Adam Citings before the Intrusion of Satan: Recontextualizing Paul's Theology of Sin and Death

Abstract

The article surveys early references to the story of Adam and Eve, which are surprisingly few in number, beginning only around 200 bce, with the Book of Tobit. The common notion that Adam was punished by death for his sin is verified neither in Genesis 2–3 itself (and the surrounding chapters) nor in any pre-Pauline texts. Paul's focus on Adam's sin was out of the ordinary, and his conclusion that he was punished by some kind of death does not resemble interpretations in any other contemporary source, including Philo. The equally common idea that the Devil was assumed to participate in causing Adam's sin does not occur in early texts (for instance, Wisdom or the books of the New Testament), being first found in Justin Martyr. Therefore, assessments of biblical theology that depend on these concepts should be emended.

Keywords

Adam Eve sin death Paul Satan

Whatever the date of chapters 2 and 3 of Genesis, references to the story of Adam and Eve recounted there appear comparatively late, beginning at the turn of the second century bce, and all such allusions have to be carefully examined to determine their true meaning. Many of these mentions and accounts have been anachronistically interpreted under pressure of later traditions. One such misinterpretation is that the Book of Ben Sira blames death on the sin of Eve, and another is the notion that physical death is imposed as a penalty upon Adam and Eve in Genesis itself, and in the story's first reporters. In a recent listing of twelve “very early texts” by James Kugel (96–97) declaring that the punishment of Adam and Eve was mortality for humankind, I find four of them not applicable (Ben Sira, Wisdom, Philo, and 1 Enoch) and the remaining eight not very early: four of them are post-Pauline and post-Second Temple (Pseudo-Philo, Sibylline Oracles 1, 4 Ezra, and 2 Baruch), and the remaining four much later (Symmachus, Apocalypse of Moses, 2 Enoch, Pesikta Rabbati). This is a graphic illustration of the need for the survey that follows.

Yet another misinterpretation of Genesis (or of early references to Genesis) is that the serpent in the orchard of Eden is Satan, or that Satan is blamed for Adam's sin and punishment, whereas this identification does not appear earlier than the works of Justin Martyr (Kelly 2006: 176–77). For instance, Paul's wish that Satan soon be crushed under the feet of the Romans (Rom 16:20) has been linked to the serpent's punishment, that he will have to look out for the heel of the woman's seed (Gen 3:15), proleptically assuming that the serpent is Satan, whereas the reference is most likely to Satan's obstructionism (cf. 1 Thess 2:18).

Reassessment of early sources calls in turn for a new survey of the development of the Adam story, one that shows how sporadic and varied interest in the first parents was. Specifically, it will reveal that Paul was out of the ordinary in his focus on Adam, and that his interpretation of Adam's sin and its effect (hereditary “death” of some sort) was not shared by other writers of his time. Therefore any understanding of his theology of sin and death as based on contemporary ideas must be modified.

We should be alert at the beginning to various possibilities when death is spoken of as a punishment: instant death, violent or painful death, premature death (shortened life), loss of immortality, allegorical death (vicious life, painful life), death of the soul (annihilation), punishment of the soul after death (another kind of allegorical death).

The Original Stories

To begin, I will review the early chapters of Genesis, for two reasons: first, to recall to the mind of present-day readers exactly what of relevance is to be found there and what is not; and second, to indicate features that one might expect early readers to have found striking in the story of the sin of the first man and woman. For, in contrast to usual approaches to the episode, whether speculating about its origins, or determining authorial intentions or the real meaning of the account, my interest is in reader reception: how it was understood and passed on.

First Creation Story

In the first creation story of Genesis 1, Elohim's eight acts of creation are squeezed into six days, with humanity, ha-'ādām, LXX ho anthrōpos, both male and female, made in God's image, as the second act of the sixth day, corresponding to the creation of plants on day 3; and only plants are designated as food for both humans and animals (that is, animals are not to be killed for food). There is no reason to see the humans that God first created as limited to one man and one woman (Enns: 51). The humans are to subdue the land and fill it with their progeny. No fault is found in man, and, if this story was written subsequent to the second creation story, as is often supposed, we would have to see it either as ignoring the main action of that story (the account of transgression and its consequences) or as deliberately writing a corrective to it. We should remind ourselves that, out of the first eleven chapters of Genesis, there are very few clear early correspondences in the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures, suggesting late composition or at least late inclusion.

Second Creation Story

I will recount the second creation story of Genesis 2–3 in greater detail. After Yahweh-Elohim makes the heavens and the earth, he makes the man, ha-'ādām, from the dust of the ground, ha-'ādāmāh (LXX ho anthrōpos, with wordplay lost). Then Yahweh-Elohim plants a garden of fruit trees in Eden (LXX paradise of delight), with the Tree of Life in the middle; the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad, tov wa ra'(LXX kalon kai ponēron)— which would likely be understood as a merism for “everything” (Launderville: 312)—is also planted, and it too, as the woman tells the serpent, is in the middle of the garden. Yahweh-Elohim puts the man into the garden to cultivate it, and then gives him a command: he would die on the very day of eating. The man clearly knows what “dying” means; and the natural implication of this warning is not that he would never die if he refrained from eating, but rather that if he did eat he would die immediately, rather than when he came to the end of his natural life.

Readers have noted that the Septuagint begins to use the name “Adam” here (Bunta: 301), and that, while the permission-clause is singular, the prohibition-clause is plural: “Of every tree which is in the paradise thou mayest freely eat, but of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Bad ye shall not eat, but in whatever day ye eat of it, by death shall ye die” (LXX Gen 2:16–17). The plurality anticipates the helper that Yahweh-Elohim sets about providing for Adam. He first creates various animals and birds for Adam to name and to see if he would accept any of them as a helper. But Adam (or Yahweh-Elohim: see Good: 26–27) rejects every one of them as unsuitable, including, of course, the extremely intelligent and vocal serpent, to whom Adam gives the name Nahash (Ophis in Greek). Adam finally accepts the candidate that Yahweh-Elohim forms out of one of his ribs, whom he calls Ishah (manly), because she was taken out of Ish (man).

The reader finds two early reactions to Yahweh-Elohim's command at the beginning of chapter 3. Nahash professes to have understood that Elohim forbade the eating of fruit from all trees, and he asks Ishah about it. Would readers necessarily take this to be deception on his part (“a bald-faced lie,” Anderson 2001: 19), or an indication that the serpent misheard? Ishah clarifies, but gives a version of the command that leaves out the instantaneousness of the threatened death and adds the idea of fatal touching: “Ye shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall ye touch it, or ye shall die.” She does not specify which of the two trees in the middle is the death-dealing one, speaking perhaps as if she knows of only one tree there.

