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108-589: Adam is the name given in Genesis 1–5 to the first human. Adam is the first human-being aware of God , and features as such in various belief systems (including Judaism , Christianity , Gnosticism and Islam ). According to Christianity, Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil . This action introduced death and sin into the world. This sinful nature infected all his descendants, and led humanity to be expelled from

216-489: A deep sleep to fall upon Adam and forms a woman ( Genesis 2:21–22 ), and Adam awakes and greets her as his helpmate. Genesis 3 , the account of the Fall: A serpent persuades the woman to disobey God's command and eat of the tree of knowledge, which gives wisdom. Woman convinces Adam to do likewise, whereupon they become conscious of their nakedness, cover themselves, and hide from the sight of God. God questions Adam, who blames

324-552: A family tomb and sends his servant to Mesopotamia to find among his relations a wife for Isaac; after proving herself worthy, Rebekah becomes Isaac's betrothed. Keturah , Abraham's other wife, births more children, among whose descendants are the Midianites . Abraham dies at a prosperous old age and his family lays him to rest in Hebron (Machpelah). Isaac's wife Rebekah gives birth to the twins Esau (meaning 'velvet'), father of

432-535: A future of greatness. Genesis ends with Israel in Egypt, ready for the coming of Moses and the Exodus (departure). The narrative is punctuated by a series of covenants with God, successively narrowing in scope from all humankind (the covenant with Noah ) to a special relationship with one people alone (Abraham and his descendants through Isaac and Jacob). In Judaism , the theological importance of Genesis centres on

540-689: A larger audience. He is also considered an important prophet of God in Druze faith, being among the seven prophets who appeared in different periods of history. Some Taoists in the Tang dynasty , inspired by Emperor Taizong 's syncretic beliefs and policies encouraging it, viewed the Christian version of Jesus as a redemptive manifestation of " the Way ", and respected his ancestors, including Adam, as well. Some Mongolian Christians and Muslims thought Adam

648-500: A male heir, and the story is constantly complicated by the fact that each prospective mother— Sarah , Rebekah and Rachel —is barren. The ancestors, however, retain their faith in God and God in each case gives a son—in Jacob's case, twelve sons, the foundation of the chosen Israelites . Each succeeding generation of the three promises attains a more rich fulfilment, until through Joseph "all

756-590: A number of versions. Zunz ("G. V." 2d ed., p. 176) distinguishes three main parts: (1) the Book Ha-Malbush; (2) the Great Raziel; (3) the Book of Secrets, or the Book of Noah. These three parts are still distinguishable—2b–7a, 7b–33b, 34a and b. After these follow two shorter parts entitled "Creation" and "Shi'ur Ḳomah", and after 41a come formulas for amulets and incantations. The idea of original sin

864-428: A promise to Abram, promising that his descendants shall be as numerous as the stars, but that people will suffer oppression in a foreign land for four hundred years, after which they will inherit the land "from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates ". Abram's name is changed to 'Abraham' and that of his wife Sarai to Sarah (meaning 'princess'), and God says that all males should be circumcised as

972-620: A reference to Adam and Eve. These do not fork from a single couple at the same epoch even if the names were borrowed from the Tanakh . Book of Genesis Genesis is part of the Torah or Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. Tradition credits Moses as the Torah's author . It was probably composed around the 5th century BC , although some scholars believe that primeval history (chapters 1–11), may have been composed and added as late as

1080-448: A sign of his promise to Abraham. Due to her old age, Sarah tells Abraham to take her Egyptian handmaiden, Hagar , as a second wife (to bear a child). Through Hagar, Abraham fathers Ishmael . God then plans to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for the sins of their people. Abraham protests, but fails to get God to agree not to destroy the cities (reasoning with Abraham that not even ten righteous persons were found there; and among

1188-560: A wife and meets Rachel at a well. He goes to her father, his uncle , where he works for a total of 14 years to earn his wives, Rachel and Leah . Jacob's name is changed to Israel after his wrestle with an angel , and by his wives and their handmaidens he has twelve sons, the ancestors of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel, and a daughter, Dinah . Shechem, son of Hamor the Hivite, rapes Dinah and asks his father to get Dinah for him as his wife, according to Chapter 34. Jacob agrees to

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1296-524: A woman from the dust, as he had created Adam, and named her Lilith ; but the two could not agree, for Adam wanted Lilith to lie under him, and Lilith insisted that Adam should lie under her, and so she fled from him, and Eve was created from Adam's rib. Her story was greatly developed, during the Middle Ages , in the tradition of Aggadic midrashim , the Zohar and Jewish mysticism . Other rabbis explained

1404-563: A work in the "antiquities" genre, as the Romans knew it, a popular genre telling of the appearance of humans and their ancestors and heroes, with elaborate genealogies and chronologies fleshed out with stories and anecdotes. Notable examples are found in the work of Greek historians of the 6th century BC: their intention was to connect notable families of their own day to a distant and heroic past, and in doing so they did not distinguish between myth , legend , and facts. Professor Jean-Louis Ska of

