© Margaret Barker 2010
The story of Adam and the garden of Eden is one of the best known and yet least understood parts of
the Bible. It sets out the biblical teaching on the nature of human beings, and all too often has been
read as no more than the story of the fall. The familiar talking snake and the missing rib which have
caused such problems belong in the pre-phisosphical culture of ancient Israel, and an over-literal
reading of the text can obscure not only its profound insights but also its importance in the
framework of the New Testament.
Adam and Eden are the beginning and the end of the great story of the Bible. Returning to Eden was
an important part of Christian teaching from the beginning; paradise was regained when one entered
the Church. Cyril of Jerusalem told the newly baptised that he was leading them by the hand ‘into
the brighter and more fragrant meadow of paradise before us’....(
First Lecture on the Mysteries, 1).
In the New Testament, Jesus was described as the last Adam, the second Adam (1 Cor.15.45-7) and
he was also described as the great high priest (Heb.4.14). Adam and the high priest, as we shall see,
were the same figure. Jesus promised his faithful followers that they would once again eat from the
tree of life in the paradise of God (Rev.2.7). The story in the New Testament reverses the story of
Adam in Eden, and the Church’s claim to be paradise is rooted in the ancient belief that the original
temple represented the garden of Eden.
Paradise,
pardes, is not a Hebrew word, and when it is found in the Hebrew Bible, English
translations usually give something other than ‘paradise’:
forest (Neh.2.8), park (Eccles 2.5) or
orchard
(Song 4.13-15). In the LXX, the LORD planted a paradise, an enclosed garden, in Edem [not
Eden, Gen.2.8] The original Hebrew word Eden can mean either ‘delight’ or ‘plain’, so Eden could
have been a garden on a plain, or a garden of delight. The prophet Ezekiel, a priest who had known
the first temple (Ezek.1.3), described Eden as the mountain garden of the gods, the
’elohim
(Ezek.28.13-14), and so the meaning ‘plain’ would not have been appropriate for his Eden. ‘Delight’
fits better as the meaning of Eden, especially since Eden was used as an image for fertility. Isaiah,
for example, prophesied of Zion ‘I will make her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of
the L
ORD (Isa.51.3); and Ezekiel prophesied that the desolate land would become like the garden of
Eden (Ezek.36.35). In the L
XX, Isaiah’s Eden was translated as ‘paradise’ and Ezekiel’s as ‘garden
of delight/ luxury’.
The Genesis Eden was the garden where Yahweh of the Elohim [‘the L
ORD God’] walked. It was a
place of trees and rivers, of cherubim and an evil snake. The L
ORD God set the man there, and
caused every tree to grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, as well as the the tree of
knowledge and the tree of life. When Adam and Eve were cast out, cherubim and a flaming sword
were set to guard the gate of the garden. Nothing in the story as told in Genesis has any obvious link
to the temple. In Ezekiel’s Eden, however, the figure who was driven out was a high priest, and his
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Eden was probably earlier than the more familiar garden in Genesis. Ezekiel’s Eden was ‘the garden
of the gods’,
’elohim, on the holy mountain of the gods/God (Ezek.28.12-19). The figure addressed
in his lament, seemingly the king of Tyre, is both masculine and feminine, and it had walked among
the stones of fire, or possibly the sons of fire, before it was thrown down from the mountain garden
because it had become proud and corrupted its wisdom.
The rest of the description is almost opaque, and the problems of the Hebrew are considerable. It is
not clear whether the person Ezekiel addressed
was the guardian anointed cherub, or was with the
cherub, but it is clear that the key figure in Ezekiel’s Eden became Adam in the more familiar
version of the story. [We shall return to the King of Tyre.] It is also clear that the figure in Ezekiel’s
Eden was remembered as a high priest. It was dressed in precious stones: carnelian, topaz, jasper,
chrysolite, beryl, onyx, sapphire carbuncle, emerald - nine different stones, according to the Hebrew
text. The Greek text, however, has twelve stones which correspond exactly to those worn by the
high priest, both in name and in the position they were set in his breastplate (L
XX Exod.28.17-20).
