Orthodoxy how Adam and Eve died. Was Adam saved? Who did Cain fear?
Irina asked the following question : Hello, I have a question: were there people on Earth before (during) Adam and Eve? When Cain went to the land of Nod, where did he find his wife? Therefore, not every person on Earth can be a descendant of Adam and Eve? - Sincerely, Irina.
INTRODUCTION:
Many newcomers to the Bible are asking the same question: "Where did Cain's wife come from?" Some of them believe that in order for Cain to find a wife, there would have to be other "races" of people on Earth at that time who, by their origin, would not be descendants of Adam and Eve. This means that the Bible's statement that Adam and Eve were the only people God created is not true.
For many people, this issue is a stumbling block. Faced with him, they refuse to believe not only the book of Genesis, but also the record that at the beginning of history there was only one man and one woman on Earth.
However, there are no contradictions in the Bible. There is a rule for Bible students: "If we do not understand something in the Bible, this does not mean that the Bible is incorrect or inaccurate. It means only one thing - that we we don't understand something."
All people are descendants of two people created by God - Adam and Eve. Cain and his wife are descendants of Adam and Eve. And now we will explain it.
So in the book Genesis 4:16-17 said " And Cain departed from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, to the east of Eden. And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived and bare Enoch. And he built a city; and named the city after his son: Enoch".
The question arises:"Where did Cain find his wife?"
To answer this question, you first need to find out how many people God created on earth: two (Adam and Eve), or were there many more?
I. THE FIRST PEOPLE
1. Adam is the first man.
The Old Testament tells that God first created Adam from the dust of the ground, and then created Eve from Adam's rib. However, the book of Genesis is not the only place in the Bible that tells us about the first people. In a message to Romans 5:12 written: " Therefore, as one person sin entered the world, and death through sin, and so death passed in all people because everyone has sinned". And in 1 Corinthians 15:45 it says that Adam was the first man - " the first man Adam became a living soul".
2. Everyone is related
According to the Bible, all people are relatives. Acts 17:26 "From one blood He made the human race to dwell on all the face of the earth". All people (except Eve) are descendants of the first man - Adam.
3. Eve - the first woman
Eve was created from Adam's rib: Genesis 2:21-22 "And the Lord God brought a deep sleep upon the man; and when he fell asleep, he took one of his ribs, and covered the place with flesh. And the Lord God made a wife out of the rib taken from the man, and brought her to the man".
In the book Genesis 3:20 read: " And Adam called his wife's name Eve, for she became the mother of all living". In other words, all people except Adam are the descendants of Eve, she was the first woman.
In the New Testament, Jesus (Matthew 19:4-6) and Paul (Ephesians 5:31) use this historical event as the basis for marriage between one man and one woman.
also in Genesis 2:20 it is said that when Adam looked at all the living creatures created by God, he could not find a helper like him, like a man. All this makes it very clear that from the very beginning, only one woman was present - Eve - the wife of Adam.
So, it turns out that nowhere in the Bible is it written that God created any other people besides Adam and Eve. This means that all people who have ever existed on Earth are descendants of the first two people: Adam and Eve.
II. THE NEXT GENERATIONS.
1. Who was Cain?
Cain was the child of Adam and Eve, as stated in Genesis 4:1 "Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have got a man from the Lord". He and his brothers Abel (Genesis 4:2) and Seth (Genesis 4:25) were part of the FIRST generation of children ever born on Earth.
2. Brothers and sisters of Cain
Despite the fact that the names of only three sons are mentioned in the Holy Scriptures, Adam and Eve had other children. This is written in Genesis 5:5 "The days of Adam after he begat Seth were eight hundred years, and he begat sons and daughters
".
V Genesis 5:6 it is said that Adam lived 930 years: "All the days of Adam's life were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died." How many children do you think Adam and Eve could have had over the years? The Guinness Book of Records records that the record holder for the number of children born is a Russian woman who lived in the early 19th century, who gave birth to 58 children in her 63 years. Just think: 58 children in 63 years!!! And Adam and Eve had several centuries at their disposal!!! In addition, God gave them a command: " Be fruitful and multiply" (Genesis 1:28). The Bible does not give the exact number of children of Adam and Eve, but it does say that Adam and Eve had many sons and daughters. The Jewish historian Josephus wrote: " The number of children of Adam and Eve, according to what ancient tradition says, were thirty-three sons and twenty-three daughters".
3. Cain's wife
If there were no other people besides Adam and Eve, then it turns out that the first men had to marry their own sisters, because there were simply no other women!
We do not know when Cain married, no details of other marriages or children are given, but it can be assumed that Cain's wife was his sister, niece, or other close relative.
III. OBJECTIONS OF SKEPTS:
1. Law of God
Some, when they hear that the first generations of people married their sisters, are surprised and say that this is impossible. To this I would like to say that Adam generally married his rib. But for some reason this does not surprise anyone.
Others, however, argue that the children of Adam and Eve could not marry each other because there are laws prohibiting marriages between close relatives.
Still others say that one should not marry a relative at all. Such people would like to be reminded that if you do not marry a relative, then this is not a person at all. A wife is related to her husband even before marriage, because ALL people are descendants of Adam and Eve, all descended from the same blood.
The law forbidding close relatives to marry appeared in the time of Moses, when God gave the Law to the people of Israel ( Leviticus 18-20). And before that time, people married their close relatives.
Note that Abraham (who lived over 400 years before Moses) married his paternal sister: Genesis 20:11-13 "Abraham said: I thought that there was no fear of God in this place, and they would kill me for my wife; Yes she is truly my sister: she my father's daughter but not my mother's daughter; and became my wife; when God led me to wander from my father's house, I said to her: do this mercy to me, wherever we come, everywhere say about me: this is my brother".