1512-486: Is circumcision ; and the last, which does not appear until the Book of Exodus, is with Israel alone, and its sign is Sabbath . A great leader mediates each covenant ( Noah , Abraham, Moses), and at each stage God progressively reveals himself by his name ( Elohim with Noah, El Shaddai with Abraham, Yahweh with Moses). Throughout Genesis, various figures engage in deception or trickery to survive or prosper. Biblical scholar David M. Carr notes that such stories reflect

1620-586: Is also known as a Sidra (or Sedra / s ɛ d r ə / ). The parashah is a section of the Torah (Five Books of Moses) used in Jewish liturgy during a particular week. There are 54 weekly parshas, or parashiyot in Hebrew, and the full cycle is read over the course of one Jewish year. The first 12 of the 54 come from the Book of Genesis, and they are: Literary motif A motif ( / m oʊ ˈ t iː f / moh- TEEF )

1728-522: Is any distinctive feature or idea that recurs across a story ; often, it helps develop other narrative elements such as theme or mood . A narrative motif can be created through the use of imagery , structural components, language , and other elements throughout literature. The flute in Arthur Miller 's play Death of a Salesman is a recurrent sound motif that conveys rural and idyllic notions. Another example from modern American literature

1836-694: Is assumed, and not argued. The concern of the text is not to prove the history but rather to impress the reader with the theological significance of these acts". The original manuscripts are lost, and the text of surviving copies varies. There are four major groupings of surviving manuscripts: the Masoretic Text , the Samaritan Pentateuch (in Samaritan script ), the Septuagint (a Greek translation), and fragments of Genesis found in

1944-626: Is considered the founder of the religion and the first prophet. He heralds manda (knowledge) and the true path of enlightenment. He is viewed as the propagator of kushta or divine truth. According to the Mandaean calendar , 2021–2022 CE in the Gregorian calendar would correspond to the Mandaean year 445391 AA (AA = after the creation of Adam). In the ancient Gnostic text On the Origin of

2052-531: Is normally excluded). Since the name YHWH had not been revealed to them, they worshipped El in his various manifestations. (It is, however, worth noting that in the Jahwist source, the patriarchs refer to deity by the name YHWH, for example in Genesis 15.) Through the patriarchs, God announces the election of Israel, that is, he chooses Israel to be his special people and commits himself to their future. God tells

2160-846: Is not found in Judaism nor in Islam, and was introduced into Christianity by the Apostle Paul , drawing on currents in Hellenistic Jewish thought which held that Adam's sin had introduced death and sin into the world. Sin, for Paul, was a power to which all humans are subject, but Christ's coming held out the means by which the righteous would be restored to the Paradise from which Adam's sin had banished mankind. He did not conceive of this original sin of Adam as being biologically transmitted or that later generations were to be punished for

2268-411: Is structured around the three patriarchs Abraham, Jacob and Joseph. The stories of Isaac arguably do not make up a coherent cycle of stories and function as a bridge between the cycles of Abraham and Jacob. The Genesis creation narrative comprises two different stories; the first two chapters roughly correspond to these. In the first, Elohim , the generic Hebrew word for God, creates the heavens and

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2376-430: Is that a theme is abstract and a motif is concrete. A theme is usually defined as a message, statement, or idea, while a motif is simply a detail repeated for larger symbolic meaning. In other words, a narrative motif—a detail repeated in a pattern of meaning—can produce a theme; but it can also create other narrative aspects. Nevertheless, the distinction between the two terms remains difficult to pinpoint. For instance,

2484-399: Is the green light found in the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald . Narratives may include multiple motifs of varying types. In Shakespeare 's play Macbeth , he uses a variety of narrative elements to create many different motifs. Imagistic references to blood and water are continually repeated. The phrase "fair is foul, and foul is fair" is echoed at many points in

2592-399: Is then made second in command of Egypt by the grateful pharaoh, and later on, he is reunited with his father and brothers, who fail to recognize him and plead for food as the famine had reached Canaan as well. After much manipulation to see if they still hate him, Joseph reveals himself, forgives them for their actions, and lets them and their households into Egypt, where Pharaoh assigns to them

2700-444: Is used in the collective sense, and the interplay between the individual "Adam" and the collective "humankind" is a main literary component to the events that occur in the Garden of Eden , the ambiguous meanings embedded throughout the moral, sexual, and spiritual terms of the narrative reflecting the complexity of the human condition. Genesis 2:7 is the first verse where "Adam" takes on the sense of an individual man (the first man), and

2808-515: The Book of Jubilees , tells how Adam had a daughter, Awân, born after Cain and Abel, and another daughter, Azura , born after Seth, and they had nine other sons; Cain married Awân and Seth married Azûrâ, thus accounting for their descendants. The Life of Adam and Eve and its Greek version the Apocalypse of Moses recount how Adam repented his sin in exile and was rewarded by being transported to