Either the difficult Hebrew text has lost three precious stones, or the Greek translator has added three
in order to make clear that the figure driven from Ezekiel’s Eden was a high priest. Whether it
was a
cherub or had been ‘with the cherub’, this ‘King of Tyre’ had been in a heavenly place.
Another pattern corroborates the temple tradition that the original Adam was a high priest. When
Moses on Sinai was commanded to make the tabernacle, he had to replicate on earth what he had
seen in his mountain-top vision (Exod.25.8-9, 40). Later texts indicate that what Moses had seen
was not a heavenly temple - although some do say that that is what he saw. Moses’ vision was
the
six days of creation
, which he had seen when he was within the cloud of glory for six days
(Exod.24.15-16). This vision is now the opening of the first book of Moses, Genesis chapter 1. A
comparison of the six days of creation and the stages of erecting the tabernacle (Exod.40.16-33)
show that each day of creation was represented by one item of tabernacle or temple furnishing. The
sixth day, when Adam was created, corresponded to the laver of water in which the high priests
purified themselves before approaching the altar. Thus the creation of Adam represented the high
priesthood. This pattern of correspondences is a complex and fascinating topic, but one that we
cannot explore in detail today. Note, however, that Adam as the original high priest was a widely
based and widely known temple tradition.
The temple itself was a built as a paradise place. The great hall of Solomon’s temple [corresponding
to the nave of a western church] was decorated with carvings of gourds and open flowers, cherubim
and palm trees (1 Kgs 6.18, 29). The great bronze pillars were decorated with pomegranates and
lily-work (1 Kgs 7.15-22). When the measuring angel showed Ezekiel a vision of how the restored
temple should be, he saw a temple on a high mountain (Ezek.40.2), with cherubim and palm trees
carved on the walls of the great hall (Ezek.41.15-20). He saw a river flowing from the temple, just
as rivers had flowed from Eden (Ezek.47.1-12), and other prophets too looked forward to the time
when waters would flow from the temple (Joel 3.18; Zech.14.8). The righteous were described as
trees in the house of the L
ORD, a pointless metaphor if there had been no trees in the temple, albeit
carved in the wood (Ps. 92.13).
Various purges of the temple show other Eden items used in worship: Hezekiah broke in pieces a
bronze serpent that had been venerated with incense since time immemorial (2 Kgs 18.4), although
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the text does not say that the serpent was in the temple; and when Josiah purged the temple, he
burned the chariot of the sun [Hebrew has plural but Greek is singular] which was probably the great
throne of the L
ORD in the holy of holies (2 Kgs 23.11), another feature of the later traditions that link
the temple to Paradise. According to the Enoch tradition, when the L
ORD came to Paradise, he rested
under the tree of life (
2 Enoch 8.3), and the Greek version of the Life of Adam and Eve says that
when he returned to Paradise, seated on the chariot of cherubim, all the plants came into bloom, and
the throne was set by the tree of life (
Apocalypse of Moses 22.3-4).
The temple as Eden was the setting of the Book of Revelation, where St John described the heavenly
city itself as a huge holy of holies (Rev.21.15-16), and so there was no need of a further temple there
(Rev.21.22). In the holy of holies St John saw the tree of life and the heavenly throne, and from the
holy of holies flowed the river of the water of life (Rev.22.1-2). The risen L
ORD promised to his
faithful followers that they would have access again to the tree of life (Rev.2.7), and St John saw
them standing before the throne and the tree of life (Rev.22.3-4) – exactly as described in the other
texts. They were restored to Eden whence Adam had been banished, but in fact they were standing
in the holy of holies.
