LIFE OF ADAM AND EVE

The '''Life of Adam and Eve''' is a Jewish pseudepigraphical writing, the original of which was perhaps written around 100 BC.

Contents

Story

Texts

Archive

See also

External links

Story

The story begins immediately after Adam and Eve's exile from the Garden of Eden and continues to their deaths. The text includes a description of The Fall of Man from Eve's point of view. The text says that Eve was put in charge of all the female animals and half the garden. Greater detail of the scene is given than in Genesis; the serpent of the garden is described as having hands and feet, and the ''tree of knowledge of good and evil'' is said to be a fig tree.
There is no trace of the common story found elsewhere that Cain and Abel had twin sisters, and Cain's killing of Abel is passed over quickly. We are told, however, that Adam and Eve had 30 sons and 30 daughters.

Texts

Since tradition considered the book of Genesis as authored by Moses, this tradition was extended to the Greek variant of the ''Life of Adam and Eve''. Consequently, and somewhat confusingly, the book became known as the ''Apocalypsis Mosis'' (literally, the ''Revelation of Moses'') and was formally titled that by Tischendorf, its first editor; thus, the name stuck.
What appear to be extracts are also found in later texts, such as the Cave of Treasures. The texts that have survived are later variants written in Greek, Latin, Slavonic, Armenian, Georgian and Coptic (fragments only). These obviously go back for the most part to a single source and contain (except for obvious inserts in individual texts) no undeniable Christian teaching. Each language version contains material unique to itself, as well as variations in the texts found in that language in what does or does not appear.

Archive

The ''Adam and Eve Archive'' is an ongoing project by Gary Anderson and Michael E. Stone to present all of the original texts in both the original languages and in translation. It currently contains English translations of the most important texts and a synopsis guide that allows the viewer to easily jump from a section in one source to parallel sections in other sources.

See also

For other pseudepigraphical works about Adam and Eve, see

★ ''Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan''

★ ''Apocalypse of Adam''

★ ''Testament of Adam''

External links

★ Pseudepigrapha

★ Christian Classics Ethereal Library: POT

★ Wesley Center Online: Old Testament Pseudepigrapha ''Adam and Eve, The Books of -- translation of the Latin version''

★ Sacred Texts: Christianity: Apocrypha

★ Free Books: Apocrypha (PDF version)

★ ''Apocalypse of Moses'' (Greek version of the ''Life of Adam and Eve'')

★ Pseudepigrapha

★ Christian Classics Ethereal Library: POT

★ Wesley Center Online: Old Testament Pseudepigrapha - ''Adam and Eve, Life of -- translation of the Greek version (a.k.a. The Apocalypse of Moses) ''

★ Free Books: Apocrypha (PDF version)

★
★ ''Slavonic Life of Adam and Eve''

★ Pseudepigrapha

★ Christian Classics Ethereal Library: POT

★ Wesley Center Online: Old Testament Pseudepigrapha -''Adam and Eve, Life of -- translation of the Slavonic version''

★ Sacred Texts: Christianity: Apocrypha

★ Free Books: Apocrypha (PDF version)

★ English Translations by L.S.A. Wells from ''The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, Volume II Pseudepigrapha'' edited by R. H. Charles (ISBN 0-19-826152-7)

★ ''Latin Life of Adam and Eve''

★ ''The Book of Adam'', translated from Georgian by J.-P. Mahe.

★ Pseudepigrapha

★ Free Books: Apocrypha (PDF version)

★ The Penitence of Adam, the original Armenian text in graphic form and edited and translated into English from ''M.E. Stone, Texts and Concordances of the Armenian Adam Literature'' (Society of Biblical Literature: Early Judaism and its Literature, 12; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996) (ISBN 0-7885-0278-6).