ATR/86Á

Review Article

The Apocryphal Life of Adam and Eve:

Recent Scholarly Work
WANDA ZEMLER-CIZEWSKI*

The story of Adam and Eve, as we encounter it in Genesis 2-5, presents

us with many of the great dramatic themes of the human condition: conju-
gal love, fratricidal hate, crime and punishment, birth and death. It is also a
story that leaves many questions unanswered: What was the serpent's motive
in tempting Eve? How did the first couple survive outside paradise? How
did they die? Were they reconciled with their Creator in the end? Hence it
is no surprise that in the first centuries of the Christian era, or possibly in the
century before, a narrative of the life and death of Adam and Eve should
have been composed to fill some of the gaps and to address, in story form,
some of the enduring questions raised by the fate of the first human couple.
The original Life of Adam and Eve was probably written in Greek, al-
though surviving versions are represented in whole or in part in six languages,
namely Greek, Latin, Armenian, Georgian, Slavonic, and Coptic. Secondary
variants and related literature exist in most of the medieval vernaculars of Eu-
rope, including Middle English, and related retellings of the life of Adam and
Eve survive in Arabic and medieval Hebrew as well. Hence, the apocryphal
Life of Adam and Eve and related secondary literature are an integral part of
the early legacy of the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic cultures, surviving as a
vehicle for reflection on the problems of illness, old age, sin, death, and the af-
terlife. Nonetheless, the Life and related writings were generally neglected
by scholars until quite recently, when a series of publications, together with
a website (http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/anderson/), resulted from the
collaborative efforts of Gary A. Anderson, Michael E. Stone, Johannes
Tromp, and others. My intention in what follows is to sketch the background
of their work, then introduce their contributions, and finally comment on the
value for modern theologians of the material they have uncovered.
The Greek Life of Adam and Eve was first published in 1866 by C. von
Tischendorf, on the basis of four manuscripts, and was included in a collec-

* Wanda Zemler-Cizewski is an associate professor in the department of theology

at Marquette University. She specializes in medieval theology, especially the scholas-
tic theology of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
671
672 Anglican Theological Review
tion of apocryphal apocalyptic writings, where it acquired the misleading
title, "Apocalypse of Moses." In 1969, a Duke University doctoral disserta-
tion by J. L. Sharpe examined the complexities of manuscript variants in the
Greek Life, arriving at a version of the text that would become the basis
for M. D. Johnsons translation.1 In 1972, M. Nagel compiled a synopsis of
twenty-four manuscripts of the Life, as part of a doctoral dissertation pre-
sented at the University of Strasbourg. At present, an electronic edition is
under construction on the website produced by Anderson and Stone, and
aims ultimately to establish the full count of manuscripts together with text
families, variants represented therein, and the vernacular translations and
derivations of the Greek Life.
Meanwhile, a Latin Vita Adae et Eva was edited in 1878 by W. Mayer,
using only manuscripts available in Germany. Since then, further investiga-
tions have brought to light a total of seventy-three manuscripts in Latin, and
the already complicated picture is still far from finished, since the Latin Vita
provides the basis for Old Irish, Old French, and Middle High German
retellings of the tale. Further to the east, the Greek Life was translated into
Armenian,2 Georgian,3 Slavonic,4 and Coptic,5 although only a fragment of
the latter version survives. The task of sorting and analyzing the relationships
among these several families of texts was undertaken by Michael Stone in
1990, at the request of M. de Jonge and M. A. Knibb, as part of a seminar
on Early Jewish Literature sponsored by the Society for New Testament
Studies.6
Stone s initial survey of the literature was only the first step toward un-
derstanding the extent of the material at hand. Next, in collaboration with
Gary A. Anderson, he prepared a preliminary synopsis of five versions of the
Life with the Greek and Latin texts in their most recently edited forms dis-
played in parallel columns with translations of the Armenian, Georgian, and

