The story of Adam and Eve. World History - Adam and Eve

The Sefer HaZohar (Jewish Book of Radiance) was compiled from various sources around the year 150 by the Jewish Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai. It does not belong to rabbinic literature, but is considered sacred by some Jews and is recognized by Kabbalists as the main book. One of the distinguishing points of its content is the story of the first woman, Lilith.

Eve was not Adam's first wife

According to the Sefer HaZohar, Gnostic treatises, Arabic myths, other legends and sources, Adam had another wife before Eve named Lilith. God fashioned her from clay, like Adam. Lilith is a character with a very complex symbolism, which has common features with the ancient cult of the Great Mother, which is a nocturnal demonic creature that brings death. Perhaps the Indian goddess Durga, one of Shiva's wives, who protects the world order and destroys everything that hinders further development, served as its prototype. In this case, the following logical chain can be traced: Lilith destroyed what hindered Adam in his further development and gave him the opportunity to start a new life with Eve.

According to Jewish sources, Lilith was a beautiful but rebellious wife who did not want to share a bed with Adam. She flew away from him. Yahweh, after Adam's complaints, sent three angels to the rebellious wife to threaten her with death. But Lilith declared that she was the messenger of God equal to Adam and had the right to act at her own discretion. In later demonology, she became the consort of Satan.

In the mythology of Ancient Mesopotamia, a night demoness who kills children and mocks sleeping men bears a similar name.

In the Bible, Lilith is mentioned purely as a night demon:

“And her palaces will be overgrown with thorny plants, nettles and thistles - her strongholds; and it will be the dwelling place of jackals, the dwelling place of ostriches. And the beasts of the desert will meet wild cats, and the goblin will call one to another; there the ghost of the night will rest and find rest” (Book of Isaiah 34:13-14).

Lilith was considered a killer and at the same time the patroness of people, especially babies. It is her cult that is credited with the custom of wearing a red thread on her hand as protection.

How many children did Adam and Eve have?

Scripture tells about the first people: Adam, Eve and their sons: Cain the tiller and Abel the cattle breeder. When Adam was 130 years old, another son was born: Seth - it was he who became the ancestor of Noah and the ancestor of all mankind (Abel died at the hands of his brother, and Cain drowned during the Flood). The Bible does not clearly indicate other children, and yet Adam lived 930 years, and he had enough time to conceive other children. This fact has always served as a reason for criticism: where did the wife of Cain, who is mentioned in the Bible, come from? So there were other people.

John Chrysostom answered this criticism: Cain's wife was one of the sisters, who are not mentioned in the Bible. And it is not said because the spiritual unit of Christianity is the trinity: for example, the three Persons of the one God; or mother, father and son; or the three sons of Adam (it was redundant to name the rest of the children).

With regard to marriages with sisters, the orthodox Christian Church states the following: in ancient times, incest could not cause damage, since mutations were not yet accumulated that contribute to degeneration in consanguineous marriages. This is the official theory.

Gnostic worldview

Gnosticism is one of the widespread currents of Christianity, considering religion from the position of knowledge. This philosophical direction was considered eradicated by the 5th century, but subsequently it found new followers. William Blake, a Gnostic poet of the early 19th century, wrote: "We both read the Bible day and night, but you read black where I read white."

Gnostics reject the biblical view of women as the source of evil. In their opinion, Eve awakened Adam and moved him to perfection. The Gnostic Tertullian argued that a man is indebted to a woman for bringing him to life and awareness.

In a treatise from the Nag Hammadi Gnostic Collection, the Gospel of Truth, the serpent appears as the wisest being in Paradise. The text extols his goodness and casts a shadow over the Creator. To the question "What is he, this God?" there the following answer is given: God's prohibition against the fruit of the tree is motivated by envy, for He did not want to give man higher knowledge. That is, according to the Gnostics, the deity who expelled the first people from Paradise is in fact an evil and envious spirit. Despite his opposition, Adam and Eve acquired the ability to know the world and passed it on to their son Seth and daughter Nora.

According to L.N. Gumilyov, God Yahweh is none other than a fiery demon, judging by the fact that he appeared to Moses in a burning and not burning thorn bush (Burning Bush).

Analogues of Adam and Eve according to the myths of various peoples

In the mythology of most peoples, you can find a story about two progenitors, from whom the whole people went.

