Adam (-4004 to -3074)

God had expelled mankind from paradise and punished all involved:

• The serpent was banished to the ground without legs with all the disadvantages of such an existence.
• The woman gives birth to the children from now on under pain and is suppressed by the man. Nevertheless, the woman longs for the man. In the history of mankind this curse has come true in most cultures and times. Despite today's discussion about equality between men and women, which is primarily taking place in the West, the position of women in relation to men is still the same depressing one.
• The man, after all, will have to struggle all his life to provide for the family. If a family wants to work its way out of poverty, in many parts of the world the cooperation of the whole family is necessary.

The creation story is no longer a topic in the Old Testament and is only taken up again in the New Testament. According to the Christian view, the original sin came into the world with Adam and Eve: every human being is born into this sin as a descendant of Adam. Only with Jesus does the new Adam come into the world again, so to speak, and goes the way of suffering as a sacrifice to redeem man from sin. Adam is the disobedient one because he eats from the forbidden tree, Jesus is the obedient one who let himself be beaten on the tree trunk of the cross to atone for Adam's sin.

Gen 3,14 Then the Lord God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, you are cursed among all the cattle and all the beasts of the field; you shall crawl on your belly and eat dust all the days of your life.
Gen 3,15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring; he will strike you on the head, and you will strike him on the heel.
Gen 3:16 He said to the woman, "I will cause you much trouble every time you conceive. / In pain you bear children; you desire your husband, but he will rule over you.
Gen 3:17 He said to Adam, "Because you have listened to your wife and eaten from the tree of which I forbade you to eat, the ground is cursed because of you. / You will eat of it with hardship all the days of your life.
Gen 3,18 He will make thorns and thistles grow for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.
Gen 3,19 In the sweat of your face you shall eat your bread until you return to the ground, from which you were taken. / For dust you are, to dust you must return.
Gen 3:20 Adam named his wife Eve (life), for she became the mother of all the living.

Adam is not only described in the New Testament as the "progenitor" of mankind. At the same time, his story also serves as a justification for present-day living conditions. The prehistory served e.g. in Mk 10,6ff for the justification of the prohibition of divorce. Likewise, the problem of being human in general is derived from the story of Adam (and Eve). Through Adam's fall, all human beings have lost their original glory (Rom 3:23) and are subject to the dominion of death (Rom 5:12-21; 1Cor 15:21f). On this point, the New Testament is influenced by Jewish tradition, in which Adam and Eve not infrequently appear as the founders of strife, disease and death.

Adam and Eve had sons who had different occupations. Cain was a farmer and Abel a shepherd. Both brothers offered sacrifices to God. He preferred Abel's sacrifice to that of Cain. The latter became jealous and killed Abel. Already the second generation committed the first murder. Cain was punished and had to spend a life of flight and wandering. Cain then lived in the land of Nod, built a city there and begat his descendants there. The murder and what happened afterwards is described in Genesis like this:

And Cain said unto Abel his brother, Let us go into the field: and when they were in the field, Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him. And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, "I know not; am I then my brother's keeper?" And he said, "What have you done? Hear, the blood of thy brother crieth unto me out of the earth. And so thou shalt be accursed by the ground, which gapeth with his mouth to take thy brother's blood from thy hand. When thou workest the ground, it shall not give thee strength. A restless wanderer shalt thou be upon the earth." And Cain said to the Lord, "My punishment is too great to bear. Since you drove me from the field today, I must hide from you; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me." And the Lord said to him, "Therefore he who kills Cain shall suffer sevenfold vengeance." And the Lord provided Cain with a sign, so that he who found him would not kill him.

About Adam's descendants is not reported much in the Bible. After the murder of Abel, another son Seth was born when Adam was 130 years old. " After that" Adam begat sons and daughters" (Genesis 5:3-4).

With the exception of Enoch, all of these pre-Flood descendants of Adam lived at least 777 years, while most lived over 900 years. Proportionally to today, the female fertility period would then be about 350 years. At a rate of only one child every seven years, this would result in approximately 50 children for Adam's family.

Considering their longevity, it can be said that Adam and Eve, although they were sinners, had faithfully obeyed God's first command, namely, "Be fruitful and multiply..." [Genesis 1:28].

Then the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, so that he fell asleep, and took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the LORD God made a woman of the rib which he had taken from man, and brought her unto man. And the man said, This at last is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh. Woman shall she be called; for from man is she taken. Wherefore the man leaveth father and mother, and cleaveth unto his wife, and they become one flesh.  Both man and his wife were naked, but they were not ashamed before one another.

Adam gave his wife the name "Eve" which means mother of all living. God's concept was and is that Eve, or woman, was and is a complement to Adam or Man. The point is that man and woman together can be a unity and are more than man or woman alone. According to the motto 1+1=3. 

The Bible says that Adam and Eve had three sons (Cain, Abel and Seth). But in the works of Josephus (Flavius Josephus was an early historian born in Jerusalem in 37 A.D.) it said, "The number of Adam's children, ancient tradition says, was 33 sons and 23 daughters." At that time it was also still normal (for genetic reasons) for siblings to have children together.

This is the book of Adam's genealogy: On the day God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, he blessed them and gave them the name man on the day they were created. Adam was a hundred and thirty years old when he begat a son in his likeness, like his image, and gave him the name Set. After Adam begat Set, he lived another eight hundred years, and he begat sons and daughters. Adam's total lifetime was nine hundred and thirty years, then he died.

From our point of view, the Bible mentions extremely long lifetimes. One must consider that the first generations lived under completely different circumstances until the Flood. Later, God limited the life of humans to 120 years.