Basic Information
The Book of Genesis in the Bible describe Adam and Eve as the first people on earth, and the progenitors of the human race. According to Genesis 2:7, "the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being." (NIV translation) God placed the man, Adam, in a garden he had prepared for him, the Garden of Eden
At first Adam was alone in the Garden. God decided he needed a suitable partner; so putting Adam into a deep sleep, he took a rib from Adam's body and from that rib created the woman, Eve.
The Creation account in Genesis chapter 1 suggests that God created Man and Woman at the same time. Medieval Jewish theologians suggested that Eve was actually Adam's second wife. The hypothetical first wife was named Lilith, and it was said that Adam rejected her because she demanded equality with him. Lilith is not mentioned in the Bible. Traditional Jewish and Christian thought has held that women should be subservient to men because Adam has seniority over Eve, but other verses in chapter 2 emphasize the woman as a partner to the man and that by joining together, they become a single whole1.
Adam and Eve wore no clothes and didn't have a problem with that; making them popular subjects for medieval and Rennaisance artists.
They dwelt in the Garden of Eden until the Fall of Man, when they disobeyed God's commands and as a punishment were expelled.
Genesis records them having three sons, Cain and Abel, and later Seth. But considering they invented sex, and lived for about 900 years, they probably had more that just aren't mentioned. Talmudic lore also casts them (seperately) as the parents of the mazikeen by a variety of spirits.
According to Genesis, Adam lived to the age of 930. Jewish tradition holds that he was buried in the Cave of of Machpelah, in Hebron.
In his epistles, St. Paul compares Adam with Christ, the "New Adam".
Sources
Game and Story Use
- The stories a culture tells about the First Man and Women says a lot about how it regards the sexes.
- An old science fiction trope has a male and female space explorer stranded on an alien world and becoming Adam and Eve.
- In some adaptations of Mary Shelly's Frankenstien, the creature is named Adam, emphasizing that he is the first of a new creation.
- Two characters in the webcomic Girl Genius are Frankenstein-like constructs named Adam and Lilith Clay.
- Archaeologist in Hebron discover a pair of skeletons, male and female, in a remote cave. Could they be Adam and Eve?
- How would they know?
- Okay; let's say analysis of the bones suggests that they had lived for several centuries.
- Or weirder yet: Carbon dating puts the bodies at several thousand years old — yet they have suffered no decomposition!!!
- Hey, they don't actually have to be the real Adam and Eve as long as enough people believe that they are — and are willing to put the players in danger because of it!
- How would they know?
- A world only a few centuries from its equivalent of Adam and Eve might make an interesting setting … especially if those first humans are still alive and perhaps ruling.
- Those who hold with the concept of theistic evolution are more likely to regard Adam and Eve as the first sapient hominids (and therefore the first to be able to relate to God) with Lilith (and possibly the mates of Adam and Eve's offspring such as Seth) being pre-sapient relatives - alterntative, Lilith may be cast as another sapient that rejected God.
- In this model, full sapience is often equated to "the fall" in that it consists of "being like God, having knowledge of good and evil".