There are two accounts in Genesis of the creation of Adam: God [or the
’elohim] resolved to create
Adam ‘according to our invisible heavenly form, as our material image’ (Gen.1.26, translating
literally; ‘as’ c.f Exod. 6.3 as El Shadddai). Adam was created male and female. The second
account has Yahweh of the Elohim (the L
ORD God), form the man from dust and then breathe into
the man the breath of life so that the man became a living being (Gen.2.7). Breathing into a statue
was a well known ritual for bringing it to life as the dwelling place of the god it represented, and all
the Targums agree that breathing into Adam meant giving him the power of speech. The image of
the beast was brought to life in this way in the Book of Revelation and given the power of speech
(Rev.13.15).
In each Genesis story, Adam was created as male-and female, and only later, after being set in the
garden as high priest, was Adam separated into distinct male and female beings. He was set in the
garden ‘to till and to keep’- the usual translation - but both these words have a temple meaning
(Gen.2.15), and Adam was understood to be a high priest even though that is not explicit. ‘Till’
‘bd,
was also the technical term for temple service, and ‘keep’,
šmr, meant to preserve the tradition. The
traditional Jewish interpretations did not think this was a command about gardening. The debate
was: did it mean serve for six days and then preserve the Sabbath, or serve God and perform the
sacred duties (
Genesis Rabbah XVI.5).
Apart from the biblical accounts, there were many stories about Adam and Eden, some of which
echo material in the Hebrew Bible and so may well have been known to its writers. They confirm
that the temple was Eden. Amongst texts known in the time of Jesus, the
Book of Jubilees, an
alternative version of Genesis, had Adam wait forty days from his creation until he could enter Eden,
and Eve eighty days, since both applied to Eden the temple laws about impurity after childbirth
(Jub.3.8-14). When Adam was leaving Eden, he burned an incense very like the one prescribed for
use only in the tabernacle (Exod.30.34-38): frankincense, galbabum, stacte and sweet spices
(Jub.3.27). Noah knew that the garden of Eden was the holy of holies, and the dwelling of the L
ORD
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(Jub. 8.19). It is sometimes said that Jubilees reworked Genesis in order to make the link between
Eden and the temple, but this is unlikely, since the temple-as-Eden tradition was older than Genesis.
Another Adam and Eve text known at that time was the
Apocalypse of Moses. After Adam himself
had opened the door of paradise ,allowed the serpent to enter, and listened to his words, he grieved
for his folly. He had lost his garment of glory, the righteousness with which he had been clothed
(
Apocalypse of Moses 20-1-2). This is consistent with his role as high priest, since the vestments of
any high priest were described as a garments of glory: ‘holy garments for Aaron... for glory and for
beauty’ (Exod.28.2); and when Enoch stood before the heavenly throne, he was given garments of
God’s glory (
2 Enoch 22.6-10). St Ephrem, writing in fourth century Syria, said that God had
clothed Adam with glory (Ephrem,
Commentary on Genesis 2), and a collection of legendary
material from the same area said ‘Adam and Eve were in Paradise, clothed with glory and shining
with praise for three hours’ (
Book of the Cave of Treasures, I). The Genesis storyteller said that
Adam and Eve knew they were naked when they had taken and eaten the forbidden fruit, but did not
say what garment they had lost. Presumably the original hearers knew they had lost the high priestly
garment of glory when they listened to the snake. The community at Qumran hoped to regain ‘all
the glory of Adam... the knowledge of the Most High... the wisdom of the sons of heaven.’
(
Community Rule IV).