And when Abraham's son Isaac was born, he sent his servant to the house of "his kindred" to take a wife for his son from among his close relatives: Genesis 24:2-4 "And Abraham said to his servant, the eldest in his house, who controlled all that he had: put your hand under my thigh and swear to me by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of the earth, that you will not take my son a wife from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I I live, but you will go to my land, to my homeland, and you will take a wife for my son Isaac". Reading further, we find that Rebekah - the wife of Isaac - was the granddaughter of Nahor, who was the brother of Abraham - ( Genesis 24:15 "He had not yet ceased speaking, and behold, Rebekah came out, who was born of Bethuel, the son of Milka, the wife of Nahor, the brother of Abraham").
And the son of Isaac - Jacob married Leah and Rachel, who were his cousins (daughters of Laban - brother of Rebekah, mother of Jacob). We read about it in Genesis 28:1-2 "And Isaac called Jacob, and blessed him, and commanded him, and said, Take not for thee a wife from the daughters of Canaan; Arise, go to Mesopotamia, to the house of Bethuel your mother's father, and take yourself a wife from there, from the daughters of Laban your mother's brother.".
2. Genetic deformities
Today, under existing laws, siblings (as well as brothers and sisters from one of the parents) cannot marry each other. And if they get married, then they will not have healthy offspring.
It is true that children from a brother-sister marriage are at risk of being abnormal. By the way, the closer the relationship of the spouses, the higher the risk of manifestations of genetic abnormalities in the offspring. It is easy for an ordinary person to understand without going into detailed explanations. Everyone receives a set of genes from their parents. Unfortunately, today's genes contain a lot of errors (due to sin and the curse), and these errors manifest themselves in very different ways. For example, one person's ears are either protruding or asymmetrical, and therefore he has to grow his hair and cover his ears with it. Another person's nose is not quite in the middle of the face. In the third, the eyes are asymmetrically located. We just stopped noticing it.
The closer the relationship of two people, the higher the possibility of having the same errors in their genes received from the same parents. Therefore, brother and sister are likely to have the same errors in their genetic information. A child born from the marriage of a sister and brother will inherit one set of genes from each parent. And due to similar errors in the genes of the parents, these violations are duplicated in the genetic code of the offspring, and the result will be deformities among such children.
On the contrary, the further the relationship of the parents, the higher the likelihood that their genes will not carry the same errors. Children who inherit one set of genes from each parent are more likely to get a good gene in every pair with a bad gene. Usually the good gene dominates the bad, and thus deformity (at least the serious one) is suppressed. For example, instead of completely deformed ears, there will be only slightly twisted ears. (In general, however, the human race gradually degenerates, accumulating errors generation after generation.)
However, this fact of today's life does not apply to Adam and Eve. The first two people were created perfect. Everything created by God was, according to God, "very good" ( Genesis 1:31) This means that their genes were perfect, without mistakes! But when sin entered the world (because of Adam - Genesis 3:6), God cursed the world and the perfect creation began to degenerate, get sick, grow old and die. Over a long period of time, this process manifested itself in all sorts of distortions of the genetic material of all living things. Therefore, God gave people through Moses a law that forbids marrying close relatives.
But Cain belonged to the first generation of children born on Earth. He (like his brothers and sisters) received a virtually flawless set of genes from Adam and Eve, because the effects of sin on human body were then minimal. In such a situation, brother and sister could marry without fear for offspring.
By the time of Moses, degenerative errors in the human gene pool had accumulated on such a scale that God needed to introduce laws prohibiting marriage between brothers and sisters (and other close relatives), otherwise humanity would have completely degenerated. Among other things, we must not forget that in the time of Moses many people lived on earth, and the need for marriages between brothers and sisters completely disappeared.
3. Cain and the land of Nod
Some argue that the verses in Genesis 4:16-17 mean that Cain went to the land of Nod and found himself a wife there. From this they come to the conclusion that there was another race of people on Earth, not consisting of the descendants of Adam and Eve, to which Cain's wife belonged. "And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord; and dwelt in the land of Nod, to the east of Eden. And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch. And he built a city; and called the city by the name of his son: Enoch."
However, a careful reading of this passage shows that Cain did not find his wife in the land of Nod, but "knew" his wife in the land of Nod, after which their son Enoch was born. Many theologians believe that Cain was already married at the time of Abel's murder, otherwise the Bible would have said something about Cain's marriage.
4. Who was Cain afraid of?
Genesis 4:14"... behold, now You are driving me from the face of the earth, and from Your presence I will hide myself, and I will be an exile and a wanderer on the earth; and whoever meets me will kill me."
Some argue, based on this verse, that there were many people on earth who were not the descendants of Adam and Eve, otherwise Cain would not have needed to be afraid of people who wanted to kill him because he killed Abel. Who was Cain afraid of?
Firstly, the reason anyone would want revenge on Cain for killing Abel was their close relationship! And the close relatives of Abel were automatically close relatives of Cain, since Cain and Abel were siblings.
Secondly, Cain and Abel were born long before Abel's death occurred. V Genesis 4:3 said: " After some time, Cain brought from the fruits of the earth a gift to the Lord". Pay attention to the phrase "after a while." We know that Seth was born when Adam was 130 years old ( Genesis 5:3), and Eve saw in him a replacement for the deceased Abel ( Genesis 4:25). Therefore, the period of time from the birth of Cain to the death of Abel can be about a hundred years, which is quite enough for other children of Adam and Eve not only to marry, but also to give birth to children and grandchildren. By the time of Abel's murder, the number of descendants of Adam and Eve may have been significant, including several generations.
CONCLUSION
The Bible is the Word of God - the Word of the Creator, who was present during all historical events. This is the Word of the One who knows everything and is a witness of the past, present and future, on whom you can rely.
And if we begin to treat the Book of Genesis as an infallible source of information about the history of the creation of the world and man, then we will be able to understand events that, without the help of Holy Scripture, seem incomprehensible and mysterious to us.