2916-467: The Dead Sea Scrolls . The Dead Sea Scrolls are oldest but cover only a small proportion of the book. Genesis appears to be structured around the recurring phrase elleh toledot , meaning "these are the generations", with the first use of the phrase referring to the "generations of heaven and earth" and the remainder marking individuals. The toledot formula, occurring eleven times in

3024-478: The Edomites , and Jacob (meaning 'supplanter' or 'follower'). Esau was a couple of seconds older as he had come out of the womb first, and was going to become the heir; however, through carelessness, he sold his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of stew. His mother, Rebekah, ensures Jacob rightly gains his father's blessing as the firstborn son and inheritor. At 77 years of age, Jacob leaves his parents and later seeks

3132-595: The Hebrew word elohim for God. This original work was expanded in the 8th century BC, with the name Yahweh used for God. In the 7th century BC, during the time of Jeremiah , the final parts of the Pentateuch were added, specifically the main parts of Deuteronomy. This would mean the Pentateuch achieved its final form before the Babylonian Exile ( c.  598 BC  – c.   538 BC ). At

3240-578: The Islamic creation myth , he was the first prophet of Islam and the first Muslim . The Qur'an states that all the prophets preached the same faith of submission to God . When God informed the angels that he would create a vicegerent ( Arabic : خليفة , romanized :  khalifa , lit.   'caliph') on Earth, the angels enquired, asking, "will You place therein that which will spread corruption and bloodshed?" God responded, "I know what you know not" ( Qur'an 2:30 ), and commanded

3348-586: The Pontifical Biblical Institute calls the basic rule of the antiquarian historian the "law of conservation": everything old is valuable, nothing is eliminated. This antiquity was needed to prove the worth of Israel's traditions to the nations (the neighbours of the Jews in the early Persian province of Judea), and to reconcile and unite the various factions within Israel itself. Describing

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3456-593: The Victorian crisis of faith as evidence mounted that the Earth was far older than six thousand years. It is a custom among religious Jewish communities for a weekly Torah portion , popularly referred to as a parashah , to be read during Jewish prayer services on Saturdays, Mondays and Thursdays. The full name, פָּרָשַׁת הַשָּׁבוּעַ , Parashat ha-Shavua , is popularly abbreviated to parashah (also parshah / p ɑː r ʃ ə / or parsha ), and

3564-422: The creator (Demiurge) of the material world , who in turn is tricked into blowing the soul into a body. In Genesis , the name "Adam" is given to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, the Hebrew word adam is also used in the Bible as a pronoun , individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as "mankind". Genesis 1 tells of God's creation of the world and its creatures, including

3672-420: The land of Goshen . Jacob calls his sons to his bedside and reveals their future before he dies. Joseph lives to old age and tells his brothers before his death that if God leads them out of the country, then they should take his bones with them. In 1978, David Clines published The Theme of the Pentateuch . Considered influential as one of the first authors to take up the question of the overarching theme of

3780-470: The talmudic hypothesis that Adam instituted the custom of fasting before the winter solstice and rejoicing afterwards – an observance that devolved into Saturnalia and the Calends . Adam withdrew from Eve for 130 years after their expulsion from Eden, and in this time both he and Eve had sex with demons, until at length they reunited and Eve gave birth to Seth. A 2nd-century BCE Jewish religious work ,

3888-466: The tree of the knowledge of good and evil . Later, in chapter 3, a serpent , portrayed as a deceptive creature or trickster , convinces Eve to eat the fruit. She then convinces Adam to eat it, whereupon God throws them out and punishes them—Adam was punished with getting what he needs only by sweat and work, and Eve to giving birth in pain. This is interpreted by Christians as the " fall of man " into sin . Eve bears two sons, Cain and Abel . Cain works in

3996-448: The 16th to the 19th century treated the book of Genesis as factual. As evidence in the fields of paleontology , geology and other sciences was uncovered, scholars tried to fit these discoveries into the Genesis creation account. For example, Johann Jakob Scheuchzer in the 18th century believed that fossils were the remains of creatures killed during the flood. This literal understanding of Genesis fell out of favor with scholars during

4104-406: The 3rd century BC. Based on scientific interpretation of archaeological , genetic , and linguistic evidence, some mainstream Bible scholars consider Genesis to be primarily mythological rather than historical . It is divisible into two parts, the primeval history (chapters 1–11) and the ancestral history (chapters 12–50). The primeval history sets out the author's concepts of the nature of

4212-477: The American science fiction cult classic Blade Runner , director Ridley Scott uses motifs to not only establish a dark and shadowy film noir atmosphere, but also to weave together the thematic complexities of the plot. Throughout the film, the recurring motif of "eyes" is connected to a constantly changing flow of images, and sometimes violent manipulations, in order to call into question our ability, and

4320-518: The Angel ) is a collection of esoteric writings, probably compiled and edited by the same hand, but originally not the work of one author, which according to tradition was revealed to Adam by the angel Raziel. The book cannot be shown to predate the 13th century, but may in parts date back to Late Antiquity , and like other obscure ancient texts such as the Bahir and Sefer Yetzirah , it has been extant in