Adam’s garment of glory was woven by Wisdom, and Adam was proverbially wise. Eliphaz asked
Job: ‘Are you the first man that was born?... Have you listened in the council of God? And do you
limit wisdom to yourself?’ (Job 15.7-8). Ben Sira, writing in the second century BCE linked the high
priest’s vestments and Wisdom. When he was advising his son to accept the discipline of Wisdom,
he compared this to putting on the vestments of the high priest: ‘There is a golden ornament upon
her, and her bonds are a blue cord. You will wear her as a garment of glory, and put her on as a
crown of gladness ‘ (Ben Sira 6.30-31, my translation). This passed into Christian teaching. An
early Christian Wisdom text found in Egypt had Wisdom speaking to her children: ‘I am giving you
a high-priestly garment woven from every wisdom... clothe yourself with wisdom like a robe... be
seated on a throne of perception... return to your divine nature..’ (
Teaching of Silvanus CG VII.4.89,
91). The Gospel of Thomas attributes to Jesus a longer version of a saying in Matthew and Luke,
which suggests that Jesus was speaking of this robe of glory and wisdom. ‘Jesus said “Why have
you come out into the desert? To see a reed shaken by the wind? And to see a man clothed in fine
garments like your kings and your great men? Upon them are the fine garments, and yet they are
unable to discern the truth.”’ (
Gospel of Thomas 78).
Now Adam wearing fine garments of wisdom and sitting on a throne is not the figure we imagine in
Genesis, but such stories were known in the time of Jesus and, it would seem, to the writers of the
Hebrew Bible. The
Life of Adam and Eve is, in effect, the background to the Genesis story. It
describes how Satan was driven from heaven and vowed revenge on Adam who had caused his
downfall, [and this is the Adam story that appears in the Qur’an]. When Adam was created as the
image of the L
ORD God, all the angels were commanded to worship him, but Satan refused. He had
been created with the angels, he said, and so was prior to Adam in creation. Adam should worship
him. Satan and his angels were then expelled from heaven and plotted Adam’s downfall (
Life of
Adam and Eve
12-16).
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This story is the context for the enigmatic words in Psalm 2. The L
ORD has set his king in Zion and
called him his son, and the kings and rulers are commanded to serve him: ‘Kiss the Son, lest he be
angy and you perish...’ (Ps.2.12). The king in Zion is the Adam figure, the image of God enthroned
in Zion. The angels called to worship Adam is also the setting for Deuteronomy 32.43, which
became a key proof text for the early Church: ‘When he brings the Firstborn into the world, he says
“Let all God’s angels worship him”’ (Heb.1.6). Jesus is the second Adam enthroned as the Son and
the angels have to worship him. Remember, Luke’s genealogy of Jesus describes Adam as the son
of God (Lk.3.38). The story of Satan refusing to worship Adam is also the context for Jesus’
temptations in the wilderness. Since Jesus was alone at that time, these must have been his own
accounts of the experience, and they are told in terms of this story: ‘If you are the Son of God...’. and
then most telling of all, the words of the devil: ‘If you will worship me, [the kingdoms of the world]
shall be yours’ (Lk.4.7). The second Adam was being asked to worship Satan, to reverse Satan’s
ancient humiliation. Mark summarised the same wilderness experience differently: ‘[Jesus] was with
the beasts and the angels served him’ (Mk.1.13). This means that in his wilderness visions, Jesus
was in the holy of holies with the beasts that formed the heavenly throne [the ‘living creatures’], and
the angels served him. This is the same story of Adam the image being worshipped, and is the vision
St John described in Revelation 5. It also appears in the description of the image of the beast who,
like Adam, was given breath and the power of speech, and then those who would not worship the
image of the beast were killed (Rev.13.15).
It is possible that all the stories known only in later texts were spun from the gaps and allusions in
the Genesis story, and the Eden temple of the
Book of Jubilees was a late fabrication. It is also
possible that the Adam and Eden and temple material is far older than Genesis 2-3, and that
traditions surfacing in later texts were themselves ancient, known to Ezekiel and either assumed by,
or omitted from, Genesis.
The accounts of Ezekiel’s visions of the chariot throne leaving the temple and going to Babylon,
with their mixture of masculine and feminine forms, singular and plural, are almost impossible to
translate. This is what we should expect of the male-and-female-Adam in the heavenly state.
