3 Adam and Eve

Authorship, Date, and Context

The Third Book of Adam and Eve constitutes the third major part of the Eastern Christian narrative cycle known as The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan (Gadla Adama wa-Hewan in classical Ge'ez). Orientalist philologists including Ernest Trumpp, August Dillmann, and Solomon Caesar Malan established that the surviving Ethiopic version was translated from an earlier Christian Arabic original composed in Egypt around the fifth or sixth century CE, closely aligned with the Syriac Cave of Treasures.

The anonymous redactor worked in an Egyptian or Abyssinian monastic setting, framing biblical primeval history to highlight the unbroken genealogical chain extending from Adam's remains to Melchizedek's priesthood and the coming Messiah.

Structure

This third book encompasses twenty-five chapters according to the standard sequence published in Malan's and Trumpp's nineteenth-century scholarship.

Chapters 1 through 5 narrate Noah's perseverance on the Holy Mountain, the moral degradation of Seth's descendants consorting with the daughters of Cain, the deaths of Lamech and Methuselah, and the divine mandate to build the ark. Chapters 6 to 12 document the solemn removal of Adam's body from the Cave of Treasures into the vessel, the deluge of waters, and the post-diluvian sacrifice. Chapters 13 to 17 chronicle the division of territories among Noah's sons and the night journey undertaken by Shem and Melchizedek to inter Adam at Golgotha. Chapters 18 to 25 portray Melchizedek's continuous ministry with bread and wine, the dispersion of nations, the origin of idol worship under Serug, and the idol factory of Terah.

Themes and Key Passages

The overarching theological vision highlights Golgotha as the cosmic center of the earth where the first man's skull rests directly beneath the cross of the Redeemer, the ark as a type of salvation, and Melchizedek's bloodless liturgy foreshadowing the Christian Eucharist.

At the burial of the patriarch's remains in chapter seventeen, the instruction given to Noah reads, in Malan's translation: "Melchizedec shall stand ministering on that mountain that is in the middle of the earth, before the body of our father Adam for ever."

Summary by Parts

Noah and the Fabrication of the Ark (chapters 1-5): Resisting rampant worldliness, Noah obeys divine warnings while the antediluvian race plunges into sorcery; following Methuselah's demise, Noah builds the three-story vessel to rescue life.

The Cataclysm and the Relic of Adam (chapters 6-12): The embalmed body of Adam is transported from the ancestral cave into the ark along with treasures of gold and incense; catastrophic fountains overwhelm all mountains until the waters recede upon Mount Qardu.

Translation to Golgotha and Sacred Ordination (chapters 13-17): Guided by an angel, Shem and young Melchizedek secretly carry Adam's corpse to the hill of the skull; the ground opens to receive the coffin, and Melchizedek remains as perpetual priest of the sanctuary.

Genealogies and the Birth of Idolatry (chapters 18-25): Post-diluvian generations multiply from Arphaxad to Peleg; during the reign of Serug, men invent carved images of deceased heroes, leading into the widespread polytheism of Ur during the childhood of Abraham.

Reception

The work was venerated within the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, read extensively in monastic scriptoria as an authentic historical witness to patriarchal succession. It was never incorporated into Jewish rabbinic or Western biblical canons.

Ernest Trumpp published the Ethiopic text in Munich in 1880 under the title Der Kampf Adams, followed in 1882 by Solomon Caesar Malan's pioneering English translation with extensive comparative patristic annotations.

Sources

• Solomon Caesar Malan, The Book of Adam and Eve, also called The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan (1882).
• J. M. Harden, An Introduction to Ethiopic Christian Literature (1926).