account, enriching it with details, even of an anthropomorphic coloring: "Then the Lord formed man — an individual — from the dust of the ground (or from the mud of the earth moistened by the dew) and breathed into his nostrils (through which breath is manifested) a breath of life, and thereby man became a living soul." With the anthropomorphic language of v. 7, the doctrine of Gen. 1:26 ff. is expressed. Man by an act of the divine will is created in the image and likeness of God. His vital breath indeed comes from God, who infused it into the body. The immateriality and immortality of the human soul clearly emerges from our text, in the light of others, such as Eccles. 12:7 (v. SOUL).

A. was placed in the earthly paradise (v.) (Gen. 2:8-17), "a garden in Eden — a region not well defined — to the East" (ibid., 2:8). The king of creation was, however, still alone. God said: "It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper worthy of him" (v. 19): this was Eve. From A. plunged in a deep sleep God took a rib and formed a woman from it. She was brought to A., who exclaimed: "This time it is flesh of my flesh and bone of my bones; this one shall be called woman (issāh) because she was taken from man (is)." The very origins of the human race consecrate the conjugal union and found society on the family (Gen. 2:20 ff.).

The final observation of the sacred account: "they were both naked, Adam and his wife, and yet they felt no shame" (Gen. 2:25), is a fleeting allusion to the original

(v.) integrity of the first parents. God created man enriching him with the properties and activities that belong to the bodily nature and the spiritual nature that form him: the senses, the intellect and the will. But he did not limit himself to these natural gifts; divine liberality conferred in addition on the first man certain gifts not owed to his nature, or preternatural. Man, enriched with these gifts, more than any other creature had the right and the duty to call God by the name of Father. But the goodness of God, who willed him as his own adoptive son, clothed him with a gift superior to all the others, sanctifying grace (v.). Gen. 1:26 also includes, virtually, the doctrine of the elevation of the first man to the supernatural state, which took place at the very moment of creation or after (v. ORIGINAL JUSTICE).

3. Fall of A. (Gen. 3)

In paradise A. was king of creation, rich in the greatest earthly happiness. God, however, willed to subject the progenitor to a test. "Eat of any tree of the garden — he enjoined — but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for on whatever day you eat of it, you shall die" (Gen. 2:16-17). The precept was rigorous but easy to observe. Satan approached Eve to make her sin and then induce her husband to fall into guilt (Gen. 3:1-5). Seduced, "the woman... took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate" (Gen. 3:6). Thus the first sin was committed and the harmony of creation was destroyed. By sinning, A., as the head of humanity, harmed not only himself but also his descendants (v. ORIGINAL SIN).

The punishment (Gen. 3:8-24) was not long in coming. God came to call A. to account for what he had done and punished the guilt: he cursed the devil and the serpent he had used, and drove the first parents out of paradise toward a land that had become stingy and alien, now subject to pain and death. A. had, besides Cain, Abel and Seth, various sons and daughters (Gen. 4; 5:4). In Wis. 10:1, we read that Wisdom guarded A. even before he had Eve as his companion, and afterward through penance drew him out of the sin into which he had fallen. The Fathers, from St. Irenaeus (Adv. Haer., III, 23; PG 7, 960) to St. Augustine (Epist. 164 ad Evod., 3; PL 33, 711), hold that A. atoned for his guilt in penance and did not fall again. The Byzantine Church honors him with public worship (feast of Sts. Adam and Eve, Dec. 19). He died at the age of 930 (Gen. 5:5). According to ancient legends he was buried near the earthly paradise; it has seemed that St. Jerome, in his translation of Jos. 14:15 (Vulgate), speaks of Hebron; many Fathers held that A.'s body was buried beneath the rock of Calvary (Origen, In Matth., 126; PG 13, 1777; St. Athanasius, De passione et cruce Domini, 12; PG 27, 207; St. Ambrose, In Lucam, X, 114; PL 15, 1832).

«The biblical data, compared — thus G. Ricciotti, in Enc. Ital., I, p. 471 — with other narratives of the origins of man, show these particulars: 1) the immediacy of A.'s origin, excluding any interposition of demigods, aeons or heroes; 2) the kingship of man in nature; 3) the intimate correlation between man and woman; 4) the fall of the first couple and of their descendants». On the character of the biblical narrative, v. GENESI.

4. The new (or second) A

In the very act in which God rigorously punished the sin of the first parents, his mercy promised the Redeemer (Gen. 3:15; v. PROTOVANGELO): it is the announcement of the new A. to come who would crush the head of sin. Under this name the Redeemer is recalled especially by St. Paul in 1 Cor. 15:20-22 and 45-49, and in Rom. 5:12-21.