4428-519: The Chaldeans and whose identification with Sumerian Ur is tentative in modern scholarship ) into the God-given land of Canaan , where he dwells as a sojourner , as does his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob . Jacob's name is changed to "Israel", and through the agency of his son Joseph , the children of Israel descend into Egypt, 70 people in all with their households, and God promises them

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4536-637: The Garden. Only through the crucifixion of Jesus , humanity can be redeemed. In Islam, Adam is considered Khalifa (خليفة) (successor) on earth. This is understood to mean either that he is God's deputy, the initiation of a new cycle of sentient life on earth, or both. Similar to the Biblical account, the Quran has Adam placed in a garden where he sins by taking from the Tree of Immortality , so loses his abode in

4644-409: The Hebrew word adam , meaning humankind. In Genesis 2 God forms "Adam", this time meaning a single male human, out of "the dust of the ground", places him in the Garden of Eden , and forms a woman, Eve , as his companion. In Genesis 3 Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge and God condemns Adam to labour on the earth for his food and to return to it on his death. Genesis 4 deals with

4752-538: The Imamate, would also hold the position of enunciator and prophet ( Arabic : نبي , romanized :  nabi ). In the Islamic traditions ( ahadith ), Adam is given the name Adam-aI-Safi ( Arabic : آدم ألصافي , lit.   'Adam, The Chosen One') by Allah. The Druze regard Adam as the first spokesman ( natiq ), who helped to transmit the foundational teachings of monotheism ( tawhid ) intended for

4860-434: The Islamic religious tradition. He writes that Adam was the first enunciator of divine revelation ( Arabic : ناطق , romanized :  nāṭiq , lit.   'orator') and Seth was his legatee ( Arabic : وصي , romanized :  wasī , lit.   'inheritor, guardian'). He argues that the descendants of Seth are Aimmah , culminating in the seventh Imam, Nuh/Noah who, in addition to holding

4968-491: The Pentateuch, Clines' conclusion was that the overall theme is "the partial fulfilment—which implies also the partial nonfulfillment—of the promise to or blessing of the Patriarchs". (By calling the fulfilment "partial", Clines was drawing attention to the fact that at the end of Deuteronomy the people of Israel are still outside Canaan.) The patriarchs , or ancestors, are Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, with their wives (Joseph

5076-682: The Pentateuch: J, D, and P. The E source is considered no more than a variation of J, and P is considered a body of revisions and expansions to the J (or "non-Priestly") material. The Deuteronomistic source does not appear in Genesis. More recent thinking is that J dates from either just before or during the Babylonian Exile, and the Priestly final edition was made late in the Exilic period or soon after. The almost complete absence of all

5184-598: The Persians of the Achaemenid Empire , after their conquest of Babylon in 539 BC, agreed to grant Jerusalem a large measure of local autonomy within the empire, but required the local authorities to produce a single law code accepted by the entire community. The two powerful groups making up the community—the priestly families who controlled the Second Temple and who traced their origin to Moses and

5292-452: The World , Adam originally appears as a primordial being born from light poured out by the aeon known as forethought. Accordingly, his primordial form is called Adam of Light. But when he desired to reach the eighth heaven , he was unable to because of the corruption mixed with his light. Thus he creates his own realm, containing six universes and their worlds which are seven times better than

5400-601: The absence of all the other characters and incidents mentioned in chapters 1–11 of Genesis from the rest of the Hebrew Bible has led a sizeable minority to the conclusion that these chapters were composed much later than those that follow, possibly in the 3rd century BCE. The Bible uses the word אָדָם ‎ ( 'adam ) in all of its senses: collectively ("mankind", Genesis 1:27 ), individually (a "man", Genesis 2:7 ), gender nonspecific ("man and woman", Genesis 5:1–2 ), and male ( Genesis 2:23–24 ). In Genesis 1:27 "adam"

5508-630: The age of the world since creation. This Anno Mundi system of counting years is the basis of the Hebrew calendar and Byzantine calendar . Counts differ somewhat, but they generally place the age of the Earth at about six thousand years. During the Protestant Reformation , rivalry between Catholic and Protestant Christians led to a closer study of the Bible and a competition to take its words more seriously. Thus, scholars in Europe from

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5616-552: The altar of the Temple of Solomon was the centre of the world and the gateway to God's Garden of Eden, and it was here that Adam was both created and buried. In the 17th-century book Kav ha-Yashar , the author warns not to talk negatively about Adam, and writes that those who talk positively about Adam will be blessed with a long life. A similar warning can be found in The Zohar . The Sefer Raziel HaMalakh (רזיאל המלאך) ( Raziel

5724-628: The analysis of the Abraham cycle, the Jacob cycle, and the Joseph cycle, and the Yahwist and Priestly sources . The problem lies in finding a way to unite the patriarchal theme of the divine promise to the stories of Genesis 1–11 (the primeval history ) with their theme of God's forgiveness in the face of man's evil nature. One solution is to see the patriarchal stories as resulting from God's decision not to remain alienated from humankind: God creates