Ezekiel saw ‘on the heavenly form of the throne, a heavenly form as the appearance of Adam,’
(Ezek.1.26, translating literally) which he recognised as ‘the appearance of the heavenly form of the
glory of Yahweh’ (Ezek.1.28). Adam enthroned was leaving the temple. Ezekiel spoke of ‘forms’
and ‘appearances’, mysterious words for us, but for a first temple priest they were probably technical
terms. The word translated ‘form’ seems to mean a heavenly archetype, and the word translated
‘appearance’ seems to mean its manifestation in a visible but not material form. Later teachers
would say that sin made it impossible for Adam to see his form, that is, to know his true self and his
true potential. ‘Because of sin, it was not given for man to know the
demut on high; were it not for
this sin, all the keys would be given to him and he would know how the heavens and the earth were
created...’ (
Abot de R Nathan, A39).
Similar ideas are found in the Qumran
Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, which also describe the
heavenly throne and entourage that Ezekiel saw, but there is a different word here for the invisible
realities, the forms. It is the word
şur. The Songs describe the ‘forms’ of living ’elohim, and the
‘forms’ of luminous spirits (4Q405). In the Old Testament, this same word is often found in
descriptions of God, but is translated as ‘Rock’ since that the same Hebrew letters can also mean
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Rock. ‘The Rock, his work is perfect’ (Deut.32.4); ‘He scoffed at the Rock of his
salvation’(Deut.32.15); ‘The Rock of Israel has spoken to me’ (2 Sam.23.3); ‘O L
ORD... O Rock...’
(Hab.1.12). In none of these examples does the L
XX have the word ‘rock’, and there are many
examples where the Rock becomes simply ‘God’. In other words,
şur which means the ‘invisible
form’ in the
Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice probably meant that in many other places in the Hebrew
Bible.
But how is this relevant to Adam? In Ezekiel’s Eden there was a bejewelled high priest figure who
was thrown out of the mountain-top garden of the gods. He was addressed as the King of Tyre.
Now why should the translator of the L
XX describe this figure as a temple high priest with all his
jewels if he was the King of Tyre? The answer may lie in the fact that the Hebrew for ‘Tyre’ is
written in the same way as the word that can mean ‘Rock’ or ‘invisible heavenly form’. The King of
Tyre, I suggest, was originally the heavenly ‘form’ of the king in Jerusalem, who had also been the
high priest after the order of Melchizedek (Ps.110.4). His expulsion from the city and temple was
described as Adam, the image of God, being expelled from Eden, or, in the case of Ezekel’s visions
of the throne, Adam, the appearance of the heavenly reality of the L
ORD, leaving the temple.
The charges against Ezekiel’s fallen high priest figure resemble the words to unfallen Adam in
Genesis who was created as the image, according to the ‘form’ of God - the same word as Ezekiel
used for the invisible reality. In his glorious unfallen state and vested, we assume, in his garment of
glory and wisdom, Adam was told to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth (Gen.1.28). But these
words can have other meanings, and I suggest that they were originally understood to mean: ‘Be
beautiful and great, and fill the earth with glory’
1. In the time of Jesus, Adam was described as very
tall and beautiful: ‘a man very great in height, and terrible in breadth, incomparable in aspect’
(
Apocalyspe of Abraham 23.5), and later Jewish teachers said that in the time of the Messiah,
everything Adam had lost would be restored: his lustre, his immortality, his height..... (
Genesis
Rabbah
XII.6). There is nothing in Genesis, as we now read it, to suggest that Adam was tall and
radiant, but the words translated ‘be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth’ can have this other
meaning.
The Genesis Adam was also commanded to subdue,
kbš, the earth and have dominion, rdh. Now kbš
usually means ‘subdue’ (e.g Num.32.22; Jer.34.11), but Micah 7.18-19 suggests another possibility.
