(Again, I feel the need to remind you that all of this is actually taken from apocryphal and Talmudic scripture, and presented in Louis Ginzberg's The Legends of the Jews. I am not making any of it up.)
God made the world and its creatures for man. Humanity represents the unity of the heavenly and the earthly. 'His power of speech, his discriminating intellect, his upright walk, the glance of his eye - they all make an angel of him. But, on the other hand, he eats and drinks, secretes waste matter, propagates his kind, and dies, like the beast of the field.'
And so, before creating humanity, God said: "The celestials are not propagated, but they are immortal; the beings on earth are propagated, but they die. I will create man to be the union of the two, so that when he sins, when he behaves like a beast, death shall overtake him, but if he refrains from sin, he shall live forever."
After he had decided to create humans, God invited his angels, in groups, to say what they thought of the idea. Opinions differed: the Angel of Love and the Angel of Justice were for the motion, because man would be loving and practice justice; the Angel of Truth and the Angel of Peace were against, because men would lie and argue.
'To invalidate his protest, God cast the Angel of Truth down from heaven to earth, and when the others cried out against such contemptuous treatment of their companion, He said, "Truth will spring back out of the earth."
Some of the angels asked why man was necessary on earth, and God explained that earth needed something to eat all the tasty animals and fruits he'd just made. The angels were satisfied by this answer.
Then God summoned the angels led by the Archangel Michael and asked their opinion. They scornfully replied with the same questions about the necessity of man's existence that the last group of angels asked. In exactly the same words. 'God thereupon stretched forth His little finger, and all were consumed by fire except their chief Michael. And the same fate befell the band under the leadership of the Archangel Gabriel; he alone of all was saved from destruction.'
Then God saw the angels led by the Archangel Labbiel. Having heard of the terrible fate of his predecessors, Labbiel warned his troupe not to question God. They told God that they thought creating humans was definitely a swell idea. God was pleased with this answer; he promoted Labbiel to Angel of Healing and renamed him Raphael, the Rescuer, 'because his host of angels had been rescued by his sage advice.'
When at last the assent of the angels to the creation of man was given, God told Gabriel to collect some dust from earth, which God used to create man. At this point, the Fire Torah intervened, telling God that she really doesn't think that creating humans is a good idea. God brushed her off.
God spent great care fashioning the human body; he made it perfect. At the same time as the human body, he made the souls of every single human that will ever exist. He keeps all the souls in a storehouse in the Seventh Heaven. God created Adam as the Ideal Man. He was huge and strong, he was intelligence and wise. His form was like that of a man at twenty years old.
[A digression on how human souls end up in their bodies:
When a woman conceives, the Angel of the Night, Lailah, takes the sperm before God, and God decides what kind of person it shall become. Piety and wickedness are the only human traits that God does not choose. God then commands Lailah to collect a certain soul from the storehouse.
God commands the soul to enter the sperm, but the soul is always reluctant , because it had been having a great time in the Soul Storehouse on Seventh Heaven. God consoles the soul by explaining that if they so well on earth they can get an even better existence than the one they had in the Soul Storehouse. The soul is then forced to enter the sperm whether they like it or not, and two angels are set guard over it to make sure it doesn't try to break out. The angels take the Sperm-encased Soul on a tour of Paradise, and explain that you get into here if you follow the Torah laws. They then take it on a tour of the entire earth, and, finally, they take it on a tour of Hell, and explain that you're put in here if you fail to follow the Torah laws.
When the soul emerges from the woman as a baby, it loses its memory of these events until the moment of death, when everything comes flooding back.]
Some of the angels were jealous of Adam's perfection. They tried to kill him with fire, but God protected Adam. Satan was the most envious; he was the most powerful angel in heaven; he had twelve wings instead of the usual six.
God commanded the angels to bow before Adam. Michael was the first to bow, hoping to set a good example for the others. Satan outright refused, not understanding why he, a heavenly entity, such bow to a being made from dirt. God thinks of a cool way of testing whether Satan is as wise as Adam: who can name the beasts of the earth correctly.
So God presented the animals of earth before Adam and Satan. Whenever Satan tried to named an animal, he got it wrong. Adam confidently named them all correctly. But Satan still refused to bow. Michael then felt the need to warn Satan that God might get angry.
"If He breaks out in wrath against me, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will be like the Most High!" said Satan. 'At once God flung Satan and his host out of heaven, down to the earth, and from that moment dates the enmity between Satan and man.'
Adam became lonely; he was one of a kind. God created a woman out of dust to be his companion. Her name was Lilith. 'But she remained with him only a short time, because she insisted on enjoying full equality with her husband. She derived her rights from their identical origin. Adam complained before God that the wife He had given him had deserted him, and God sent forth three angels to capture her.'