Nahash tells her that Elohim was not telling the truth: they will not die; Elohim simply wants to keep them from eating the fruit because if they do their eyes will be opened and they will be like Elohim in knowing good and bad. Ishah believes him, and, wishing to become wise, goes ahead and eats the fruit, but nothing happens until Adam eats it as well; then, sure enough, their eyes are opened and they do not die, just as the serpent promised. The only thing that they learn, however, is that they are naked, which they did not realize before, when they felt no shame—or rather they suddenly know now that it is shameful to be naked—and they fasten fig-leaves together to cover themselves. This increase of knowledge might seem too paltry and questionable to qualify as knowledge of good and bad, let alone as wisdom, but it is confirmed by Yahweh-Elohim (“Adam has become like one of us, knowing good and bad”). Also confirmed is the validity of their apparent judgment about nakedness, that it was bad all along, since Yahweh-Elohim proceeds to make more durable covering for them out of skin. A reader might wonder why he allowed their nakedness at all, if it was not good, unless it was taken for granted that this kind of origin-tale does not call for such analysis, especially since this passage depends on a punning wordplay on the homonym ‘rwm, meaning both “smart” and “naked.”

The only death that occurs on the day on which Adam and Ishah eat the fruit is presumably that of the animal or animals used to make their leather garments. Ishah and Adam receive two disparate punishments for their offense, neither of which is death; but Adam's punishment, namely, hardship in working the ground for food (still limited to plants) outside the garden, ground now changed for the worse, will last until he returns to the ground—in other words, until he dies. The reason given here for returning to the ground is not his disobedience, but the fact that he came from the ground. He was dust to begin with, and will go back to being dust. All the animals too are destined to go back to the ground, but Nahash, as part of his punishment, will anticipate this end by being forced to eat dust all the days of his life. And the same will be true of the serpent's progeny, his “seed,” which will somehow be propagated from him. Eve will have trouble bearing children, and there will be continued enmity between serpents and her progeny. She will be dominated by her husband, a condition that will not necessarily be seen as canceling out her previous role as a helpmate, and all wives as constituting one flesh with their husbands. We will see that sometimes this is the only lesson noted from these chapters of Genesis.

It is remarkable that Adam's immediate reaction to this statement of punishments is to focus only on Ishah's child-birthing, calling her “Life” (Havva in Hebrew, Zōē in Greek), because she will be the mother of all the living, that is, his own offspring and their offspring, on and on. A reader could perhaps conclude that Adam is relieved that God has forgotten about the immediate death-penalty—even seeing it as confirming Nahash's assertion that he did not mean it.

Then the reader sees that Adam (and Eve, too, presumably) could have avoided the fate of death, whether instant or eventual, all along, by eating of the other tree in the middle of the garden, the Tree of Life, thereby living forever, or at least for a very long time (3:22). The Life Tree could be considered an antidote to the poison fruit of the Knowledge Tree, except that the latter is no longer said to inflict death. The Life Tree is now physically prohibited to them by a pair of cherubs (perhaps thought of as stone gate-statues) and a flaming sword, barring the way back into Eden. And it is assumed that Adam and Eve know about the life-giving property of the Tree of Life, hence these precautions blocking off their access. Nahash, of course, did not tell Eve about it, perhaps because he did not know it. He was after all not said to be all-knowing, but only very smart or cunning. He did know a great deal, admittedly, and everything that he told Eve was true, so that he could be held to be deceiving her (as Eve alleged later) only if we take it that he meant her to think that she would live indefinitely without further ado—if he realized that this was not true!

Cain's Sin and Punishment

In the episode that follows, in chapter 4, there is no overt reference to anything that has happened in chapters 2 and 3, except for the name of the woman as Eve, now “known” by the man (Adam in LXX). She gives birth to Cain without any pains. The story is about an abrupt death, the killing of Eve's second son, Abel, at the hands of Cain. Abrupt animal deaths occur before this, that is, the sacrifices of sheep that Abel offers to Yahweh, which are found to be acceptable, in contrast to the offerings of fruits of the earth that Cain has presented.

There is no hint of awareness in Tobit that the first couple later fell into disgrace and hardship.

The curse upon the ground pronounced by Yahweh-Elohim in chapter 3 has not carried over to the present chapter, and it is only now, after the murder, that it is cursed for Cain, the tiller of the ground, and cursed to such an extent that it will yield nothing. Cain complains at the severity of the punishment imposed upon him and fears that he will be killed. Yahweh thereupon prohibits any such attack on Cain, on pain of punishment seven times greater than that imposed upon Cain (4:15). The figure of Cain thus appears as a kind of alternative primal man (Callender: 201–02, 214–15). The only other death one hears of is in the song of Lamech, Cain's descendant, who says that he killed a man for wounding him (4:23).

Adam and His Progeny

Chapter 5 of Genesis proceeds from the creation account of chapter 1, almost as if there were no account of the trees and the serpent and Cain and Abel—except that at the end when Noah is born, there is reference to the ground that Yahweh has cursed (5:29). God creates man (Adam) in his own image, male and female, and blesses them. Seth is the first son, being born when Adam is 130, and Adam dies 800 years later (5:5); this is the first natural human death that we hear of, with no suggestion of punishment. His named descendants live similarly long lives, apart from Enoch, born when Adam is 622 (in the Hebrew text) and living on for 57 years after Adam's death, except that Enoch is not said to die but to be taken by Elohim and to be walking with him (5:23–24).

Life of Men Limited; Sudden Death for Men and Animals

Finally, in Genesis 6, interrupting the account of the sons of Elohim who mate with the daughters of men, Yahweh pronounces a kind of death sentence on humans, limiting their life-span to a mere 120 years, “for they are but flesh” (6:3). The language is obscure, but it looks like a punitive measure, especially in light of what follows: Yahweh sees man's wickedness and his inclination (yetser) towards wickedness, ra' (LXX ta ponēra) (6:5). A few verses on, Elohim tells Noah that he will put an end to all flesh (6:13), which includes animals (6:7, 17). And this time, as we know, the threat is carried out, with only Noah and his family and his assemblage of animals excepted. Looking forward, we see that the bad-turning yetser in man survives the Flood (8:21). Now animals may be eaten (9:3), and now capital punishment is instituted: since man was made in God's image (Gen 1), “he who sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed” (9:5–7).

The upshot is that in chapters 4 and 5 there is no notice taken of the death sentence threatened against Adam in chapter 2; and thereafter, from chapter 6 on throughout the rest of Genesis and the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures and Septuagint (not counting Ben Sira and Wisdom), there is no notice of any kind taken of Adam and Eve and their sin and punishment.

