The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve: The Story That Created Us

by Stephen Greenblatt

“Endlessly illuminating and a sheer pleasure to read.” —Jack Miles, author of A BiographyDaring to take the great biblical account of human origins seriously, but without credulity.

The most influential story in Western cultural history, the biblical account of Adam and Eve is now treated either as the sacred possession of the faithful or as the butt of secular jokes. Here, acclaimed scholar Stephen Greenblatt explores it with profound appreciation for its cultural and psychological power as literature. From the birth of the Hebrew Bible to the awe-inspiring contributions of Augustine, Dürer, and Milton in bringing Adam and Eve to vivid life, Greenblatt unpacks the story’s many interpretations and consequences over time. Rich allegory, vicious misogyny, deep moral insight, narrow literalism, and some of the greatest triumphs of art and all can be counted as children of our “first” parents.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Religion, Philosophy, Theology, Art, Spirituality

421 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 12, 2017

About the author

Stephen Greenblatt (Ph.D. Yale) is Cogan University Professor of English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University. Also General Editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Eighth Edition, he is the author of nine books, including Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare; Hamlet in Purgatory; Practicing New Historicism; Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World; Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture; and The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. He has edited six collections of criticism, is the co-author (with Charles Mee) of a play, Cardenio, and is a founding coeditor of the journal Representations. He honors include the MLA's James Russell Lowell Prize, for Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England, the Distinguished Humanist Award from the Mellon Foundation, the Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in Vermont.

Stephen Jay Greenblatt is a Pulitzer Prize winning American literary critic, theorist and scholar.

Greenblatt is regarded by many as one of the founders of New Historicism, a set of critical practices that he often refers to as "cultural poetics"; his works have been influential since the early 1980s when he introduced the term. Greenblatt has written and edited numerous books and articles relevant to new historicism, the study of culture, Renaissance studies and Shakespeare studies and is considered to be an expert in these fields. He is also co-founder of the literary-cultural journal Representations, which often publishes articles by new historicists. His most popular work is Will in the World, a biography of Shakespeare that was on the New York Times Best Seller List for nine weeks.

Reviews

[Darwin8u · Rating 4 out of 5]

"For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."
- Genesis



Greenblatt traces the story/myth of Adam and Eve from its origins (a Jewish reaction to Babylonian rule and myths) down to a post-Darwin world. He focuses a lot of time on the literature (Milton), philosophy (Lucretius), doctrine (Augustine), and art (Dürer) while maintaining a rough chronology of time ( from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts*.).

It was fascinating and moved quickly. I don't think it was as good as The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, but still worth the time and energy; comparable to Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. The big negative for me was its unevenness. Some chapters made me want to eat the fruit myself. Others made me pray for banishment. OK, that is probably a tad dramatic. I thoroughly enjoyed the sections on Milton, Durer, Augustine, and the first chapters that looked at Babylon and Gilgamesh: A New English Version in relationship to the Jewish people and the story of Adam and Eve.

I also appreciated the discussion that the story of Adam and Eve invariably brings up concerning sex, guilt, marriage, gender, power, faith, science, and our need to tell each other stories and understand where we came from and where we will eventually end up.

* Moroni 10: 3

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sweeping review of biblical interpretation and the scientific take on creation myths. The author devoted considerable time, appropriately, to stuff (like Darwin and literary biblical criticism) that makes the literal read of Genesis troubling to say the least.

However, I take issue with the scope (really, the lack of scope) Greenblatt presented with regard to the Genesis story’s theological interpretation.

True, Augustine and Milton and innumerable antique and Middle Ages scholars and poets interpreted the story in ways that had, and continue to have, lasting effect— including effects that are overtly hostile to women and people of color. But the author here makes no mention AT ALL of modern theological interpretations. What of Bonhoeffer’s Creation and Fall? What of the theologians of race, James Cone, Willie Jennings, and J Kameron Carter, and the liberation theologians? What of modern feminist theologians who are doing fabulous theology of Eve?

It seems an unfair characterization to write only of antiquity’s and medieval times’ opinions, leaving readers with the distinct impression that theology has not evolved. PUN INTENDED. Just like science and ethics, which have throughout history supported great injustices and human rights offenses, so too has theology evolved. I’m frankly offended that this evolution was overlooked.

4/5 stars, except for that oversight, which knocks it down to 3/5 for me.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this book through a Good Reads "First Reads" Give-away. Fascinating book that is a "life-history" (Dr. Greenblatt's words) of the story of the biblical Adam and Eve. I am not quite sure how to best describe this book - basically, the author examines how this fantastical story the of the first man and woman's creation and banishment from the Garden of Eden has influenced our thinking about humankind's origins (who we are and where we came from) over the course of time. But it is also a reflection on the power of story telling - how a few verses in an ancient book can so powerfully resonate with and speak to (in very different ways) so many people on what it means to be human, why we love, and why we suffer. Greenblatt's writing is engaging and approachable and his breadth of knowledge is remarkable (history, literature, science, theology, etc., I could go on and on). I would definitely recommend this book to others.

[Jan Rice · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read an excerpt in The New Yorker that made me want to rush out and buy this book: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20... . But its publication date was still in the future.

I'd read part of his book about Shakespeare a long time ago and quit because his hypothesizing that Shakespeare was a homosexual annoyed me. I wouldn't mind if Shakespeare was, but speculating on the basis of how he closed his letters seemed trite to me--or maybe that was Lincoln. But now some Goodreads friends were raving about The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, plus I soon read an even more impressive essay by Greenblatt on another subject. I was taken by storm and willing to consider I'd misjudged him over Will in the World.

The MP3 audio version was available for cheap so I immediately snatched it up sight unseen word unheard, even before the September 2017 release date. The audio did help me get to the book fast but the reader turns out to be unfortunate. I have a hypothesis that any audiobook with even a hint of religion will get a narrator with a preacherly cadence. This book is read in a sometimes sanctimonious but chiefly supercilious manner, as though the reader is curling his lip at particular passages as he goes along.

Sadly, turning to the book in hopes of dissipating the offending tone failed to eliminate the emerging difficulties. Even the portion The New Yorker had excerpted was adisappointment, in part because, it turns out, it wasn't an excerpt but the author's adaptation. I've now read the adaptation three times, and it's superior--more concise, and precise. The chapters in the book are padded in comparison, and some of the extraneous material may be tendentious or an attempt to hint at things without coming right out and saying them.

The New Yorker piece is called "The Invention of Sex -- St. Augustine's Carnal Knowledge." I was thinking the book would be about sexual guilt in Western civilization, but it was not. Then I was thinking he was using the lens of the Adam and Eve story as an angle to examine Western civilization. Sort of. But the title itself is a better description of what the book is about.

The book is about too many things, amid which the point gets lost.

In the early chapters he questions the Genesis story, asking why it makes people feel guilty and responsible, which was not necessarily the case in earlier civilizations. I was struck by his attitude that religions turning bad situations upside down and maybe even finding salvation in them is bizarre and practically unbelievable, when that would seem to be the point. Pharoah's deported you? No! You've been redeemed. Your leader is crucified? No--you've been saved. Life is not easy, especially for a conquered or subordinate group, and thus the redemptive stories. So, is Greenblatt clueless about religion? Or looking for understanding but failing to recognize it when he gets there?

