Middle-eastern Mythology

The Gods of Old Testament Times...

ADAM

Jewish legendary mortal

The first man, created by God in the Garden of Eden

Adam’s body was formed from the dust of the Earth. Apparently he was the spitting image of God himself, and to this day nobody knows if he had a belly-button or not.

God gave him the breath of life by blowing up his nose, and soon Adam was frolicking around and naming everything in sight. The population of the world now stood at one.

God surveyed the immensity of Earth’s lush garden and thought to himself: ‘he’ll never cut all that grass on his own’. So the first woman was created, to give Adam a helping hand and kick-start a population boom.

Her name was Lilith and she had issues. The two of them just could not get along. They disagreed about everything — and she refused to sleep with him on the grounds that he was a male chauvinist wimp. So God kicked her out and made a replacement woman named Eve, using material from Adam’s spare rib to ensure she was subordinate to him and properly submissive.

This could have been the start of a happy, clean-living human race — with no war, no famine, no strife, and everyone living in peace and harmony for ever and ever. But someone had to come along and spoil it, didn’t they?

God had planted the Tree of Knowledge in the garden of Eden. Anyone eating the fruit would acquire the knowledge of Good and Evil. In other words, they would instantly develop a conscience. This might seem like a good thing, but it would lead to independent thinking and choice. Only God was allowed to have a conscience. So the Tree was declared out of bounds.

Along came the serpent — since identified with Satan. He must have been nibbling at the Fruit of Knowledge himself because he knew all about Good and Evil — and frankly he preferred Evil.

“Hey, have you tried this?” he said to Eve. “It’s really tasty. And full of vitamin G.” So Eve ignored God’s injunction and took a bite. Wow, that was good. She gave some to Adam. The serpent watched as their frontal lobes expanded. Higher brain functions evolved in an instant and suddenly Adam and Eve were capable of independent thought.

“OMG, I’m naked!” screamed Eve, and frantically grabbed some fig leaves to cover her modesty. Within two minutes she had devised the world’s first bikini. Then God came along. He was very cross.

Adam blamed Eve. Eve blamed the serpent. God blamed everyone and banished them all from Eden. Sin had entered the world and the human race was going to find life very tough from now on. Which seems a little unfair; how could they know they were doing wrong if they didn’t know the difference between Good and Evil? They had to eat the fruit to find out it was wrong to eat the fruit. But that’s mythology for you.

Despite falling from God’s favor and taking the entire human race with him, Adam didn’t do so bad. He churned out more children than you can possibly imagine and lived to a ripe old age of 930.

Adam Facts and Figures

Name: Adam
Pronunciation: Coming soon
Alternative names:

Gender: Male
Type: legendary mortal
Area or people: Old Testament – Jewish, Christian, Muslim
Celebration or Feast Day: Unknown at present

Role: Unknown at present

Good/Evil Rating: Unknown at present
Popularity index: 5264

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Article last revised on May 14, 2019 by Rowan Allen.
Editors: Peter J. Allen, Chas Saunders

References: Coming soon.

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