Demonstrating our future resurrection, the apostle teaches that we must expect it from no one other than Christ, if we remain united to him as members to the body. «For as in A. all die, so also in Christ all will come to life» (1 Cor. 15:21 f.). Regarding the manner of the resurrection, he adds: «Thus indeed it is written (Gen. 2,

7): He became the first man, A., a living soul: the last A. a life-giving spirit (πνεῦμα ζωοποιούν). While the first man was the principle of natural life, Christ, completing the work of redemption with his resurrection, became a life-giving spirit, giving to those who are united to him a new life, perfect and indestructible, the crowning of Christian regeneration. The first man is also by antithesis a figure of Christ (Rom. 5:14): A. and Christ gave origin to a posterity: the first is the father of fallen humanity, Christ instead of regenerated humanity. This Pauline doctrine, central in the teaching on the incarnation of Jesus Christ and the redemption, can be summed up in the phrase of Leo the Great: «Quod cecidit in Adam primo, erigitur in secundo» (PL. 54, 168).

5. Traditions concerning A

The traditions of the most ancient peoples have preserved, on the origin and fall of the first man, the Mosaic account more or less disfigured. Interesting is the comparison with the Assyro-Babylonians (cf. J. Plessis, Babylone et la Bible, in DBs, I, pp. 714-45).

Around the biblical account there soon arose an efflorescence of Jewish legends. From the 1st century B.C. to the 3rd century A.D., many legends form the principal subject of various apocryphal books; sometimes enlarged by Christian interpolations. This literature is summarized by J. B. Frey, in DBs, I, coll. 101-34. A broad tradition concerning A. is also found in the Qur'an.

In the copious legendary flowering, worthy of note is that narrated by the book The Cave of Treasures (a Christian book of the 5th or 6th century, in Syriac, which makes use of earlier Jewish materials; v. n. 6, Testament of A.), according to which A., expelled from the earthly paradise, deposited in a cave the gold, the incense and the myrrh of the Magi, and was afterwards buried there. Noah would have carried into the ark the bones of A. and the treasure, which were then transported to the center of the earth or Calvary, which received them by opening in the form of a cross. Thus the blood of Christ Crucified purified the first man from original sin.

Vincenzo M. Iacono

2. RABBINIC LITERATURE

In the various midrashim A. is called «the first man» (adām hārišān) or «primordial» (qidmāh). According to the haggadic legends, A. was created from the beginning formless (golēm) and, according to some, did not receive the human soul until the end of the creative work, while according to others the soul was created from the beginning because «the spirit of God was hovering» (Gen. 1:2). The letters of his name sum up the four cardinal points: ἀνατολή (east), θύσις (west), ἄρχτος (north), μεσπυβρία (south). The dust from which the body of A. was formed was taken from the place of the altar; others hold that it was of various colors and taken from various places, so that every part of the earth might receive him after death (Philo, De creat., 47). The evolution of A. took place through twelve stages (an astral number): collection of the material substratum, formless sketch (golēm), formation of the limbs, gift of the soul, upright position, conferring of names on the creatures, reception of Eve, etc. (Sanhedrin, 38 b). The components of his family were seven (a sacred number): A. and Eve, Cain with a sister, Abel with two twin sisters.

A. and Eve were created as twenty-year-olds outright. (Num. Rabbā, 12, 10). A., having risen to his feet for the first time, looks upward and downward, sees his own stature reaching from one end of the world to the other and sings, Ps. 104:24. The Lord doubts, in view of the sins of men, whether to create A. or not; and the angels and the powers doubt as well; but charity and mercy prevail. The angels wished to adore A. and therefore the Lord plunged him into a deep sleep to signify thereby that he was a transitory being. According to another legend (in the Slavonic Enoch, in the Qur'an and elsewhere; cf. Enc. Iud., I, 764) the archangel Michael invites the angels to adore A. for his likeness to God; all obey except Satan, who as punishment is hurled from heaven into the abyss.

A. was created alone to signify that the life of each individual is worth as much as that of the whole human race and also so that one man might not say to another: My ancestor is worth more than yours (Mišnāh, Sanhedrīn, IV, 5, and elsewhere). He was beautiful, with a shining heel, strong as Samson, tall as Saul, etc., (Pirgé R. Eliezer, 53), circumcised. As soon as he was created, he was introduced into Paradise; the reward thus preceded the good works (Gen. rabá, 15, 4). There he found ten canopies; the most modest of gold (B. Batrā, 75 a) and two districts: Gan (Garden) and Eden. A. lived in the first; no human eye ever saw the second (Berakhāt, 34 b). On the garments of A. opinions vary. They were shining like pearls, like the lights of many lanterns and smooth as the nails of the fingers of the hands (Gen. rabá, 20, 29); or they were the vestments of the High Priest which then passed as an inheritance to Seth and after him to Methuselah (Num. rabá, 4, 8); once every 70 years a healthy man with the garments of A. rides to Rome on the shoulders of a cripple (Abodāhcarā, 11 b).