He says the story is polemical toward the Babylonians and their critically-different origin story. That's a reasonable hypothesis, as scripture is written by those hoping to be the winners--and that's everybody--with frequently ugly portrayals of group(s) they've left behind or are hoping to. But he doesn't convince me here. The Genesis foundational story's being different doesn't mean it's polemical, although that would make sense. He just didn't support his contention convincingly--which is a pattern of sorts.

Sometimes it's a matter of being one dimensional, as when he reduces Christianity's retention of the Hebrew Bible to one reason alone: "No Adam, no Jesus"....

Next comes what I think is the best part (Augustine), of neurotic moms and original sin...

Then misogyny. Does he seek to blame Christianity in particular? Judaism and Islam soon enough became patriarchal in their own right. Something in the water....

Milton! I had Paradise Lost in English Lit in college, with underlined text to prove it, but may as well not have. ...Something from Greenblatt here on how making Adam and Eve so real in poetry and in art eventually brought the story down...

Here's Marilynne Robinson's review of The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve (probably assigned to her since she has a book of her own on Adam). https://nyti.ms/2yMZFXj She takes him to task particularly on Milton, since, she says, he's ignorant of the various reforming movements in Christianity impacting Milton's thought at the time.

From her book review, I learned a useful new word, merism, a characteristic of Hebrew (which Milton knew) in which two contrasting terms convey an entirety and not a polarity. We have merisms in English, too, for example, if I say I looked "high and low" for my missing keys, I mean I looked everywhere for them.

So, she says, Stephen Greenblatt's book is cursory...out of ignorance. For her critique she may pick the low-hanging fruit. She doesn't take on the Adam-Jesus contrast. She doesn't take on Augustine and original sin. She does flare up at his seeming lack of appreciation of Genesis as compared to the Babylonian narratives.

"Cursory" isn't a bad word for The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve, but "ignorant" doesn't seem exactly right, even if it does fit re Milton's times. It's more of a failure of vision: of where he wanted to go with his critique and what he wanted people to know. He could have stuck with the great essay in The New Yorker. He bit off more than he could chew. He tried to tack on too much. Was he being anti-Christian? Anti-Western civilization? Was he struggling to figure something out for himself but didn't quite get there? Was he submerged in some dominant stream of intellectual thought and unable to get his head out-from-under enough for an unobstructed view? Or feeling pressured to publish a follow-up to his award-winning The Swerve?

The New Yorker online published one more piece of this book; in this case it is an excerpt, the final chapter: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-... . It's the section Robinson calls "disheartening." I'm not sure about that. He does make a point that when a male chimpanzee beats the female, she may scream, but she doesn't think she's been immorally treated: she has not eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She hasn't "fallen." She's part of nature, submerged, and can't get above it.

But aren't we ourselves part of a living merism, a continuity? Two hundred years ago--or 500--did women everywhere think they were being treated immorally if they were beaten or raped? (Did the concept of sexual harassment even exist yet?) Didn't many women (and their society) think it was just the nature of things? (Fifty years ago--or thirty--for some of it!)

Without a certain level of social order and a certain degree of technological development, the salience of our concept of gender equality could collapse. We could revert. I'm not looking forward to it.

...One more thing. In his final section, Greenblatt says something that may distinguish him from Steven Pinker or from multitudes of secular Jews, public or private:

“And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.” It is this transgression—a deliberate action, not an impersonal, mechanistic process of random genetic mutation and natural selection—that determined the shape of our lives. The Adam and Eve story insists that our fate, at least at the beginning of time, was our own responsibility. Millions of people in the world, including many who grasp the underlying assumptions of modern science, continue to cling to the peculiar satisfaction that the ancient story provides. I do. (My italics)

He does not elaborate.

[Ярослава · Rating 4 out of 5]

Я хочу бути Стівеном Ґрінблаттом, коли виросту – і цю амбіцію, думаю, поділяє багато гуманітаріїв. Цей гаврик уміє із розрізнених фактів сплести стилістично привабливу історію, що справляє враження якогось космічного, всеохопного інтелекту. У цьому випадку - про культурну силу, uses and abuses міфу про Адама і Єву через віки: коли цей міф розуміли як метафору, як буквальну правду, як політичну заяву (“When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?”). Розповідь включає все: від провокативних питань про те, як виглядала б наша культура, якб�� фундаційним міфом став не цей, а, скажімо, міф про Гільгамеша – до побічних анекдоток про те, що у нинішній таксономії Лінней є еталонною людиною (справді є: опис виду Лінней заснував на самоописі) – ��о аналізу, як великі географічні й наукові відкриття підривали міф про Адама і Єву, з жартами рівня “як динозаври помогли знищити Райський сад” (“Дарвінізм сумісний із вірою в Бога, але несумісний із вірою в Адама і Єву”). Карочє, я авансом страждаю в передчутті того моменту, коли нечитаного Ґрінблатта в мене не лишиться.

[Wanda Pedersen · Rating 3 out of 5]

My many hours spent listening to CBC radio tend to expand my TBR list beyond what I would usually choose for reading material. This book is but one example of that phenomenon, as I heard the author interviewed and became curious about this book.

It was interesting, although not quite as riveting as I could have hoped. Nevertheless, I learned a number of things that I found intriguing. I wasn’t fully aware of the creation myths of cultures surrounding the ancient Hebrews (Sumerians,Assyrians, Babylonians, etc.) but now I have some desire to learn more about all of those cultures.

I also learned more about St. Augustine and John Milton than I expected to (especially their sex lives!).

The Genesis story is so brief that it practically cries out for people to embellish it with fiction. I know that, as a child, I asked a lot of the same questions that Greenblatt explores in this book. I’m sure that this lack of detail has caused major headaches for Sunday School teachers for as long as there has been Sunday School. The tale has certainly inspired a lot of art work and it may be the ultimate tale of the “good old days,” referencing a gone-but-not-forgotten Golden Age.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found great enjoyment in reading The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve by Stephen Greenblatt. He examines the stories humans have created of our first parents, from prehistory's myths to the challenge of scientific evidence shaking a literal reading of the Bible.

Adam and Eve is one of the great stories in Western literature, a tale that has morphed from folklore to Christian canon to inspiration for artistic and literary masterworks and finally become relegated again to myth--a story with meaning--it's historic veracity disproved by science.

In the beginning we humans created stories to explain the world and our place in it. Stories from societies immemorial have come down to us via clay tablets, the Enuma Elish and the epic Gilgamesh. These known four thousand year-old tales are but 'later' contributions in human history.

In the Western world, the biblical story of Adam and Eve had its roots in the earlier myths but soon displaced them with the spread of Christianity. Early theologian St. Augustine insisted on a literal reading of the story. Renaissance art focused on Biblical stories, bringing Adam and Eve come to life as real people. John Milton, a radical in many ways, wrote his masterpiece Paradise Lost, which consolidated Christian's vision of the 'real' Adam and Eve.

Greenblatt contends that this very elevation of the story of Adam and Eve from a story with meaning to 'historic truth' was in fact it's downfall. There are too many questions that arise. I recall, back in the early 1980s, when a man asked, "Where did Cain get a wife? " He told me he figured that Cain took an ape as wife and that is where black people come from. This is the awful kind problem that literalism leads to!

