ADAMO

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

SUMMARY:

I. Holy Scripture

2. Rabbinic literature

3. Christian archaeology

4. Popular poetry

5. Iconography

6. Testament of Adam

7. Life of Adam and Eve.

I. HOLY SCRIPTURE

Father of the human race. The name *’ādām* means “man”; it indicates both the human species (Gen 1:26) and the first man, the progenitor of the human family.

1. The etymology of *’ādām* is uncertain. The explanation given by Flavius Josephus (*Antiquitates Judaicae*, I, 1, 2), which later became common, that it derives from “red” because the first man was formed from red earth, is now rejected. Some philologists derive it from *adam-mu* “my father”; many others trace it to the Assyrian verb *adamu* “to make, produce,” or to the Sabroean *adam* “servant.” The Bible connects the name with *’ădāmâ* “earth” (Gen 2:5–7): Adam would therefore be the one who, by his origin, existence, and destiny, is related to the earth (cf. ADAPA).

7. Creation of Adam

In Genesis, two accounts present the creation of Adam. According to the first (Gen 1:26–31), Adam is created by God on the sixth day, after the animals: he is the crown of creation. God says: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” not because He takes counsel from creatures, e.g., from angels, as Origen supposed following F. Ione (*De Opificio*, 24), since angels are not mentioned in the context. There can be no question of vestiges of polytheism, excluded by the entire narrative, which is characteristically monotheistic. God speaks to Himself: the use of the plural (“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 the best explanation for it (cf. J. Lebreton, *Les origines du dogme de la Trinité*, 4th ed., Paris 1919, pp. 507–12). Here *’ādām*, without the article, indicates the human species. Full of wonder, the inspired author exclaims: “God created man in his own 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 Hebrew forms such as *nif’al* to indicate a direct action or intervention of God (cf. CREATION).

The likeness of man to God is spiritual. God is pure spirit; and since man alone among visible creatures is made in the image of God, this image consists in what essentially distinguishes man from animals and plants, namely, his rational and spiritual nature (cf. MAN).

Transformism (cf.), applied to man, presents itself in an absolute sense (materialistic) or in a relative sense (spiritualistic). The former denies the existence of the spiritual soul, explaining man solely by evolution within the scale of beings; the latter holds that the body, before being informed by the soul from God, was slowly prepared through evolution under the influence of secondary causes. Sacred Scripture excludes absolute transformism and does not support the mitigated form; indeed, it multiplies, one might say deliberately (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, including St. Augustine (*De Genesi ad litteram*, IX, 16–18: PL 34, 404–408), and theologians have always taught the doctrine of the immediate creation or formation of the body of man. The Biblical Commission, on June 30, 1909, declared that the literal historical sense cannot be doubted where the special creation of man is spoken of. “As for whether in fact... God made use of the body of an animal to fashion the body of the first man, this is a question that does not arise from the data of anthropology” (L. Pirot, in *DBs.*, 1st ed., 64). Now, “the many investigations — duly noted by Pius XII (*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 concerning problems related to the origins of man, have thus far brought nothing positively clear and certain.” As for chronology (cf.), it is readily admitted that anthropology, with regard to the age of man, may require up to tens of millennia; since the Bible does not present an explicit or at least complete chronological system in its data, it is permissible for every Catholic, for serious reasons, to depart from the chronology that seems to be presented by the current sacred text, which assigns to the human race an age ranging between 5,700 years (calculation of the Hebrew text) and 6,400 (calculation of the Alexandrian version); cf. R. Köppel, *Homo Neanderthalensis*, in *Biblica*, 17 (1936), pp. 85–93, and V. Marcozzi, *Il Sinanthropus Pekinensis*, in *La Civiltà Cattolica* (1942, 1), pp. 409–11 (cf. EVOLUTIONISM; PALEONTOLOGY).

The final phrase of the sacred narrative, “the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed” (Gen 2:25), is a fleeting hint at integrity (cf.).

**ABAMO AND EVE — The Condemnation to Labor.** Engraving by Lucas van Leyden (16th century).
(v. original of the first parents)

God created man, enriching him with the faculties and activities proper to his bodily nature and to the spiritual nature that constitutes him: the senses, the intellect, and the will. But He did not stop at these natural gifts; divine generosity bestowed upon the first man certain gifts that were above his nature, or preternatural. Enriched with these gifts, man had, more than any other creature, the right and duty to call God by the name of Father. Yet the goodness of God, which willed him to be His adopted son, clothed him with a gift superior to all others: sanctifying grace (v.). Gen. 1:26 virtually includes the doctrine of the elevation of the first man to the supernatural state, which occurred at the very moment of creation or shortly thereafter (v. ORIGINAL JUSTICE).