5832-592: The ancestors of the Moabites and Ammonites . Abraham and Sarah go to the Philistine town of Gerar , pretending to be brother and sister (they are half-siblings). The King of Gerar takes Sarah for his wife, but God warns him to return her (as she is really Abraham's wife) and he obeys. God sends Sarah a son and tells her she should name him Isaac ; through him will be the establishment of the covenant (promise). Sarah then drives Ishmael and his mother Hagar out into

5940-523: The ancient world's ideas on biology, according to which male sperm contained the entire unborn baby, the mother's womb being no more than a nurturing chamber in which it grew.) As mentioned above , the Apocalypse of Moses , a Jewish writing containing material probably originating from the first century CE, places both Adam's place of creation and his burial at the altar of the Temple of Solomon, seen as

6048-453: The angels to prostrate to Adam. Adam and Eve both ate from the Tree of Immortality ( Arabic : شَجَرَةُ الْخُلْد , romanized :  šajara al-ḫuld ) despite Allah's warnings against it, and both shared guilt equally, for Eve neither tempted Adam or ate before him; nor is Eve to blame for the pain of childbirth, for God never punishes one person for the sins of another. The Shia school of Islam does not even consider that their action

6156-413: The articulation of Dr. Ian Malcolm 's dialogue. Any number of narrative elements with symbolic significance can be classified as motifs—whether they are images, spoken or written phrases, structural or stylistic devices , or other elements like sound, physical movement, or visual components in dramatic narratives. While it may appear interchangeable with the related concept, theme , a general rule

6264-544: The birth of Adam's sons, and Genesis 5 lists his descendants from Seth to Noah . In the entire Hebrew Bible, Adam appears only in chapters 1–5 of the Book of Genesis, with the exception of a mention at the beginning of the Books of Chronicles where, as in Genesis, he heads the list of Israel's ancestors. The majority view among scholars is that the final text of Genesis dates from the Persian period (the 5th century BCE), but

6372-436: The birth of their first sons (except Adam himself, for whom his age at the birth of Seth, his third son, is given) and their ages at death (Adam lives 930 years, up to the 56th year of Lamech, father of Noah ). The chapter notes that Adam had other sons and daughters after Seth, but does not name them. Louis Ginzberg retells a midrash that God himself took dust from all four corners of the earth, and with each color (red for

6480-481: The blood, black for the bowels, white for the bones and veins, and green for the pale skin), created Adam. The soul of Adam is the image of God , and as God fills the world, so the soul fills the human body: "as God sees all things, and is seen by none, so the soul sees, but cannot be seen; as God guides the world, so the soul guides the body; as God in His holiness is pure, so is the soul; and as God dwells in secret, so doth

6588-402: The book of Genesis, serves as a heading which marks a transition to a new subject. The creation account of Genesis 1 functions as a prologue for the whole book and is not introduced with a toledot . The toledot divide the book into the following sections: It is not clear, however, what this meant to the original authors, and most modern commentators divide it into two parts based on

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6696-615: The centre of the world and the gateway to the Garden of Eden. The early Christian community adapted this to their own legend of Golgotha , replacing the altar with the place of Jesus's crucifixion. According to this Christian legend, current in the time of Origen (early 3rd century CE), the holy blood of Christ trickled down and restored to life the father of the human race, who then led the saints who appeared to many in Jerusalem on that day as described in Scripture. In Mandaeism , Adam

6804-424: The characters and incidents mentioned in primeval history from the rest of the Hebrew Bible has led a sizeable minority of scholars to conclude that these chapters were composed much later than those that follow, possibly in the 3rd century BC. As for why the book was created, a theory which has gained considerable interest, although still controversial, is that of Persian imperial authorisation. This proposes that

6912-453: The context of sex is absent; the gender distinction of "adam" is then reiterated in Genesis 5:1–2 by defining "male and female". A recurring literary motif is the bond between Adam and the earth ( adamah ): God creates Adam by molding him out of clay in the final stages of the creation narrative . After the loss of innocence, God curses Adam and the earth as punishment for his disobedience. Adam and humanity are cursed to die and return to

7020-528: The covenants linking God to his chosen people and the people to the Promised Land . The name Genesis is from the Latin Vulgate , in turn borrowed or transliterated from Greek Γένεσις , meaning 'origin'; Biblical Hebrew : בְּרֵאשִׁית , romanized:  Bərēʾšīṯ , 'In [the] beginning'. Genesis was written anonymously, but both Jewish and Christian religious tradition attributes

7128-471: The death oracle given to Adam in Genesis 3:19 forms a link between man's creation from "dust" ( Genesis 2:7 ) to the "return" of his beginnings. Genesis 4 deals with the birth of Adam's sons Cain and Abel and the story of the first murder, followed by the birth of a third son, Seth. Genesis 5 , the Book of the Generations of Adam, lists the descendants of Adam from Seth to Noah with their ages at

