Texts in Conversation
Genesis 3 reflects earlier ancient Near Eastern traditions where human access to divine knowledge and immortality is limited. Like Adapa, humans gain insight through divine contact yet lose access to immortality, connected to the act of eating.
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Adapa and the Sound Wind
Ancient Near East
Then Anu said: “Why did Ea disclose to wretched humankind The ways of heaven and earth! Why did he give them a heavy heart? He is the one who has done this; what can we do for him? Bring him the food of life, that he may eat!” Adapa was brought the food of life; he did not eat. He was brought the water of life; he did not drink. He was brought a garment; he dressed. He was brought oil; he anointed himself. Anu watched him and laughed: “Come, Adapa, why didn’t you eat or drink? Didn’t you want to be immortal? Alas for inferior humanity!” Adapa responded: “But Ea my lord told me: ‘Do not eat, do not drink!’” Anu responded: “Take him and send him back to his earth.”
Date: 1400 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Genesis 3:22
Hebrew Bible
20 The man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. 21 The Lord God made garments from skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, “Now that the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he must not be allowed to stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God expelled him from the orchard in Eden to cultivate the ground from which he had been taken.
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Notes and References
"... In Adapa, dichotomies are employed in a subtle, sophisticated manner. In the biblical myth of the Garden of Eden, which resembles the Adapa myth in significant respects, Adam and Eve ate from “the tree of knowledge-of-good-and-bad ... The ties between these two stories were recognized already by the very first students of the Adapa text; e.g., Zimmern 1892: 397. See further, among many biblical exegetes, Speiser 1962: 27; Westermann 1984: 240ff. In their very essence, both tales recapitulate the basic human dichotomy between life and death versus the no-less-basic dichotomy between knowledge and ignorance, between awareness and innocence. Thus, the two stories resemble each other in several thematic matters, notably the shared essence of humans and gods with regard to knowledge or wisdom (Genesis 3:5, 22) ..."
Izre’el, Shlomo
Adapa and the South Wind: Language Has the Power of Life and Death
(pp. 138-139) Eisenbrauns, 2001
* 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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