Texts in Conversation
Genesis can be read to say that Adam and Eve were created outside Eden and placed in it, based on the vocabulary and events. Jubilees follows this and adds a waiting period before Adam and Eve enter, treating it as a space that required preparation.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Genesis 2:8
Hebrew Bible
7 The Lord God formed the man from the soil of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. 8 The Lord God planted an orchard in the east, in Eden; and there he placed the man he had formed. 9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow from the soil, every tree that was pleasing to look at and good for food. (Now the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil were in the middle of the orchard.)
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Jubilees 3:9
Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
8 In the first week Adam was created, and the rib — his wife: in the second week He showed her to him: and for this reason the commandment was given to keep in their defilement, for a male seven days, and for a female twice seven days. 9 And after Adam had completed forty days in the land where he had been created, we brought him into the garden of Eden to cultivate and care for it, but they brought his wife in on the eightieth day, and after this she entered into the garden of Eden.
Date: 170–125 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... the Genesis story said nothing about Adam or Eve waiting any period of time before entering Eden. But the Interpolator was a careful reader, and he noticed that, according to the biblical account, neither Adam nor Eve was created within the Garden of Eden itself: God apparently created Adam somewhere else and then, only afterward, “placed” him in the Garden (Genesis 2:8, 15). Presumably, the same was true of Eve too, since it was only after her creation that God “brought her to the man” (Genesis 2:22), the word “brought” presumably implying that she had been in another location. If so, the Interpolator concluded, Adam and Eve might indeed be thought to have been waiting their 40 and 80 days respectively somewhere outside of the Garden ..."
James L. Kugel, A Walk through Jubilees: Studies in the Book of Jubilees and the World of Its Creation (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 39.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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