Before New Testament Times

Tobit

There seem to be no references to Adam until the third century bce, in the genealogy of 1 Chronicles 1 (cf. Gen 5), ca. 250. The next citation appears in the Book of Tobit, coming from the end of the century or the turn of the next, so ca. 200 bce. In praying together with his new wife Sarah, Tobias addresses God: “You made Adam and gave to him his wife Eve as a helper and support, and from them came the race of humankind. You said, ‘It is not good for the man to remain alone; let us make a helper for him like himself'” (Tob 8:6, citing Gen 2:18). There is no hint of awareness here that the first couple later fell into disgrace and hardship.

Ben Sira

The next use of the Adam stories can be seen in Ben Sira's treatise, originally composed in Hebrew before 180 bce (for all that follows, see Levison 1988: 33–48). Here we are first told that God created man with his own yetser, and he is free to choose life or death (15:14, 17). All living things on the earth return to the earth (16:30; hē gē, which in LXX translates both ‘ādāmāh ‘ground’ and ‘aphar ‘dust,’ as in Gen 3:20). This holds for the human race as well: the Lord created man from the earth, and he must return to it again (17:1). The Lord gave to “them” a set number of days and time (17:2; Wright: 377–79). He filled them with knowledge and understanding, “and showed them goods and evils” kai agatha kai kaka (17:7; Berg: 148–50). He made an everlasting covenant with them (17:12), telling them to beware of all injustice, adikon (17:14); the number of a man's days at most is a hundred years (18:9). The first man did not know wisdom fully, and neither shall the last (24:28). “All men are from the soil (edaphos), and Adam was created of earth (gē)” (33[36]:10). Although the Greek uses Adam here, the meaning is clearly generic, as in the following verses: some God blessed and others he cursed (33[36]:12). The same is true later, when we are told that hard work is created for the children of Adam from the time they go out of their mother's womb until they return to the mother of all (40:1). The catalogue of hardships that follow has sometimes been thought to be part of the punishment given to Adam, but it seems more likely that they are in the realm of generic realism; and the one specific reference to wrongdoing refers to the wicked people who brought about the punishment of the Flood:

To all creatures, human and animal, but to sinners seven times more, come death and bloodshed and strife and sword, calamities and famine and ruin and plague. All these were created for the wicked, and on their account the Flood came. All that is of earth returns to earth, and what is from above returns above [40:8–11].

Earlier, there was a list of disobedient persons who were punished by God, beginning with the giants, continuing through the Sodomites, Canaanites, and the Israelites in the desert (16:6–16). This sort of list is common in later writings, including Jude and 2 Peter, and Adam is never included (Bauckham: 46–47).

There is only one reference to Adam as the proper name of the first man, and there he is clearly abstracted from any taint of sin or punishment: Shem and Seth were in great honor, and Adam was above every living thing in creation (49:16). This sort of presentation of Adam may have influenced the later tradition of Adamic wisdom (Joseph: 34–36) and the glory of Adam (Fletcher-Louis: 91–97).

In light of this, it clearly seems to be a mistake to see a reference to Eve in 25:24, as is usually done, translating it thus: “The beginning of sin is from a woman, and because of her we all die.” As John Levison shows, the context of the verse does not deal with Eve at all, but with bad wives in general. He translates it, “From the [evil] wife is the beginning of sin, and because of her we [husbands] all die.” He suggests that the verse is not speaking of the wife's own sin, but of the sin she leads her husband into. This is in keeping with the previous verse, of the bad effects the bad wife causes in her husband (25:23) (Levison 1985; Schäfer 1986: 72; pace Dunn 1998: 85; Camp: 70; and Meiser: 377). It is even clearer in the original Hebrew, where the verb is not “die” but “waste away,” as is pointed out by Teresa Ann Ellis; the line means, “From a wife is the start of iniquity—and because of her we waste away, all alike.” Ellis claims that the Hebrew text cannot be an allusion to Eve, and suggests that the model in the mind of the Hebrew text's author could have been Pandora (Ellis: 729, 736). Maurice Gilbert, while considering the verse to be a re-reading of Genesis 3, says that it means that the household is ruined when the wife is the first cause of maliciousness (434 and n. 23).

Those who see the verse as referring only to Eve, as well as those who think that it may at least echo Eve (Brand: 113–14), especially in the grandson's Greek version (Ellis: 742 n 45), beg the question of the “obvious” meaning of Genesis 2–3, assuming that death is said to be the punishment for Adam and Eve and all their descendants (in spite of Ben Sira's stated view elsewhere that death is the natural lot of humankind).

Qumran Nonsectarian Fragments

Esther Glickler Chazon agrees that Ben Sira seems to reflect a sapential interpretation of Genesis 2–3, by which the eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge has a good effect, and the same may be true of one of the fragments among the Dead Sea Scrolls, Sapiential Work A^e (4Q423), where proper cultivation of the trees of Eden results in knowledge: the writer speaks of “every good work and every pleasant tree that is desirable to give knowledge.” But neglect of the garden results in thorns and thistles (Chazon: 18–19). Such a picture, of course, draws only on the agricultural aspect of Adam's punishment, ignoring the narrative plot of the story. In this interpretation, hardship is imposed not for seeking knowledge but for failing to seek it.

Another work, The Words of the Heavenly Lights (4Q504 frg 8) mentions God's mandate to Adam “not to st[ray],” with the observation, “he is flesh and to dust” [he will return(?)] (Vermes: 367). This looks like a combination of the curtailment of human life because of flesh (Gen 6:3) with the cessation of human life because of dust (Gen 3:19); but the interpretation is uncertain, and, if valid, its significance lost.

The “minute remains of a biblical paraphrase” in 4Q422 (García Martínez: 505) is even more uncertain in its treatment of Adam. There is a reference to the prohibition concerning the Tree of Knowledge, perhaps implicating the bad yetser of Gen 6:5 and 8:21 (Chazon: 14–16).

1 Enoch

Perhaps dating from the same time as Ben Sira is the first part of the Book of Enoch, “The Book of the Watchers.” This work, of course, is connected with the story referred to at the beginning of Genesis 6, and also with the figure of Enoch in Genesis 5. Enoch was Adam's great-great-great-great-grandson, though still overlapping with Adam for 300 years in the Hebrew text (but born after his death in the Greek). Enoch received his information from a celestial vantage point, after being taken up by God. In one of his tours of the cosmos, he sees the Garden of Righteousness, and in it the Tree of Knowledge, and he is made aware that persons who eat of its fruit “know great wisdom” (1 Enoch 32:3). Raphael explains: “This is the Tree of Knowledge, from which your father of old and your mother of old did eat, and they learned knowledge, and their eyes were opened, and they understood that they were naked, and they were driven out of the garden” (32:6). There is no hint here of considering the fruit to be fatal for the first parents, or of thinking that the death that would come to Adam centuries later was caused by eating it. Earlier in this same tour, Enoch heard the voice of someone who had died early, namely, Abel, crying out against his elder brother Cain and calling in effect for the death penalty for all of Cain's descendants (22:6–7)—a penalty, we recall, that God refused to institute against Cain himself. In a later installment of the Book of Enoch, the “Dream Visions,” there is an allegory of Cain's killing of Abel (85:3–7), but no reference to Adam and Eve except as the progenitors.