Eugenio Zolli

3. CHRISTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY

Ancient Christian art was the first to create, both in painting and in sculpture, the scene of the sin of the first parents, opposing the deplorable consequences of original sin to the salvation wrought by Christ. A. and Eve, naked and in various attitudes, have between them the tree and the serpent. The fruit, if specified, is the fig or the apple. The scene is found in glass, in terracottas and in a fresco at Dura-Europos. From the Constantinian era onward, there appears the scene of God handing to A. the ears of grain and to Eve a sheep, symbols of labor, or rather of food: rare are the references to the interrogation or to the expulsion from paradise. Soon the cycle is completed with the scene of the creation, where A. is stretched on the ground, while Eve is created by the Word or by the Most Holy Trinity. The dogmatic intentions that determined the choice of the cycle seem beyond doubt. Ivories and miniatures, from the 5th century onward, offer greater development: A. appears among the animals of paradise, Eve led to A., contrition, hiding and interrogation, expulsion from paradise, birth of a son. The ampullae of Monza present A. and Eve at the foot of the cross.

Luciano De Bruyne

4. POPULAR POETRY

The short poem entitled Il fallo originale ossia Adamo cacciato dal Paradiso terrestre, octaves by G. Francesco Tamburini, among the Arcadians of Rome Eumeo Tritonio (Baroni, Lucca 1831), a semi-literary and semi-popular production, has had various reprints.

Paolo Toschi

5. ICONOGRAPHY

The iconography of A. and Eve can be said to have been definitively formed as early as the 10th century. The first representation of the creation of Eve is found on a 2nd-century sarcophagus in the basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls. Very important is the one on the bronze door of St. Zeno in Verona from the 12th century. The creation of A. recurs frequently in illuminated manuscripts, which serve as models for the mosaics of the basilica of St. Mark in Venice and for those of Monreale. The composition of the scene offers few variants: the Eternal extends one arm toward A., giving him life, and beside him Eve, who is born from A.'s rib, depicted sleeping and lying down. Funerary art and the mosaics of St. Mark portray the Eternal in the act of modeling the figure of A. Jacopo della Quercia interpreted the creation of man with dramatic power, followed, as regards general conception, by Michelangelo on the vault of the Sistine Chapel; in these two examples the powerful personality of the artists prevails over the iconographic tradition.

A. and Eve, in the scene of original sin, appear for the first time in the second catacomb of St. Januarius in Naples. The composition of the scene would remain unchanged for centuries: in the center a tree from which the serpent winds, and at the sides A. and Eve; sometimes the serpent has the face of a woman. In the Vienna Genesis (5th century) the serpent is not present in the scene of sin.

The scene of the expulsion is depicted on the bronze portal of the church of Hildesheim (11th century), but the first vividly and humanly dramatic and human representation is that of Masaccio in the Brancacci Chapel of the church of the Carmine in Florence.

The story of A. and Eve remained popular also in the 17th and 18th centuries, but the artists of this period, and especially the northern ones, even earlier ones such as Cranach, Holbein and Dürer, mostly limited themselves to representing, together or in isolation, only the figures of A. and Eve.

Even in more recent artists, as well as in contemporary ones, the iconography has not undergone substantial modifications. — See Pl. XXII.

Kurt Rathe

6. TESTAMENT OF ADAM

Apocryphon (of the 5th or 6th century) of which three fragments in Syriac remain (Patrol. Syriaca, I, 2). The Testament of A. was included in the manuscripts of the Syriac compilation The Cave of Treasures, but it is not clear whether it was originally framed within this work or in a book entitled to A.

The first fragment, the most important, places the individual hours of the day and night in relation to the beings that praise the Creator; for the tenth hour of the day and the seventh of the night the rite is mentioned of mixing oil and water to cure the sick or those suffering from insomnia, with an allusion to the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the baptismal water. This "horary" is found in expanded form in Greek astrological manuscripts, which attribute it to the famous Apollonius of Tyana; it was published by F. Nau (Patrol. Syr., I, II, p. 1363 ff.: Paris ms.) and by F. Boll (Catalogus codicum astrologicorum graecorum, VII, p. 177: Berlin ms.). On the importance of this writing in the Islamic religion cf. I. Goldziher, in Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, 8 (1906), p. 301 f. It would appear — in contrast with F. Nau — that the attribution of the "horary" to Apollonius is the work of Byzantine authors, perhaps caused by an ecclesiastical condemnation of the Testament (or Penitence?) of A. According to George Syncellus (ed. G. Dindorf, I, Bonn 1829, p. 646), Apollonius would have taught the kingdom of Christ.

