Brothers Limburg. A wonderful book of hours of the Duke of Berry. Beginning of the 15th century
The fall of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from paradise are the most common Old Testament subjects in European art of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. We see the figures of Adam and Eve in the sculptural decoration of cathedrals and on frescoes, in the painting of folding altars, in book miniatures and engravings. In order to understand why this story was so popular, let us remember how Christian theologians interpreted the story of the Fall. Eve, succumbing to the temptation of the insidious serpent, tasted the fruits of the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil and persuaded Adam to follow her. Having learned about this, the angry God cursed the first people and expelled them from paradise. From now on, people became mortal; the woman, being more guilty, had to submit to her husband in everything and give birth to children in pain, and the man had to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. 
English miniaturist. Expulsion from paradise. York Psalter, 1170
According to the Bible, expulsion from paradise is the starting point of man’s earthly history, and in this Christianity agrees with Judaism. However, for Jews, this legend is just one of the many stories about human disobedience and divine punishment that the Torah is full of: remember the Flood, the Tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah. The story of the Fall stood out only in that it had the most serious consequences for people. In Christianity, the idea gradually developed that the guilt for original sin extended to all the descendants of Adam, and the crucifixion of Jesus became the atonement for this guilt. Scenes of the Fall and expulsion from paradise were compared in altar compositions and frescoes with scenes of the Annunciation, the Nativity of Christ, the Crucifixion or the Passion of the Lord and were called upon to remind believers of the meaning of the atoning sacrifice: Christ, the “new Adam,” came into the world to cleanse people from sin and give humanity eternal life.
Mosaic of the Cathedral in Montreal, Sicily. 1180s
French psalter. 1279
In depicting the Fall and expulsion from paradise, artists followed certain canons. Paradoxically, these canons did not accurately reflect the biblical story. In the scene of the Fall, naked Adam and Eve stand at the tree of knowledge, listening to the speeches of the serpent or picking the fruit. The Bible does not specify exactly what fruits grew on the tree of knowledge, but in the Middle Ages the tradition of depicting apples on the Tree of Eden (in the earliest works - pomegranates) was firmly established. In Hebrew, the word “serpent” is masculine, but the tempting serpent (who was seen as the embodiment of the devil) was traditionally depicted as a woman with a snake’s body, which symbolized the sinfulness of the feminine gender. In the scene of expulsion from paradise, the inconsolable disobedients are pursued by an angel with a punishing sword. However, the Bible does not say that it was an angel who expelled the first parents from paradise: God “drove out Adam and placed in the east by the Garden of Eden a cherubim and a flaming sword that turned around” (Genesis 3:24).
Giovanni di Paolo. Creation of the Earth and expulsion from Paradise. 1445
The traditional interpretation of the plot, inherent in medieval art, was preserved in the early Renaissance. Let's look at the amazing "Annunciation", written around 1434 by the Florentine artist, Franciscan monk Fra Beato Angelico. When the viewer takes his eyes off the golden-winged angel and the Virgin Mary reverently listening to him, he notices in the upper left corner of the picture the scene of expulsion from paradise, almost merging with the landscape. In Fra Beato Angelico, a peaceful and enlightened artist, this scene is not so dramatic as it is sad. The angel does not burn with anger, does not raise his sword warlike. Almost like a father, he laid his hand on the shoulder of the inconsolable Adam, not expelling, but as if sympathetically escorting the sinned couple from the gates of heaven.
Fra Beato Angelico. Annunciation. 1434
In the first third of the 15th century. In parallel with the canonical one, a new approach to the depiction of ancestors appeared. There was a gradual breakdown of the medieval worldview: humanists asserted new ideas about nature, about man and his place in the world, and the images of Adam and Eve began to interest artists in themselves, and not just as the embodiment of original sin. What is a person essentially like? What lay behind his desire to taste the fruits of the tree of knowledge: frivolity, stupidity, depravity, or a noble desire to penetrate the secrets of nature, so familiar to the humanists of the Renaissance?