Darwin's observations during his time on the HMS Beagle led to his life's work proving and testing the theory of evolution. Theologians scrambled to reconcile science and the literal reading of the Bible.

I was taught (auditing a seminary class) that a myth is a story with meaning, humanity's endeavor to put into words the unknowable. It is not diminished because it is not literally true. Evolution is a theory, the best understanding that scientific evidence and observation and testing can offer us at this time. Oddly, DNA evidence offers us an "Eve"-- a common first human ancestor.

I enjoyed how Greenblatt brought everything together into a rich narrative.

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a while now, I've been wondering how I am going to write this review. It's difficult for me to put into words how I feel about this book. The best way to write about it will probably be to split my thoughts into two veins.
One will be about the actual writing, the content, the structure, all the big components that make this a book. In that respect, the book deserves four stars. Greenblatt is a great writer--that much is obvious and well-known. He knows how to turn a phrase, and when he studies a subject, he studies it completely. Oh, yes, there are the hyperboles, as there are in The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (and there are even a couple references to Poggio and Lucretius). There is some repetition (you don't have to use the same noun over and over--that's what pronouns are for!). Overall, the writing flows and is a pleasure to read aloud (although I've never in my life said "sexual," "intercourse," "erection," "penis," and other such words so many times in a sitting essentially to my dad, to whom I read this book aloud; I tried to power through it--I'm thirty-one, for goodness' sake--but, at one point, I did stop and say, "Okay, this is really weird").

The book is structured loosely, but I noticed the move forward through time. Greenblatt establishes the story of Adam and Eve from Genesis 1-3, he talks about various rabbinical, Islamic, and Christian interpretations (heavier on the first and third, of course--everyone leaves the Muslims out of stories the three religions share), and he sets the stage for the rise of belief in the story.

Then, he discusses Origen, Augustine, Milton, and other major players in the rise of the story. Essentially, belief switched back and forth between an allegorical interpretation and a literal one until people like Milton brought Adam and Eve so much to life that the other elements of the creation story seemed too impossible to believe in. Then, Greenblatt brings Darwin to the party, establishing the background for the fall of Adam and Eve. The structure makes sense.

He includes an Epilogue, wherein he recounts his visit to a chimpanzee colony in Uganda, a colony he associates with paradise because the chimps have no shame and live in a manner suggestive of the first humans--an easy, carefree life with no worries, no regrets, and no concept of good and evil (or so we all think...).

The Appendices are very interesting. They include various interpretations of the Adam and Eve story and origin stories from around the world. Greenblatt essentially ends the book with the idea that Adam and Eve can no longer be accepted as our ancestors, but their story makes great literature because it sticks with us, and Greenblatt sees no reason why the story shouldn't still resonate with us and even help us to understand the human condition.

Okay, moving on to my second vein of thought, which connects to the end of the first point. I'm a Christian, and I've never hidden that in my reviews. I went into reading this book, knowing that Greenblatt was taking a humanistic, secular viewpoint. I appreciate other perspectives and like taking what I learn from other people to add to my understanding of God and the Bible. I'm not going to critique Greenblatt for any lack of religious perspective on the Adam and Eve story (although he does begin his book with an episode from temple that essentially shook his faith in God), even on the way he concludes his journey through their rise and fall. That would be stupid of me. What I do want to critique is a misapplication of religious dogma, doctrine, and interpretation to a discussion of the Biblical narrative.

There are aspects of the story that Greenblatt discusses (and eventually shoots down) that aren't even in the Genesis story. Not just Greenblatt, but the people whose perspectives he discusses, analyzes, and supports, include components of the story that aren't in the Bible. Therefore, the whole section on Darwin and how his findings negate the Biblical origin story was extremely frustrating to read. Those of you who have read the Genesis story know that it's sparse. If the whole Christian Bible is 1,000 pages, the Adam and Eve story is maybe a page or two ? It's so brief that any details we know as part of that story are likely to be interpretations and inventions that society and culture have integrated into retellings rather than from the original itself.

I expect more from Greenblatt as a scholar. When I'm analyzing texts, I have to stick to what's there. I can't write a paper about The Sun Also Rises and include references to other scholars' work as if their opinions are actually part of the original novel. That makes no sense. I have to recognize that those opinions are other people's opinions about the text. I know Christians and non-Christians alike will argue this, but there's nothing in the few chapters discussing Adam and Eve that contradicts evolution. The Bible doesn't even say that Adam and Eve were the first humans!

Basically, my point is that if you're going to contradict something and flat out say it's not truth and state your opinion of a sacred text as if it's fact (while simultaneously and paradoxically stating that Darwinism isn't proven beyond a shadow of a doubt), then you should probably stick to facts about the text and use your secondary sources as that--secondary sources. For this completely frustrating lack of discretion when using other people's opinions as somehow the text itself, Greenblatt gets two stars.

How do I rate the book as a whole, then? Well, I wish he spent less time on Augustine and Milton and more time on the Classical period. I wish he spent more time on Darwin and the after effects of his theories. I wish he actually discussed how the idea of Adam and Eve led to excuses for slavery, which he mentions but never proves (it's so fascinating--I want more!). But I also enjoyed the discussion, the information, the conversation with my dad while we read. I like the book, and the cover (the jacket and the actual front and back of the book) is gorgeous.
I recommend this book to people who want an approach towards Adam and Eve that is part exploratory, part explanatory, and part scholarly. It's a fascinating read, but it relies heavily on analysis of literature (that's Greenblatt's thing, of course), and it also has a limited scope (Westerners, as usual).
In summation (to sound like a bore), I guess a three-star rating (average of my two "veins of thought") is fair.

[Linda Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did we need one more book that describes how humans can justify misogyny, patriarchy and the general cussedness of religiously motivated literacy since somebody picked up a stylus and began writing stories? Adam and Eve. "You hear it at five or six years old and you never forget it." Not sure that's accurate. A talking snake was immediately out of my head. Greenblatt makes a good case for how the story of Christ picks up on the much older story of the first humans, including a tree. Mary redeems the maligned Eve. The first half of the book is intellectually interesting. Then we get to Augustine, Jerome, Peter Damain, and all those beatified writers who made the place of woman in the world - real, imagined or otherwise - an ongoing way-behind second. (Thank goodness, there's a little Wife of Bath Chaucer cheekiness in the mix here.) It's difficult to miss the relationship Augustine had with his mother and his sexuality, not that these occupied the same place in his psyche - except that, did these? And we finish with Milton, who in my mind resides in the same patriarchical, pious special realm of the afterlife that John Donne occupies, bent on piety while enslaving their wives in endless childbirth until it kills them. Sexuality is the problem, chastity is the solution, unless, of course, you happen to marry four times as Milton did. Educate boys with languages by the rod, except for your daughters because one language is enough for women. I suppose we can be grateful the girls missed the educational beatings at least. Until page 267 we spend our time examining literature before the 17th century, Then we skip to Darwin in the 19th century. Paradise was not only lost, maybe it never existed. The epilogue, notes and acknowledgements begin on page 285: less than 20 pages of where we are now. What's the take on Adam and Eve in the modern world? Does it matter as much as it did to those who lost their lives accused of heresy? Do we have a good understanding of how this origin story impacts the way supposedly pious legislators continuously regulate the bodies of women? While I understand that the history of this particular origin story is important, I also understand that it is important in the context of devout religion. Which is assuredly not the same animal as humanity. Not sure how important it is to the wider world and a better understanding of the human condition. It is intriguing to me as well that there are only a couple of women mentioned; that the reviewers on the book jacket are all men, that no woman except one disgruntled nun is named. (Actually, two, if we include Augustine's mom.) And a bright spot Sister Tarabotti is! Author of Paternal Tyranny, published in 1654, 2 years after she'd fled this mortal coil, Arcangela Tarabotti wrote that Eve was the superior human: Adam was born outside of Eden, of mere clay, while Eve was formed in Paradise itself: a masterpiece. "'Truly,' God tells Eve, 'the devil stands for the male, who from now on will cast on to you the blame for his failings and will have no other purpose than deceiving you, betraying you, and removing all your rights of dominion granted by my omnipotence.'" Arcangela was already dead when the book was published, which exempted her from being put to death surely. Everything in this book is undoubtedly true - Greenblatt's scholarship is exemplary and his appendices thorough - I would have preferred a less relentless reminder of how this one and a half page story impacts the lives of all of us, whether we believe the story or not.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like the last work of Greenblatt's I read (The Swerve) I was struck by his clear prose and narrative sense as well as his extensive historical knowledge and command of the interconnectedness of a wide range of elements. This work takes a look at one of the central myths of christianity, namely the story of Adam and Eve, and examines its staying power, how and why in spite of centuries of, essentially, debunking the story tenaciously clings to our collective psyche. As allegory, this is no mystery---it's a compelling story---but the fact that so many people still assert its factual reality leads us into the murkiness of our ability to deceive ourselves and ignore evidence.