From today on, we'll be peeping through the keyhole. And the topic of today's reflections: what is the sin of Adam. But before that, you need to take a closer look at biblical text and try to understand what commandments Adam received, how the Lord saw him, what he intended.
It is usually said that Adam and Eve received one commandment: not to eat from the tree of knowledge - that's it, they say, and violated. In fact, there were more commandments.
The first of them was the commandment to multiply life: “ be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth". This is the command that the Lord gave to the people in the first place. And it should be noted that the presence of such a command means that the anti-Christian argument is stupid, which identifies the sin of Adam and Eve with their sexual life, and then triumphantly asks, pulling his finger out of his nose, or from somewhere else: Ah, here's how would people have multiplied if they had not sinned, eh? - They would multiply. And the sin of Adam and Eve has nothing to do with a person's sexual life, his family life. It was not in this area that the sin occurred.
The second commandment that Adam receives is the commandment to cultivate the land, the commandment of labor: by the sweat of your face you will till the ground". There's not even sweat there yet, but just here, cultivate it. The Lord brings a person into the Garden of Eden and says: keep it and cultivate it. This is where the difficulty lies in the Hebrew text of Scripture. The fact is that not only in Hebrew, but also in Russian, the word garden("gonom") masculine. And, nevertheless, God's command speaks of a woman's face, in the feminine gender: keep her and cultivate her.
Here, on the one hand, the really closest feminine being, which is closer in the text, is the earth: keep the earth and cultivate the earth. On the other hand, well, let's say, the rabbis believe that we are talking about the Torah, the Word of God, the commandments and the wife, who, however, does not yet exist, her gift is yet to come.
It should be noted that Adam was created outside the Garden of Eden and is then introduced there. This is an important remark, because the holy fathers, describing the life of a person in the Garden of Eden, in the Garden of Eden, say that there was no pain, no sorrow, and so on. But, however, these descriptions should not be mechanically transferred to the circumstances of anthropogenesis, to the world in which man arose. That is, initially a person was isolated from the world of his origin and placed in a certain limited space. This Garden of Eden, it had its limits, it did not fill the whole earth.
So, the commandment of labor is given to man. In this work, a person must go a long way. At the beginning of the biblical account of the creation of man, there is this detail: And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.". However, in the following phrase of the Bible, the word “likeness” is missing: “ And God created man in His own image". So, beginning at least with St. Irenaeus of Lyon, from the second century, Christian thought distinguishes between these two concepts: the image of God and the likeness of God. The image of God is those talents that the Lord gave to man. That which distinguishes us from both animals and angels. Creativity first and foremost. The personal nature of our being, freedom, the ability to speak, to rational thought, to love. These are the divine features of man. But, unfortunately, a person can use all these traits for evil. We can create lawlessness, think over crimes, we can not create our own sphere, but kill. And if a person, like God, directs all his talents only towards good, then he reaches the likeness of God, becomes a reverend.
So, the fact that we are the image of God is given to us, and we must become the likeness of God in the course of our life. That is why the commandment to work is given. There is something that a person cannot be given - himself. A person must be able to grow himself, compel his soul to work in order to change himself in this feat. Because, well, we ourselves know this from our lives, when everything is given and nothing is achieved by labor, then these gifts often turn out to be destructive and deadly and by no means joyful.
So the commandment to work is the second of the commandments that Adam receives. And again, I note that in Soviet anti-church propaganda it was argued that, allegedly according to Christianity, labor is a curse. Here we are building a labor society, but the church is an anti-Soviet institution, because, they say, labor is considered a curse and punishment for the fall. It is not true. The Church considers work to be a vocation of man. But the church really considers hard work already a punishment, such work that is capable of races- to humanize a person. Labor that grinds a person with its millstones and does not allow him to breathe. At one time, in the fourth century, Saint Cyril of Jerusalem explained in this way why the Lord gave people the Sabbath. He says that Saturday was given to people so that at least on this day the slaves could rest from the arbitrariness of their masters. This means that this is why the commandment of labor is given before the fall, and after the fall it will be complicated by sweat and sorrow.
The third commandment that is given to man is the commandment of knowledge: name the animals. The fact is that for the archaic consciousness, the name and essence are one and the same. Even in Latin there was a saying mimina est mimina: names are signs, signs, omens. For the ancient Sumerian civilization, for the Egyptian, the knowledge of a name means knowledge of a thing, power over this thing.
Well, for example, in Egypt there was such a myth. One day Isis quarreled with the god Ra and decided to make him nasty. She made some terribly poisonous snake and let this snake crawl through those fields where Ra used to walk. And when Ra was walking, this snake bit him on the heel. The leg is swollen. But after all, it was not a bite of an ordinary snake, but a charmed one, so it had an effect on God. And now Ra is trying to remove this damage from himself and cannot, because, according to the belief of the sorcerers, only the sorcerer who made and sent it can remove the damage. Ra is tormented and cannot do anything. Then he starts calling other gods for help, they come, they try, but nothing happens either. Well, all the gods tried to help Ra, except for Isis, and then Ra realizes: it's about Isis. He calls her and says: Sister, help. Help me get rid of the pain. Isis says: With joy, with joy, please. Only you know that in order for my spell to work, tell me your true name. Ra understands that if he tells Isis his true name, then Isis will have power over him. So he, don't be a fool, calls her another name. Isis, don't be a fool, says no. You didn't tell me your name. Name yours. It's been a long haul. But then Ra realizes how right the Strugatsky brothers are, who said that it is difficult to be a god. It is clear that it is difficult, because a person in such a situation has hope: well, I will get sick, I will get sick, well, I will die in the end. And the gods, unfortunately, are immortal, therefore, with this heel, the patient to hobble through eternity is a very long time. Therefore, Ra surrenders, calls Isis her real name, she uses it in a spell, the pain passes, but Isis has really had power over Ra since then.