Jan and Hubert van Eyck. Ghent Altarpiece. 1422-1432
The first artists to interpret the traditional figures of the ancestors in a new way were the Dutch masters - the brothers Jan and Hubert van Eyck, the authors of the famous Ghent Altarpiece, created in 1422-132. for the Cathedral of St. Bavo in Ghent. The grandiose folding two-tier altar unites twenty-six paintings, which depict 258 human figures. But we are now interested in only two of them - Adam and Eve. When the altar is opened, and radiant pictures of the transformed world that is to reign after the Last Judgment appear before the viewer, only the figures of Adam and Eve to the left and right of the central composition contrast with the general jubilant mood. The resulting impression was very accurately described by the author of the book “Antwerp. Ghent. Bruges" Mikhail German: "Like strangers, Adam and Eve enter the fold shining with heavenly inflorescences, bringing with them the heavy breath of real, not at all ennobled human flesh. They enter the altar from opposite sides, leaving a dull black darkness behind them, wary and distrustful, ugly, tired, even middle-aged.”
Jan and Hubert van Eyck. Adam and Eve. Doors of the Ghent Altarpiece.
Fragment.1422-1432.
The images of Adam and Eve in this altar also serve, as was customary, as an eternal reminder of original sin, but their meaning - compositional and semantic - has changed and intensified. Mentally remove the figures of the ancestors from the painting “The Annunciation” by Fra Beato Angelico: the beautiful work will not lose so much. But try to remove the images of Adam and Eve from the Ghent Altar - and the triumph of eternal life will no longer seem so complete without comparison with mortal life, and the chords of colors will no longer be so stunningly sonorous without these figures protruding from the darkness.
Tommaso Masaccio. Brancacci Chapel.
Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. 1428
Masaccio's frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel were created around the same time as Fra Beato's "Annunciation" and the Ghent Altarpiece - in 1428, but this is really hard to believe. Twenty-seven-year-old Tommaso Masaccio worked on the frescoes of the Brancacci Chapel of the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. In the midst of work, the artist suddenly died. The unfinished paintings of the Brancacci Chapel indicate that Masaccio stood on the threshold of great achievements. The chapel became a place of pilgrimage for painters of subsequent generations; Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael admired the skill of the untimely departed genius.
The most striking of the Brancacci Chapel frescoes is “The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise.” There are few works in European art in which human suffering is so powerfully and convincingly expressed through painting. The figures of Adam and Eve cry out about their grief with every gesture, every fold of their body. “The main thing here is not the biblical plot and not the external details, but the feeling of boundless human despair that engulfs Adam, who covered his face with his hands, and sobbing Eve, with sunken eyes and a dark hollow of a mouth distorted by a scream,” writes art historian Tatyana Kaptereva about the fresco.
"The Last Judgment." About 1504 -1508
Hieronymus Bosch. Paradise. Left wing of the altar
Let us, however, move back to the Netherlands. Seven decades after the appearance of the Ghent Altarpiece, in the first years of the 16th century, Hieronymus Bosch created amazing altarpieces in which the subject of interest to us appears in a completely unexpected light. As a matter of fact, these works by Bosch can be called altars only conditionally. Although The Hay Wagon, The Garden of Earthly Delights, and The Last Judgment retain the traditional form of a three-leaf folding altar, these works are intended more for philosophical reflection than for prayer. There is no exalted holy image before which the believer could kneel. On the left inner doors of all three altars there is a depiction of paradise. Depicted in different ways, but always in complex semantic relationships with the plots of the central and right wings. “A Wagon of Hay” and “The Last Judgment” depict the history of the ancestors - the creation of Eve, the Fall and expulsion from paradise. In “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” on the left wing only the scene of the creation of Eve is presented, but the Garden of Eden itself and the amazing creatures inhabiting it are painted in more detail. In all three altars, the degree of sinfulness of the depicted increases from the left “heavenly” composition to the right one - “hellish”.