Jubilees

In the Book of Jubilees, composed in the 150s bce (Hanneken: 272–84) and based on 1 Enoch, revelations are made not to Enoch but to Moses. The two creation stories of Genesis are here combined. The angels were created on the first day, and man, male and female, on the sixth (2:2, 14), though we find out later that it was only Adam who was created on the sixth day of the first week, and that the woman was formed from his rib in the second week, after Adam had reviewed and named all of the male and female animals without finding one like himself to be a helpmate (3:1–6). There is no preliminary mention of the Tree of Knowledge or the threat of dying on the day of eating its fruit, but only God's command that anyone who works on the Sabbath or defiles it should be put to death (2:25). After seven years in which Adam and his wife tilled the soil of the garden, the serpent came and had the conversation with the woman given in Genesis 3: she says that they will die if they even touch the tree in the middle of the garden, and the serpent denies it (3:17–19). One novelty is that the woman realizes her shame as soon as she eats the fruit, and covers herself with a fig-leaf before giving the fruit to Adam (3:21). The Lord curses the serpent, his anger against it to remain forever. The punishments for the woman and Adam are repeated from Genesis, with the land cursed because of Adam, who will eat bread in the sweat of his face until he returns to the earth from which he was taken, “because thou art earth and to the earth thou wilt return” (3:25). There is no mention of the Tree of Life, and the earth is not cursed again after Cain's sin; rather, Cain himself is cursed upon the earth (4:4). But one further change occurs after the Lord makes garments of skin for Adam and the woman and sends them out of the garden. The animals are no longer able to speak to each other, and they too are put out of the garden, but only Adam is allowed to cover his shame (3:26–31).

Later, however, there is a surprise ending to the story. When Adam finally dies, “all of his children buried him in the land of his creation, and he was the first who was buried in the earth” (4:29)—thus literally fulfilling God's statement that he would return to the earth whence he came. Next we are told: “And he lacked seventy years from one thousand years, for a thousand years are like one day in the testimony of heaven, and therefore it was written concerning the Tree of Knowledge, ‘In the day you eat from it you will die.’ Therefore he did not complete the years of this day because he died in it” (4:30) (Bouteneff: 6). Thus the punishment is regarded as being directed at Adam alone, and not his descendants (not to mention Eve, who is forgotten), although in fact no one else will live to the end of a thousand-year day, and few will surpass the term reached by Adam, supposedly punished by having his life shortened. We will see one other reader of the Adam story, namely, Justin Martyr, who will come up with this ingenious way of saving the letter of Genesis 2:17 while making a mockery of its spirit.

Wisdom

I know of no other reflection of the Adam story until we come to the Book of Wisdom, which is hard to date, the possibilities ranging from 50 bce to 50 ce, Paul's time, but the early pole is generally favored. It is a peculiarity of the style of this book that no proper names are used. For instance, the person who starts speaking in chapter 7, obviously Solomon, does not identify himself or Adam: “I also am a mortal man (thnētos anthrōpos), like everyone else, a descendant of him who was first made of earth” (Wis 7:1). He tells us here that the death of the body is natural, a consequence of being formed of earth. “A perishable body weighs down the soul, and this earthy tent burdens the mind filled with many thoughts” (9:15). God created man to rule the world: “Thou hast made all things by thy word, and by thy wisdom hast fitted man (anthrōpos) to have power over the creatures thou hast made” (9:1–2). In chapter 10, seven examples of just men saved by Lady Wisdom are detailed, each contrasted with a sinner, starting with Adam, who is contrasted with Cain, and Noah is also contrasted with Cain:

She protected the first-formed father of the world, when he alone had been created; she delivered him from his transgression (paraptōma), and gave him the strength to rule all things. But when an unjust man departed from her in his anger, he perished because in rage he killed his brother. When the earth was flooded because of him, Wisdom again saved it, steering the just man by a mere piece of wood [10:1–4].

Adam therefore was rehabilitated without being punished, and the world as created was saved (since Wisdom in rescuing Noah is said to have saved the world “again”). Cain, in contrast, did suffer punishment and brought on a world disaster (Kraeling: 153). The “perishing” that he underwent was earlier specified as death (obviously not referring to physical death), and the “rage” that impelled him as envy: “God created man (anthrōpos) for incorruption (aphtharsia), and made him to be an image of his own everlastingness (aïdiotēs), but through envy (phthonos) of an adversary (diabolos) Death entered the world, and those of his company (tēs ekeinou meridos) find him [Death]” (2:24) (Levison 1988: 31–32, 155; Kelly 2006: 70–79). This phrase hearkens back to the previous chapter: “The godless called him [Death] to themselves with their works and words, and, considering him a friend, labored on his behalf and made a covenant with him, because they are fit to be of his company (tēs ekeinou meridos)” (1:16).

The Wisdom author goes on to say, “But the souls of the upright are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them. In the eyes of the unwise, they seemed to have died, … but they are at peace” (3:1–3). This condition would hold not only for the murdered Abel, but also for the rehabilitated Adam. We can also infer from this passage that when the ungodly die a physical death they go to the real death they have chosen and suffer torment in the realm of Hades, from which no one returns, as the ungodly themselves acknowledge (2:1). They will be punished as they deserve (3:10), and will have no consolation on Judgment Day (3:18), when the just will testify against them (5:1).

That the envious diabolos was Cain was seen by the first known reader of Wisdom, Clement of Rome, in his Epistle to the Corinthians, 3:4–4:7 (Kelly 1964: 206–07). Most readers nowadays take the reference to be to the Devil, thus presupposing the identification of the Eden serpent with Satan; however, this identification happened only in post-biblical times, a point that has not been appreciated by most modern interpreters of the passage (Collins; Dunn 1988: 82; Glicksman: 161–62). Moreover, the satan of Job 1–2 and Zechariah 3 is taken as a proper name in LXX, ho diabolos, with the definite article, which the Wisdom author would avoid—and the lack of an article in his text makes it likely that he is using the term as a common noun (Learoyd; Kelly 2001: 125). Finally, the intervention of a supra-human adversary does not fit with the author's worldview (Zurawski: 268).