1
James H. Charlesworth (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Garden City,
N.Y.: Doubleday, 1983, 1985), 2:249-295.
2
Michael E. Stone (ed.), The Penitence of Adam, Corpus Scriptorum Christiano-
rum Orientalium 429-430; Scriptores Armeniaci 13-14, Ed. R. Draguet (Louvain:
Peeters, 1981).
3
J.-P. Mahé (ed. and trans.), "Le Livre d'Adam géorgienne de la Vita Adae" in
Studies in Gnosticism and HeUenistic Religion, edited by R. van den Broek and M. J.
Vermaseren (Leiden: Brill, 1981), 227-260.
4
V. Jagic (ed.), "Slavische Beiträge zu den biblische Apocryphen, 1, Die Alt-
kirchenslavische Texte des Adamsbuche," Denkschr. kaiserl. Akademie der Wis-
senschaften, philos.-hist. Klasse (Vienna, 1893) 42:1-104.
5
W. E. Crum, Catalogue of Coptic Manuscripts in the Collection of the John Ry-
lands Library (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1909).
6
Michael E. Stone, A History of the Literature of Adam and Eve, Society of Bib-
lical Literature: Early Judaism and its Literature 3 (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press,
1992).
 REVIEW ARTICLE 673
7
Slavonic. The Armenian text is provided in Stone s translation into English,
while the Georgian appears in J.-P. Mahé s French, and the Slavonic text is
represented by the German translation of V. Jagic. In their preface, the com-
pilers acknowledge that the synopsis is a tentative document, but argue that
recent publication by Stone and Mahé of the Armenian and Georgian ver-
sions of the Life necessitate prompt recognition of the synoptic character of
the material, including editorial display of both parallels and variants. More-
over, they argue, further study of the Life will benefit from division of the
text into pericopes or narrative units, which they supply.
Not surprisingly, the 1994 synopsis soon required substantial revision in
light of continuing scholarly activity. In 1999, therefore, Anderson and Stone
published a second revised edition, including updated versions of all five of
the original language texts, with corresponding English translations on the
facing page.8 They succeeded, also, in overcoming the daunting scholarly
and technological hurdles involved in the deployment of five different al-
phabets in precisely matched parallel printed columns. Moreover, the new
synopsis further improved upon the previous edition not only by making
texts of the original languages available together for the first time, but also
by adding to the table of contents thematic titles that group the pericopes
into three parts, and then further subdividing each pericope into verses. At
the same time that Anderson and Stone were working on their revised syn-
opsis, John R. Levison, with the encouragement of Marinus de Jonge and Jo-
hannes Tromp, set about reopening the editorial question of the Greek Life,
publishing a study of the several text forms in which the material survives,
together with a synopsis of the four main families of the Greek text.9 Levi-
son s contribution serves to display the complexity of the textual tradition,
where a single early text version cannot be isolated from among its variants
as the "best" without losing sight of the creativity and originality of later con-
tributors to its transmission. At the same time, Levison s synopsis of the
Greek textual traditions enriches and nuances the panorama of textual vari-
ants presented in the work of Anderson and Stone.
Before continuing to survey the scholarly literature, it will be useful to
summarize the basic elements of the Greek Life together with some of the
most notable variants in the other language versions. The Slavonic version,
which shows the greatest number of interesting additions, begins with an an-
nouncement of Adam s primordial authority over the animals, which will be

7
Michael E. Stone, A Synopsis of the Books of Adam and Eve (Atlanta, Ga.:
Scholars Press, 1994).
8
Michael E. Stone, A Synopsis of the Books of Adam and Eve, Society of Bibli-
cal Literature: Early Judaism and Its Literature 17 (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press,
1999).
9
John R. Levison, Texts in Transition: The Greek Life of Adam and Eve, Society
of Biblical Literature: Early Judaism and Its Literature 16 (Atlanta, Ga.: Society of
Biblical Literature, 2000).
674 Anglican Theological Review
lost after his sin. There follows in the Slavonic, Latin, Armenian, and Geor-
gian versions a narrative of the expulsion of Adam and Eve, their penitence,
and a second temptation by Satan. The Slavonic version inserts into this sec-
tion the pericope of Adam s cheirograph or contract with Satan for power to
plow the earth with his yoke of oxen. The Latin, Armenian, and Georgian
versions supply a pericope of the fall of Satan, and then describe the sepa-
ration of Adam and Eve during her first pregnancy, at the end of which
Adam comes to her aid and entreats the Lord God for mercy on her in her
pains. All five versions include a pericope of Cain and Abel, followed only in
the Latin by Adam s vision of future divine judgment and purification of hu-
mankind. The texts then move into an account of Adam s final illness, his
story of the fall into sin, and his command to Eve and their son Seth to seek
the healing oil of paradise for his sickness.
The quest of Eve and Seth for the oil of healing occupies the middle
part of the Life. In their journey, they are attacked by a beast that blames
Eve for its aggressive demeanor, claiming that it follows her example of dis-
obedience. Arriving finally at the gate of paradise, they are met by the
archangel Michael, who refuses to give them the oil of healing, but promises,
at considerable length in the Latin, Armenian, Georgian, and Slavonic ver-
sions, that it will later be made available to humankind. They are then sup-
plied with a variety of fragrant spices and wood to offer as incense with their
prayers to God. Eve and Seth thereupon return to the dying Adam, who re-
bukes Eve for her original transgression. This speech is followed in all but
the Latin version by Eve s own tale of the temptation in paradise, her de-
scription of the judgment on Adam, herself, and the serpent, and her ac-
count of the expulsion from the garden. The Life, therefore, is exceptional
among apocryphal and pseudepigraphal literature in that it not only allows
the first woman to have the last word, but lets her speak at much greater
length than any of the male protagonists, telling her side of the story in full.
The final third of the Life reports the death of Adam, his assumption
into heaven, and his funerary rites as well as those of Abel. The closing peri-
copes feature Eve s prayer to be reunited with Adam, a description of her
death, and the details of her funeral. In all but the Latin version, three an-
gels bear her body away for burial. Last of all, Michael instructs Seth on the
correct period of mourning for his mother, and commands him to build her
a monument.
In the interval between publication of the first and second editions of
the Anderson and Stone synopsis, European scholars de Jonge and Tromp
provided a brief but indispensable guide to the texts and their contexts.10
Benefiting from the exploratory work of Anderson and Stone, they survey