Hieronymus Bosch. Paradise. Fragment of the left wing of the altar
"The Garden of Earthly Delights" About 1504
Let's take a closer look at Bosch's paradise. Elephants and giraffes graze peacefully near the intricate fountain, and adorable unicorns come out to drink. The artist’s gloomy fantasy has not yet played out in full force, but even here, in paradise, absurd and unsightly metamorphoses of all living things are taking place. In “The Hay Wagon” and “The Last Judgment,” clouds of ugly insects with frog-like limbs pour directly from the clouds under the divine throne. In “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” an owl (in the language of Bosch’s symbols, the embodiment of evil) peeps out of a hole in a fantastic paradise plant, a dead flying fish floats belly up in a pond (a symbol of sin), the paws of some other creature disappear in the mouth of a godless hybrid, and a cat with a mouse in its mouth busily runs past Adam and Eve, whom the Creator blesses. Adam and Eve look touchingly innocent: serene faces, fragile porcelain figures... Original sin has not yet been committed, but evil has already sprouted in the Garden of Eden, the world is initially vicious, and the Fall is not a tragic accident, but a natural beginning of world history. In Bosch's interpretation, a sinless person will certainly sin, the road from heaven will inevitably lead to the garden of worldly pleasures, to the kingdom of earthly vices, and from there straight to hell.
Michelangelo
Buonarroti. The Fall.
Fragment of the painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. 1510
Bosch's contemporary Michelangelo Buonarroti saw in the biblical tale a proud challenge of a person who wants to comprehend the laws of the universe and become equal in wisdom to God. In the fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1510), Eve appears to us not as an unreasonable, curious creature, as if in a dream listening to the sweet words of a snake, but as a strong, mature person, fully aware of her actions. Her hand confidently reaches out to the forbidden tree, her eyes fearlessly meet the gaze of the snake woman. The intense rhythm of the hands of Eve, Adam, the serpent woman, and the angel with a sword unites the parts of the composition separated by a tree trunk, giving the fresco an impulse of energetic movement, which ends somewhere outside the panel - where the first man and his girlfriend go to begin their earthly life.
Rafael Santi. The Fall. Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican. 1508-11
Michelangelo's Eve, boldly challenging fate, is majestic and proud, but she cannot be called feminine. The fact that the ancestors, among other things, were a man and a woman, that their insight, their shame for their nakedness meant the awakening of sensual love, was not fully reflected in works of art until Albrecht Durer said his word. Let's compare his first work on our topic - the copper engraving "Adam and Eve" of 1504 - and the paintings painted in 1507. Dürer's engraving became a new word in the art of the German Renaissance. Having visited Italy, the artist brought the achievements of the Italian Renaissance to his native Germany: never before had a naked body been depicted with such impeccable proportions. However, in the engraving, Adam and Eve look as if they were made “from the same cloth”: muscular, powerful Eve seems only a slightly softened copy of Adam. Immediately after his second Italian trip, the artist, who was deeply impressed by the art of antiquity, created two paired paintings - “Adam” and “Eve”. In German Renaissance painting, this was the first life-size depiction of a completely nude human figure. Dürer wrote that since the first parents were created in the image and likeness of God, their bodies should be an example of perfect beauty. And indeed, his Adam and Eve are captivatingly beautiful, but beautiful in different ways: Adam’s youthful masculinity emphasizes the soft femininity of his girlfriend. It seems that Eve’s tender body is blossoming in anticipation of happy earthly love.
Albrecht Durer. Adam and Eve. 1507
The painting was originally intended for a custom-made altar; it contains all the indispensable attributes of the scene of the Fall - a tree, apples, a snake (though no longer in the guise of a woman, but in the form of an ordinary snake), but for unknown reasons the altar was not painted, and it is unlikely that accident. Could such a picture fulfill the traditional role of reminding the devout churchgoer of the sinfulness of the human race? Young sinners are too charming not to evoke sympathy; their sin is too sweet to repent of.
Hans Baldung Green. The Fall. 1511
This work of Dürer inspired his followers for several decades. In Hans Baldung Green's engraving "The Fall" from 1511, Adam, having barely tasted the apple, resolutely hugs Eve, and in the painting by the same author from 1525, Eve looks bashfully chaste. In Lucas Cranach the Elder (and he created seven compositions on the theme of the Fall!) Eve is flirtatious and seductive... New times were coming, secular art was establishing itself alongside church art, and the perspicacious artists of the Renaissance learned to see in the images of Adam and Eve not only the first people and the first sinners, but above all - just people with all their sins and virtues.