By the time that the Johannine books of the New Testament were written, Satan had indeed become associated with Cain, who is seen as his brother's killer because he was ek tou Ponērou (1 John 3:12). Those who act thus are tekna tou Diabolou (3:11), as Jesus tells the Judaeans, speaking also of Cain, when he says that ho Diabolos was a murderer and liar from the beginning (John 8:44) (Brown: 1:358; Blenkinsopp: 189). The common fanciful assumption that Jesus is here referring to Satan-as-serpent as man-killer, anthrōpoktonos, because he paved the way to God's execution of his death sentence against Adam, is, of course, to be rejected. Also to be rejected is the identification of the red dragon of Rev 12 with the Eden serpent rather than with the twisting sea-serpent Leviathan of Isaiah 27:1 (Kelly 2006: 148–57).

Philo

Philo of Alexandria flourished in the first half of the first century ce, so just before Paul. It is important to remember that he considered humans to be composite beings, with an immortal mind or soul and a mortal body (Levison 1988: 64–65, 78–79). When then he says, for instance, that Adam exchanged a mortal life for an immortal one, forfeiting happiness for a life of toil and misery (De virt. 205), he should be taken to mean that Adam chose to follow vice rather than virtue, or the like.

Philo has two works that are chiefly relevant here, The Account of the Creation of the World Given by Moses (De opif.) and The Allegorical Interpretation of Genesis 2–3 (Leg. alleg.), as well as another, Questions and Answers on Genesis (QG), preserved mainly in an Armenian translation. They are parts of Philo's three-commentary series on Scripture (Sterling: 428–38). In the Allegorical Interpretation, he meets the problem of God's death threat head-on: he says that since the man and woman did not die but went on to produce more life, the stipulated punishment referred to a different kind of death:

And further he says, “In the day that ye eat thereof, ye shall die the death” [Gen 2:17]. And yet after they have eaten, not merely do they not die, but they beget children and become authors of life to others. What, then, is to be said to this? That death is of two kinds, one that of the man in general, the other that of the soul in particular. The death of the man is the separation of the soul from the body, but the death of the soul is the decay of virtue and the bringing in of wickedness. It is for this reason that God says not only “die” but “die the death,” indicating not the death common to us all, but that special death properly so called, which is that of the soul becoming entombed in passions and wickedness of all kinds. And this death is practically the antithesis of the death which awaits us all. The latter is a separation of combatants that had been pitted against one another, body and soul, to wit. The former, on the other hand, is a meeting of the two in conflict. And in this conflict the worse, the body, overcomes, and the better, the soul, is overcome. But observe that wherever Moses speaks of “dying the death,” he means the penalty-death, not that which takes place in the course of nature. That one is in the course of nature in which soul is parted from body; but the penalty-death takes place when the soul dies to the life of virtue, and is alive only to that of wickedness [Leg. alleg. 1:105–07].

It becomes apparent here that God's statement to Adam was not a threat of instant punishment but a statement of what Adam would bring upon himself. The spiritual death that he and Eve suffered was a self-inflicted state of wickedness.

In Questions and Answers on Genesis, Philo applies this verse to men in general: “What is the meaning of the words, ‘Ye shall die by the death'? The death of worthy men is the beginning of another life. For life is twofold; one is with corruptible body; the other is without body and incorruptible. So that the evil man dies by death even when he breathes, before he is buried, as though he preserved for himself no spark at all of the true life, and this is excellence of character. The decent and worthy man, however, does not die by death, but after living long, passes away to eternity, that is, he is borne to eternal life” (QG 1:16).

In his book on the creation, Philo says that when the couple ate of the fruit, they chose a short and fleeting life full of misery, bypassing the Tree of Life, that is, a long and happy life of virtue, and God punished them accordingly:

[The wife] gave her consent and ate of the fruit, and gave some of it to her husband; this instantly brought them out of a state of simplicity and innocence into one of wickedness; whereat the Father in anger appointed for them the punishments that were fitting. For their conduct well merited wrath, inasmuch as they had passed by the tree of life immortal (zoē athanatos), the consummation of virtue, from which they could have gathered an existence (bios) long (makraiōn) and happy. Yet they chose that fleeting and mortal (thnētos) existence which is not an existence but a period of time full of misery [De opif. 156].

We see here the punishments that God imposed on them did not include physical death, which was already naturally in store for them, and when he says that the life of virtue is “deathless” he means only that it is “long and happy,” and when he calls the life they chose “deadly” (thnētos) he means “miserable.”

Philo goes on to say that their action did indeed merit physical extinction (that is, not allowing them to reproduce their kind), but God took mercy on them and only made their life one of hardship, which turned out to be a benefit, and permitted them to have children:

If the human race had had to undergo the fitting penalty, it must needs have been wiped out by reason of its ingratitude to God, its benefactor and preserver. But he being merciful took pity on it and moderated the punishment, suffering the race to continue, but no longer as before supplying it with food ready to its hand, that men might not, by indulging the twin evils of idleness and satiety, wax insolent in wrongdoing.

By removing Adam and Eve from the temptations of a soft and easy life, God opened the way for them to recover from the spiritual death or state of wickedness into which they had fallen.

4 Maccabees

The Fourth Book of Maccabees, which may have been written around the time of Paul, refers to the Adam story in that the mother of the seven martyred brothers is made to say that she guarded the rib from which woman was made (18:7). But it is not clear whether the following verse refers to the serpent of Genesis 3: “No seducer corrupted me on a desert plain, nor did the destroyer, the deceitful serpent, defile the purity of my virginity” (18:8). The first part of the verse has been taken to refer to Deuteronomy 22:25–27, though that passage deals with rape rather than seduction. Similarly, the second part of verse 8 is read as referring to Genesis 3:13 (Eve's punishment), and compared to Paul's reference to the serpent's deception of Eve (2 Cor 11:2–3) (de Silva). But this deception was not of a sexual nature. Others take the passage to refer generically to the membrum virile (Charlesworth 2010: 1).

The New Testament

The Epistles of Paul

It seems that the next references to the story of Adam are to be found in the letters of Paul. His earliest allusion comes in 1 Corinthians 15:22: “As all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ,” where we see decisively that he thinks of death as Adam's punishment, and, moreover, that it was extended to the whole human race—an unprecedented conclusion, so far as I can see. But what kind of death he takes to be entailed by Adam's sin is not obvious. Later in the chapter he contrasts Adam's original condition, when he was created from dust, quoting Genesis 2:7, “the first man Adam became a living soul (psuchē),” with the “life-giving spirit (pneuma)” of the second Adam (1 Cor 15:45–47). It is clear that his state was mortal (thnēton, v 53) from the beginning, before he sinned.