3. The Fall of A. (Gen. 3). — In Paradise, A. was king of creation, rich in the greatest earthly happiness. Yet God willed to subject the first parent to a trial. “Of every tree of Paradise thou shalt eat,” He commanded, “but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat; for in whatever day thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die” (Gen. 2:16–17). The precept was strict but easy to observe. Satan approached Eve to make her sin and then induce her husband to fall into guilt (Gen. 3:1–5). Having been seduced, “the woman... took of the fruit thereof and did eat, and gave to her husband, who did eat likewise” (Gen. 3:6). Thus was the first sin consummated, and the harmony of creation destroyed. By sinning, A., as the head of humanity, harmed not only himself but also his descendants (v. ORIGINAL SIN).

Punishment was not long in coming (Gen. 3:8–24). God came to demand an account of A.’s deed and punished his fault: He cursed the devil and the serpent that had been used as an instrument, banished the first parents from Paradise to an earth now barren and foreign, subject henceforth to pain and death. A. had, besides Cain, Abel, and Seth, other sons and daughters (Gen. 4; 5:4). In Wis. 10:1 we read that Wisdom guarded A. even before he had Eve as a companion, and then, 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. expiated his fault in penance and did not relapse. The Byzantine Church honors him with public veneration (feast of SS. Adam and Eve, Dec. 19). He died at the age of 930 years (Gen. 5:5). According to ancient legends, he was buried near the earthly Paradise; it has been thought that St. Jerome, in his translation of Josh. 1:15 (Vulgate), speaks of Hebron; many Fathers believed 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).

“When the biblical data are compared,” writes G. Ricciotti in Enc. Ital., 1, p. 471, “with other narratives of the origins of man, these particulars emerge: 1) the immediate origin of A., 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 their descendants.” On the character of the biblical narrative, V. GENESIS.

8. The New (or Second) A

At the very moment when God punished the sin of the first parents with severity, His mercy promised the Redeemer (Gen. 3:15; V. PROTOEVANGELIUM): it is the announcement of the coming new A. who would crush the head of sin. This name is recalled especially by St. Paul in 1 Cor. 15:20–22 and 45–49, and in Rom. 5:12–21.

By demonstrating our future resurrection, the Apostle teaches that we must await it from no 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 shall be made to live” (1 Cor. 15:21–22). Concerning the manner of the resurrection, he adds: “Thus it is written (Gen. 2:7): The first man, A., became a living soul; the last A. a life-giving spirit (πνεῦμα ζωοποιόν). While the first man was the principle of natural life, Christ, by completing the work of redemption with His resurrection, became a life-giving spirit, giving to those united to Him a new, perfect, and indestructible life, the crown of Christian regeneration. The first man is also, by antithesis, a figure of Christ (Rom. 5:14): A. and Christ have given rise to a posterity; the former is the father of fallen humanity, the latter of regenerated humanity. This Pauline doctrine, central to the teaching on the Incarnation of Jesus Christ and redemption, may be summed up in the words of Leo the Great: ‘What fell in the first A. is raised up in the second’” (PL 54, 168).

9. Traditions about A

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

Around the biblical account there soon arose a reflection in 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 they are augmented by Christian interpolations. This literature is summarized by J. B. Frey in DBs, I, cols. 101–34. A broad tradition about A. is also found in the Koran.

In the abundant flowering of legend, noteworthy is that narrated in the book *The Cave of Treasures* (a Christian book of the 5th or 6th century in Syriac, using materials judged to be earlier; V. n. 6, Testament of A.), according to which A., expelled from the earthly Paradise, deposited in a cave the gold, frankincense, and myrrh of the Magi, and was later buried there. Noah would have carried the bones of A. and the treasure in the ark, which were then transported to the center of the earth or Calvary, where they were received as the cross opened in the form of a cross. Thus the blood of Christ crucified purified the first man from original sin.

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10. Rabbinic Literature

In various midrashim, A. is called “the first man” (ἀδάμης ἡγούμενος) or “primigenial” (ἀδάμης). According to haggadic legends, A. was created from the outset shapeless (γολέων), and, according to some, did not receive the human soul until the end of the work of creation, while others hold that the soul was created from the beginning because “the Spirit of God moved” (Gen. 1:2). The letters of his name comprise the four cardinal points: ἀνατολή (east), δύσις (west), ἀρχηγός (north), μεσημβρία (south). The dust from which A.’s body was formed was taken from the place of the altar; others maintain 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 (a stellar number): collection of the material substratum, shapeless form (γολέων), formation of the limbs, gift of the soul, upright posture, conferral of names upon creatures, reception of Eve, etc. (*Sanhedrin*, 38b). The members of his family were seven (a sacred number): A. and Eve, Cain with a sister, Abel with two twin sisters.