He also does a good job showing how that myth became the source of a millennia-long embrace of studied misogyny, begun primarily by St. Augustine, who somehow could not come to terms with his own erotic obsessions and his desire to become (in my view, not Greenblatt's) Other Than Human for the glory of his newfound faith after his dramatic conversion to Catholicism. The details Greenblatt offers give us ample evidence of someone who was working out personal issues at the expense of half the human population.

There are surprising turns of history, of intellectual adventurism, of the human capacity to master the irrational and accept the changes demanded by reason and evidence combined into reconceptualizations of things thought long settled.

And then there are the artists and, finally, Milton.

Highly recommended.

[David Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book because I felt Greenblatt’s Will of the World the best Shakespeare “biography” for general consumption. It remains one of my favorite books on Shakespeare. The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve follows the same level of scholarship and easy-to-read style, and it should be read by anyone with an open mind about one of the most sensitive issues in Christian society—the symbolic versus the literal interpretation and acceptance of The Bible. It is a exploration of the origin, the emergence, the changing interpretations, and the ever evolving implications of a remarkably simple story of Adam and Eve and their transgression in The Garden of Eden. Greenblatt tells of the origin of an allegorical story with much older roots in Mesopotamia, how early Hebrews regarded it rather loosely, how Saint Augustine reversed this trend by fiercely believing the story to be literally true and dedicating his life to make others feel the same way, how John Milton further intrenched the “truth” of the story, and how the emergence of the sciences brought the understanding of the story back to its allegorical take. All the while Greenblatt explains the immense impact of this tiny story on Western culture, especially art. While he is clearly in the allegorical camp, he remains deeply respectful of the story and to those who have taken it as gospel. Some of my best friends and family may find it disturbing to their long-held beliefs but they, nonetheless, need to give the book careful consideration.

[Meg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stephen Greenblatt gives us the full history of the ancient story of Adam and Eve. Somehow with this biography of a story (okay, not just any story. Let's just say it's THE foundational origin story of Judaism, Islam & Christianity) he has us looking backwards and gets us to look forward at the same time. So, as he did with The Swerve, he takes this massive subject and deftly weaves it into a tight canvas.

Prof. Greenblatt tracks the creation & expulsion stories back to epic of Gilgamesh and the enuma elish. He shows that starting as mythical, Adam & Eve became literal, and then real, as they were transformed by Augustine and John Milton. The Milton section is especially strong.

Then, he tells the story of the Enlightenment itself with this wonderful sense of freshness. And then… Darwin… And somehow by the end we end up back with the apes.

You've simply got to read this. It's guaranteed to make you smarter!

[Rika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este libro es una auténtica joya a nivel cultural y estético, recomendadísimo

[Nelson Zagalo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tinha gostado muito de “The Swerve” (2011), e posso dizer que “The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve: The Story That Created Us” (2017) não me desiludiu, ainda que esteja alguns pontos abaixo em termos de relevância e coesão. O foco deste trabalho é o significado da representação cultural de Adão e Eva desde os tempos da Babilónia. Greenblatt realiza uma viagem impressionante ao longo de 5 milénios, ainda que os pontos altos destaquem 3 grandes autores — Agostinho, Dürer e Milton. Ao longo das páginas ficamos a saber muito do que sabíamos, mas imenso do que desconhecíamos sobre a história e durabilidade do mito. Greenblatt refere-o como o mais duradouro, o que talvez não seja difícil explicar já que se trata de uma história sobre a Origem, mas é também uma história sobre um dos processo centrais da na nossa espécie, o sexo, e por fim, um mito que só pôde ser completamente derrubado em 1859 por Darwin.

Greenblatt fez um levantamento sobre as origens do mito, assim como sobre os maiores responsáveis pela sua manutenção e impulsionamento. Nesse sentido, toda a discussão em redor de Santo Agostinho é muito rica pelo modo como liga a forma como este se tornou crente ao mito, com toda a discussão sobre a culpa e o pecado a ser trabalhada na sustentação do mesmo. Com a mesma profundidade, é realizado o trabalho de análise da vida e obra de John Milton, nomeadamente ao seu maior legado “Paraíso Perdido”.

Longe de ser uma leitura obrigatória, é uma leitura que oferece algumas visões novas, e acima de tudo estabelece uma cronologia de significado ao mito de Adão e Eva.

https://narrativax.blogspot.com/2024/...

[Liam Guilar · Rating 2 out of 5]

Is there something ironic about a scholar who made his reputation challenging the idea of the grand narrative with a reading practice focussed on specific textual traces now writing grand narratives full of subjective and impressionistic commentary?

While this is a readable book full of fascinating bits of information, it feels like it goes nowhere. The majority of people no longer believe in the literal truth of the story of Adam and Eve. The trajectory of their narrative 'their rise and fall' is well known. So it's hard to see what's new here.

The chapters on Milton are well written but hardly ground breaking and seem disproportionate. Greenblatt the early modern scholar is obviously at home here but,i'ts impossible not to wonder how comfortable he is with much of the early material, but while Milton's Adam and Eve are undoubtedly significant to the narrative, Milton's virginity, marriage and political troubles are the kind of general biographical material critics used to ferret out to explain poems. The relationship between the first Mrs. Milton and Eve is unknowable. This doesn't stop Greenblatt from speculating.

The chapter on 'embodiment' surveys famous paintings and Greenblatt gets to use 'beautiful' a lot. Whether you agree with him seems beside the point. A couple of thinkers are rescued though how important or representative they are or how widely the were known seems irrelevant.

An element of the old fashioned mandarin critic has crept into Greenblatts's writing: his opinions are now statements of fact. Just as some paintings are 'beautiful' or 'moving', Paradise Lost is 'the greatest poem in the English language' (p.163). I'm not sure I'm convinced by the 'Reality' of Milton's couple, but Greenbelt is and therefore they are 'real'. I'm not sure how you could substantiate either claim.