His conclusion about death coming through Adam is elaborated in the Epistle to the Romans:

Just as sin (hamartia) came into the world through one human being, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned—sin was indeed in the world before law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law—yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the trespass (parabasis) of Adam, who is a type of the One who is to come. But the free gift is not like the transgression (paraptōma). For if the many died through one man's transgression, it is much more certain that the grace of God and the gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, have abounded for the many. And the gift is not like the effect of the one man's sin. For the judgment following one transgression brought condemnation, but the free gift following many transgressions brings uprightness. If, because of the one man's transgression, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of being made upright exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Therefore, just as one man's transgression led to condemnation for all, so one man's upright act leads to the uprightness of life for all. For just as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made upright. But law entered in order that the transgression might abound, but where the sin abounded, the grace abounded more, in order that, as the sin reigned in death, so the grace might reign into the life of the next age (eis zōēn aiōnion) through Jesus Christ our Lord [Rom 5:12–21].

Paul's thoughts are very complex here, of course, and perhaps muddled, but the last verse, referring to life in the next age, tells us that the death he speaks of as caused by Adam's transgression does not refer to physical death, which remains with us even after Christ's reversal of death for life. It must be therefore that Paul saw no contradiction in the fact that Adam did not suffer immediate physical death when he disobeyed the command, and it may be that he took the plural in the Greek version of the command to apply not merely to Adam and Eve but to all their progeny.

If it is not always obvious what Paul means by death at any given point, there can be no doubt that he sometimes is using death metaphorically, like Philo. But Paul's interpretation of the death caused by Adam's sin was not like Philo's, a simple descent into wickedness from which one could recover, but rather a condemnation passed on to all of Adam's descendants. In chapter 7, however, there are new kinds of metaphorical death. Whereas before he spoke of death reigning from Adam to Moses (5:14), now he speaks of mankind as being alive before the coming of the law but sin as being dead; and then under the law sin came alive and humans died (Rom 7:8–9).

Paul has some similarities in vocabulary and themes with the Book of Wisdom, and it is possible that he was influenced by it on the question of Adam. But even though Paul uses the same word for Adam's transgression (paraptōma), Adam suffers no punishment and no lasting effects in Wisdom. Given this fact, it is unthinkable that the passage referring to Death entering the world through the envy of an adversary would have struck Paul as referring to the serpent in Eden, let alone to the Devil—whom Paul always refers to as Satanas, never Diabolos—since he does not associate envy with the serpent when he refers to it in 2 Corinthians 11:3. Here he expresses his fear that, just as the serpent deceived Eve by his cleverness, so too the Corinthians will be led astray by false teachers.

The Gospels

In the Gospels Adam is mentioned by name only in Luke's genealogy of Joseph, who is traced back through Noah and so on to Seth and Adam, who is begotten of God (3:38), and obviously not singled out for any sin he committed; there is no room for speculation about a connection with the Devil's temptation of Jesus (see Dunn 2009: 310). The argument that the Markan version shows a return to Eden (Allison: 196–99) is not convincing. There is also a positive reference by Jesus to the first man and woman in Mark and Matthew: he says that God made male and female from the beginning, alluding not only to Genesis 1:27 but also to 2:23, the creation of Eve from Adam's rib, because he cites 2:24 immediately afterwards, about leaving father and mother and being two in one flesh (Mark 10:6–8, Matt 19:4–5). The last part is also cited favorably in Ephesians (5:31), but negatively by Paul, to characterize the result of having sex with a prostitute (1 Cor 6:16). Elsewhere, however, in 1 Corinthians 11:7–9, Paul can be seen to be alluding to the creation of Eve. He ingeniously reads Genesis 1:27, which says that God created both male and female humanity in God's image, in light of Genesis 2:21, concluding that only the male was made in God's image, while the female was made in the male's image (Kvam et al.: 117–19).

The Other Books

Luke's second book, the Acts of the Apostles, reports a speech that Paul made before the Areopagus in Athens in which he alludes to the first man, but not to any fault that he committed or disability that he suffered. Paul tells the Athenians about the God who made the whole world, and “from one [man] he made every nation of men to dwell on the whole face of the earth, fixing seasons and the boundaries of their dwellings, that they might seek God, striving towards him and finding him” (Acts 17:26–27).

Paul's special interest in the sin of Adam was not picked up by any of the later books of the New Testament. The only other reference to the Adam story in the Deutero-Pauline epistles is in First Timothy, where it says that it was Eve and not Adam who committed a parabasis: women are not to teach, “for Adam was the first to be formed, and then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman, who, once deceived, came to be in trespass” (1 Tim 2:13–14).

Later Allusions

4 Ezra

Around the end of the first century ce a Jewish work known as 4 Ezra, incorporated into 2 Esdras, tells us that, after God planted the earth and breathed life into Adam, he gave him one command, which he transgressed, and God “immediately appointed death for him and his descendants” (3:7). This may well signal a novel interpretation of God's command: it is not death but the death sentence that occurred on the day of the trespass.

Later we are told that Adam was inclined to evil before his transgression: “Adam, burdened with an evil heart, transgressed and was overcome, as were also all who were descended from him” (3:21). A similar statement comes in the next chapter: “A grain of evil seed was sown in Adam's heart from the beginning, and how much ungodliness it has produced until now—and will produce until the time of threshing comes!” (4:30). This is probably a reference to Genesis 6:5, the inclination (yetser) of man (ha-'ādām) to wickedness.

Pseudo-Philo

The Biblical Antiquities of Pseudo-Philo has not been satisfactorily dated, with estimates ranging from the time of Jesus to after 135 ce (Harrington). But because it resembles the interpretation of 4 Ezra on the subject of mankind's punishment, I put it here. In the course of God's instruction to Moses about the beginning of the world, he says: “This is the place concerning which I taught the first man, saying, ‘If you do not transgress what I have commanded you, all things will be subject to you.’ But that man transgressed my ways and was persuaded by his wife; and she was deceived by the serpent. And then death was ordained for the generations of men” (13:8).

Josephus

Next let us look at how Josephus summed up the Genesis story of Adam and Eve in his Antiquities of the Jews, written around 95 ce. Josephus was familiar with Philo's Creation of the World, but his account of the first humans shows some originality. He says that God warned Adam and Eve that breaking his command would be destructive (olethron), rather than specifically causing their death (Lichtenberger: 210–13). He attributes the serpent's motivation to envy at their prospective happiness, and he believed that disobedience would prove disastrous for them:

God therefore commanded that Adam and his wife should eat of all the rest of the plants, but to abstain from the Tree of Knowledge; and foretold to them, that if they touched it, it would prove their destruction. But while all the living creatures had one language, at that time the serpent, which then lived together with Adam and his wife, showed an envious disposition, at his supposal of their living happily and in obedience to the commands of God; and imagining that when they disobeyed them they would fall into calamities, he persuaded the woman, out of a malicious intention, to taste of the Tree of Knowledge, telling her that in that tree was the knowledge of good and evil; which knowledge when they should obtain, they would lead a happy life; nay, a life not inferior to that of a god: by which means he overcame the woman, and persuaded her to despise the command of God [AJ 1:40–43].