7236-411: The deeds of a remote ancestor. It was Augustine who took this step, locating sin itself in male semen: when Adam and Eve ate of the fruit they were ashamed and covered their genitals, identifying the place from which the first sin was passed on to all succeeding generations. Only Jesus Christ, who was not conceived by human semen, was free of the stain passed down from Adam. (Augustine's idea was based on

7344-483: The deity and of humankind's relationship with its maker: God creates a world which is good and fit for humans, but when man corrupts it with sin, God decides to destroy his creation, sparing only the righteous Noah and his family to re-establish the relationship between man and God. The ancestral history (chapters 12–50) tells of the prehistory of Israel , God's chosen people . At God's command, Noah's descendant Abraham journeys from his birthplace (described as Ur of

7452-537: The designations for God. For example, the Yahwist source uses Yahweh, while the Elohistic and Priestly sources use Elohim. Scholars also use repeated and duplicate stories to identify separate sources. In Genesis, these include the two creation stories, three different wife–sister narratives , and the two versions of Abraham sending Hagar and Ishmael into the desert. According to the documentary hypothesis, J

7560-558: The earth (or ground) from which he was formed. This "earthly" aspect is a component of Adam's identity, and Adam's curse of estrangement from the earth seems to describe humankind's divided nature of being earthly yet separated from nature. Genesis 1 tells of God's creation of the world and its creatures, with humankind as the last of his creatures: "Male and female created He them, and blessed them, and called their name Adam ..." ( Genesis 5:2 ). God blesses mankind, commands them to " be fruitful and multiply ", and gives them "dominion over

7668-474: The earth including humankind, in six days, and rests on the seventh . In the second, God, now referred to as " Yahweh Elohim" (rendered as "the L ORD God" in English translations), creates two individuals, Adam and Eve , as the first man and woman, and places them in the Garden of Eden . In the second chapter, God commanded the man that he is free to eat from any tree, including the tree of life, except from

7776-594: The end of the 19th century, most scholars adopted the documentary hypothesis . This theory held that the five books of the Pentateuch came from four sources: the Yahwist (abbreviated as J), the Elohist (E), the Deuteronomist (D) and the Priestly source (P). Each source was held to tell the same basic story, with the sources later combined by various editors. Scholars were able to distinguish sources based on

7884-483: The entire Pentateuch —Genesis, Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy —to Moses . During the Enlightenment , the philosophers Benedict Spinoza and Thomas Hobbes questioned Mosaic authorship . In the 17th century, Richard Simon proposed that the Pentateuch was written by multiple authors over a long period of time. The involvement of multiple authors is suggested by internal contradictions within

7992-443: The fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth" ( Genesis 1.26–27 ). In Genesis 2 , God forms "Adam", this time meaning a single male human, out of "the dust of the ground" and "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life" ( Genesis 2:7 ). God then places this first man in the Garden of Eden , telling him that "Of every tree of

8100-430: The garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil , thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" ( Genesis 2:16–17 ). God notes that "It is not good that the man should be alone" ( Genesis 2:18 ) and brings the animals to Adam, who gives them their names, but among all the animals there was not found a companion for him ( Genesis 2:20 ). God causes

8208-415: The garden, and Abel works with meat; they both offer offerings to God one day, and God does not accept Cain's offering but does accept Abel's. This causes Cain to resent Abel, and Cain ends up murdering him. God then curses Cain . Eve bears another son, Seth , to take Abel's place in accordance to the promises given at 3:15, 20. After many generations of Adam have passed from the lines of Cain and Seth,

8316-431: The garden. When Adam repents from his sin, he is forgiven by God. This is seen as a guidance for human-life, who sin, become aware of their mistake, and repent. In Gnostic belief-systems, the bodily creation of Adam is viewed in a negative light. Due to the underlying demonization of matter, Gnostic cosmologies depict the body as a form of prison of Adam's soul. This soul would have been transferred by Sophia (wisdom) onto

8424-543: The heavenly paradise, foreshadowing the destiny of all the righteous at the end of time. The Archangel Michael attended Adam's death, together with Eve and his son Seth, still living at that time, and he was buried together with his murdered son Abel. Because they repented, God gave Adam and Eve garments of light, and similar garments will clothe the Messiah when he comes. According to the Apocalypse of Moses , which probably originates in first-century CE Jewish literature,

8532-482: The heavens of Chaos . All these realms exist within the region between the eighth heaven and the Chaos beneath it. But when the archons saw him, they realize the chief creator of the material world ( Yaldabaoth ) had lied to them by claiming he was the only god. However, they decide to create a physical version of Adam in the image of the spiritual Adam. But Sophia later sends her daughter Zoe (the spiritual Eve) to give

8640-533: The marriage but requires that all the males of Hamor's tribe be circumcised, including Hamor and Shechem. After this was performed and all the men were still weak, Jacob's sons Simeon and Levi murdered all the males. Jacob complained that their act would mean retribution by others, namely the Canaanites and Perizzites. Jacob and his tribe took all the Hivite women and children as well as livestock and other property for themselves. Joseph , Jacob's favourite son of