This is an extremely stable idea in the religious consciousness of people. For example, in the Vyatka region in the north of Russia, a father told me such a case. In the parish of this priest there lived a man, well, an old man, of course, now already, somewhere from the middle of the twenties of his birth. The twenties were interesting years in the life of the Soviet Union, well, something similar to modern Belarus, that is, such a strange mixture, it seems, of the old Orthodox and Soviet way of life. Here I have a wonderful document at home: "Decree of the Krasnodar Regional Council of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies, and Cossacks at the same time on the announcement of holidays in the coming 24th year." The line of holidays was as follows: Christmas, February Revolution Day, Easter, May 1, Trinity, Day of the Paris Commune, Assumption, Great October. That was such a wonderful line of holidays.
Well, and accordingly, in the twenties, children were all baptized, they continued, but now they baptized a child with a normal name, and then they also starred him. Here they starred this boy with the name Adolf. Well, such was the fashion then to give children Comintern foreign exotic names. The twenties, well, he is called by the passport Adolf and is called, well, nothing. In the thirties, with the name Adolf, as you understand, it became uncomfortable to live in the world, in the forties it was simply impossible, well, in subsequent years too. So, he had a Christian name, he was baptized, but he never called him to anyone except the priest. Why? Because he explained it like this: if parishioners, grandmothers, recognize my baptized name, they will sing me alive. So, out of this deep feeling of brotherly Christian love, he hid his name from his sisters in Christ.
By the way, this is also a very stable thing, maybe one of the Orthodox people knows that there was no Tsarevich Dimitri in the history of the Russian Church. Tsarevich Dimitry of Uglich, the last Rurikovich on the royal throne or near him, in baptism he was Uar, baby Uar. Many Russian people had baptismal secret names that were not called.
So, in the Bible, let's say, the theme is: the name equals the essence, and the knowledge of the name equals the power - in the Bible this theme sounds varied. For example, when Moses meets with the Burning Bush, the bush, enveloped in fire, burns, but does not burn out. They also explain - the Mother of God: the Fire of God entered into Her, the Word of God fit into Her, but She did not burn out, did not disappear, and so on.
Well, after this digression it will be clear what is happening on the first pages of the Bible. The Lord commands Adam to name the animals. The point is, asks Ephraim the Sirin in the fourth century: who in the family gives names to everyone? Do the older members of the family name the younger members of the family, or, conversely, do the younger members give names to the elders? Of course, the elders give names to the younger ones. But the question is: who is older on our planet, a giraffe or Adam? Definitely a giraffe. And this is not even something from Darwinism, but even according to the biblical story. So, the fact that Adam, a man, gives names to animals - this means the assertion of the primacy of Adam.
Here begins an extremely important theme for the entire biblical narrative: the theme of the passing primacy: “ And the last will be first and the first will be last» - gospel words. Adam is the last of the divine creations, he is the last to appear in the diamond chain of divine creatures. And yet, he is the firstborn of God's love. And therefore the birthright should be with him, passes to him. This topic will come up again and again. Let's say Cain is the firstborn, Abel is the last son. However, Abel is blessed and Seth, not Cain. David is the last, youngest of the sons, Joseph the Beautiful is again the youngest of the sons, but it is they who are blessed. And the apostle Peter also says about Christians: you, once not a people, but now a people, the last have become the first. So, Adam is the last one, and he must name the animals in order to establish his special place in this world.
Now further. I will tell you one apocrypha, but an apocrypha of high significance, status. We read this apocrypha in " Tales of Bygone Years", in the first Russian chronicle. It says that when Prince Vladimir listened to a Greek philosopher preach about Christianity, this Greek philosopher told him the following.
When Adam gave names to animals, he gave names to angels as well. There is no need to be embarrassed here. For the Church Slavonic language, the word "animal" refers to angels in exactly the same way. In our prayers of Great Compline we read: animal six-winged seraphim.
Well, Adam names the whole creature, all living beings, asserting his highest status. And here, according to The Tale of Bygone Years, well, of course, it is told as some kind of more ancient legend, it is simply recorded here only in The Tale of Bygone Years, and the fall of Satan, Dennitsa, occurred. When Adam gave names to the angels, and they all had to bow to him and serve, - and this is a very important and characteristic feature of Orthodox anthropology - that a person is higher than angels; angels are commanded to serve people: command your angels about you”, - then Dennitsa was among these angels, I would say this: the guardian angel of the planet Earth, such is our planetary logos. So he, too, was supposed to serve a person, but then, according to The Tale of Bygone Years, he became obsessed. How am I, the highest of the angels, going to serve some bald monkey?
A very interesting story. This means that because of man there is a superhuman war in the universe. That is, the man is so serious that because of him there was even an uprising of angels against God. This is worth remembering, because there is a beautiful and dangerous in its beauty phrase of Dostoevsky: “ Here the devil and God are fighting, and the battlefield is the hearts of people". Do you see the danger in this phrase? The person in this phrase appears as just a mat, a wrestling mat, on which two athletes, God and the devil, trample, and the person is just a field, the arena of their battle. No, a person is not a tatami, not a mat, not a wrestling mat. Man is such a value for which God and Satan fight among themselves.
The next story that I would like to explain. Too often we say that, according to Christianity, the history of mankind began with a failure: original sin. However, it is not. The history of mankind began with luck. Adam managed to name the animals. This is not a crossword puzzle. This is a very serious thing. You see, we may not know what Adam called these animals, in Hebrew or not. It's not about that. It's not that he called a giraffe a giraffe, but a hippopotamus a hippopotamus. But the fact is that Adam did not recognize himself in any of the animals. He did not say about any of the animals: this is me.
Here in the formation of man, human personality This stage of self-knowledge through opposition is very important. "No, I'm not Byron, I'm different." This is very important in the development of a teenager, in the formation of a people, nation, culture, and so on: to notice and realize one's difference, one's uniqueness. And this is exactly what Adam did. He was able to understand his difference from all animals.
