Week 3 Reading Notes: Adam and Eve Part A

The Creation Notes: 

-God created everything. He created man in his own image and told them, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." 
-God provided for them. have them herb and fruit bearing trees. 
-HE rested on the seventh day from all of his work. 
-GOD formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. 
- 4 rivers around and in the garden of Eden.
-God commanded the man not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for if he does he will surely die that day.
-HE put Adam in a deep sleep and took one of his ribs, then closed up the flesh. From this rib he made woman. 
-"This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." 

The Fall Notes:

-The serpent more subtil than any beast that God had created
-The serpent convinces Eve to go and eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. saying, "ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ya eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."
-Eve goes and eats the fruit and gives it to her husband, then they notice that they are naked and sew fig leaves together to make aprons. 
- Adam and Eve hide from God, HE calls them out.
- Adam 'blames' Eve from eating from the tree, Eve 'blames' the serpent for convincing her to eat from the tree. 
- Adam is told to return to the garden of Eden where he was made and he had to till the ground. 

The Ideal Man Notes: 

-like all creatures created on the six days of creation, man was created fully developed. Not a child, but a man of 20 yrs of age. 
-Adam was a giant, reaching from the heavens to earth, or from east to west. 
-Later generations there was only a few men who resembled Adams size. 
 and physical perfections. 
-Eve is compared to an ape in relation to Adam (why and ape?)
-As God fills the world, the soul fills the human body. 
-God sees all things but is not seen, the same goes for the soul. 
-Soul is still breathed in through the nostrils of man, "I will breathe her into his nostrils: as they discern the unclean and reject it, and take in the fragrant, so the pious will shun sin, and will cleave to the word of the Torah."
-In the time from when God created Adam and before he came alive (about an hour) God revealed the whole history of mankind, each generation and their leaders, prophets, teachers, scholars, statesmen, judges, pious members, average and common place members, impious members. 
-If Adam was the first man.... how was there generations before him?
- A thousand years = one of God's days
- Adam gave 70 years of his life to David. 
- Adam the creator of writing, and all 70 languages. 

The Fall of Satan Notes:

-envy of the Angels in comparison to Adam 
-Satan was jealous of the first man, and his evil thought finally led to his fall. 
- Satan was the greatest of angles in heave, with 12 wings instead of 6 like all others. 
-Satan refused to pay respect to Adam at Gods request. 
-Satan agrees to Gods 'test' between him and Adam 
-Satan fails at naming the animals, but when asking Adam God starts with a word with a first letter the same as the animal. 
-Satan still refuses to pay homage to Adam, other angels warn him of the wrath of God
-God flung Satan and his houst out of heaven, down to the earth, and from that moment dates the enmity between Satan and man. 

Lilith Notes: 

-Man awoke and started praising God, the animals though seemed to worship Adam. 
-God cast a sleep upon Adam, this is when the angels knew that he was a human not an angel. 
-Purpose of this sleep was to provide Adam with a wife, the Earth trembled saying to God that he  could not provide for Adam's descendants. 
-God reassured Earth that together they could, and so they split up the time. Earth took the day, and God the night. 
- But with this man had to work the earth to earn his food. 
- To banish Adam's loneliness Lilith was given to Adam as a wife. 
-Lilith and Adam was created as equals, both from dust. She wanted equality with her husband, and she eventually flew away from Adam and vanished in the air. 
-Adam complained. God sent 3 angels to go find Lilith. They found her in the Red Sea. 
-Angles threatened her to come back but she refused, and would have rather lose 100 of her demon children daily by death. 
-She takes her revenge by injuring baby boys on the first night of their lives, and the baby girls are exposed to her wicked designs until they are 20 days old. 
-Only way to ward off this even is by baring an amulet with the name of her 3 angels captors. 