Adam and Eve were created as if they were twenty years old. (*Num. Rabbā*, 12, 10). As soon as Adam stood upright for the first time, he looked up and down, saw his stature extend from one end of the world to the other, and sang: *Ps. 104, 24*. The Lord doubted, in view of the sins of men, whether to create Adam or not; and the angels and the virtues also doubted. But charity and mercy prevailed. The angels wished to adore Adam, and so the Lord immersed him in a deep sleep to signify that he was a frail being. According to another legend (in the Slavonic *Henoch*, the Koran, and elsewhere; cf. *Enc. Iud.*, I, 764), the archangel Michael invites the angels to adore Adam for his likeness to God; all obey except Satan, who is punished by being cast from heaven into the abyss.

Adam was created alone to signify that the life of each individual is worth as much as that of all mankind, and also so that one man could not say to another: “My ancestor is worth more than yours.” (*Mishnah, Sanhedrin*, IV, 5, and elsewhere). He was handsome, with a shining heel, strong as Samson, tall as Saul, etc. (*Pirqê R. Eliezer*, 53), and circumcised. As soon as he was created, he was introduced into Paradise; the reward thus preceded good works (*Gen. Rabbā*, 15, 4). There he found ten pavilions; the humblest was of gold (*B. Batrā*, 75a) and two districts: Gan (Garden) and Eden. Adam lived in the first; the human eye never saw the second (*Berakhôt*, 34b).

Opinions vary regarding Adam’s garments. They were shining like pearls, like the lights of many lanterns, and smooth as the nails of the fingers (*Gen. Rabbā*, 20, 20); or they were the vestments of the High Priest, which then passed by inheritance to Seth and after him to Methuselah (*Num. Rabbā*, 4, 8). Once every seventy years, a healthy man rides through Rome on the shoulders of a cripple, wearing Adam’s garments (*Abodāh Zārā*, 11b).

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### 3. Christian Archaeology
Early Christian art was the first to create, both in painting and sculpture, the scene of the protagonists’ fall, contrasting the deplorable consequences of original sin with the salvation wrought by Christ. Adam and Eve, nude and in various poses, stand with the tree and the serpent between them. The fruit, if specified, is the fig or the apple. The scene is found in glass, terracotta, and a fresco at Dura-Europos. From the Constantinian period onward, the scene appears of God handing to Adam ears of grain and to Eve a sheep, symbols of labor, or rather of sustenance; rare are the allusions to the interrogation or the expulsion from Paradise. Soon the cycle is completed with the scene of creation, where Adam lies on the ground while Eve is created by the Word or by the Holy Trinity. The dogmatic aims that determined the choice of this cycle seem beyond doubt. From the 5th century onward, ivories and miniatures offer greater development: Adam appears among the animals of Paradise, Eve is brought to Adam, there is contrition, concealment, interrogation, expulsion from Paradise, and the birth of a son. The Monza ampullae depict Adam and Eve at the foot of the Cross.

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### 4. Popular Poetry
There have been various reprints of the poem entitled *Il fallo originale ossia Adamo cacciato dal Paradiso terrestre*, octaves by G. Francesco Tamburini, among the Arcadi of Rome as Eumoe Tritonio (Baroni, Lucca 1831), a semi-literary and semi-popular work.

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### 5. Iconography
The iconography of Adam and Eve may be said to have been definitively formed by the 10th century. The earliest representation of the creation of Eve is found on a 2nd-century sarcophagus of the basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls. Of great importance is that on the bronze doors of San Zeno in Verona (12th century). The creation of Adam recurs frequently in illuminated manuscripts, which served as models for the mosaics of St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice and those of Monreale. The composition of the scene offers few variants: the Eternal extends an arm toward Adam giving him life, and beside him Eve is born from Adam’s side, depicted as sleeping and lying down. Funerary art and the mosaics of St. Mark portray the Eternal in the act of shaping Adam’s figure.

Jacopo della Quercia interpreted the creation of man with dramatic force, followed in general conception by Michelangelo on the Sistine ceiling; in these two examples, the powerful personalities of the artists prevail over iconographic tradition.

Adam 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 remained unchanged for centuries: in the center a tree from which the serpent winds, and on either side Adam 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 the fall.

The scene of the expulsion is depicted on the bronze doors of the church of Hildesheim (10th century), but the first vividly and humanly dramatic representation is that of Masaccio in the Brancacci Chapel of the Carmine Church in Florence.

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

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

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### 6. Testament of Adam
An apocryphal work (5th or 6th century) of which three fragments remain in Syriac (*Patrologia Syriaca*, I, 2). The *Testament of Adam* was included in manuscripts of the Syriac compilation *The Cave of Treasures*, but it is not clear whether it was originally part of this work or a separate book attributed to Adam.