Today, not all people succeed. Today - great news from Russia. Did not hear? I looked at the news, I had time today. It just sounds like poetry, it's just fantastic: The State Darwin Museum in Moscow has opened an exposition dedicated to the year of the pig. Seriously, this is not a joke, this is today's news No. 1 from Moscow. Hello big science!
You know, we Orthodox people are conservatives, but when I hear such things, I want to call for a reform of the Russian language. I propose to cancel New Year greetings, and on December 31st I call on radio and television announcers to speak like this: “Dear friends! The year of the red rat is ending, the year of the blue pig is beginning, with a new reptile you, dear comrades!
So, today, very often people liken themselves to cattle: “Who are you?” - "I'm a scorpion." - "And who are you?" - "And I'm some kind of, I don't know, a goat." Here Adam avoided this astrological Darwinism. He did not recognize himself in animals, and he did not recognize animals in himself. And this is where we understand an unusual detail in the structures of the biblical narrative. It is here that the theme of a woman, a wife, arises. It would seem so logical to say: Adam was created first, then about Eve, and then with animals. No. It seems that when Adam called the names of animals, he understood the esoteric meaning of the famous song: all the girls are in pairs, only I am alone. That is, he felt his ontological loneliness in this world. And now he felt the need for an assistant and companion.
Here begins a new page of the biblical story: the creation of a wife. A dream is brought on Adam, here the most interesting term in the Hebrew language is: tardemah, and in the Greek translation, in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, there is a word that is more familiar to you: ecstasy. Here is an ecstatic dream. Tardemah in Hebrew means not just a dream, but such a prophetic dream, a dream with visions, a subtle dream in the language of patristic asceticism. Adam is introduced into such an ecstatic state, and here the famous surgical operation follows, when a wife is created from his rib.
Did we review this text during my last visit? About the rib? Isn't it? An interesting text, with a lot of comments, interpretations.
I heard the most remarkable exegesis of this text a quarter of a century ago within the walls of Moscow State University. Students from the Theological Faculty of West Berlin University came to visit us. The question arose of who to mate with them, they needed to find colleagues, theologians, they found students of the department of atheism, they decided that they were suitable for this. Well, we had a meeting. And these, God forgive me, theologians, they shocked us with the following statement. They are feminists. For the first time I saw the bestial grin of feminism, these feminists pleased us with the statement, it turns out: a woman is the crown of creation. What does it mean that the wife was created from Adam? That a man is a semi-finished product, this is an intermediate link on the way to a higher creation, namely, a woman is the crown of creation.
By the way, there is some truth in this. If we strictly adhere to the biblical text, then it is Eve, it is the wife, who is a heavenly creature. Here Adam, remember, I emphasized, was created outside of paradise, and the wife was created in paradise.
So, as for the non-feminist interpretation, but the scientific one, we have here an echo, perhaps the first in the history of mankind, of a conscious literary play on words. This is exactly the echo of the first game with words. Because this play on words does not take place in the Bible, not in Jewish culture, but in Sumerian.
There, in Sumer, there is the goddess Ninti, and her name is translated in two ways: the goddess of life and the goddess of the rib. The fact is that in the Akkadian language, the language of ancient Sumer, the Akkadian language is a Semitic language related to Hebrew, in the Akkadian language the word qing has two meanings, qing- rib and life. That is, the semantic connection is clear. The Slav will say: the stomach is life, yes. And here the breath, the heart, the chest, the rib are obvious - this is the association in the end: the rib and life.
So in Sumerian it is qing, and in Hebrew, Hebrew, it is intact, integer - edge. Accordingly, this play on words began to be played out in the literature of ancient Sumer, and later it finds its echo in the Bible. But, in fact, in the Hebrew language, as in Russian, the word intact has two other meanings. That is a rib, yes, but a rib can mean anatomically "bone", and edge has another meaning - it is a certain aspect, a facet. And in this sense, a woman, femininity turns out to be a facet, an aspect of human nature.
And, finally, from the theological point of view, already, in fact, what I told you, the feminist interpretation, in fact, the scientific etymological and theological interpretation from the time, again, of Irenaeus of Lyon, from the second century.
Here is the next connection. Old and New Testaments. The events of the New Testament are represented in the Old Testament. In two words of Osip Mandelstam: and before the lips there was already a whisper, and in the woodlessness the sheets were spinning". Here is the shadow of the Gospel in the Law. This means that in the Old Testament Adam is the ancestor of mankind, in the New Testament Christ is the ancestor of the new mankind. Adam has a wife, Eve. Christ has a bride - the Church, a bride - arens. Adam's wife was created from Adam's rib while he was sleeping. In the deathly sleep of Christ on the Cross, His rib is pierced, and blood is poured out of the rib, with which He builds His Church, His Bride.
After Adam comes to his senses, he sees his wife. Yes, here again it is important to note that there is no Eve in this story, and there is no Adam either. Here the Russian translation should not be trusted. There is no Adam or Eve in this story. The Hebrew original has ha-Adam, that is, Adam with the article - this means the term, and not the personal name of the person. And Eve comes later Havva appears later, after the fall, somewhere in the 7th chapter, this name appears. And in the second all the time "wife".
So, ha-Adam, the first man, sees the wife and pronounces the phrase: "She will be called wife, because she was taken from her husband." For the Russian ear, there is no logic in this phrase: well, taken from her husband, why should she be called a wife, why not a daughter, not a sister, not a mother-in-law, after all. But for the Jewish reader, everything was very clear here. In Hebrew, the word for husband is " ish", wife -" isha". I suspect that this is where the shtetl verb “ischachit” comes from, as a designation for a heavy female lot.
And this is a very important statement: it is taken from Isha, and therefore it will be Isha. This is very logical. But the fact is that this is already a very polemical thesis.