Surprisingly, according to the legends of Australia, snakes also tried to prevent the existence of the first people. According to the mythology of the natives of the fifth continent, in ancient times the earth was flat and smooth, animals looked like people, and people like gods, but that period ended in disaster. The ancestors of modern mankind were two sisters: Misilgoe and Boaler, who came south from the country of Vavilak. Misilgoe was expecting a baby. For the duration of the birth, the women stopped at the source of Mirramina, not far from the river, which is now called Goyder. A boy was born, he was named Janggalang. However, the giant serpent Yurlunggur, who lived in the spring, became angry because the blood of Misilgoe muddied the water. At night, the serpent swallowed the baby and the women, he bent up to the sky, his body became a rainbow, his tongue became lightning, and his voice became thunder. He called to himself all the snakes living in the sky, and told them about what had happened. But they ridiculed him and said that he had done something stupid. Then Yurlunggur pulled out of himself the living sisters and the child and again plunged to the bottom of the source. Soon after, the sisters met the Vongar men, and the history of mankind began.

The inhabitants of Tahiti, according to legend, descend from a couple who escaped in the days of the Flood, finding refuge on the top of Mount Pitohito. When the water receded, the family began a new life, and their children - a boy and a girl - became the ancestors of all Tahitians.

The Aztecs in the "Legend of the Suns" mention the first man Tata and his wife Nena, who survived the Flood. They were cared for by the god Tezcatlipoca, responsible for creation, change and destruction, the deity of fate and good luck. In Aztec mythology, there is also a serpent - the winged Quetzalcoatl, which created people and was associated with rain and fertility (as in India).

The mythology of the ancient Paleo-Asiatic peoples, such as the Chukchi, Itelmens and Koryaks, has the most complex structure. Their progenitor ancestor is called Big Grandfather, Achichenyaku. Its symbolic incarnation is the raven.

What events could underlie the myth of Adam and Eve

73.5 thousand years ago there was a strong eruption of the Toba volcano on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. Huge clouds of volcanic ash covered the earth's surface from the sun's rays for a long time. And a new evolutionary turn took place - for several hundred years, space winter, the era of glaciation, began. Many species of living beings have become extinct. The human population on the planet has declined, according to some scientists, to 4,000 people. Ice caps at the poles have absorbed a huge amount of water. In the remaining territory, the level of the world's oceans dropped sharply, and the Pleistocene shelf was exposed. Thus, the people who remained on the planet received additional opportunities for migration, and the very plot of the development of mankind from a pair of progenitors was preserved in the mythologies of the peoples of the whole world.

According to sociologists, in 2011, a little more than 7 billion people lived on planet Earth. And every year this figure increases (the forecast for 2050 is 9 billion). The more people live on the planet, the more often we ask ourselves: "How did it all begin?" How many people lived on the planet in ancient times, where did they come from, and where does individuality come from in such a densely populated world? And most importantly - how to remain yourself, not to be like anyone else?

Most often we are faced with the fact that the main source of information on this topic is the Bible. It is in it that it says how many children Adam and Eve had. Of course, there is also Darwin's theory and all sorts of fantastic versions of the origin of mankind. But the biblical explanation is somehow closer and more understandable to us.

Why are we interested

How many children did Adam and Eve have? Everyone asks this question at one time or another. And it doesn’t matter whether we are driven by simple curiosity or we are consciously looking for an answer in order to understand how representatives of different peoples really differ so much. And sometimes even in the same family there are almost opposite characters, which is even more amazing. We are all so different that it is hard to imagine that all people on the planet have only two progenitors: Adam and Eve.

What is Reliably Known from the Bible

Humanity has been studying this book for more than one millennium. And it can be responsibly stated that the Bible does not clearly indicate how many children Adam had. That is, we all know that after the expulsion from paradise and the fall, Eve gave birth to two sons. And after another 800 years, Adam conceived a third son, Seth. The official version is limited to these three. What is difficult for a modern person to believe in? How did Adam and Eve manage to live such a long life and never conceive a child again? Even a deeply religious person will not believe in such "luck". What can we say about atheists!

And skeptics also have a completely reasonable question: if all the children of Eve are male, then how did they manage to multiply? Only women have the ability to bear children. Men in this case can only help to conceive a child, but only a woman can bear and give birth. Some experts question the very existence of only two progenitors of mankind and argue that God created more people. It's just that they were the first and "famous" for having sinned. So we only know their history and the names of the children of Adam and Eve.

What else can you read in the Bible

However, theologians still insist that the Bible has all the answers. You need to look for meaning in every line. In this case, it turns out that it is almost impossible to calculate how many children Adam and Eve had. After all, having expelled them to Earth, God gave the command: "Be fruitful and multiply." For 930 years of life on Earth, Adam probably conceived not three sons, but several more.

Take, for example, the facts of modern history. The Guinness Book of Records recorded a record number of children born to one woman: 58. And this is at the beginning of the 19th century! Therefore, there is no reason to doubt that the children of Adam and Eve in the Bible are "badly counted". One of the historians who studied this issue came to the conclusion that Adam conceived 33 sons and 23 daughters. But this is also unprovable.