If there is a thesis it seems to be that the Renaissance made Adam and Eve so real that their reality invited the obvious questions that destroyed their credibility. Geography, geology, anthropology and history, as well as internal incoherence, all undermined the possibility of taking the narrative literally.

And that's it.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a disclaimer, I received a copy of "The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve" from the publisher. As a further disclaimer, I'm Agnostic. I think the story of Adam and Eve is just as likely to have happened as the story of the Easter Bunny. That being said, I appreciated the level of research that went into "The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve" from a historical perspective. The author doesn't try to persuade the reader one way or another as to the validity of the story but rather its context throughout history and possible influences. There are enough footnotes in the bibliography for an individual to be able to conduct their own further research and decide for themselves. Or not.

[Stephen Gallup · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book reminds me somewhat of David Frye's Walls: A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick, which I commented on recently. Each examines a phenomenon originating in prehistoric times that has had a fundamental effect on the way modern people think and live.

Frye's book had a lot to say about the tension between the security of sheltered city life versus the freedom of living with fewer guarantees. Stephen Greenblatt's concern is with the story of Adam and Eve, which has been common knowledge for thousands of years now, but is only one of alternate creation myths, and has been subject to various interpretations. The interpretations to which we have been exposed have affected us.

"Whether we believe in the story of Adam and Eve or regard it as an absurd fiction, we have been made in its image. Over many centuries, the story has shaped the way we think about crime and punishment, moral responsibility, death, pain, work, leisure, companionship, ..."

A different exposure might have turned our basic assumptions in another direction.

Greenblatt begins with what a general reader might have been told at an early age, e.g., that the creation story told in the first chapters of Genesis was originally authored by Moses. That idea, he says, is no longer credible. Rather, scholarship over the centuries has led to the conclusion that multiple strands of the story, each representing different interests and theological ideas, were compiled and merged, presumably by a committee of rabbis. Those strands stretched far back in time, "far deeper than any surviving traces of the Hebrew Bible." However, Greenblatt suggests that this merging of them occurred after the Hebrews returned to their homeland following the years of captivity in Babylon (ca. 597-539 BC).

While in that foreign land, they had been subjected to an alien culture, with its own deities and narratives. Writings from that period, e.g., Psalm 137, tell us there was a resistance to compromising with that culture or giving up their own traditions. When finally able to rebuild and reestablish their civilization (in a homeland that, in their absence, had become populated by other peoples), the Hebrews made a concerted effort to shore up their national identity by eradicating any notions from outside their own cultural tradition. However, those competing narratives also had ancient origins. Their thorough suppression is indicated by the fact that they became almost unknown for hundreds of years thereafter, until in the nineteenth century British scholars finally deciphered the cuneiform writing on ancient clay tablets found in "the sloping alluvial plains along the Tigris and Euphrates."

The alternate narrative is much less succinct than the one in Genesis. It's hard for me to summarize the differences, but the key seems to be in the Western concept of guilt. We have been taught that Adam and Eve sinned and consequently were expelled from Paradise. It was their fault. Their guilt was passed down to their descendants, and that is the explanation for all the misery in the world. The thinking behind this was that there had to be some explanation, and since God is neither unjust nor impotent, the fault must lie with us. This concept is absent from, for example, the Epic of Gilgamesh, which dates from the 2nd millennium BC and was "almost certainly known to the Genesis storyteller." Gilgamesh contains many analogues to parts of the familiar narrative, including a tree or branch that would have provided eternal life, had it not been stolen by a serpent; a Flood story; and even the Tower of Babel. What it does not have is a clear lesson that people were the authors of their own sorrows. The Hebrews repurposed all that for their own ends.

Speaking of the Flood, chapter 6 of Genesis tells us that the wickedness of fallen mankind reached the point where God repented "that he had ever made man on the earth." That was when he told Noah to build the Ark.

Even so, theologians down through the ages have had trouble with the idea that a misdeed committed many years earlier had doomed the world to such a fate. For example, "did the the wise maker not anticipate what his creatures would do? How is it possible for an omniscient divinity to regret what he has done? And how is it possible to justify or even comprehend the arbitrariness and cruelty of the destruction he unleashes, destruction that sweeps away not only adult malefactors but also small children, newborn lambs, virgin forests?"

Moving on through the centuries, Greenblatt discusses other little-known texts, such as apocryphal treatises from the first century or thereabouts, including an account of the life of Adam and Eve after their expulsion from the garden (an attempt to fill in a bit more of what transpired in the 930 years of Adam's life). These were excluded from the canon of writings accepted by the early church.

He mentions a very early bishop, born in the year 85, who "proposed that the church simply abandon the Hebrew Bible altogether as the basis for faith in Christ, [saying] the God whose acts and intentions are recorded in the history of the Jews is manifestly tainted by evil."

He also mentions early writers who sought to interpret the story of Adam and Eve allegorically; i.e., we should not think of Adam as a naked prototype man in some literal park-like space but rather as an Everyman at work within in own soul. He is distracted by pleasure (represented by the serpent) from what needs to be done, and loses his way. Thereafter, he takes to wearing clothes as a reminder of the truth he has yet to learn. I believe a key part of this argument was that the individual has free will and is still capable of choosing good.

All such claims came under devastating attack, as the Church was establishing a different doctrine. Augustine (354-430) had a central role in promoting the view that the story of Adam and Eve was not a myth or allegory but "the literal truth." (Consider that the serpent had told Eve the commandment against eating the forbidden fruit need not be taken literally, and look how that turned out.) Again, Original Sin was taken as the only way to make sense of all the suffering in the world. "It was better to believe that accounts were being kept to the last scruple by an all-seeing God, even one who was murderously angry at humanity, rather than to believe that God was indifferent or absent." And in view of the magnitude of human misery—infants dying, often along with the mothers who bore them; natural disasters; crop failures and starvation, etc.—the conclusion was that mankind's evils had to be appalling. Otherwise, the goodness of God would be called into question.

Another consequence of this direction in thought was an opening of the floodgates of misogyny. Even though Eve too had been Satan's victim, she was also his (unwitting) ally and therefore "the principal agent of humanity's downfall." In time this led to accusations of witchcraft and the infamous barbarities that have been recorded.

Efforts to erase the curse of Eve's culpability included writings by a 17th century nun, Arcangela Tarabotti, who wrote that it was the man who took the devil's role, casting on the woman the blame for his failings and using that as justification for dominating and abusing her.

At this point Greenblatt's text moves into the realm of art history/appreciation, with detailed discussions of medieval and Renaissance paintings and engravings of the first couple (many of which depict them in attitudes of shame and remorse). Then in literature there was Milton's Paradise Lost, which "forever transformed the ancient narrative." The summary of Milton's life, like that of Augustine's, is enlightening and engaging, even if not always closely related to the matter at hand. I was interested to know that Milton had wanted for years to write a tragic drama on the fall of Adam and Eve, but it had "refused to get written." Finally, at an advanced age, when he'd lost his eyesight and his once-promising career lay in ruins, he suddenly received inspiration (from an inner muse, he thought) to compose and dictate the great epics that made him famous.