That is, here I ask Orthodox people to get rid of one illusion. This biblical text tells about the first pages of the history of mankind, but this story itself appeared very late. Somewhere there, on the 1500th page of human history. Understandable or not? Yes? That is, by this time the Egyptian pyramids had long stood, by the time of the life of Moses and the writing of the Pentateuch, the Phoenician ships had long sailed Gibraltar and so on, and a lot of things happened in the history of mankind. Therefore, how would it already be, which Augean stables to clear with a biblical word?
So that you understand the beauty of this train of thought: she will be called a wife, because she was taken from her husband, let's conduct a simple experiment. Take a sheet of paper, graph it, divide it in half. Further, I will name different paired categories, and you will associatively try to distribute them into columns. Here is the right column, the left column. Next - good and evil, where do we write, in which column, where do we write? Good - right, evil - left: light - darkness, where do we write? Light - right, good, darkness - left, evil. Top - bottom, where do we write? Top - light, good, bottom - darkness, evil, left. Male - female, where do we write? Well, first of all, remember your wonderful school years: boys - to the right, girls - to the left.
But it's not only that. Remember the Chinese Taoist yin-yang symbol. And there it is the female half that is painted over in black. This is not a lesson on Christian theology, yin-yang, this tablet and so on, this is precisely about certain archetypes, about folklore, about paganism. Here in paganism it is the feminine principle, oddly enough, it is very often identified with the destructive. It is enough to remember the goddess Kali, the Indian goddess of death.
So, the fact that in the Hebrew language the words husband and wife have the same root crosses out all possible speculations on this topic. That is, in Jewish culture, these speculations are prohibited, that, they say, the feminine is destructive, dark, gloomy, different from the masculine.
For many even European languages, this is not fully understood. In many European languages, the words "man" and "man" are still synonymous. In order not to go far, look at the Ukrainian language. About English man again, I am silent. Therefore, modern politically correct Western politicians have to speak wildly for the Russian ear: Men and women sitting in this hall.
That is, from our point of view, it’s just even impolite: why are these gender highlights there, just “people” you can say, after all, yes? No, men and women - because they do not have such a common single word.
So, it will be called "isha" because it is taken from "isha".
This is followed by a phrase no less interesting: "And from now on a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife." Try to look at this phrase through the eyes of a sociologist, anthropologist, ethnographer. Before us is a typical formula of matriarchy. That is, the husband leaves his home, father and mother, and clings to his wife. Speaking in the language of an undergrowth, it turns out that the wife is a noun, and the husband is an adjective, since it is attached to the wife. That is, this is undoubtedly the formula of matriarchy. And it is precisely the matriarchal, according to the Bible, that the first model of human community appears to be.
What exactly did Adam and Eve do, since the Lord expelled them from Paradise, and moreover, that for some reason we are all paying for their act? What is it about, what kind of forbidden fruit, what kind of tree of knowledge is this, why was this tree placed next to Adam and Eve and at the same time it was forbidden to approach it? What happened in paradise? And how is this connected with our lives, with the lives of our loved ones, friends? Why does our fate depend on a deed not committed by us, and committed a very, very long time ago?
What happened in paradise? There happened the most terrible thing that can only happen between loving beings who trust each other. In the Garden of Eden something happened that after a while will be repeated already in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Judas leads there a crowd of armed guards who were looking for Jesus.
Simply put, betrayal happened in paradise.
Person betrayed his Creator when he believed the slander against Him and decided to live solely on his own will.
A man has learned to betray those closest to him when accused his wife of his own sin.
Person betrayed himself. After all, “to betray” literally means to convey. And man transferred himself from the good will of God who created him to the evil will of his killer - the devil.
That's what happened in paradise. And how it all happened and why it turned out to be connected with the life of each of us, now we will try to find out in more detail.
You cannot imagine!
God created man and placed him in the place most favorable for his life. That is, in the beautiful garden of Eden, which is also called paradise. Today we can only build various assumptions and conjectures - what was the Garden of Eden. But on the other hand, you can safely bet that any of these guesses will turn out to be wrong. Why?
But because the man himself then was different - pure, joyful, not knowing worries and worries, open to the world, meeting this world with a happy and imperious smile of his master. The reason for this is simple: at that time a person had not yet crossed God out of his life, he was in close fellowship with Him and received from God such knowledge, consolations and gifts that we have no idea about today.
We, the current, as already mentioned, can only fantasize on a paradise theme. Moreover, with an effort, squeezing these fantasies through the narrow gaps between gloomy thoughts about the falling ruble exchange rate, resentment against the mother-in-law, worries about buying winter tires for the car, the upcoming exam for the eldest son and a thousand more unpleasant thoughts that simultaneously torment any modern person every day from morning until night. That meager stuffing of fantasies that will fall out at the exit of this mental meat grinder will be our today's ideas about paradise.
Of course, the Garden of Eden was beautiful. But life with God can turn out to be a paradise for a person even in the middle of a waterless desert overgrown with camel thorn bushes. And life without God and the Garden of Eden instantly turns into ordinary thickets of grass, bushes and trees. Only by understanding this, one can understand everything else that happened in paradise with the first people.
Man has a unique place in God's creation. The fact is that God created the spiritual world and the material world. The first was inhabited by angels - incorporeal spirits (some of which subsequently fell away from God and became demons). The second is all the inhabitants of the Earth who have a body. Man turned out to be a kind of bridge between these two worlds. He was created as a spiritual being, but he also had a material body. True, this body was not at all what we know it today. Here is how St. John Chrysostom describes it: “That body was not so mortal and corruptible. But just as a golden statue that has just emerged from the furnace shines brightly, so the body was free from all corruption, neither labor weighed it down, nor sweat exhausted it, nor tormented worries, nor besieged sorrows, and no such suffering depressed ". And St. Ignatius (Bryanchaninov) speaks of even more amazing possibilities of the body of primitive man: “... Clothed in such a body, with such sense organs, a person was capable of sensual vision of spirits, to the category of which he belonged in soul, was capable of communicating with them, to that vision of God and communion with God, which are akin to holy spirits. The holy body of a person did not serve as an obstacle for this, did not separate a person from the world of spirits.