Lucas Cranach the Elder. Adam and Eve. 1528
Illustrations from the site
Days of creation of the world and living beings. For a very, very long time there was nothing, there was not even the Earth itself, but there was complete darkness, cold, emptiness - and only one almighty God. God began by creating the heavens and the earth. But they did not yet have a specific appearance, and, as the Bible says, only the Spirit of God hovered over the waters. Then God separated the light from the darkness and called the light day and the darkness night.
The first day of the creation of the world.
From Kedmonovskaya
manuscripts, ca. 1000 g
On the second day, God created a firmament that divided the water so that part of the water was above it, and part was below it. He called this firmament the sky [more precise meaning of the Hebrew word translated “firmament of the sky” is “gaseous layer”].
On the third day, God gathered the water that was under the sky into one place, and dry land appeared. He called it earth, and the waters seas. God liked what he created, and according to his desire, grass and trees grew on the earth. And God saw that it was good.
On the fourth day, God created the luminaries to give light to the earth and separate day from night. Days, months, and years could be counted by the luminaries. The big one shone during the day, the smaller one gave light at night, and the stars helped it.
On the fifth day, God took care of living beings. First, fish, aquatic animals and birds were created. God liked them all, and he wished that there would be as many of them as possible.
God creates a helper for himself. On the sixth day, God created creatures that were supposed to live on land: cattle, snakes, and wild animals. But He had many other things to do, and He created an assistant for Himself - a man. Outwardly, he had to resemble God himself. And just as God rules over the whole world, so man had to rule over the whole earth and all living creatures. God created a man from the dust of the earth and breathed life into him, and after a while he created a woman (we will find out exactly how later). And God blessed them, saying: “Fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that walks and crawls on the earth.”
God looked at the heaven and earth he created, and he liked everything created. On the seventh day God rested from his labors. And He decided that from now on every seventh day would be a holiday.
Creation of the world.
From a manuscript of the late 13th century.
Adam in heaven. Eve.
Adam had to care for and protect the Garden of Eden. He could eat fruit from all the trees except one: God forbade him to touch the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” saying that Adam would die as soon as he ate fruit from this tree.
Adam was bored alone, and then God ordered all living creatures to come, fly, crawl, and swim to the man, and Adam gave them all names and found himself an assistant among them. Adam called all the animals, birds, fish and reptiles by their names, but there was no one among them who could help man in everything. Adam got bored again. God took pity on him, put him to sleep, and while Adam was sleeping, he took out one of his rib and created a woman from it. Then He brought her to the man and woke him up. Adam was very happy and decided that now this woman, a part of himself, would be his wife and helper.
Days of creation of the world and living beings. For a very, very long time there was nothing, there was not even the Earth itself, but there was complete darkness, cold, emptiness - and only one almighty God. God began by creating the heavens and the earth. But they did not yet have a specific appearance, and, as the Bible says, only the Spirit of God hovered over the waters. Then God separated the light from the darkness and called the light day and the darkness night.
The first day of the creation of the world.
From Kedmonovskaya
manuscripts, ca. 1000 g
On the second day, God created a firmament that divided the water so that part of the water was above it, and part was below it. He called this firmament the sky [more precise meaning of the Hebrew word translated “firmament of the sky” is “gaseous layer”].
On the third day, God gathered the water that was under the sky into one place, and dry land appeared. He called it earth, and the waters seas. God liked what he created, and according to his desire, grass and trees grew on the earth. And God saw that it was good.
On the fourth day, God created the luminaries to give light to the earth and separate day from night. Days, months, and years could be counted by the luminaries. The big one shone during the day, the smaller one gave light at night, and the stars helped it.
On the fifth day, God took care of living beings. First, fish, aquatic animals and birds were created. God liked them all, and he wished that there would be as many of them as possible.
God creates a helper for himself. On the sixth day, God created creatures that were supposed to live on land: cattle, snakes, and wild animals. But He had many other things to do, and He created an assistant for Himself - a man. Outwardly, he had to resemble God himself. And just as God rules over the whole world, so man had to rule over the whole earth and all living creatures. God created a man from the dust of the earth and breathed life into him, and after a while he created a woman (we will find out exactly how later). And God blessed them, saying: “Fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that walks and crawls on the earth.”
God looked at the heaven and earth he created, and he liked everything created. On the seventh day God rested from his labors. And He decided that from now on every seventh day would be a holiday.
Creation of the world.