When God discovers what they have done, in rebuking them he explains (perhaps Josephus is now drawing on Philo) that he had planned a long life for them, free of the sort of stresses that would bring on an early death:

I had before determined about you both, how you might lead a happy life, without any affliction, and care, and vexation of soul; and that all things which might contribute to your enjoyment and pleasure should grow up, by my providence, of their own accord, without your own labor and pains-taking; which state of labor and pains-taking would soon bring on old age, and death would not be at any remote distance [AJ 1:46].

One might be tempted to see an implicit conclusion here that the stresses of their punished state would be expected to bring on an early death; but, of course, this would be hard to maintain in view of Adam's long life (and the lack of concern about Eve's death, which is not even recorded).

The punishments that God gives to Adam and Eve are based on those in Genesis, but Josephus omits the dust-to-dust-endpoint:

God allotted him punishment, because he weakly submitted to the counsel of his wife; and said the ground should not henceforth yield its fruits of its own accord, but that when it should be harassed by their labor, it should bring forth some of its fruits, and refuse to bring forth others. He also made Eve liable to the inconveniency of breeding, and the sharp pains of bringing forth children; and this because she persuaded Adam with the same arguments wherewith the serpent had persuaded her, and had thereby brought him into a calamitous condition [AJ 1:49].

Other Pseudepigrapha

Other pseudepigraphous writings, like the Second Book of Enoch (Andersen; Suter and others in Orlov et al.) and the Life of Adam and Eve (Anderson et al.), have in the past been dated to the first century ce out of an impulse, one scholar suggests, to show that Paul was not alone in his interest in Adam (de Jonge: 348 n. 2). But I agree with the scholars who have placed these works (or at least the sections of them relevant to our present interests) much later, not least because of their advanced satanology, and I exclude them from our survey of the earliest citations of Adam. I should mention, however, that neither work features death as the punishment for Adam and Eve's eating of the forbidden fruit (except for one verse, 2 Enoch 30:17). The last two works that I will deal with of this genre are the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch (2 Baruch) and the first book of the Sibylline Oracles, both of which may date to around 120 ce.

2 Baruch

In 2 Baruch, Baruch is first told that by his sin Adam lost not only Paradise but also the glorious city that was in store for him (4:3). His sin also brought death for himself and all his descendants—no matter that it was not instant, for time means nothing to God:

With the Most High no account is taken of much time and of few years. For what did it profit Adam that he lived 930 years and transgressed that which he was commanded? Therefore, the multitude of time that he lived did not profit him, but it brought death and cut off the years of those who were born from him [2 Bar. 17:2–3].

And far from acquiring knowledge, Adam seems to have become benighted, since the light lighted by Moses is contrasted with “the darkness of Adam” (18:1–2). But the darkness can refer to all the miseries of life, beginning with “untimely death” (56:5–6). Not only Adam was to blame, but also Eve, who obeyed the serpent (48:42).

But we also hear that death “was decreed against those who trespassed” (19:8), and Baruch distinguishes between “the end of those who have sinned” and “the fulfillment of those who have proved themselves to be righteous” (21:12). So, even though death was decreed for all born of Adam, some will live again (23:4–5). We each of us decide our own torment or glory (54:15–16). “Each of us has become our own Adam” (54:19). The final torment of sinners might be thought of as a second death, but this does not seem to be stated explicitly.

Sibylline Oracles 1

In retelling the story of Genesis 2–3, the author of Sibylline Oracles book 1 says that the command was not to touch the tree (which tree is not specified), but a horrible snake deceived them, making them go to the fate of death, as well as gaining them knowledge. As a result, they were expelled from the place of the immortals to a mortal place, but God ameliorated their lot by instructing them to increase and multiply and produce food by hard work from the fruitful ground (a noteworthy twist). The race did increase to many peoples, who lived happy lives and died peaceful deaths.

Justin Martyr and the Entry of Satan into Eden

Finally, I take up the Samaritan philosopher Justin Martyr, concentrating on his Dialogue with Trypho (ca. 160 ce). As noted at the beginning, Justin seems to have been the earliest writer whose works are extant to identify the serpent in Eden with Satan. Such an inference on his part, if it was original with him, shows that he could ride roughshod over the clear text of Holy Writ when it suited his preconceptions: for Genesis unequivocally says that the serpent was one of the animals created on the earth by God. Instead, Justin says that Eve's tempter was one of the angels designated as gods or princes in Psalm 82, who was called “the serpent.” Because he deceived Eve, he fell with a great fall. Adam and Eve brought death upon themselves by their disobedience, and men who imitate them do the same (DT 124). He etymologizes the name that Jesus calls him, “Satanas,” saying that sata in the language of the Jews and Syrians means “apostate” and nas means “serpent” (DT 103).

Earlier, he says that, just as the virgin Eve conceived the serpent's word and brought forth disobedience and death, so the Virgin Mary bore a Son by whom God destroyed both the serpent and those angels and men who are like him, but who works deliverance from death to those who repent of their wickedness and believe in him (DT 100). So the human race from Adam onwards fell under the power of death and the guile of the serpent (DT 88). As for the death that Adam was to suffer on the day that he ate from the tree, Justin comes to the same conclusion as the author of Jubilees: he understands, from what Isaiah says about the days of the Tree of Life (Isa 65:22), that it is a thousand-year day that is being spoken of, like the Lord's day that lasts a thousand years (LXX Ps 89:4; 2 Pet 3:8) (cf. Lanfer: 33–65), and we know that Adam did not live a full thousand years (DT 81). With this explanation, which justifies the meaning of the text and turns God's empty threat of instant death into a real threat that was fulfilled hundreds of years later, I will cease my survey.

Conclusion

A general result that we can draw from this exercise in reader-reception is that most readers are very selective in what they look for and what they see, and they tend to run only with what strikes their fancies. There was surprisingly little interest in Adam once his story came upon the scene when the first chapters of Genesis were added as a “prequel” to the story of Abraham. Among the few readers who did take notice of it, there seems to have been a reluctance to believe that the transgression of Adam and his wife was the cause of human death. Such reluctance was no doubt at least partially due to the evident contradiction in the scriptural account: immediate death is threatened but not carried out.

One obvious way of dealing with a difficult text is to ignore it completely. This would seem to be the solution of Tobit and Ben Sira, which bypass the whole episode of the transgression. The Book of Enoch recognizes it, but sees the punishment only as expulsion from the garden, which the author may have considered to be a good exchange for the acquisition of wisdom that came from eating of the Tree. The Book of Wisdom sees the transgression as a minor one, and reports no punishment at all, but rather complete recuperation.