The context here is atonement, and the L
ORD has compassion and *** our iniquities. The verb is
translated ‘subdue’ [AV], ‘tread under foot’ [ RSV], but the atonement process was one of repairing
the bonds of the eternal covenant, and so ‘binding up’ our iniquities would better fit the context.
Since Adam was the high priest, this would have been his great work of atonement, of upholding the
eternal covenant and binding all things together. His second duty,
rdh, would then follow. ‘Have
dominion’ should be understood in the way it was used of Solomon: he ruled, he had dominion, and
he had peace on all sides (1 Kgs.4.21.24).
Ezekiel’s jewelled figure in the garden of the gods had corrupted all the characteristics of the original
Adam. Like the original Adam it was male-and-female, and in this passage, as in the visions of the
throne, ther is a mixture of masculine and feminine forms. Originally the jewelled figure had been
1
Parah, be fruitful, pa’ar, be beautiful; rabah, be great, ,
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perfect in beauty and full of wisdom, just as Adam had been beautiful and wise, but the jewelled
figure had corrupted its wisdom and become proud through its beauty. Instead of filling the earth
with glory or wisdom, it had filled the earth with violence, and instead of being great, it had achieved
only greatness in commerce. The difficult command to Adam, ‘subdue’, which I suggest meant
‘bind things together’ appears in Ezekiel’s description of the jewelled figure as ‘You were the
seal of
perfection’.
The Genesis Adam was set in the garden and told that he could eat the fruit of any tree except the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam’s first disobedience was not simply an act of defiance
or stupidity; it concerned the attitude to knowledge. Adam was intended to eat from the tree of life
which was the symbol of Wisdom (Prov.3.18), but instead the human pair listened to the voice of the
snake and ate from the forbidden tree. Immediately they realised they were naked because they had
lost their garments of wisdom. You will recall that the Qumran community hoped to regain ‘all the
glory of Adam....’ which was ‘the knowledge of the Most High... the wisdom of the sons of heaven’;
and Ezekiel’s jewelled figure was thrown down from the mountain garden of the gods because it had
corrupted its wisdom and become proud.
Who, then, was the snake? A bronze snake had been part of the cult in Jerusalem until Hezekiah
destroyed it, and the words of the snake were in fact the promise to those who ate from the tree of
life. ‘Your eyes will be opened and you will be like the
’elohim’ (Gen. 3.5). But Wisdom did open
the eyes of those who fed on her, and she did make her children sons of God. This was symbolised
by temple anointing, since the perfumed oil represented the oil of the tree of life, and thre high priest
was anointed on his eyelids.
But who was the snake? I suspect that this was Satan’s first act of deception, taking the form of the
symbol of Wisdom, the bronze snake that Hezekiah destroyed. The snake suggested that both trees
were identical and had identical effects. The Genesis story of Adan and the garden of Eden marks
the point in Israel’s religion when Wisdom was rejected by the temple priesthood. Adam, the high
priest, chose the knowledge of good and evil rather than wisdom, and Ezekiel’s jewelled figure
corrupted its wisdom. They were driven from the garden. Those who remained faithful to Wisdom
said that she was rejected at this time, and that the eyes of the temple priests lost their sight. (
1 Enoch
93.8).
There are many echoes of the story of Adam leaving the garden that was the temple. Before he
sinned, when he was still in the garden, he could hear the song of the seraphim singing ‘Holy Holy
Holy’ (
Testament of Adam 1.4, a mid-3rd century Christian text), the seraphim that Isaiah had heard
in the holy of holies. When he left the garden, he took with him gold, frankincense and myrrh to
remind him of the garden, the temple, that he had lost, and these were buried with him (
Testament of
Adam
3.6). The magi bringing them as gifts to Jesus is the first sign in the New Testament of the
new Adam.
....
Taken from: http://www.templestudiesgroup.com/Barker_TheParadisaicTemple.pdf