Sons of Adam

The names of the children of Adam and Eve are known to every more or less enlightened person. The biblical story about the fratricide of Abel by Cain teaches us not to envy and not to betray the closest and dearest people. Cain's name has become a household name for an evil, envious and dishonest person.

Returning to the question of how many children Adam and Eve had, it must be admitted that if there were only two of them, then after the murder of Abel, all people would be descendants of Cain. The Bible cannot allow mankind to descend from a sinful person in the worst sense of the word. Therefore, Cain perishes from the Flood. And then only the third official son of Adam remains - Seth, who is considered the progenitor of Noah, who survived in

We can assume that to determine the origins of mankind, everything is quite simple. The children of Adam and Eve are three sons. One (Abel) died at the hands of his elder brother. Therefore, to give him, Cain, the opportunity to continue to be fruitful and sow sin on Earth would be wrong. Therefore, as a result of the Flood, he does not survive. But humanity still continues its history, which means that there was a third son. It was he, Seth, who became the successor of the human race.

Women in the lineage of Adam

According to ancient tradition, the lineage is conducted through the male line. Therefore, in the Bible it is very rare to find a mention of someone's daughters. Perhaps that is why we do not know any of the daughters that Adam and Eve conceived. No one ever wrote about them, and did not mention their names.

But, as noted above, only three sons could not breed and give life to all the peoples inhabiting the modern Earth. Therefore, the fact that Adam also had daughters is indisputable. Moreover, there is a direct indication of this: and he gave birth to sons and daughters. So we boldly assert that not all of the children of Adam and Eve are mentioned in the Bible. Probably, only those personalities were of interest to the Bible, whose life had a fundamental impact on the development of mankind.

Otherwise, the question again arises: "Where did Cain get his wife?" The Bible clearly states that when he went to the land of Nod, he was married. But since there is no hint of the origin of Cain's wife, one can only guess who she was to the fratricide: sister, niece, or someone else.

Marriages with close relatives

If we dwell on the version that there were two first people, then, without a doubt, the understanding comes that they got married and created families with their closest relatives. Literally the first generations of people, in addition to being husband and wife, were also brothers and sisters to each other.

This is contrary to modern morality, when in many countries there is a ban on marriages between close relatives. But we are talking about events that took place more than two thousand years ago. Therefore, the modern principles of morality and genetics cannot be transferred to the behavior of the first generations of people.

genetic deformities

Genetic deformities are violations and errors in the genes that the father and mother pass on to the child. Not the first day it is known that a child receives half of the genes from the father, and half from the mother. Over the millennia of human existence, an incredible number of sets of genes have accumulated, and in almost every set there are so-called "errors".

Modern researchers have proven that the lesser the relationship of the parents, the less likely it is to pass on the same set of these errors to the child. In nature, the strongest wins, which means that in each pair of genes the “defective” will be suppressed by the “strong”. And a person will live life calmly, being beautiful and healthy. So, if the father in the family has a crooked nose, and the mother has asymmetrical ears, then the child will most likely get a normal nose and neat ears. In extreme cases, the flaws will not be very noticeable.

It is a completely different matter - parents who are closely related to each other. The set of their genetic errors is almost the same, and it is passed on to offspring with a coefficient of "2". Dad's crooked nose plus mom's crooked nose will give a completely ugly face to the child.

Prohibition on marriage of close relatives

In antiquity, no one conducted thorough research. There were few scientists and enlightened people. But even ordinary "children of Adam and Eve" began to notice such features of offspring born from close relatives. Therefore, at first there were those who condemned intimate relationships between close relatives. There was even a statement that each family needs "fresh blood". Therefore, it was customary to choose wives and husbands not even from their own village, in order to certainly avoid the relationship of their parents.

Over time, most countries have introduced a ban on marriages within the same family. Even such countries as England, France and Spain began to turn a blind eye to the pedigree and traditions. After all, the purity of the blood of the nobles of these states was above all. However, the incredible number of freaks and mentally retarded children forced us to reconsider our canons and them. Now no one is surprised that the prince marries a fashion model, and the princess marries an entrepreneur. And a hundred years ago it was impossible!

Biblical morality

In continuation of the topic of prohibitions on closely related marriages, it should be noted that in the Bible for the first time such unions are condemned as far back as the time of Moses. And this is 2500 years after the fall of Adam and Eve. It is quite clear that the first generations were, as they say, "absolutes". There were no errors in the genes of Adam and Eve, because God created them in his own image and likeness. Probably, their children received the purest genes.