The second fragment of the Testament of A. contains a prophecy of the kingdom of Christ in the mouth of A. It is evident from the content that it has connections with the Cave of Treasures and with the books called "of A."

The third fragment — of lesser interest — deals with the nine Orders of angels, but is not influenced by the writings of pseudo-Dionysius. According to Theophilus Cedrenus, I, 41: PG 121, 41, it seems that fragments 1 and 2 were also part of a writing entitled Penitence of A., which furthermore contained revelations about the angel of penitence Uriel, about the guardian angels (Gregoroi) and about penitence. The relations between the "Testament of A." and the "Penitence of A." are not clear. Also the relations between the Apocalypse of A. cited in a marginal note to codex C of the Epistola Barnabae, 2, 10, and the Testament of A. remain obscure (cf. M. R. James, Apocrypha anecdota, Cambridge 1893, p. 145).

Erik Petersen

7. LIFE OF ADAM AND EVE

Apocryphal book preserved in several languages. It is a disorganized collection of traditions concerning A. and Eve, of diverse origin. The Latin text begins with the account of the penitence of A. and Eve.

The theme was also known to Jewish literature (cf. H. L. Strack-P. Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrash, III, Munich 1926, p. 478; L. Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, V, Philadelphia 1927, p. 114 f.) and to the Samaritans (J. A. Montgomery, The Samaritans, Philadelphia 1907, p. 224). But the form of the penitence (A. and Eve stand up to their necks in water) seems to reflect a penitential practice of the Celtic Church (cf. L. Gougaud, Les chrétientés celtiques, Paris 1911, p. 100; id., Christianity in Celtic Lands, London 1932, p. 95 f.; id., Ascetic Immersion in Devotional and Ascetical Practices of the Middle Age, pp. 159-78); the description of the penitence would therefore be the work of a Christian. The Ethiopic text of the apocryphon seems not to know of the immersion; the Slavonic text, however, does know of it.

The dialogue of the devil with A., in which the fall of Satan is recounted (ch. 13 f.), must be of Jewish origin, because it presupposes the idea of the creation of the angels according to the image of God, a Jewish belief combated by the Fathers of the Church. Chs. 18-24 constitute a separate passage that deals with the childbirth of Eve. Chs. 25-28 contain the rapture to paradise and the prayer of A. The text must come from a Hebrew source (ch. 29 "paradisus iustitiae", that is, "for the just" [Enoch 50, 23 and 60, 82]. Of A. it is said that "figuratio cordis et corporis mei factus es" (Latin text, in Mozley, p. 136, 9). The prayer of Adam is the culminating point of the work. There follows (Mozley, p. 136, 22 f.) a prophecy of A., which is not motivated by the ascension to paradise, but by the food of the tree of knowledge: the apocalypse is perhaps ancient, but has nothing to do with the gnostic apocalypses of A., mentioned by Epiphanius, Haer., 26, 8, 1 (ed. Holl, I, p. 284, 13).

With ch. 30 begins the text that speaks of the oil for curing A.'s illness. The identification of the "tree of life" with the olive tree does not seem to be found elsewhere in Jewish literature; only the Slavonic Enoch, 8 (rec. B) identifies the tree of knowledge with the olive tree. It is therefore probably a Christian text. Ch. 39, moreover, is an exorcism. The death of A. (ch. 46 ff.) likewise comes from a Christian source. The ascension of A. was later developed in other texts (e.g. the Apocalypse of Bartholomew in E. A. W. Budge, Coptic Apocrypha, p. 197 ff.; Mandaean texts also know of it). The allusions to Christian burial customs are clear. Ch. 53 is a quotation from a book of Enoch, and ch. 54 comes from the Book of Jubilees. Chapters 55, 56, 57 were all separate pieces, as the manuscript tradition demonstrates.

C. Fuchs, Das Leben Adams und Evas, in E. Kautrach, Apokryphen und Pseudopographen des Alten Testaments, II, Tübingen 1900, pp. 306-28, has asserted that the original would have been Hebrew, and similarly W. Meyer and others. E. Schürer is more cautious, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesus, III, 4th ed., Leipzig 1909, p. 399. W. Bousser dates the work to the time between the construction of the Temple of Jerusalem and its destruction (Die Religion des Judentums im späibellenistischen Zeitalter, 3rd ed., Tübingen 1926, p. 23); a very risky thesis, based on a corrupt text. These hypotheses then clash with the fact that the Vita di A. does not possess a literary unity.

The Syriac writing The Cave of Treasures (A. Goetze, Die Schatzhöhle, Überlieferung und Quellen, Heidelberg 1922, p. 42) has few connections with the Life of A. For the use of a Life of A. in Byzantine chronography, cf. H. Gelser, S. Julius Africanus und die byzantinische Chronographie, Leipzig 1898, pp. 265 f., 269 f., 273.

Erik Petersen