Able to communicate with God, a person could proclaim the will of God to the entire material world, over which he received tremendous power from God. And at the same time, only he alone could stand on behalf of this world before its Creator.
Man was created as a king or, more precisely, a vicar of God on Earth. Having settled him in a beautiful garden, God gave him a commandment to keep and cultivate this garden. In combination with the blessing, be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, this meant that in time man was to make the whole world a Garden of Eden.
To do this, he received the broadest powers and opportunities. The whole world gladly obeyed him. Wild animals could not harm him, pathogens could not cause disease in him, fire could not burn him, water could not drown him, the earth could not swallow him in its abysses.
And only one ban received from God this almost sovereign ruler of the world: « And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You shall eat of every tree in the garden, but you shall not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day that you eat of it you will die by death.» (Genesis 2:16-17).
This is the only prohibition that the man in the Garden of Eden violated. The man who had everything decided that in order to be completely happy, he still had to do something that was impossible.
The sandbox is mined
But why did God plant such a dangerous tree in paradise? Directly at least hang a sign on him with a skull and crossbones "Do not fit - it will kill you." What a strange idea - in the middle of the most beautiful place on the planet to take and hang deadly fruits on the branches? As if a modern architect, when planning kindergarten suddenly, for some reason, he designed a small minefield on the playground, and the teacher would then say: “Children, you can play everywhere - on the hill, and on the carousels, and in the sandbox. But don’t even think of coming up here, otherwise there will be a big bang-badabum and a lot of trouble for all of us.”
Here it is immediately necessary to clarify: the ban on eating the fruits from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil did not mean at all that a person without these fruits knew nothing about good and evil. Otherwise, what was the point of giving him such a commandment?
Chrysostom writes: “Only those who by nature do not have reason do not know good and evil, and Adam possessed great wisdom and could recognize both. That he was filled with spiritual wisdom, see its revelation. “Brought,” it is said, God to him the beasts, “to see what he would call them, and that whatever a man called every living creature, that was its name” (Genesis 2:19). Think what wisdom he had who could give names to various breeds of cattle, reptiles and birds. God himself so accepted this naming of names that he did not change them, and even after the fall he did not want to cancel the names of animals. It is said: As a man calls every living soul, so was its name ... So, who knew so much, really, tell me, did not know what is good and what is evil? With what will it be in accordance?
So, the tree was not a source of knowledge about good and evil. And its fruits were not poisonous either. otherwise God would be like the alternatively gifted kindergarten architect already mentioned here. And it was called so for one simple reason: a person had ideas about good and evil, but only theoretical ones. He knew that goodness is in obedience and trust in the God who created him, and evil is in violation of His commands. However, in practice, he could know what good is only by fulfilling the commandment and not touching the forbidden fruits. After all, even today, each of us understands: to know about good and to do good is very much not the same thing. Just like knowing about evil and not doing evil. And in order to translate your knowledge of good and evil into a practical plane, you need to make some effort. For example, in a situation where a loved one hastily said something offensive to you, it will certainly be kind to keep silent in response, wait until he cools down, and only then calmly and lovingly find out what pissed him off so much. And evil in this situation, just as certainly, will be - to slander him in response to three boxes of all sorts of nasty things and quarrel for long painful hours, or even days. Each of us knows about it. But it is not always possible to use this knowledge in a real conflict, alas.
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is so named in the Bible because it was an opportunity for the first people to demonstrate their desire for good and aversion from evil by experience.
But man was not created as a robot hard-wired for nothing but goodness. God gave him freedom of choice, and the tree of knowledge became for the first people just such a point where this choice could be put into practice. Without it, the Garden of Eden, and indeed the whole beautiful world created by God, would turn out to be only a golden cage with ideal conditions for a person. And the essence of God's prohibition was reduced to a caring warning addressed to people who are free in their decision, as if saying to them: “You can not listen to Me and do it your way. But know what disobedience is - death for you, created by Me from the dust of the earth. Behold, I leave open to you also the path of evil, on which inevitable death awaits you. But this is not what I created you for. Strengthen yourself in goodness through the rejection of evil. This will be for you the knowledge of both.
But - alas! - people did not heed this warning and decided to know evil through the rejection of good.
We are not guilty!
Further, the Bible describes the events in the Garden of Eden as follows: “The serpent was more cunning than all the animals of the field, which the Lord God created. And the serpent said to the woman: Did God truly say: Do not eat from any tree in paradise? And the woman said to the serpent: We can eat fruits from trees, only the fruits of a tree that is in the middle of paradise, God said, do not eat them and do not touch them, lest you die. And the serpent said to the woman: No, you will not die, but God knows that on the day you eat them, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil. And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasing to the eye and desirable, because it gives knowledge; and took its fruit and ate; and gave also to her husband, and he ate” (Genesis 3:1-6).
The serpent here means Satan - the head of the angels who fell away from God and turned into demons. One of the most powerful and beautiful spirits, he decided that he did not need God, and turned into Satan - the implacable enemy of God and all of His creation. But Satan, of course, could not deal with God. And therefore he directed all his hatred to the crown of God's creation - to man.
in the bible Satan is called the father of lies and a murderer. We can see both in the above passage from the book of Genesis. Satan concocted a false story in which God appeared as a jealous deceiver, afraid of human competition. And people who have already received so many gifts and blessings from God, who knew Him, communicated with Him and from the experience of this communication were convinced that He is good, suddenly believed this dirty lie. And they decided to taste the fruits from the forbidden tree in order to become "like the gods".
But instead, they just discovered that they were naked, and urgently began to build themselves primitive clothes from tree leaves. And when they heard God's voice calling them, they were frightened and began to hide between the trees of paradise from the One who planted this paradise for them.