But for sin, God cursed people and sent them sickness, deformity, and old age. It is almost impossible to say how many generations this went on, and at what point those same genetic errors appeared. However, the condemnation of marriages between close relatives came to mankind through the law of God, which was announced by Moses. As already mentioned, he lived almost three thousand years later. Of course, a very extensive database of genetic errors has accumulated over such a period of time. Given the growing population of the planet, it was quite possible to abandon closely related marriages in favor of the health of nations.

Conclusion

Despite the mass of research that theologians, geneticists, historians and other specialists have been conducting for decades, we do not have an exact answer to the question: "How many children did Adam and Eve have?"

Geneticists who have studied hundreds of thousands of DNA over 20 years have come to the conclusion that it is quite possible that all people on the planet can be considered relatives. At least, this does not contradict either the biblical version of the appearance of the human race.

I would only like to note that if we are all one family, then why do we so often do not understand our loved ones and take offense at each other? Let's live together, relatives!

Second option:

William Blake. Eve's creation

Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld - The Sixth Day of Creation

Since Adam was not born of a woman, but created, it is not clear whether Adam had a navel. This question has been discussed by Christian theologians for centuries, worrying artists. An 11th-century French miniature depicts how God makes an indentation on the belly of clay Adam with his finger.

Michelangelo. Adam's creation

William Blake. Adam's creation

The creation of Eve from Adam's rib is a dark place in the Bible. It is possible that this motif of the Bible was influenced by Sumerian mythology. According to one of the Sumerian myths, to heal the diseased rib (in the Sumerian language - "ti") of the god Enki, a rib healer goddess, presumably named Nin-ti, was created. But the Sumerian word "ti" meant not only "rib", but also "to give life." Thanks to this literary pun, the biblical version of Eve could have arisen not only as a "life-giver", but also as a "woman from the ribs."

Eve's creation. Medieval German miniature

According to Jewish tradition, before the appearance of Eve, Adam's first wife was Lilith. God, having created Adam from clay, also made his wife from clay and named her Lilith. Adam and Lilith immediately had an argument. Lilith claimed that they were equal, since both were made of clay; unable to convince Adam, she flew away. After parting with Adam, Lilith became a child-killing demoness.

John Collier. Lilith

In Paradise, God allowed Adam to eat from every tree except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, "for on the day you eat of it you will die the death" (Genesis 2:17). "The serpent was more cunning than all the animals of the field, which the Lord God created. And the serpent said to the woman: Did God truly say: Do not eat from any tree in paradise? And the woman said to the serpent: We can eat the fruits of trees, only the fruits of the tree that Paradise, God said, do not eat them or touch them, lest you die. And the serpent said to the woman, No, you will not die, but God knows that on the day you eat them, your eyes will be opened, and you will like gods, knowing good and evil, and the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasing to the eye and desirable, because it gave knowledge: and she took its fruit and ate, and gave also to her husband, and he ate. And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed together fig leaves, and made themselves aprons" (Genesis 3:1-7).

Lucien Levy-Dhurmer. Eve

Pantaleon Szyndler. Eve

Gustave Moreau. Eve

Albrecht Durer. Adam and Eve

Albrecht Durer. Adam and Eve

Hans Memling - Adam and Eve

Dominic Ingres. Golden age

Hieronymus Bosch. Paradise

Lucas Cranach. Adam and Eve

Lucas Cranach. Adam and Eve

Raphael. Adam and Eve

William Blake. Archangel Raphael, Adam and Eve

William Blake. Adam, Eve and angels

In Judaism, the serpent is the fallen angel of death Samael, who did not want to submit to man, envious of him. In the Christian tradition, the identification of the serpent with the devil, Satan, who took only the guise of a serpent, was firmly established. According to one legend, Satan could not give names to all the animals in the Garden of Eden, but Adam could. By this God proved the superiority of man over the angels. That is why Satan became the enemy of man. Judaic interpreters of the plot of the seduction of Eve by the serpent try to psychologically explain the behavior of the characters in the story: the serpent touched the forbidden tree, but remained alive, which demonstrated the failure of Eve's fears; he pushed Eve so that she herself touched the tree and said to herself: if I die, God will create another wife for Adam, so I will also give him a taste of the fruit - either we die together, or we remain alive.

John Roddam Spencer Stanhope. Eve's Temptation

Michelangelo. fall

Titian. fall

William Blake. The Temptation of Eve and the Fall

William Blake. Eve's Temptation

Hugo van der Goes. fall

Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld - The Fall

God, having learned about what had happened, cursed the serpent, and said to Eve: "I will multiply your sorrow in your pregnancy; in sickness you will give birth to children; and your attraction to your husband, and he will rule over you" (Genesis, 3: 16). He said to Adam, “Because you listened to the voice of your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, saying: do not eat from it, the ground is cursed for you; in sorrow you will eat from it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it will bring forth for you; and you shall eat the grass of the field; in the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, until you return to the ground from which you were taken, for dust you are and to dust you shall return" (Genesis 3:17-19). After that, Adam and Eve were expelled from Paradise.

Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld - Adam and Eve hide from the face of the Lord

Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld - Expulsion from Paradise

According to the Bible, Adam lived for 930 years, leaving many sons and daughters, among whom were Cain and Abel.

Johann Ramboux. Adam and Eve after being expelled from Paradise

Adam and Eve after the expulsion from Paradise. Medieval German miniature

Andrey Ivanov - Adam and Eve with children under a tree

Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld - Adam and Eve after being expelled from Paradise

Edward Burne-Jones. Adam and Eve after being expelled from Paradise

Carl Johan Bonnesen. Adam and Eve mourn the death of Abel

Piero della Francesca. Death of Adam

In the apocryphal "Life of Adam and Eve" Eve dies 6 days after the death of Adam, having managed to bequeath to her children to carve the life of the first people on a stone. Adam and Eve are given the assurance that the coming "son of God" (Jesus Christ) will save them.

In Christianity, it is believed that the fall (otherwise called "original sin") i.e. Adam and Eve's violation of the will of God led to a distortion of the original nature of man, who was first created innocent and sinless. Salvation from the consequences of the fall is seen in the act of baptism, which establishes the participation of the baptized in Jesus Christ (the new Adam), who atoned for the "original sin" of the first Adam by his death.

William Blake. Adam, Eve and the crucifixion of Christ

The story of Adam and Eve is known to every person who has at least a superficial idea of ​​the Faith. Their names are mentioned in the most ancient part of the Old Testament - the book of Genesis. The ancient events described in this biblical legend have affected the lives of all people on earth.

Creation of the first people

On the sixth day of the creation of the world, God created a man from the earth's dust, to whom the name Adam was given. Literally translated from Hebrew, it means "red." Apparently, this word is a derivative of adamah - earth (red earth). Thus, the name of the first man directly indicates the way he appeared on Earth.

The story of Adam and Eve begins in the Garden of Eden

Cain - the eldest son - was engaged in the cultivation of plants. His younger brother Abel raised cattle. He led a righteous life, often prayed, and reverence and love for the Lord and loved ones lived in his soul. Cain, on the other hand, did not think about spiritual perfection, but was looking only for personal gain. His soul was filled with anger, pride and envy. Yielding to these vices, he killed his younger brother, committing one of the most serious sins - fratricide. As a punishment, the All-seeing God doomed the fratricide to life-long wandering around the world and constant remorse.

Abel and Cain - the first sons of Adam and Eve

Cain and his wife Avan had a son, Enoch, whose descendants are mentioned in the Old Testament before the time of the Great Flood. The murder committed by Cain led to the appearance of the greatest grief in the life of mankind - the loss of a loved one. Struck by the terrible news, Eve experienced severe mental suffering, but the All-Merciful Lord gave her another son - Seth, whose descendant was the pious Noah.

In total, 930 years of life, Adam had 3 sons and an unknown number of daughters. The place of intoxication of the progenitor of mankind is not exactly known. There are two versions on this issue:

• in Jewish tradition, Judea is considered the burial place of Adam;
• Christians place the grave of the first man on Mount Calvary.

Eve lived for another six days after her husband's death. Before her death, she bequeathed to perpetuate the story of their life on stone.

The story of Adam and Eve in world mythology

The Old Testament biblical tradition about the first people is based on the Sumerian myth of the creation of man. Clay cuneiform tablets, compiled 2 thousand years before the birth of the Savior, contain an inscription about the creation of a pair of people by the god Hao. From the same source it follows that the plot of the temptation of a woman by a snake and eating the fruit from the forbidden tree, as well as the subsequent expulsion from the Garden of Eden and the appearance of guards from cherubs in it, are also borrowed from the Assyro-Babylonian culture.

A legend about the origin of mankind, similar to the Jewish one, exists among the Persian peoples. The supreme god Ormuzd created the progenitor of mankind by combining the four main elements and placing in it part of his immortal soul. Having thus created a man and a woman, he settled them on a golden mountain in the Garden of Eden. The supreme virgin - Ahriman - seduced the forefathers to taste the fruit from the tree of eternal life. People were expelled from Paradise, and large vultures began to guard the golden mountain.

Interesting: the myth of the creation of a pair of the first people by the demiurge god exists among many peoples of the world from Australia to South America. In all of them there is an image of a snake-tempter, which is the personification of evil forces.