10
Marinus de Jonge and Johannes Tromp, The Life of Adam and Eve and Related
Literature (Sheffield: Academic Press, 1997).
 REVIEW ARTICLE 675
the available editions and contents of the different versions of the Life, then
offer a preliminary discussion of the versions and their text-forms. Their
general description of the main story elements and themes of the various
versions is an indispensable road map for the reader who first attempts to
understand the material. Finally, their discussion of provenance and date for
the Greek Life opens a number of important questions about the place of
the Adam and Eve tradition in early Judeo-Christian literature. They note,
for instance, that the geographical provenance of the Greek Life remains
problematic, as do both its ideological provenance and the date of composi-
tion. If, as some scholars have argued, the Greek text is based on a Hebrew
prototype, the narrative may have a Palestinian-Jewish origin, and discussion
of the date of composition would be reducible to the question: before or
after 70 CE.? Furthermore, although all surviving manuscripts of the Life
were produced by Christians, there is limited and debatable evidence to
suggest that the narrative originated in a Christian setting. Thus, the Life
represents what may be a Jewish apocryphal text that was embraced, trans-
mitted, and embellished by several generations of Christian authors. Finally,
the Life itself is at the center of a miscellaneous and multicultural mass of
secondary literature, some of which de Jonge and Tromp review in their
closing chapter, with the understanding that a very great deal of scholarly in-
vestigation remains to be done. In fact, Stone had already collected and eval-
uated some of the secondary literature in Armenian,11 while Brian Murdoch
and Jacqueline Tasioulas would subsequently edit the Middle English Lives
of Adam and Eve.12 Their work makes available printed editions of two four-
teenth-century poems, together with an introductory essay that sets these
works in their literary context and relationship to the sources, especially the
Latin Vita Adae et Eva.
Is it too early in the scholarly process to begin to evaluate the thematic
content of the literature of Adam and Eve? While further refinements to the
history of the textual transmission are to be anticipated, a recent turn to
more thematic and theological appreciation of the material is not to be
judged premature. The studies assembled by Anderson, Stone, and Tromp13
include not only important contributions to ongoing text-critical studies, but
also a number of valuable discussions of theological issues raised by the
material. The first part consists of essays by Anderson and Stone, some pre-
viously published, which focus on narrative features of the Life and compa-