Milton wanted "to give Adam and Eve the compelling presence that Homer had given Hector and that Virgil had given Aeneas. The opening chapters of Genesis, he recognized, lacked the thrilling struggle of the Trojan War or the historical specificity of the founding of Rome. But he was certain that the origin story ... was far more important and, rightly understood, at once more heroic and more poignant than either the Greek or Latin masterpieces."

Greenblatt says Milton accomplished this by borrowing from a medieval legend about an uprising in heaven. In that tale, Satan and a third of the angels rebelled against God and then, in defeat, plotted to harm God's creatures, the first man and woman. (Note: the fall of Satan is also mentioned in scripture, e.g., Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28, Luke 10, Revelation 12.) For a template of Satan's persona, Milton could draw upon Shakespeare's arch-villains, Macbeth and Iago and Richard III. Depicting a fully realized married couple was a bigger challenge, as it had perhaps never been done before in literature. However, he knew he had to succeed at that, both because he took the Adam and Eve story to be real and because real characters are the secret of great literature. Greenblatt suggests Milton used personal experiences and observations to achieve the result he did.

"By the close of Paradise Lost, Adam and Eve had become so real in Milton's imagination that they began to crack open the whole theological apparatus that brought them into being. ... They possessed an insistent, undeniable, literal human presence."

I must say this analysis of it makes me want to read Paradise Lost again. My only previous exposure was in an undergraduate English course at age 20, when I was not prepared to grasp what it meant. All I recall from that is the poet's invocation of his muse (apparently not just a formality) and Satan's oft-quoted line about making "a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven."

At any rate, a result of "conjuring up lives so powerfully" was that it called attention to logical problems that had always been present in the narrative. Also, mankind's expanding knowledge of the world challenged literal acceptance of the story in Genesis. Increasingly, it was understood that Adam and Eve could not have been the first humans on earth, and that the difficulties experienced in life are simply the shared fate of all mortals—not the consequence of Eve's temptation.

"There are many intervening stages between blind faith and outright rejection." However, five hundred years ago one ventured into those stages at great personal risk (e.g., from the Inquisition). Nevertheless, a point arrived at which the ground began to shift, and the majority of people stopped accepting the story as literal truth. Even so, Greenblatt concludes that Adam and Eve "remain a powerful, even indispensable, way to think about innocence, temptation, and moral choice, about cleaving to a beloved partner, about work and sex and death."

This is an extraordinarily good book. I've summarized it much more thoroughly than usual, in hopes of remembering its main points, and yet there is so much more valuable discussion, e.g., regarding Voltaire, and frisky American writers like Mark Twain, and scientists like Darwin. This book is worth everyone's time, and worth a more comprehensive study than I gave it.

[Lee Underwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Marilynn Robinson's review of this book, and although the argument, "it is a tendentious reading of any ancient text that would apply modern standards of plausibility to myth", is true, it was not myth to those who ordered entire civilizations around it. That included the horrifying ways humans were treated, and unfortunately, continue to be treated today. Perhaps Greenblatt didn't give the holy text the academic or scholarly treatment a pious religious monk would, but we live with the consequences of those readings now, and it's nice to have a modern rationalist reading of it. If anything it makes those of us who feel that Genesis is akin to a story parents tell children so they will behave a bit more comfortable in our critique of it.

I do find the Allegory beautiful and the art and literature emerging from it reflective of the human condition embedded in it. But there's a deep flaw in allowing humans to organize hate from it.

Anyway, I loved Swerve, and I know Shakespeare scholars have similar issues with Will in the World, but I also know how to balance academic research with popular storytelling. I consume his books, and as a teacher, I also have the benefit of bringing some interesting tidbits back to the classroom!

[Kyle Muntz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recently I've had probably the strangest desire of my life--to read literary criticism (which is something I thought I would never want to do after grad school). Greenblatt dominated the field when I was studying, so a lot of his approach in this book felt familiar, both in the good and the bad. The writing and focus was fantastic, vivid, and accessible. On the other hand, he also reminds me of the new-historicism I studied in college with his tendency to make absurd, counterintuitive, broad reaching arguments with almost zero evidence. But in general I really like this book, both of in its focus and the experience of reading it as a sort of intellectual history. I'm really interested suddenly in the idea of literary criticism for a wide audience--which, interestingly, basically doesn't exist--and I'll probably be hunting for similar books a lot over the next year or so.

[Galen Weitkamp · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve by Stephen Greenblatt.
Review by Galen Weitkamp.

The story of Adam and Eve is a story of origins; not just the origin of Earth and sky, flora and fauna, man and woman but also a story about the origin of right and wrong, or at least about the origin of our human knowledge of right and wrong. It seems to me we haven’t quite acquired that knowledge in its entirety as yet, but that is not really so much Stephen Greenblatt’s concern. His book, The Rise And Fall Of Adam And Eve, is about the evolution of the story itself and its interpretation in art, literature and moral thought.

When the Hebrews lived side by side with their conquerers in Babylon, their origin story also lived side by side with Enuma Elish, the Mesopotamian origin story preserved for us in the form of clay tablets. How stories are transmitted through time can determine their permanence and fidelity to the original telling. Most early creation stories were propagated by word of mouth before they were committed to writing. Written copies were copied again and again, translated, re-translated and the translations translated into other languages. We do not have the original writings of Moses’ narrative of Adam and Eve. We do not know if was written on papyrus, clay tablets or animal skins.

Not everybody’s story of Adam and Eve is the same. The story Adam himself tells to his son Seth (according to the Apocalypse of Adam found at Nag Hammadi) differs remarkably from the one told by Moses.

Many early commentators dealt with the story allegorically, thus avoiding the literal confusions and contradictions. But one North African convert to Christianity, St. Augustine, insisted upon its literal truth. His view on this held sway for more than a thousand years.

The painters, printers and sculptors of the Renaissance brought a realism to Adam and Eve that even Augustine couldn’t achieve. Later, in Milton’s literary depiction of the story in Paradise Lost, the primeval couple became nearly tangible. Goldblatt tells us that by making Adam and Eve real, Augustine, Milton, Michelangelo et. al. had rendered them mortal. Their reality only brought into clear view the cracks and the contradictions. The literal tale was opened to the ridicule of Pierre Bayle’s Dictionary and Mark Twain’s diaries of Adam and Eve as well as to the criticisms from science which begin with Copernicus, Galileo and continued with Darwin.

Still the story is essential to our understanding of our moral history and the way we see ourselves. It deeply influenced the way men and women relate to one another and to this day it is still something we need to work through or find our way around.

Greenblatt is a elegant writer. I loved his book Swerve on the writing and rescue of Lucretius’s book On The Nature Of Things and I love and recommend this book. Because it has a number of gorgeous color plates, you may want to get yourself a hard copy.

[Kisxela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Greenblatt has already dazzled me with his previous book, that concentrated knowledge, in such an orderly form, in a logical arrangement, tries to convince its reader that he is sharing something with him. Of course, this is not true, as it only summarizes pre-existing knowledge and leads it along a logical chain of thought. Sure, there are those who say it’s just Greenblatt’s vision, and they’d see these connections quite differently, but since the chemtrailes have fluttered to nothing on the edge of the earth, I’m just trusting my common sense.