From a manuscript of the late 13th century.
Adam in heaven. Eve.
Adam had to care for and protect the Garden of Eden. He could eat fruit from all the trees except one: God forbade him to touch the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” saying that Adam would die as soon as he ate fruit from this tree.
Adam was bored alone, and then God ordered all living creatures to come, fly, crawl, and swim to the man, and Adam gave them all names and found himself an assistant among them. Adam called all the animals, birds, fish and reptiles by their names, but there was no one among them who could help man in everything. Adam got bored again. God took pity on him, put him to sleep, and while Adam was sleeping, he took out one of his rib and created a woman from it. Then He brought her to the man and woke him up. Adam was very happy and decided that now this woman, a part of himself, would be his wife and helper.
Flowers were blooming in the morning, the river was inviting with coolness, but the wonderful garden was empty. There was no one to swim in the river, pick flowers, pick sweet berries and relax in the shade of the trees.
And God decided: “I will create a man like me.”
God took river clay, sculpted a man out of it, breathed life into him and named the man Adam.
Adam walked around the Garden of Eden, picked fruits, bathed in the river, but he was bored.
Then God sculpted various animals and birds from clay, revived them and brought them to Adam.
All the animals passed by Adam, all the birds flew past.
An elephant passed by Adam, and Adam called it an elephant.
An eagle flew past Adam, and Adam called it an eagle. And he called the hedgehog a hedgehog, and he called the ferret a ferret, and a hare - a hare, and a tit - a tit. He gave everyone names!
But Adam still walked around sad, because he did not have a close friend whom he could love.
And then God said:
It is not good for Adam to be alone. I will create him a faithful assistant and friend.
God put Adam to sleep and, while he was sleeping, took Adam’s rib and made a woman from the rib.
Adam woke up, looked at the woman and said:
You are beautiful! My name is Adam, and let your name be Eve. You will be my wife.
And Adam and Eve began to live in paradise.
They walked together, swam in the river together, wove flower wreaths together, and collected fruits from all the trees together.
But there grew on a hill in the middle of the garden one very beautiful tree, about which God said to Adam and Eve:
Never, ever pick apples from this tree. As soon as you eat even one apple, you will die immediately.
Why do we need this tree? We already have a lot of fruit! - said Adam and Eve.
An evil and crafty Serpent lived on the forbidden tree. He was more cunning than all the animals and birds that God created.
The cunning Serpent began to wait for Eve to approach the forbidden tree. And when Eve approached the forbidden tree.
The serpent said:
I heard that God forbade you to pick fruit from the trees in paradise.
Eva answered him:
No! We can pick fruit from all trees, but we can’t pick fruit from this one. God said: -Don't eat them. Anyone who eats an apple from this tree will die.”
And the insidious Serpent said to Eve:
God has deceived you. He knows that on the day you eat the forbidden fruit, you and Adam will become as wise and omnipotent as God himself.
Eve looked at the juicy, rosy apples growing on the forbidden tree, and Eve wanted to eat the forbidden apple.
Eve picked an apple, ate half, and gave half to Adam. As soon as Adam and Eve ate the forbidden apple, they looked at each other and for the first time saw that they were naked.
And they put them to shame.
God walked in the shade of the trees in the Garden of Eden and called to Adam:
Adam, where are you?
Adam hid in the bushes and answered:
God, I hear you, but I cannot reach you. I don't have any clothes on.
God approached Adam and asked:
Who told you that you are naked? Have you eaten the fruit that I forbade you to eat?
Adam got scared and said:
), and also as a proper name. It is included in the expression "sons of Adam", which never means the immediate descendants of the first person. They can be called “people” (in the synodal translation “sons of men”) (Prov. 8:31; Ps. 44:3). Used in the singular (lit. “son of Adam”), it denotes a specific person (Ezek. 2:1) or anyone (Jer. 49:18).
Creation of the first people
Adam was created "from the dust of the earth"(Gen. 2:7), therefore he is “earthly” (1 Cor. 15:47). God “He breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.”(Genesis 2:7). Adam was created as a spiritual-physical being, who is the bearer of the image of God Himself (Gen. 1:27). According to the Divine creative plan, he must also be like God (Gen. 1:26). This similarity, unlike the image, is not given, but is assigned to a person and must be realized by him throughout his entire life.