Interesting about Orthodoxy:

Adam and Eve in the Quran

Judeo-Christian ideas about the origin of the first people in a partially modified form became part of the Islamic teaching. According to the holy book of Muslims, Adam is not only the first person, but also the first in a number of prophets that preceded the appearance of Muhammad. Allah created him from a mixture of clay and water and breathed a part of himself into him.

God exalted man above all his other creatures, forcing even the angels of heaven to recognize the primacy of Adam. But one of them - the genie Iblis - did not want to obey the will of the Creator, and was overthrown by him from Heaven.

As in Christian tradition, the first woman was created from a male rib. Adam and Havva lived in paradise until the violation of the prohibition of Allah to eat fruits from the forbidden tree. They were tempted to this act by the insidious Iblis, who entered the Garden of Eden. As a punishment, the first people, separated, were expelled from paradise to earth. For 200 years, the first people traveled the earth alone and prayed to Allah for mercy.

The Creator forgave them and ordered them to make the Hajj to Mecca. Here the first prophet built a building of black stone - the Kaaba, to which he made regular pilgrimages.

The Qur'an says that Adam and Havva had 39 children, 38 of which appeared in pairs. In Islamic tradition, it is generally accepted that Adam lived for 2 thousand years and was buried near Mecca. After the Flood, his body was transferred to Jerusalem on Mount Golgotha.

Interestingly, it was Adam who received the first commandments from Allah, on which all Islamic teachings are based. They were passed on to the first prophet and teacher by the archangel Jabrail (compared with the Christian Michael).

The biblical story, which tells about the life of the progenitors of mankind - Adam and Eve, teaches modern people that the Lord created people for a grace-filled life in union with him. But it depends only on the free will of a person whether to follow the righteous path, or to succumb to sinful temptations.

Creation of Adam and Eve

The Limburg Brothers. Fine Hours of the Duke of Berry. Early 15th century

The fall of Adam and Eve, their expulsion from paradise are the most common Old Testament subjects in European art of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. We see the figures of Adam and Eve in the sculptural decoration of cathedrals and frescoes, in the painting of folding altars, in book miniatures and engravings. In order to understand why this story was so popular, let us recall how Christian theologians interpreted the story of the fall. Eve, succumbing to the temptation of the insidious serpent, tasted the fruits from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil and persuaded Adam to follow her. Upon learning of this, the angry God cursed the first people and expelled them from paradise. From now on, people became mortal; a woman, as more guilty, had to obey her husband in everything and give birth to children in pain, and a man - in the sweat of his brow to get his bread.


English miniaturist. Exile from paradise. York Psalter, 1170

According to the Bible, the expulsion from paradise is the starting point of the earthly history of man, and in this Christianity converges with Judaism. However, for the Jews, this legend is only one of the many stories of human disobedience and divine punishment that the Torah is full of: remember the Flood, the Tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah. The history of the fall was distinguished only by the fact that it had the most serious consequences for people. In Christianity, the idea gradually developed that the guilt for original sin extended to all the descendants of Adam, and the crucifixion of Jesus became the atonement for this guilt. Scenes of the fall and expulsion from paradise were compared in altar compositions and frescoes with scenes of the Annunciation, the Nativity of Christ, the Crucifixion or the Passion of the Lord and were called upon to remind believers of the meaning of the redemptive sacrifice: Christ, the “new Adam”, came into the world to cleanse people from sin and give mankind eternal life.

Mosaic of the cathedral in Montreal, Sicily. 1180s

French psalter. 1279

Depicting the fall and expulsion from paradise, the artists followed certain canons. Paradoxically, these canons did not accurately reflect the biblical story. In the scene of the fall, naked Adam and Eve stand at the tree of knowledge, listening to the words of the serpent or picking fruit. The Bible does not specify exactly which fruits grew on the tree of knowledge, but in the Middle Ages, the tradition of depicting apples on the tree of paradise was firmly established (in the earliest works, pomegranates). In Hebrew, the word "serpent" is masculine, but the tempting serpent (which was seen as the incarnation of the devil) was traditionally depicted as a woman with a snake body, which symbolized the sinfulness of the feminine. In the scene of the expulsion from paradise, the inconsolable disobedient are pursued by an angel with a punishing sword. However, the Bible does not say that it was the angel who expelled the first parents from paradise: God “expelled Adam and placed in the east near the garden of Eden a cherub and a flaming sword that turned” (Genesis 3:24).

Giovanni di Paolo. Creation of the Earth and expulsion from paradise. 1445

The traditional interpretation of the plot, inherent in medieval art, was preserved in the early Renaissance. Let's look at the amazing "Annunciation", written around 1434 by the Florentine artist, the Franciscan friar Fra Beato Angelico. When the viewer looks away from the golden-winged angel and the virgin Mary reverently listening to him, he notices in the upper left corner of the picture the scene of the expulsion from paradise that almost merges with the landscape. In Fra Beato Angelico, a peaceful and enlightened artist, this scene is not so dramatic as it is sad. An angel does not burn with anger, does not raise his sword militantly. He almost paternally laid his hand on the shoulder of the inconsolable Adam, not expelling, but as if sympathetically sending the sinning couple out of the gates of paradise.