This book analyzes one of the oldest myths. Mankind has always been preoccupied with where we came from (although perhaps we would go further with it to deal with where we are going, there is still room for correction) and the origins of Adam and Eve in Christian culture - even though there are few today who believe in in its literal meaning - was forever embedded in the common consciousness. Even if not in a religious sense, but in a cultural sense, Adam and Eve still symbolize man and woman.

Greenblatt goes through history and takes stock of every major change the interpretation of the myth has gone through. St. Augustine put his life on it to prove a literal interpretation of Genesis with moderate success. We get a lengthy analysis of the artist’s depictions of the first human couple, including the image of the famous Dürer, who wanted to be the depiction of the physical perfection of Adam and Eve. We get a good lengthy analysis of Milton’s Paradise Lost, (actually, a mini-Milton biography is incorporated into the book by Greenblatt), and then comes the scientific discoveries that have begun to undermine the myth, with Darwin in closing.

It can be said that Greenblatt immerses quite extensively and has packed a lot into this book that only touches on the story of the first human couple, so perhaps this book may not seem compiled enough for everyone, but in fact Greenblatt is not simply exploring an ancient myth, but human thinking, if you will, writes the story of the Enlightenment. How a tale becomes a dogma, a weapon, and how this weapon is deactivated by advanced thinking.

[Kaitlynn · Rating 2 out of 5]

The writer sets up the whole book to prove that we shouldn’t take the creation story literally yet ends the books to compare paradise before the fall to chimpanzees in modern day?

It was thought provoking but not the best written book. The author should have taken perhaps another angle. I also found that there was way too much context to some chapters that I felt were off topic to the main argument/theme of the book. Also..the author was wrong on a fact about Catholicism but what do I know?

[verbava · Rating 4 out of 5]

усе, що стівен ґрінблатт розповідає про адама і єву (а він ретельний, починає з добіблійних історій і завершує дарвіном) здається насамперед велетенським бароковим обрамленням для трьох розділів про мільтона.

[W.M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

基本上是將重心放在創世紀中的亞當與夏娃「故事」，將時間��到非常久遠去看聖經中這短短幾章裡，「第一對人類」在長久的天主－基督教史中如何被詮釋、被定義以及許多重點詮釋者將亞當和夏娃放置在什麼位置、以此去述說了什麼信念（或自己的妄念）。
是蠻好讀的一本書，視角廣泛而且客觀，但那些直指過往曾經的神學和哲學家們在這個信仰背景下，為了滿足自己對神的理解（嗯）所做出的詮釋能夠如何仇恨女性還是覺得生氣XD

[Stephanie]

DNF

You say evo psych, I'm NOT there

[Jim Robles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars! Another great book by Stephen Greenblatt.

"And most threatening of all they had begun to intermarry" (p. 34).

"You would spend eternity in hell, and justly so, because of the taint you inherited from the sin of Adam and Eve" (p. 104).

"For sex as we know it is not natural and not healthy" (p. 107).

"The truly serious issue was that the Messiah himself, citing the story of Adam and Eve, seemed explicitly to prohibit divorce, except on grounds of adultery" (p. 179).

"But on a foggy mid-June morning in 1645, at the Battle of Naseby, the Parliament's New Model Army, under the command of Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell, crushed the king's forces in what proved to be the decisive battle of the Civil War" (p. 186).

"Milton believed deeply that at the center of marriage was an intimate conversation between husband and wife, but to imagine and depict such intimacy was largely uncharted territory, not for him alone but for all of the literary culture in which he had steeped himself" (p. 210).

Bummer!!!!

"What do you think of me? God asked Adam; I am alone for all eternity without equal" (p. 214).

Precisely!!! See also p. 220 (8:583-84).

". . . . Milton wrote, adding a line that has become notorious for its complacent, self-congratulatory sexism, "He for God only, she for God in him" (4:297-99)" (p. 218).

"Like Adam, Eve believed that the truest love must be between equals" (p. 224).

See Aristotle on friendship.

"If these tragic victims resembled the Edenic innocence of Adam and Eve, what did that make the Spanish?" (p. 236).

"The archaic Greek poet Hesiod offered a vision of a golden age, along with the myth of Pandora, so oddly reminiscent of Eve" (p. 239).

"What happens instead is simply that a significant number of people cease t believe that the story convincingly depicts reality" (p. 251).

"Surely, the all-knowing Creator knew in advance that his creatures would fall and, in doing so, would bring down pestilence, war, famine, and unspeakable pain on all of their progeny" (p. 256).

That is the one that always leaps out at me. Add that time does not pass for the Christian God: in the words of Jonathan Edwards, God sees "all of Eternity in a single glance." How could the Christian God be "surprised?"

"Lucretius's observations from the natural world strikingly anticipated what Darwin brought in such massive detail to support his overarching theory of naural selection: . . ." (p. 274).

Lucretius also anticipated significant aspects of modern physics.

"Now, largely thanks to us, the chimpanzees are an endangered species" (p. 288).

"Females, Melissa told me, go out of their way to copulate with the males who have been the most aggre ssive towards them" (p. 291).

Judah Abravanel (c. 1464- c. 1523), on p. 309) is reminiscent of Plato's Symposium.

"God not only knew that Adam and Eve would violate the prohibition; He also actively and deliberately impelled them to do so. . . . . [John CalVin (1509 - 1564)]" (p. 309 - 310).

I have never been able to make any sense of the Christian view that we have free will (as opposed to autonomy).

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first became familiar with Stephen Greenblatt when I read his brilliant book on Shakespeare, Will in the World. Then I eagerly read The Swerve, which didn't quite live up to my expectations. This one more than makes up for it. I can't imagine covering Adam and Eve more thoroughly than this. The book goes all the way from Gilgamesh and its resemblances to and differences from the Genesis story, to a final description of the author being allowed to accompany some scientists studying a colony of chimpanzees in Uganda. The number of interpretations of the story of our first parents is astonishing, and there are many that I had never heard of. St. Augustine gets prominent attention in what I think is the weakest section of the book. Greenblatt lays strong emphasis on his supposed obsession with sex, apparently never having read anything by James O'Donnell or Garry Wills, both of whom are more nuanced. His section on Milton and Paradise Lost is several chapters long, and is for me the best part of the book. His appreciation of that now unpopular poem is strong and very affecting. He also interprets some visual art, with special emphasis on Durer and his famous engraving of the pair in the moment before the fall. Most surprising and new to me was the relation of the Adam and Eve story (believed to be not a story but a historically accurate account) to the discovery of the New World and its strange people, who had apparently never felt the stain of original sin. How could this be? Were they subhuman savages? Or perhaps more than human, living (as many believed) closer to Paradise, and therefore somehow less fallen? Many people believed that the four large rivers in South America were in fact the four rivers of Paradise. Perhaps Adam and Eve were only the first parents of the Jews? At any rate, with the Enlightenment and further scientific exploration it became ever more difficult to regard the story as historical, and Charles Darwin ended all possibility. Nevertheless, the story still has its resonance: "It is (Adam and Eve's) transgression--a deliberate action, not an impersonal, mechanistic process of random genetic mutation and natural selection--that determined the shape of our lives. The Adam and Eve story insists that our fate, at least at the beginning of time, was our own responsibility. Millions of people in the world, including many who grasp the underlying assumptions of modern science, continue to cling to the peculiar satisfaction that the ancient story provides. I do."