We might wish to see the Book of Enoch as agreeing with the serpent, that God was merely bluffing, in order to keep Adam and Eve from gaining knowledge. Other readers may have simply seen God's unfulfilled threat as a puzzle or mystery that could not be explained. But a way of explaining it would be to redefine one of the terms as meaning something other than what it ordinarily means. Philo provides an explicit example of attacking the word “die” and declaring that it must mean something other than what people usually mean by it, because, clearly, Adam did not die right away. Paul came to a similar conclusion.

4 Ezra found a way of explaining the death threat as referring to natural death: Adam could be seen as dying immediately, because God's death-sentence went into effect as soon as he sinned. Irenaeus would later suggest this as a possible way of explaining how God's threat was in fact carried out (Against Heresies 5:23:2). Josephus, however, ignores the instant-death threat and defines the punishment as a shortened life filled with troubles (which Philo also conceded to be part of the punishment). The Sibylline Oracles seems to say that God commuted the punishment from instant death and racial extinction to a future death, construing it however as a peaceful end after a trouble-free life.

Justin Martyr, like Jubilees, chooses another word for re-analysis, that is “day,” saving the letter of the text by accepting the death-penalty as meaning natural death but defining the day of execution for Adam as one that lasted a thousand years, near the end of which Adam duly succumbed. But he and the rest of us also succumbed to a spiritual death, from which we can recover. 2 Baruch comes close to another solution: time is irrelevant to God, and so eventual death is equivalent to immediate death.

Not many followed Justin with the long-day interpretation, although Irenaeus suggested it as a possible explanation; but everyone followed him in bringing Satan into the story, and once this happened the episode took on an attraction that finally surpassed the draw of the angelic Watchers who mated with women in Genesis 6, especially when Satan's activity was combined with Paul's focus on Adam. The spiritual death that Adam incurred was now seen to have been caused by a malevolent spiritual adversary, soon to be defined, by Origen of Alexandria, as the fallen Lucifer or Morning Star of Isaiah 14; meaning that Satan was no longer God's unscrupulous minister of justice, but a rebel against God. This development had explosive results for the development of Christian doctrine, paving the way for Augustinian dualism. The Council of Trent's decree on original sin can serve as a representative example of this development: by his offense, Adam incurred death, “which God had threatened to him beforehand,” and, together with death, captivity by the Devil (Session 5:17, June 1546). We note that Trent accepts Adam's eventual death as fulfilling God's death threat, thus burying the troublesome same-day qualification. Earlier, the expanded creed of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), Firmiter credimus, specified, “Man sinned by the suggestion of the Devil.”

The most important result of this survey, to my mind, is that Paul's theology of sin and death cannot be explicated by referring to similar interpretations among his contemporaries. While we can agree with James Dunn that Paul “drew upon Genesis 1–3 to illuminate the plight of humankind in the face of the powers of sin and death,” we can no longer hold that “the basic raw materials for this Pauline reflection” were drawn from and shared by “other strands in Second Temple Judaism” (Dunn 2008: 125). Rather, we must agree with Alexander Toepel that Second Temple Judaism, generally speaking, “had very little interest in a ‘fall,’ if it knew this category at all,” in contrast to later works, notably 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch, which associated Adam's fall with the fall of Jerusalem (Toepel: 308). John Levison makes similar points: “In general, Adam, understood as an individual figure, does not occupy center stage in reflections upon mortality in Second Temple Jewish literature; it is the constitution of human beings that results in the inevitability of mortality” (Levison 2012: 272). Paul's thoughts must be contrasted with those of other writers of his time rather than likened to them, and our assessments of biblical views of sin and death should be revised accordingly.

Chronological Table of Major Citings

Genesis

ante 300 bce	Gen 1: Man (Adam) to rule over all life (no sin).
	Gen 2–3: Immediate death threatened to Adam; instead, he is condemned to a hard life on a cursed ground, lasting until he returns to the ground (to which he must go because he came from it).
	Gen 4: No reference to Adam's sin or punishment. Cain commits first killing, for which the death penalty is prohibited; the ground is cursed for Cain.
	Gen 5: Adam and desendants live long. A curse is on the ground.
	Gen 6: Life for men shortened; inclination to evil; sudden death for whole world (no Adam).
	Gen 9: Animals may now be eaten; death penalty for homicide (no Adam).

First Allusions

ca. 250 bce	1 Chr 1: Descent from Adam (as in Gen 5).
ca. 200 bce	Tobit: Adam and his helpmate Eve produced the whole human race.
ca. 190 bce	Ben Sira: Adam in great honor (no sin implied); death is natural.
	4Q Words of the Heavenly Lights: Shortened life for Adam's sin (?)
	1 Enoch: Sin, punished by exile from Eden.
ca. 155 bce	Jubilees: Death for Adam before end of 1000-year day; punishment of exile, stressful life.
ca. 50 bce	Wisdom: No punishment for Adam's minor transgression; rehabilitation.
ca. 40 ce	Philo: The instant death that God warned of was not physical death and not a punishment, but a self-inflicted deterioration, “soul-death” (meaning that the soul is buried in vice); the actual punishment exacted was the removal of Adam and Eve from a life of ease to a life of hardship (with the advantage, however, of protecting them from further soul-death temptations), while allowing their race to continue.
ca. 55 ce	Paul: Condemnation and “death” for all humanity, from which Jesus rescues us (natural death still happens).
	4 Maccabees: Adam and his rib (no sin).
ca. 75 ce	Mark and Matthew: No mention of sin in references to Gen 1–3.
ca. 80 ce	Luke and Acts: No mention of sin in Adam citings.
ca. 90 ce	Pseudo-Paul (1 Timothy): The sin was Eve's, not Adam's, and therefore all women are punished by being forbidden to teach.
	Jude: Enoch descended from Adam; sinners listed, Cain being the earliest.
	4 Ezra: Immediate sentence of death for Adam and all descendants; his sin was caused by inborn bad inclination.
	Pseudo-Philo: Death ordained for all men.
ca. 95 ce	Josephus: Stressful life (and early death?).
ca. 120 ce	2 Baruch: Physical death for Adam and all his descendants; all death is immediate in the eyes of God.
	Sibylline Oracles 1: Expulsion from place of immortals to place of mortality, but under conditions making for a happy life.
ca. 160 ce	Justin Martyr: Eve deceived by Satan; Adam and all humanity under the power of death (reversible through Jesus); Adam punished by dying within a 1000-year day.

Later dominant tradition (cf. Trent, 1546): Death of body and death of soul (= condemnation to eternal punishment) for Adam and all his descendants because of his sin.

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