The first fragment, the most important, relates the individual hours of the day and night to the beings that praise the Creator; for the tenth hour of the day and the seventh of the night, mention is made of the rite of mixing oil and water to heal the sick or those suffering from insomnia, with a reference to the descent of the Holy Spirit upon baptismal water. This “hourly” text appears in an expanded form in Greek astrological manuscripts, which attribute it to the famous Apollonius of Tyana; it has been published by F. Nau (*Patrologia Syriaca*, 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 Islamic religion cf. I. Goldziher, in *Archiv für Religionswissenschaft*, 8 (1906), p. 301 ff. It would appear—in contrast to F. Nau—that the attribution of the “hourly” text to Apollonius is the work of Byzantine authors, perhaps caused by an ecclesiastical condemnation of the *Testament* (or *Penitence?*) of Adam. 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 Adam contains a prophecy of the kingdom of Christ spoken by Adam. It is evident from the content that it has connections with the Cave of Treasures and with the books known as "of Adam."

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 the Penitence of Adam, which also contained revelations about the angel of penitence Uriel, the guardian angels (Gregori), and penitence. The relations between the "Testament of Adam" and the "Penitence of Adam" are unclear. The relations between the Apocalypse of Adam, cited in a marginal note to codex C of the Epistle of Barnabas, 2, 10, and the Testament of Adam also remain obscure (cf. M. R. James, Apocrypha anecdotae, Cambridge 1893, p. 145).

7. LIFE OF ADAM AND EVE

An apocryphal book preserved in several languages. It is a disorganized collection of traditions concerning Adam and Eve, of diverse origin. The Latin text begins with the account of the penitence of Adam 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. G. Zberg, Legends of the Jews, V, Philadelphia 1927, p. 114 ff.) and to the Samaritans (J. A. Montgomery, The Samaritans, Philadelphia 1907, p. 224). But the form of the penitence (Adam and Eve standing up to their necks in water) seems to reflect a penitential practice of the Celtic Church (cf. L. Gougaud, Les chrétiens celtiques, Paris 1911, p. 100; id., Christianity in Celtic Lands, London 1932, p. 95 ff.; id., Ascetic Immersion in Devotional and Ascetical Practices of the Middle Age, pp. 159-78); the description of the penitence would thus be the work of a Christian. The Ethiopian text of the apocryphon does not seem to know of immersion; the Slavic text, however, does.

The dialogue of the devil with Adam, in which the fall of Satan is recounted (chaps. 13 ff.), must be of Jewish origin, because it presupposes the idea of the creation of angels in the image of God, a Jewish belief opposed by the Fathers of the Church. Chaps. 18-24 form a separate section dealing with the birth of Eve. Chaps. 25-28 contain the rapture to paradise and the prayer of Adam. The text must derive from a Hebrew source (chap. 29: "paradise of justice," i.e., "for the just" [Enoch 50, 23 and 60, 8]). Of Adam it is said that "thou hast become the figure of my heart and body" (Latin text, in Mozley, p. 136, 9). The prayer of Adam is the climax of the work. Following it (Mozley, p. 136, 22 ff.) is a prophecy of Adam, which is not motivated by an ascent to paradise, but by the eating of the tree of knowledge: the apocalypse is perhaps ancient, but has nothing to do with the gnostic apocalypses of Adam mentioned by Epiphanius, Haer., 26, 8, 1 (ed. Holl, I, p. 284, 13).

With chap. 30 begins the text that speaks of the oil to heal Adam'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. It is therefore probably a Christian text. Chap. 39, moreover, is an exercise. The death of Adam (chaps. 46 ff.) also comes from a Christian source. The ascension of Adam was later developed in other texts (e.g., Apocalypse of Bartholomew in E. A. W. Budge, Coptic Apocrypha, p. 197 ff.; also texts from Mandaism). The references to Christian burial customs are clear. Chap. 53 is a quotation from the Book of Enoch, and chap. 54 comes from the Book of Jubilees. Chaps. 55, 56, 57 were all separate pieces, as shown by the manuscript tradition.

C. Fuchs, Das Leben Adams und Eves, in E. Kautzsch, Apokryphen und Pseudepigraphen des Alten Testaments, II, Tübingen 1900, p. 506-28, maintained that the original was Hebrew, and symbolically W. Meyer and others. More cautious is E. Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu, III, 4th ed., Leipzig 1909, p. 399. W. Bousset dates the work to the period between the construction of the Temple of Jerusalem and its destruction (Die Religion des Judentums im späthellenistischen Zeitalter, 3rd ed., Tübingen 1926, p. 23): a very venturesome thesis, based on a corrupted text. These hypotheses then clash with the fact that the Life of Adam does not possess literary unity.

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