11
Michael E. Stone, Armenian Apocrypha Relating to Adam and Eve (Leiden:
Brill, 1996).
12
Brian Murdoch and J. A. Tasioulas (eds.), The Apocryphal Lives of Adam and
Eve, from the Auchinleck Manuscript and from Trinity College, Oxford, MS 57, Ex-
eter Medieval English Texts and Studies (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002).
13
Gary A. Anderson, Michael E. Stone, and Johannes Tromp, Literature on Adam
and Eve: Collected Essays (Leiden: Brill, 2000).
676 Anglican Theological Review
rabie material in other literature. The second half, edited by Tromp, com-
prises papers read at a 1998 symposium in Leiden. The volume thus brings
together for the first time an international array of contributions by leading
specialists in the literature of Adam and Eve.
In the opening essay of part 2, "The Literary Development of the Life of
Adam and Eve" (pp. 239-249), de Jonge draws attention to the fact that while
the "primary Adam books" brought together in synopsis by Anderson and
Stone have so much in common that they may be studied as different versions
of a single Life ofAdam and Eve, they also diverge in so many important ways
that the next stage of scholarly work must be to discover when and why the
omissions or additions occurred. Several other essays in the collection address
or illustrate this theme. For example, the legend of the cheirograph of Adam
(discussed by Stone, pp. 146-166) occurs only in the Slavonic Life and was,
among an earlier generation of scholars, attributed to Bogomil influence be-
cause of its heavily dualist implications. However, as Stone demonstrates, the
legend is widely known in eastern European literature and folklore outside
the Adam literature, besides having demonstrable finks to patristic interpre-
tations of Colossians 2:14, the only place in canonical Scripture where the
Greek word cheirograph occurs. Stone discusses some of the literary and ex-
egetical background to the legend of the cheirograph, concluding that its his-
tory, including its occurrence in the Slavonic Life, is extremely complex and
deserves further investigation. In fact, he returns to the problem with a de-
tailed look at some of the patristic and Greek renditions of the legend, as well
as its occurrence in Armenian and Balkan folklore and art.14
A comparable problem is raised by the differences between the Greek
and Eastern versions of the Life, which include Eve s tale or "Testament,"
and the Latin, which does not. Levison argues ("The Exoneration and Den-
igration of Eve," pp. 251-275) that the Anderson and Stone synopsis, to-
gether with the work of de Jonge and Tromp, suggest that the Greek
and Latin versions of the Life are not, as had earlier been believed, two re-
censions of a lost Hebrew prototype, but rather two distinct literary compo-
sitions that make use of a common tradition. He focuses primarily on
comparison of Eve material in the four Greek text-forms, but his investiga-
tions raise for further inquiry the problem of the Latin Vita's treatment of
Eve and its afterlife in the medieval European vernacular adaptations.
De Jonge s closing essay, "The Christian Origins of the Greek Life of
Adam and Eve" (pp. 347-363), focuses on the shortest text-form of the
Greek Life, the core of which is the tale or "Testament" of Eve. He argues
that the essential message of the Life is to be found in its extended, non-
biblical concluding account of the deaths of Adam and Eve, which clearly re-

14
Michael E. Stone, Adam's Contract with Satan: The Legend of the Cheirograph
of Adam (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2002).
 REVIEW ARTICLE 677
lates that both repent, are pardoned, and are granted eternal life. Thus, al-
though the Life is neither typically Christian nor typically Jewish, alluding
neither to Moses nor to Jesus, its central message is one of divine mercy on
all who seek to obey the commandments of the Creator and are willing to re-
pent whenever they fall into sin. De Jonge then argues that a case can be
made for a Christian origin of the Life based upon that core message of di-
vine mercy for Adam and Eve, and so also for all of their descendants. He
adduces in evidence interpretations by Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Theophilus
of Antioch of Genesis 3, showing how all three present God s dealings with
Adam and Eve as merciful and compassionate, extending the promise of sal-
vation and eternal life to the penitent.
Many of the questions raised at the 1998 Leiden conference are taken
up for further discussion by Michael D. Eldridge, one of the more recent ar-
rivals among scholars of the Adam and Eve literature, in his revised doctoral
dissertation.15 He acknowledges his debt to de Jonge, Tromp, and Levison,
whose work provides the impetus and foundation for his own. However, he
argues, the time has come for a comprehensive interpretation of the Life
which will first concern itself with the meaning intended by the author and
then consider what the text may offer to its readers in the present day.
Eldridge presents a careful, three-part analysis of the material, begin-
ning with studies of the contents, parameters for dating the text-forms, lan-
guage, and underlying sources. After a highly technical review of text-critical
problems, he devotes the central section of the study to the question of
meaning, approaching it primarily from the perspective of genre and narra-
tive criticism. Finally, he offers some suggestions as to the historical setting
of the work. Eldridge s most valuable contribution, however, is his investiga-
tion into the texts meaning, which he summarizes as follows: (1) to offer all
humanity acceptance by God and membership of his holy people on the
basis of repentance and trust in God s mercy; (2) to encourage all those who
belong to that people to persevere in holding fast to "the good," not letting
up in their conflict with the enemy of humankind and in the warfare he has
put in their hearts; and (3) to provide assurance that all those who belong to
the holy people and persist to the end will have joy and eternal life follow-
ing their bodily resurrection at the last day (p. 230).
These are indeed enduring goods, as meaningful in the present as in the
remote century when the Life was first composed. Nevertheless, Eldridge s
contribution is by no means the last word on the literature of Adam and Eve,
and it is to be hoped that these ageless and fascinating texts will find an even
wider circle of students in the years to come.

15
Michael D. Eldridge, Dying Adam with His Multiethnic Family: Understand-
ing the Greek Life of Adam and Eve, Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha 16
(Leiden: Brill, 2001).
 ^ s
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