About the creation of the wife of the book. Genesis narrates twice, briefly: “And God created man... male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27), and in more detail: “...for man there was no helper like him. And the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and when he fell asleep, he took one of his ribs and covered that place with flesh. And the Lord God created a wife from a rib taken from a man, and brought her to the man. And the man said, Behold, this is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she will be called woman, for she was taken from man.”(Gen. 2, 20 -23).
The first man is the crown of the world created by God and, as such, has royal dignity, as evidenced by the fact that in the creative act God Himself graciously inhabits man and makes him the ruler of the world (Gen. 1:28). In accordance with his high purpose, man gives names to animals (Gen. 2:19-20); he is called "to cultivate... and store" the world around us (Gen. 2:15). However, Adam's perfection was not absolute. It only served as the basis for the fulfillment of his calling and opened up for him the opportunity to become perfect, “how perfect is the Father...Heavenly”(Matt. 5:48). Accordingly, man’s free will was not perfect, since it could choose not only good, but also evil, as evidenced by the commandment given to man, forbidding him to eat the fruits of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Gen. 2:17). Since only God gives the world He created “life and breath and all things” (Acts 17:25) and only by Him “we... live and move and have our being”(Acts 17:28), the first man could achieve godlikeness only in unity with God. Otherwise, he doomed himself to an autonomous, extra-divine existence, which inevitably led to death (Gen. 2:17).
The First Fall and its Consequences
Adam and Eve's first sons were Cain and Abel. Cain, out of envy, kills Abel, for which he was expelled and settled separately with his wife and had offspring (Genesis 4).
Little is known about the further life of the first parents: “Adam lived one hundred and thirty years and begat [a son] in his likeness [and] in his image, and called his name: Seth. The days of Adam after he begat Seth were eight hundred years, and he begat sons and daughters. All the days of Adam’s life were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died” (Genesis 5:3-5).
According to Jewish legend, Adam rests in Judea, next to the patriarchs; according to Christian legend, on Golgotha.
The universal human significance of the nature of the first man
The first people, Adam and Eve, are the ancestors of all humanity. There was no other root from which the human race took its beginning, either before or after them. In Gen. 2:5 it is said that before the creation of Adam there was no man to cultivate the land, but in Gen. 3:20 the name of the wife is reported and it is explained that she was called Eve (Hebrew hawwah - life), because she became the mother of all living, i.e. the foremother. The unity of the human race is evidenced by the Old Testament genealogies dating from Adam (Gen. 5: 1; 1 Chron 1), and in the New Testament in the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Evangelist Luke indicates that Christ is not only the Son of God, but also the Son (i.e., a descendant ) Adam (Luke 3:23-38). Finally, Acts tells us that the entire human race was created “of one blood” (Acts 17:26).
About two Adams after the apostle. Paul teaches St. Irenaeus of Lyons, noting that “in the first Adam we offended [God] by not fulfilling His commandments” and “reconciled [with Him] in the Second Adam, “being obedient even to death.” In the Atonement, according to the same St. father, Christ “headed (recapitulavit) all mankind, giving us salvation, so that what we lost in Adam ... we received again in Christ Jesus.”
The idea of the universal human nature of the first man was reflected in the patristic and liturgical tradition of the Orthodox Church. Churches. St. Gregory of Nyssa believes that “This name “Adam”... is given to created man not as any one, but as a race in general” .
Trying to understand the pan-human character of Adam’s nature, some Christian thinkers (for example, Vl. S. Solovyov, Archpriest S. Bulgakov) deviated into speculative constructions, as a result of which the first man became more than one (more precisely, the first) hypostasis possessing a universal human nature , but a multi-hypostatic personality, in which each person, in some incredible way, was already present in his own hypostasis. The anthropological fallacy of such ideas inevitably led to an error in the field of soteriology, to a distortion of the doctrine of original sin and salvation accomplished by the Second Adam - Jesus Christ.
Traditions about Adam and Eve among different nations
The story of Adam and Eve, with greater or lesser modifications, is preserved in the traditions of almost all ancient peoples, especially the Semitic generation.
