Eva and Adán have long been regarded as the ancestors of all humanity. Their story, both beautiful and tragic, speaks of God’s immense love in creating these two special beings and gifting them the marvelous world He had just created. But it also speaks of disobedience, as the first man and woman failed their Father and were deserving of being expelled from Paradise.
However, the story of Adam and Eve holds much deeper meanings that deserve closer examination. Accepting their existence means recognizing that all of humanity descends from the same couple, making us one big family. This concept is not insignificant, especially in times when fraternity and mercy are constantly questioned.
The true story of Adam and Eve is narrated in the Bible, specifically in the Book of Genesis. This book describes the days of creation, when God desired to bring forth the world we know and all its inhabitants. In five days, He created the heavens, the earth, light, stars, all the fish, birds, and animals. And on the sixth day, He decided to create Man.
And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:26-28).
However, there is a second version of this same episode in the Bible: “The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man” (Genesis 2:20-22).
These two versions, known as the priestly source and the yahwist source, respectively, are linked to the documentary hypothesis, formulated by the German biblical scholar Julius Wellhausen. According to this hypothesis, the first five books of the Bible, known as the Pentateuch (Torah for Jews) – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy – were not just written by Moses, but by four probable authors, whose initials form the acronym JEDP.
As we can see, the two accounts of the creation of the first man and woman have some substantial differences. In the first account, God created Adam and Eve at the same time, both in His own image, and made them the owners of the earthly Paradise. In the second account, however, Adam was created first, and God assigned him alone the dominion over the things and animals He had created. The woman came afterwards. Of course, this is not the place to delve into these two viewpoints, but the implications that these different interpretations have had in the history of the Church and humanity, especially regarding the relationship between men and women, is evident.
The story of the forbidden fruit that would make Adam and Eve equal to God, giving them the knowledge of good and evil, is not just a children’s tale. In fact, it is the foundation of the religions of the Book: the consequence of disobedience to God was the fall of man, the rupture of the tacit covenant between him and God, whose effects have reverberated throughout humanity for millennia. From that single act of disobedience, all the evils of mankind originated. Before it, man was perfect, immune to diseases and wounds, immortal, and happy.
This act arises from man’s desire to decide for himself what is good and what is evil, instead of trusting in God’s infinite wisdom and love.
The story of the original sin, from the serpent’s temptation to Eve’s gesture of taking the fruit from the tree and offering it to Adam (a tree that should not be confused with the tree of life, which we will discuss next week), is imbued with references to countless earlier sacred tales. It is interesting how the words of the tempting serpent are enough to sow the seed of doubt in the first woman, the belief that God’s command not to eat from the tree’s fruit was unjust. Above all, it makes us think that the serpent’s promise, telling Eve that by eating the forbidden apple, she and Adam will gain the knowledge of good and evil and effectively become like God, is so irresistible.
It is worth noting that the Bible never speaks of an apple, only of “a fruit”. Michelangelo depicted this fruit as figs in the Sistine Chapel.
However, after the fruit was plucked and tasted, the first thing Adam and Eve realize is their own nakedness. Shame is the first negative feeling experienced by the first man and woman, just moments after their fall. As soon as disobedience is discovered, God summons the three culprits, who attempt to exonerate themselves by blaming each other.
God’s punishment strikes them all: first the serpent, who is cursed; then the woman, Eve, condemned to the pains of childbirth; and finally Adam, condemned to toil and sweat in order to reap the fruits of the earth, which had previously been plentiful and generous to him. Lastly, and certainly the worst consequence of this thoughtless act, God condemns man and woman, along with their descendants, to physical death, whereas they were immortal before.
Who were the sons of Adam and Eve? After being expelled from Eden, Adam and Eve had several children: according to unwritten tradition, between 14 and 140. However, the only three mentioned in the Bible are Cain, Abel, and Seth. Cain married his twin sister Calmana and together they had a son named Enoch. Seth married his sister Azura, who gave birth to Enosh, from whose descendants Noah and his sons would be born. The descendants of Cain, on the other hand, became nomadic herdsmen and learned the art of forging metals. However, they were distinguished by violence and the practice of polygamy.
Before delving into a discussion about the children of Adam and Eve and the origin of the human race, it is important to remember a fundamental concept that is sometimes overlooked. It would be absurd to take everything written in the Holy Scriptures literally, especially when we are talking about its oldest books. While it is true that the Bible was inspired by God, it is equally true that it was written by men, who reinterpret the divine message in a way that is compatible with the world they lived in. An interesting aspect of Adam and Eve’s genealogy is that it assumes that, once expelled from the Garden of Eden, they found themselves living in a world already populated by other men and women. The fact that two of their sons, Cain and Abel, were respectively an agriculturist and a herdsman allows us to place the lives of these two ancestors of humanity in a historical period corresponding to the Neolithic era, between approximately 10,000 BC and 3,500 BC. This period was characterized by important innovations in stonework, as well as the introduction of pottery, agriculture, and animal husbandry. It was also marked by true revolutions in social and family structures.
Thus, there were other men and women, in addition to Adam and Eve, who had many children. “After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters. So Adam lived a total of 930 years, and then he died” (Gen 5:4-5). Therefore, the sons of Adam and Eve were Cain, Abel, and Seth, along with many others whose names are unknown. It is also important to note that the way time was perceived then is different from the present, so the hundreds of years they lived refer to how time was measured with ancient calendars.
Cain, the farmer, after the death of Abel, settled northeast of Eden, married his sister Awan, and with his cursed descendants founded the first cities, living as an atheist. Enoch was born from his union with Awan.
God made sure that at the age of 130, Adam fathered a “son in his own image and likeness” (Gen 5:3), Seth, who was born already circumcised and whose good and religious descendants would carry out the great divine plan until Noah and the flood. Adam also revealed to Seth the secret knowledge that would later be gathered in the Kabbalah, the collection of esoteric teachings of Rabbinic Judaism. According to the Book of Jubilees, a non-canonical text dating from the 2nd century, Seth married his sister Azura, who was four years younger than him, and they conceived Enosh.
If we examine the biblical story further, we can see that sacrifices to God were widespread among men: Abel’s sacrifices, consisting of animals offered as burnt offerings, pleased God, while Cain’s sacrifices, offering the fruits of the land he cultivated, did not. To understand this preference, we must look back to Jewish culture and religion. Leviticus states that only blood can atone for sins because blood is life (cf. Lev 17:11), and without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness (Heb 9:22). Therefore, animal sacrifices were the most pleasing to God, the only ones capable of guaranteeing redemption and reconciliation.
Some scholars have interpreted Abel’s murder by his brother as a symbolic contrast between the lives of nomadic men and the life of the first sedentary man, dedicated to cultivating the land.
In conclusion, it is important to recognize that we are all part of the same human family when considering the story of Adam and Eve. As Pope John XXIII paraphrased, “nothing human should be foreign to us.”