by Karen Pusey

Created on: June 09, 2009   Last Updated: June 12, 2009

Adam and Eve

How did people relax in primeval ages? What kind of entertainment was on offer? Just as today there were specialists in that industry, men and women were famous for helping their fellows chill out when their day's work was done. Much of what was on offer is still available to us today, particularly in the realm of story. Our ancestors would gather round the camp fire in the evening and listened to gifted storytellers. These were men and women who answered questions about the beginnings of the world, rehearsed folk memories about a flood encompassing the earth and perhaps most of all told of the first men and women who inhabited our world.

There are stories of how humans were made from clay, baked in ovens- some came out half baked, some seriously underdone and some who were left in too long! It is unlikely that those who listened to these stories believed them to be true, in the sense that we use the word "true". They were to be enjoyed without digging too deeply into the origins they represented.

This is what makes the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2 and its following chapters, so different from other and similar stories. No one can tell how old these stories are, but with the aid of our modern linguistics toolkit it is possible to date their writing somewhere in the mid 9th.c. BCE. These stories are true. But to understand how this is so, it is necessary to understand what is meant by truth.

Is the story Jesus told about the Good Samaritan true? Yes, in one sense it is true. Jesus, that master storyteller impressed upon his hearers the truth that everyone potentially is our neighbour. Do you think that if he had spoken the literal truth ,"Listen to me, I want you to know that every time you come upon a person in need, you are to care for him", his teaching would be remembered? It is doubtful. Most people remember stories.

And so it is with Adam and Eve. Adam (from the Hebrew word for earth) was made by God from the "dust of the ground" no doubt moistened by water. People of the Middle East knew as we know today that after some time, dead bodies are nothing but heaps of dust. As an amusing aside, until the Reformation, one of Canterbury Cathedral's most treasured relics was a lump of clay left over from the making of Adam! No writer in the 8thc BCE would have made that mistake.

Men and women have similarities as well as differences, so their close relationship was explained by woman being formed from one of Adam's ribs. Interestingly,

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