Eve Notes:

-The creation of woman from man was possible because Adam had to faces, which were separated at the birth of Eve. 
-God listed off various parts not to make woman from and reasons why. Finally said I will make her from a chaste portion of the body.
-woman still has all the faults God tried to obviate. (haha)
-the formation of woman is far more complex that that of man. functions of child-bearing. and the intelligence of woman matures more quickly than the intelligence of man. 
- women need perfumes while men do not. dust  of the ground always stays fresh, but flesh with need salt to keep it in good condition. 
-Man must ask women to be his wife, not woman ask a man to be her husband. because it is man who has sustained the loss of his rib and he sallies forth to make good his loss again. 
-woman covers her hair in token of Eve's having brought sin into the world. women procede men in a funeral cortege, because women brought death into the world. 
-because women extinguished the light of man's soul, she is bidden to kindle the Sabbath light. 
-men do not appreciate the charms of women whom they have known and observed from childhood up. 
-God had prepared 10 bridal chambers for the newly weds. all made of gold, pearls, and precious stones. 

Paradise Notes: 

-the Garden of Eden was the home of the first man and woman, all souls of all men and women must pass through it after death and before they reach their final destinations. 
-our souls must go through 7 portals before they arrive in heaven. 
-our souls are there transformed into angels where they remain forever. 
-First Portal is the Cave of Machpelah: under the care and supervision of Adam
-Second: the Gate of Paradise that is guarded by the cherubim and the flaming sword. 
-the third Zebul: is at the entrance of heaven, then presented to God by Michael
-some how skips to the 7th: Arabot within the souls of the pious are changed to angels.
-in paradise stand the tree of life and the tree of knowledge one forming a hedge around the other. 
-beneath the trees flows forth the water that irrigates the whole earth parting into 4 streams: the Ganges, the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates. 
-only during creation did plants look toward the eater of the earth for nourishment, later He made them dependent on the rain. 
-God did not permit the plants to surface until Adam prayed to Him for food, because God longs for the prayers of the pious. (what is pious?)
-The Garden of Eden did not need a caretaker, there he would study the Torah and fulfil the commandments of God, 
-there is 6 commandments which every human being is expected to heed. 

The Fall of Man Notes: 

-the serpent was the most notable, and most resembled man. he stood upon 2 feet, and was about as tall as a camel. because he brought misfortune to Man he lost his legs. 
-the serpent's mental gifts caused him to become an infidel. he was too well acquainted with the character of the man to attempt to exercise tricks of persuasion upon him, therefore he approached the woman. 
-it was Adam's exaggeration that the serpent was able to persuade Eve and to taste the forbidden fruit. 
-the serpent pushed Eve on the tree to show that just touching it will not cause death.
-the serpent shakes the tree for the fruit to fall, and eats it to show Eve that she will not die from eating it.
- Eve thinks that Adam has only lied to her, and takes the advice of the serpent to eat the fruit. to clear her conscience she only ate the skin of the fruit if she did not die she would eat the fruit itself. 
-she makes Adam eat the fruit so he doesn't take another wife after her. still not satisfied she gets all the other living beings to eat the fruit as well except the bird Malham. 
-Malham calls her out. asking is it not bad enough that you have gone against God's wishes that you would have to bring death to others as well?
-after eating the fruit did Adam and Eve become naked. 
-the trees would not grant him their leaves to cover their bodies, only the fig tree because it was the forbidden fruit itself. 

The Punishment Notes: 

(Expulsion from Eden, Orvieto Cathedral)


-God gave Adam one of his days to die (1000 years). saying "He shall have nine hundred and thirty years to live, and seventy to leave to his descendants."
-Adam and Eve hid when they heard God approaching. 
-Adam shrunk to the size of one hundred ells, and felt fear when he heard God speak. 
-God wanted to give Adam the opportunity of repenting his sin, and he would have received Divine forgiveness for it. Adam did not repent his sin, instead slandered God and uttered blasphemies against Him. 
-Adam tried to shift the blame from himself to Eve. 
-the Earth was to also suffer from Adam's sin. 
-the Moon laughed at Adam's fall, so God made it where she could not shine all day and night like the Sun, but would have to born, and reborn  again and again. 
-God was full of pity for Adam and Eve. 
-if they would have repented God would have let them stay in Paradise. 


Bibliography: 


The sections of the creation and the fall are from the book of Genesis in the Bible, King James Version 

The sections the Ideal Man through the Punishment was from Lewis Ginzenberg collection of legends and folklore of the Jewish people

The image is from the Punishment cont. page from the un-textbook:

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