Fra Beato Angelico. Annunciation. 1434

In the first third of the 15th century in parallel with the canonical, a new approach to the depiction of progenitors appeared. There was a gradual breakdown of the medieval worldview: humanists asserted new ideas about nature, about man and his place in the world, and the images of Adam and Eve began to interest artists in themselves, and not just as the embodiment of original sin. What is the essence of man? What lay behind his desire to taste the fruits from the tree of knowledge: frivolity, stupidity, depravity, or a noble desire to penetrate the secrets of nature, so familiar to the humanists of the Renaissance?

Jan and Hubert van Eyck. Ghent altar. 1422-1432

The first artists who interpreted the traditional figures of the progenitors in a new way were the Dutch masters - the brothers Jan and Hubert van Eyck, the authors of the famous Ghent altar, created in 1422-132. for the Cathedral of St. Bavo in Ghent. The grand folding two-tiered altar unites twenty-six paintings, which depict 258 human figures. But we are now interested in only two of them - Adam and Eve. When the altar is opened, and the viewer is presented with radiant pictures of the transformed world that should reign after the Last Judgment, only the figures of Adam and Eve to the left and right of the central composition contrast with the general jubilant mood. The emerging impression was very accurately described by the author of the book “Antwerp. Gent. Bruges” Mikhail Herman: “Like strangers, Adam and Eve enter the fold, shining with heavenly inflorescences, bringing with them the heavy breath of real, not at all ennobled human flesh. They enter the altar from opposite sides, leaving a deaf black darkness behind them, wary and distrustful, ugly, tired, even no longer young.

Jan and Hubert van Eyck. Adam and Eve. Doors of the Ghent Altarpiece.
Fragment. 1422-1432.

The images of Adam and Eve in this altar also serve, as was customary, as an eternal reminder of original sin, but their meaning - compositional and semantic - has changed, intensified. Mentally remove the figures of the progenitors from the painting "The Annunciation" by Fra Beato Angelico: a beautiful work will not lose so much. But try to remove the images of Adam and Eve from the Ghent altar - and the triumph of eternal life will no longer seem so complete without comparison with mortal life, and the chords of colors will no longer be so stunningly sonorous without these figures protruding from the darkness.

Tommaso Masaccio. Chapel of Brancacci.
Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. 1428

The frescoes by Masaccio in the Brancacci Chapel were created around the same time as the "Annunciation" by Fra Beato and the Ghent Altarpiece - in 1428, but this, really, is hard to believe. Twenty-seven-year-old Tommaso Masaccio worked on the frescoes of the Brancacci Chapel of the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. In the midst of work, the artist suddenly died. The unfinished murals of the Brancacci Chapel testify that Masaccio was on the verge of great accomplishments. The chapel became a place of pilgrimage for painters of subsequent generations; Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael admired the mastery of the untimely deceased genius.
The most striking of the Brancacci chapel frescoes is "The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise". There are few works in European art in which human suffering would be so strongly and convincingly expressed by means of painting. The figures of Adam and Eve cry out about their grief with every gesture, every fold of the body. “The main thing here is not the biblical story and not the external details, but the feeling of boundless human despair that grips Adam, who covered his face with his hands, and the sobbing Eve, with sunken eyes and a dark gap in her mouth distorted by a scream,” writes art historian Tatyana Kaptereva about the fresco.

"Last Judgment". About 1504 -1508

Hieronymus Bosch. Paradise. Left side of the altar

Fast forward, however, back to the Netherlands. Seven decades after the appearance of the Ghent altar, in the first years of the 16th century, Hieronymus Bosch created amazing altar compositions in which the plot of interest to us appears in a completely unexpected light. As a matter of fact, these works of Bosch can be called altars only conditionally. Although The Hay Cart, The Garden of Earthly Delights, and The Last Judgment retain the traditional form of a three-leaf folding altar, these works are intended more for philosophical reflection than for prayer. There is no lofty holy image before which the believer could kneel. Paradise is depicted on the left inner wings of all three altars. Depicted in different ways, but always in complex semantic relationships with the plots of the central and right wings. The "Hay Cart" and "The Last Judgment" depict the history of the ancestors - the creation of Eve, the fall and expulsion from paradise. In the Garden of Earthly Delights, on the left wing, only the scene of the creation of Eve is presented, but the Garden of Eden itself and the amazing creatures inhabiting it are written in more detail. In all three altars, the degree of sinfulness of the depicted increases from the left "heavenly" composition to the right - "hellish".