They found her, and commanded her to return to Adam. She refused; they threatened to execute 100 of her demon children every day unless she returned to Adam. She still refused; she really didn't like living with Adam. And so to this day she takes her revenge on the descendants of Adam, by injuring their babies during their first few days of life.
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| Lilith, artist's impression. |
God decided to replace Lilith by creating a new woman from a chunk of Adam because "only when like is joined unto like is the union indissoluble." He thought about what body part he should make her from, and decided on the rib because it is a chaste part of the body. God wanted women to be chaste. 'Many of the physical and psychical differences between the two sexes must be attributed to the fact that man was formed from the ground and woman from bone.'
'Adam was first made to fall into a deep sleep before the rib for Eve was taken from his side. For, had he watched her creation, she would not have awakened love in him. To this day it is true that men do not appreciate the charms of women whom they have known and observed from childhood up.'
Adam & Eve got married. A grand wedding with all the angels attending and 'with pomp never since repeated in the whole course of history.' They have a great time living in Eden, following God's rules (including, of course, No Eating From The Tree of Knowledge), being served by angels and animals. Until along came the serpent. As mentioned in my last post, the serpent is, at this stage, humanoid in appearance, walking on two legs, about as tall as a camel.
The serpent was envious of the humans, and conspired to bring about their fall. He said to Eve:
"Naught but malevolence has prompted the prohibition, for as soon as ye eat thereof, so will ye have the power to create and destroy. As He creates and destroys worlds, so will ye have the power to create and destroy. As He doth slay and revive, so will ye have the power to slay and revive. He Himself ate first of the fruit of that tree, and then He created the world. Therefore doth He forbid you to eat thereof, lest you create other worlds. Everyone knows that artisans of the same guild hate one another."
(I imagine Eve thinking to herself 'What's an 'artisan'? What's a 'guild'?)
Eve ate some of the fruit, then she went a bit mad and convinced Adam to eat some, and then gave some to all of the animals in Eden except the Phoenix, who refused.
The first effect the fruit had on the bodies of Adam & Eve was that it caused their spiky exoskeletons to fall away, and they were ashamed of their nakedness. Adam gathered fig leaves to cover up their genitals.
The angels observed Adam's transgression, and asked God why Adam & Eve hadn't died yet. God explained to them that he didn't specify what type of day he meant when he said that they'd die the same day they ate of the fruit. He meant a Heavenly Day, which lasts 1000 of Earth's years.
God goes to Adam & Eve to ask them wtf is going on? Adam blames Eve; Eve blames the serpent; God punishes all three. He sends a troupe of angels to hack the serpents limbs off and rid it of the power of speech. 'His suffering was so great that his agonized cries could be heard from one end of the earth to another.' Adam loses his physical and spiritual perfection, and must now work the ground for food. Eve is given pain during childbirth.
God also punished the Moon, because, if you remember from last time, the Moon is a bit of a bitch. 'The very angels and celestial beings were grieved by the transgression of Adam. The moon alone laughed, wherefore God grew wroth, and obscured her light. Instead of shining steadily like the sun, all the length of the day, she grows old quickly, and must be born and reborn, again and again.
God makes clothes for Adam & Eve from the serpent's skin, and kicks them out of Eden. They had existed for less than an earth-day.
Outside Eden, Adam & Eve built a hut to live in, and struggled to feed themselves. They decided to fast in the hope that God would forgive them. Satan began to worry that God might grant them forgiveness, so appeared to Eve pretending to be an angel sent by God to welcome them back to Paradise. Adam, however, recognised Satan as the angel he beat in the Naming Animals Competition, and asked him why he was trying to trick them out of their fasting. With a heavy sigh Satan explained that he had been kicked out of heaven.
The first time Adam & Eve saw a sunset, they thought that world was being darkened forever. When they saw it rise the next morning, they understood that it was a cycle in the course of nature, and sacrificed a Unicorn to God.
Fast forward. Adam, on his death bed, 930 years old, is very sick. Eve and Seth visited the gates of Eden, hoping to convince God to let them all back in. Archangel Michael came out and told them that wasn't going to happen. They went back home, and Adam, hearing the news of the refusal, shouted at Eve and told her to explain to their family why they were all in this mess.
Eve told them the story of the fall, adding that Satan had been in league with the serpent.
Adam died, and his soul was taken up to heaven in a chariot of light drawn by four shining eagles. God forgave his trespasses, and allowed him to reside in the Third Heaven. Michael helped Seth bury Adam's body. Eve died sometime later, and Michael also helped with her funeral. We are not told whether God forgave Eve...
Next Time: The Ten Generations, Extended Edition, covering Cain & Abel and all the time up to the birth of Noah.
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