Open Collections

Stone, Lilach

University of British Columbia

The Greek Life of Adam and Eve (GLAE), a narrative about the last days of Adam and Eve composed in the early centuries CE, has received increasing scholarly attention in recent years, including the publication of a critical edition and a commentary. There are several literary studies of the narrative, but no satisfactory account of its governing principles. This essay takes a structural approach to elucidate the GLAE’s narrative progression, genre, and theme. Narrative cohesiveness can be apprehended when the relationship between God and humans is centred. This view is possible through perceiving God in the GLAE as a humanlike agent inasmuch as God is amenable to social intercourse. The narrative is oriented around God’s wrath and the human quest for mercy, with a prayer of repentance uttered by Eve as the tipping point that introduces God’s mercy on Adam, posthumously. Eve’s prayer fits into a pattern of repentance as a form of supplication for mercy that is widespread cross-culturally, appearing in both pagan Greek and biblical precursors, as well as other early Jewish literature. Study of genre draws on theoretical work on the radial prototype-centred organization of categories to show that the GLAE tells its story in the style of Greek tragedy, in features such as telling a narrative of a legendary figure, through dialogue, with emphasis on suffering, within a scenario of endangerment. The GLAE occasionally deviates from the tragic style it establishes in order to depict God as unique: a High God in charge of fate, who never appears on the tragic stage, but who is nevertheless accessible to tragic narrative through Jewish epiphanic conventions. Repentance in the form of Eve’s prayer is a uniquely Jewish virtue that makes possible access to and reconciliation with God. In this fashion, the GLAE uses Greek conventions to promote and make comprehensible Jewish views on God, and on repentance as a virtuous way to relate to God, in a Greek cultural context.

Text

2025-04-25

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/90802

Religious Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/