Hieronymus Bosch. Paradise. Fragment of the left wing of the altar
"Garden of Earthly Delights" ca.1504

Let's take a closer look at Bosch's paradise. Elephants and giraffes peacefully graze near the intricate fountain, lovely unicorns have come out to drink. The gloomy fantasy of the artist has not yet played out in full force, but even here, in paradise, ridiculous and unsightly metamorphoses of all living things take place. In "The Hay Wagon" and "The Last Judgment" clouds of ugly insects with frog-like limbs pour out directly from the clouds under the divine throne. In the Garden of Earthly Delights, an owl peeps out of a hole in a fantastic paradise plant (in the language of Bosch symbols - the embodiment of evil), a dead flying fish swims belly up in the pond (a symbol of sin), the paws of some other creature disappear in the mouth of a godless hybrid, and a cat with a mouse in its mouth busily runs past Adam and Eve, whom the Creator blesses. Adam and Eve look touchingly innocent: placid faces, fragile porcelain figures... Original sin has not yet been committed, but evil has already sprouted in the Garden of Eden, the world is inherently vicious, and the fall is not a tragic accident, but a natural beginning of world history. In the interpretation of Bosch, the sinless will certainly sin, the road from paradise will inevitably lead to the garden of worldly pleasures, to the realm of earthly vices, and from there - straight to hell.

Michelangelo Buonarroti. Fall.
Fragment of ceiling painting in the Sistine Chapel. 1510

Bosch's contemporary Michelangelo Buonarroti saw in the biblical legend the proud challenge of a person who wants to comprehend the laws of the universe and equal wisdom with God. In a fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1510), Eve appears before us not as an unreasonable curious creature, as if in a dream listening to the sweet speeches of a snake, but as a strong, mature person who is fully aware of her actions. Her hand confidently reaches for the forbidden tree, her eyes fearlessly meet the gaze of the snake woman. The tense rhythm of the hands of Eve, Adam, the serpent woman, the angel with a sword unites the parts of the composition separated by a tree trunk, giving the fresco an impulse of energetic movement, which ends somewhere outside the panel - where the first man and his girlfriend go to begin their earthly life.

Rafael Santi. Fall. Stanza della Senyatura, Vatican. 1508-11

Michelangelo's Eve, boldly challenging fate, is majestic and proud, but she can not be called feminine. The fact that the ancestors were, among other things, a man and a woman, that their insight, their shame for their nakedness meant the awakening of sensual love, was not fully reflected in works of art until Albrecht Dürer said his word. Let's compare his first work on our topic - the copper engraving "Adam and Eve" of 1504 - and the paintings written in 1507. Durer's engraving became a new word in the art of the German Renaissance. Having visited Italy, the artist transferred to his native Germany the achievements of the Italian Renaissance: never before has a naked body been depicted with such impeccable proportions. However, on the engraving, Adam and Eve look as if they were made “from the same dough”: the muscular, powerful Eve seems to be only a somewhat softened copy of Adam. Immediately after the second Italian trip, the artist, who was strongly impressed by the art of antiquity, created two paired paintings - "Adam" and "Eve". In German Renaissance painting, this was the first life-size depiction of a fully nude human figure. Durer wrote that since the ancestors were created in the image and likeness of God, their bodies should be a model of perfect beauty. And indeed - his Adam and Eve are captivatingly beautiful, but beautiful in different ways: Adam's youthful masculinity emphasizes the soft femininity of his girlfriend. It seems that the tender body of Eve blossoms in anticipation of a happy earthly love.

Albrecht Durer. Adam and Eve. 1507

The picture was originally intended for a custom-made altar, it has all the indispensable attributes of the scene of the fall - a tree, apples, snakes (although not in the guise of a woman, but in the form of an ordinary snake), but for unknown reasons the altar was not painted, and it is unlikely that accident. Could such a picture fulfill the traditional role of reminding the devout parishioner of the sinfulness of the human race? Young sinners are too charming not to arouse sympathy, their sin is portrayed too sweet to repent of it.

Hans Baldung Green. Fall. 1511

This work of Dürer inspired his followers for several decades. In the engraving of Hans Baldung Green "The Fall" of 1511, Adam, having barely tasted the apple, resolutely embraces Eve, and in the picture of the same author of 1525, Eve looks shyly chaste. Lucas Cranach the Elder (and he created seven compositions on the theme of the Fall!) Eve is coquettish and seductive... sinners, but above all - just people with all their sins and virtues.

Lucas Cranach the Elder. Adam and Eve. 1528

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