[Socraticgadfly · Rating 2 out of 5]

As iffy and up and down as "The Swerve" or more so

There's several reasons I say that. I'm going to talk about Greenblatt's down sides and even plain errors first.

First, he seems to assume that the entirety of the southern kingdome of Judah was exiled in 586 BCE. At the least, he writes in a way the average reader would infer that. And he's simply wrong. Most the "common folk" were left there. That, in turn, relates to how Israelite religion grew into proto-Judaism after the exiles returned.

Second, re Yahweh allegedly not having a consort, he is either ignorant of, or ignores, the ostracon of Yahweh and his Asherah at Kuntillet Ajrud. The fact that Yahweh WAS believed to have an Asherah at the time of the "J" section of the Torah, which includes Genesis 2-3, is a matter of importance in looking at the Eden background in the J context.

Third, also from J, he is either ignorant of, or ignores, that Yahweh had a "divine counsel," and other usage of the word "gods" in J and outside.

Fourth, he's wrong that the Garden story of Genesis 2-3 can be separated from the J tradition, and his hints at fusing it with the P tradition of Genesis 1 show that his wrestling with biblical criticism is superficial.

That said, he's right that Ezra is overlooked on skill level as editor of the Torah. Sure, there's doublets, contradictions and more. But, picture not only working without printed books, but with scrolls and not codexes to boot.

He's right on Augustine's sexual hang-ups, whatever the deepest of them were, in influencing his idea of original sin.

He's ignorant of the fact, or ignores the fact, that Orthodoxy, within Christianity, considers Augustine only a minor saint and rejects his idea of original sin.

And, "shockingly," but actually not at all, given problems in The Swerve, he's pretty well wrong that Augustine was responding to Epicureanism. Epicureanism as a philosophical school was just about dead by this time.

Finally, it's "interesting" that almost all of his critique was from Christian-based viewpoints. Now, both Jews and Muslims may be a small minority in the US, but Muslims certainly are not, worldwide. A more accurate title would have been "The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve in the Western Christian and post-Christian Tradition."

[David Steele · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding and very readable. I grew up in a Protestant home where Adam and Eve where treated as real people along with Noah, Jonah, etc. And of course I had many questions and today I have even more.
Just as Adam was molded out of clay, the story of Adam and Eve can, and has been molded by many people and groups to meet their needs. And that is the way that it will always be. Great research, well told. I am glad that I read this book.

(goodreads winner)

[Jim Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Jim Cook’s review): Greenblatt is the John Cohan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He’s one of the world’s foremost Shakespeare scholars (e.g, he’s editor of the Norton Shakespeare and author of Will in the World: How Shakespeare became Shakespeare - one of the best books ever written about the Bard, in my view; and he’s a Pulitzer Prize winner (The Swerve:How the World Became Modern). Suffice to say he’s almost certainly one of Harvard’s best paid profs!

I’ve read three of his books so far; Will in the World is a must-read for anyone interested in Shakespeare; Swerve is unmemorable and overrated; Adam and Eve is both erudite and eloquent. I recommend Adam and Eve to anyone who has read, and been fascinated by, the Creation story - which means just about everyone!

Adam and Eve is a history of the creation narrative and its various interpretations in theology, literature and art. This is, of course, a huge topic and Greenblatt has had to make many choices regarding what to include in his book, some of which I will take issue with later in this review. His own views are humanistic and secular (as are mine) but he treats the perspectives of the faithful with sensitivity and respect. He charts the course of the creation narrative from pre-Biblical precursors such as the tale of Gilgamesh, through the formation of Christian dogma about the story and the various strands of both allegorical and literal interpretation, to its impact on Western art and literature. As one of the book’s reviewers wrote: it is “brilliant enough to make me seethe with envy” (Simon Schama of the New York Times).

I mostly concur with the book’s positive reviews and would also add that the book has two excellent sets of colour prints that ably represent the impact of the creation story on Western art. Greenblatt does a really good job of describing this collection of art. The book also includes an appendix of a sampling of interpretations of the creation story not discussed in the main body of his work, which is thoughtful; and he has another appendix that has a sampling of origin stories from non-Biblical sources, a nod to the diversity of such stories in the various cultures of humankind. The book is rounded out by an excellent set of notes, a good selected bibliography, and a fairly detailed index.

A quick note about the Notes: Greenblatt does not utilize footnotes. Instead, his notes are at the back of his book, each is identified by the page number that it is speaking to. While this is an unobtrusive way to include a scholarly apparatus in a book written for the layman, its likely to lead most readers to ignore his excellent notes. Consequently, I recommend that upon finishing a chapter in his book, the reader should then proceed to scan all the notes for that chapter before proceeding to the next chapter.

Greenblatt’s book does have flaws, some of which I’ll mention now. While the book tends to focus on Christian interpretations of the creation story, it has some significant gaps even within that tradition. For example, Greenblatt discusses the work of Augustine over two complete chapters (and more) in the book but scarcely mentions Aquinas, an even more influential Christian thinker who wrote a great deal about the creation story in Genesis. This omission necessarily favours a much darker interpretation of sin, and gives far too much weight to the concept of Original Sin. In my view, much of the best Christian theology of the past 75 years has been, in part, an effort to undo the influence of Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin. Greenblatt seems quite oblivious to this important aspect of modern theological thinking regarding the creation story.

Greenblatt also completely ignores another contemporary interpretation of the creation narrative that any competent history of such narratives ought to say something about, namely Creationism. This way of thinking about the creation story, especially as propounded in the United States, has had considerable influence in the last several decades. Creationists continue to clamour for equal time in institutions of learning for their views to be heard and treated as being on par with scientific findings in history, biology, and geography. Greenblatt should have added his humanistic sensibilities to this debate, which would have provided better balance than currently exists, as we only hear the “cranky” voices of critics of Creationism like those of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.

As bad as these lacunae are, there is another more serious flaw in Greenblatt’s historical narrative of the creation story. He spends a lot of time on creation narratives that pre-date modern religions based on written texts such as the Bible; he also spends a good deal of time talking about the impact on the story of Adam and Eve of more recent thinkers like Darwin; but he pretty much ignores the very rich Islamic and Judaic traditions of interpretation about the creation story. To be fair, on a couple of occasions Greenblatt points to Rabbinical interpretations of the creation story, but usually with little comment or discussion.

Of the Islamic tradition we hear virtually nothing about it except for the fact that it never mentions Eve by name, as she is only talked about (when she is mentioned at all) as “his spouse.” While this is true, this is no reason to ignore the Islamic scholarly interpretations of this important story. While they tend to be (in my opinion) too “Adam-centric”, they do emphasize two things that are relevant to any modern interpretation of this story. First, Adam and Eve are regarded as jointly responsible for the fateful act of eating the forbidden fruit - Eve is never singled out, as she is in some Christian interpretations, for primary blame. Second, while their disobedience in Eden is regarded as a sin that merits punishment, it is not seen as a sort of hereditary stain on all subsequent human beings. In other words, there is little or no notion of Original Sin in an Augustinian sense in Islamic interpretations of the creation story.

It seems to me that in ignoring the creation story as told in the Quran as interpreted by Islamic scholars, Greenblatt is wasting an important teachable moment about this narrative that is after all, foundational for Christians, Jews and Muslims alike.

Regardless, this is an outstanding book about - as the author’s subtitle suggests - the story that created us.