The legends of the Zend Avesta among the Persians are similar to the biblical legends about the first man. Ormuzd created the first man from fire, water, air, earth and breathed into him an immortal soul. In the Garden of Eden grows the tree of life - Hôm, the fruits of which give immortality. The vengeful Ahriman in the form of a serpent appears to the ancestors, seduces them and disrupts the happiness of the immortal soul. According to Persian legends, vultures guard the golden mountain.
According to Brockhaus, both Jews and Persians borrowed their legends about the first people from ancient Assyro-Babylonian sources, since identical legends are also found in wedge-shaped inscriptions compiled 2000 years BC, i.e. long before Moses and Zoroaster, and discovered in modern times in the ruins of ancient Nineveh. On one tile from a collection of tiles recovered from the ruins of the Sardanapalus Palace, stored in the British Museum, there is the following fragmentary inscription: “After the gods created living beings, cattle and beasts and creeping things of the field... god (Hao) created two...”. Here, obviously, we are talking about the creation of the first man, and the Assyrian tradition is thus consistent with Gen. 1, 26 -30. We find a similar coincidence between the biblical and ancient Babylonian tradition regarding the legend of the Fall, which in Assyrian sources is even illustrated by bas-relief images. Thus, one bas-relief on a cylinder, also kept in the British Museum, depicts a man and a woman sitting near a tree and stretching out their hands to its fruits. A snake rises from behind the woman. Another bas-relief also represents a tree covered with fruits, surrounded by winged figures. Obviously, the first bas-relief depicts the fact of eating the forbidden fruit, and the second depicts expulsion from paradise and its guarding by cherubs.
Later teachings inherited the ideas about the creation of the world among Jews and Christians, with varying degrees of “creative processing.” Thus, the Koran says that God created the body from clay and the soul from fire. All the angels recognized the new creation, but Eblis alone refused and was expelled from paradise, where Adam settled. Eve was created in paradise. Eblis, out of revenge, seduced the first people, and they were thrown to the ground. God took pity on the repentant Adam and sent the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, around which a serpent coiled itself. On the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus there is a sheaf of ears of grain next to Adam, and a sheep near Eve, which indicates their labors after expulsion from paradise.
Scenes from the story of Adam and Eve are illustrated in detail in miniatures from early manuscripts.
The patristic tradition of comparing Christ with Adam and the tradition that Golgotha, where the Savior was crucified, is the burial place of Adam, determined the image of Adam or the head of Adam in the composition “Crucifixion”. The idea that the blood of the Savior atoned for the sin of Adam is expressed directly in iconography - drops of blood from the wounds of Christ fall on the head of Adam. The image of the head of Adam in the cave under Golgotha has been known since c. . In Byzantine art there are compositions where in the lower part, on the sides of Golgotha, Adam and Eve are depicted rising from the tombs. This detail can be explained by the influence of the iconography of the “Descent into Hell,” known since the 9th century. . Adam appears as a gray-haired old man, in a tunic and himation, Eve - in a red dress and maforia.
Adam and Eve kneeling on either side of the Etymasia (prepared throne) are depicted in the composition “The Last Judgment”. In the image of an elder, Adam is depicted among the Old Testament forefathers and prophets in temple paintings.
In Western iconography, the “Crucifixion” type with the half-figure of Adam at the base of the cross has become widespread.
Literature
- Malov E., prot. About Adam according to the teachings of the Bible and the teachings of the Koran. Kaz., 1885
- Filaret (Drozdov), archimandrite. [Metropolitan Moscow]. Notes on the book of Genesis.
- Bogorodsky Ya. A. The beginning of the history of the world and man according to the first pages of the Bible. Kaz., 1902
- Thielicke H. How the World Began: Man in the First Chapters of the Bible. Phil., 1961
Carved plate with the image of the “Crucifixion”, 11th century. (GE)
Khludovskaya Psalter. State Historical Museum Greek No. 129
Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta in Torcello, con. XI century
Monastery of Chora (Kahrie-jami) in Constantinople, 1316-1321; c. Savior on Ilyin in Novgorod, 1378; Annunciation Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin, XVI century.
Gospel frame, 12th century, Darmstadt (Hessisches Landesmuseum); Portable altar of St. Mauricius, XII century. (treasury of the Church of St. Servatius, Siegburg