8748-468: The narrator's own, to accurately perceive and understand reality. Narrative motifs can be ironic. For example, in Michael Crichton 's Jurassic Park novel, control is a recurring motif via chapter title and topic of discussion; it's an ironic motif that is instantiated in the constant creation of the unknown and the belief that it can be controlled and contained. The irony is explained through

8856-409: The patriarchs that he will be faithful to their descendants (i.e. to Israel), and Israel is expected to have faith in God and his promise. ("Faith" in the context of Genesis and the Hebrew Bible means an agreement to the promissory relationship, not a body of a belief.) The promise itself has three parts: offspring, blessings, and land. The fulfilment of the promise to each patriarch depends on having

8964-529: The physical Adam life before leaving the physical Eve with Adam and entering the Tree of Knowledge . However, according to the Hypostasis of the Archons , a spirit descends on the physical Adam and gives him a living soul. In Islam, Allah created Adam ( Arabic : آدم ) from a handful of earth taken from the entire world, which explains why the peoples of the world are of different skin colors. According to

9072-558: The play, a combination that mixes the concepts of good and evil . The play also features the central motif of the washing of hands , one that combines both verbal images and the movement of the actors. In a narrative, a motif establishes a pattern of ideas that may serve different conceptual purposes in different works. Kurt Vonnegut , for example, in his non-linear narratives such as Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle makes frequent use of motif to connect different moments that might seem otherwise separated by time and space. In

9180-467: The publication and public acceptance of this new law code c.  444 BC . There was now a large gap between the earliest sources of the Pentateuch and the period they claimed to describe, which ended c.  1200 BC . Most scholars held to the documentary hypothesis until the 1980s. Since then, a number of variations and revisions of the documentary hypothesis have been proposed. The new supplementary hypothesis posits three main sources for

9288-406: The rest of the Pentateuch did not reach its final, present-day form until after the Babylonian Exile. Julius Wellhausen argued that the Pentateuch was finalized in the time of Ezra . Ezra 7 :14 records that Ezra traveled from Babylon to Jerusalem in 458 BC with God's law in his hand. Wellhausen argued that this was the newly compiled Pentateuch. Nehemiah 8 – 10 , according to Wellhausen, describes

9396-421: The righteous was Abraham's nephew Lot ). Angels save Abraham's nephew Lot (who was living there at the same time) and his family, but his wife looks back on the destruction, (even though God commanded not to) and turns into a pillar of salt for going against his word. Lot's daughters, concerned that they are fugitives who will never find husbands, get Lot drunk so they can become pregnant by him, and give birth to

9504-562: The same canonical book, like the Genesis flood narrative , are also understood as having been influenced by older literature, with parallels in the older Epic of Gilgamesh . In biology, the most recent common ancestors of humans, when traced back using the Y-chromosome for the male lineage and mitochondrial DNA for the female lineage, are commonly called the Y-chromosomal Adam and Mitochondrial Eve respectively as

9612-425: The same verse as meaning that Adam was created with two faces, male and female, or as a single hermaphrodite being, male and female joined back to back, but God saw that this made walking and conversing difficult, and so split them apart. The serpent approached Eve rather than Adam because Adam had heard the word of God with his own ears, whereas Eve had only his report; Eve tasted the fruit and knew at once that she

9720-413: The soul." According to Jewish literature, Adam possessed a body of light, identical to the light created by God on the first day, and the original glory of Adam can be regained through mystical contemplation of God. The rabbis, puzzled by fact that Genesis 1 states that God created man and woman together while Genesis 2 describes them being created separately, told that when God created Adam he also created

9828-423: The subject matter, a primeval history (chapters 1–11) and a patriarchal history (chapters 12–50). While the first is far shorter than the second, it sets out the basic themes and provides an interpretive key for understanding the entire book. The primeval history has a symmetrical structure hinging on the flood story (chapters 6–9) with the events before the flood mirrored by the events after. The ancestral history

9936-482: The text. For example, Genesis includes two creation narratives . By the early 1860s, the leading theory for the Pentateuch's composition was the old supplementary hypothesis. This theory held that the earliest portions, the so-called Book of Origins (containing Genesis 1 and most of the priestly laws in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers), was composed in the time of King Solomon by a priest or Levite . This author used

10044-480: The twelve, makes his brothers jealous (especially because of special gifts Jacob gave him) and because of that jealousy they sell Joseph into slavery in Egypt . Joseph endures many trials including being innocently sentenced to jail but he stays faithful to God. After several years, he prospers there after the pharaoh of Egypt asks him to interpret a dream he had about an upcoming famine, which Joseph does through God. He

10152-503: The vulnerability felt by ancient Israelites and that "such stories can be a major way of gaining hope and resisting domination". Examples include: In both Judaism and Christianity , a genre of literature emerged dedicated to interpreting and commenting on the Genesis creation narrative, known as the Hexaemeron . By totaling the spans of time in the genealogies of Genesis, religious authorities have calculated what they consider to be

10260-480: The wilderness (because Ishmael is not her real son and Hagar is a slave), but God saves them and promises to make Ishmael a great nation. Then, God tests Abraham by demanding that he sacrifice Isaac . As Abraham is about to lay the knife upon his son, "the Angel of the Lord" restrains him, promising him again innumerable descendants. On the death of Sarah, Abraham purchases Machpelah (believed to be modern Hebron ) for

10368-465: The wilderness wanderings, and the major landowning families who made up the "elders" and who traced their own origins to Abraham, who had "given" them the land—were in conflict over many issues, and each had its own "history of origins". However, the Persian promise of greatly increased local autonomy for all provided a powerful incentive to cooperate in producing a single text. Genesis is an example of

10476-410: The woman. God passes judgment, first upon the serpent, condemned to go on his belly, then the woman, condemned to pain in childbirth and subordination to her husband, and finally Adam, who is condemned to labour on the earth for his food and to return to it on his death. God then expels the man and woman from the garden, lest they eat of the Tree of Life and become immortal. The chiastic structure of

10584-474: The work of the biblical authors, John Van Seters wrote that lacking many historical traditions and none from the distant past, "They had to use myths and legends for earlier periods. In order to make sense out of the variety of different and often conflicting versions of stories, and to relate the stories to each other, they fitted them into a genealogical chronology." Tremper Longman describes Genesis as theological history: "the fact that these events took place

10692-559: The world and developed the ability to receive revelation, God sent Adam to each and every branch of civilization. This opinion has also been alluded to and accepted by Islamic scholars of different sects. According to a revelation received by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad , the founder of the community, the Adam mentioned in the Qur'an was born 4,598 years before Muhammad. The Muslim thinker Nasir Khusraw offers another interpretation of Adam's significance to

10800-515: The world and humans, humans rebel, and God "elects" (chooses) Abraham. To this basic plot (which comes from the Yahwist), the Priestly source has added a series of covenants dividing history into stages, each with its own distinctive "sign". The first covenant is between God and all living creatures, and is marked by the sign of the rainbow; the second is with the descendants of Abraham ( Ishmaelites and others as well as Israelites), and its sign

10908-493: The world becomes corrupted by human sin and Nephilim , and God wants to wipe out humanity for their wickedness. However, Noah is righteous and blameless. So first, he instructs the Noah to build an ark and put examples of all the animals on it, seven pairs of every clean animal and one pair of every unclean. Then God sends a great flood to wipe out the rest of the world. When the waters recede, God promises he will never destroy

11016-544: The world with water again, making a rainbow as a symbol of his promise . God sees humankind cooperating to build a great tower city, the Tower of Babel , and divides humanity with many languages and sets them apart with confusion. Then, a generation line from Shem to Abram is described. Abram, a man descended from Noah, is instructed by God to travel from his home in Mesopotamia to the land of Canaan . There, God makes

11124-401: The world" attains salvation from famine, and by bringing the children of Israel down to Egypt he becomes the means through which the promise can be fulfilled. Scholars generally agree that the theme of divine promise unites the patriarchal cycles, but many would dispute the efficacy of trying to examine Genesis' theology by pursuing a single overarching theme, instead citing as more productive

11232-467: Was a sin, for obedience and disobedience are possible only on Earth, and not in heaven where the paradise is located. According to Qisas al-Anbiya , Adam fell on Adam's Peak located in central Sri Lanka , the tallest mountain in the world and so the closest to Heaven, and from there God sent him to Mecca , where he repented and was forgiven. At Mecca he built the first Sanctuary (the Kaabah – which

11340-496: Was doomed to death, and said to herself that it was better she trick Adam into eating so that he too would die, and not take another woman in her place. Adam ate the fruit unaware of what he was doing, and was filled with grief. When Adam blamed Eve after eating the forbidden fruit, God rebuked him that Adam as a man should not have obeyed his wife, for he is the head, not her. An Aggadic legend found in tractate Avodah Zarah 8a has observations regarding Roman midwinter holidays, and

11448-528: Was later rebuilt by Ibrahim ) and was taught the ritual of the Hajj, and wove the first cloak for himself and the first veil and shift for Eve, and after this returned to India where he died at the age of 930, having seen the sons of the sons of his children, 1400 in all. According to the Ahmadiyya sect, Adam was not the first human being on earth, but when the human race came into existence, and spread all over

11556-541: Was produced during the 9th century BC in the southern Kingdom of Judah and was believed to be the earliest source. E was written in the northern Kingdom of Israel during the 8th century BC. D was written in Judah in the 7th century BC and associated with the religious reforms of King Josiah c.  625 BC . The latest source was P, which was written during the 5th century in Babylon . Based on these dates, Genesis and

11664-461: Was the same person as Gautama Buddha . While a traditional view was that the Book of Genesis was authored by Moses and has been considered historical and metaphorical, modern scholars consider the Genesis creation narrative as one of various ancient origin myths . Analysis like the documentary hypothesis also suggests that the text is a result of the compilation of multiple previous traditions, explaining apparent contradictions. Other stories of

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