Traitors are always afraid of meeting those who have been betrayed. A what the first people did was a real betrayal of God. Satan unobtrusively hinted to them that by eating forbidden fruits, they could become like God, become equal to their Creator. And that means living without Him. AND people believed this lie. Believed Satan and stopped believing God.
This terrible change was the main tragedy of what happened in paradise. People refused to obey God and voluntarily gave themselves over to obedience to the devil.
God forgave them this first betrayal and gave them a chance to return to Himself, but people did not want to take advantage of it. The wife began to justify herself by the fact that she was seduced by the snake. And Adam completely blamed his wife and ... God, who gave him such a “wrong” companion, for his crime of the commandment. Here it is, the last conversation of people with God in paradise: “… didn’t you eat from the tree from which I forbade you to eat? Adam said: The wife that You gave me, she gave me from a tree, and I ate. And the Lord God said to the woman, Why did you do this? The woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I ate” (Genesis 3:11-13).
So the first man betrayed God, his wife and himself in paradise. Created to reign over the material world, he turned into a miserable creature, hiding in the bushes from his Creator and reproaching Him for the wife ... that You gave me. So did his poison accepted from Satan lies. Once having fulfilled the will of God's enemy, man himself became an enemy of God.
St. Theophan the Recluse writes: “The falling away from God was complete with disgust and a kind of hostile rebellion against Him. Therefore, God retreated from such criminals - and the living union is interrupted. God is everywhere and contains everything, but he enters free creatures when they surrender themselves to Him. When they are contained within themselves, then He does not violate their autocracy, but, preserving and supporting them, He does not enter inside. So our ancestors were left alone. If they repented quickly, perhaps God would have returned to them, but they persisted, and in the face of obvious reproofs, neither Adam nor Eve admitted that they were guilty.
All in Adam
That, in fact, is all. By betraying God, people fell away from the source of their life. And slowly began to die. So a branch broken off from its native trunk for some time still turns green in the roadside dust, but its further fate is predetermined and inevitable. The beautiful human body, radiant with the beauty and power of God who is with it, immediately turned into a miserable body, subject to disease and threats of the elements, when God departed from it. And paradise itself - the meeting place of man and God on earth - has become for man a place of fear and torment. Now, having heard the voice of his Creator, he, filled with horror, rushed about the Garden of Eden in search of shelter. To leave such a man in paradise would be a senseless cruelty.
So, according to the Bible, man was expelled from paradise, became a vulnerable, mortal and subject to Satan being. This was the beginning of human history. All these terrible changes in human nature, associated with the falling away of the first people from God, were inherited by their descendants, which means that we, our friends, and all contemporaries.
Why did it happen? Because man was conceived as permanently abiding with God and in God. This is not some additional bonus to our existence, but its most important foundation, the foundation. With God, man is the immortal king of the universe. Without God - a mortal being, a blind instrument of the devil.
A series of births and deaths did not bring a person closer to God. On the contrary, each generation, living in spiritual darkness, took in more and more shades of evil and betrayal, the seeds of which were sown by sinful people back in paradise. Macarius the Great writes: “... Just as Adam, who transgressed the commandment, received the leaven of evil passions in himself, so those born from him, and the whole family of Adam, by succession, became partakers of this leaven. And with gradual progress and growth, sinful passions have already multiplied in people to such an extent that they have stretched to adultery, indecency, idolatry, murders and other absurd deeds, until all mankind has become sour with vices.
This, in brief, is the connection between what happened in Paradise with the ancestors of mankind and the way we are forced to live today.
Archpriest Alexy Bogdan, head of the missionary department of the Samara diocese, dean of the Intercession Cathedral in Samara, answers questions of interest to novice Orthodox believers.
Where did the souls of Adam and Eve go after their death? Where are the souls of Adam and Eve now? In heaven or in hell?
Olga Pochasheva
Dear Olga! The first people were created with the possibility of not dying, since God is not the Creator of death. Death arose as a result of the fall of people and their apostasy from God. Accordingly, the entrance to paradise was closed for them, as evidenced by the Book of Genesis (3, 22-24), thus, until the suffering of Christ on the Cross, all people were separated from God, including the righteous of the Old Testament.
So, Patriarch Jacob, grieving over the loss of the allegedly dead son Joseph, says: “With sorrow I will go down to the underworld to my son” (Gen. 37, 35). And in Psalm 88, vv. 49, it says: "Which of the people lived - and did not see death, delivered his soul from the hand of hell?" Job also speaks of his departure to "the land of darkness, such as the darkness of the shadow of death, where there is no structure" (Job 10:22).
The souls of Adam and Eve also descended into hell after death. It must be said about a certain "bosom of Abraham", where the Old Testament righteous were (Lk. 16, 22-26). This is a place in hell where the righteous did not suffer torment. And only after the death of the Savior on the Cross, when He descended in soul into hell, He brought out all the Old Testament righteous from there (1 Pet. 3:18-20; 4:6), who were waiting for His coming to earth. Adam and Eve were the same, who were the first to be told about the seed of the woman striking the serpent, that is, the coming of the Savior into the world (Genesis 3:15).
The Easter icon "Descent into Hell" just depicts this moment. The Lord Jesus Christ stands on the defeated gates of hell and leads Adam and Eve by the hands, followed by hosts of the Old Testament righteous. And Scripture tells about the fall of the first people, but the Tradition of the Church has preserved information about the greatest repentance of Adam and Eve and their hope for the coming Redeemer of the world, therefore they can be considered the first Christians. The Old Testament fathers were saved by faith in the coming Messiah, just as we are saved by faith in the Christ who has come.
The memory of Adam and Eve and all the Old Testament forefathers takes place two weeks before Christmas.
"Let the Children Come to Me"
At what age can a child be baptized? I wanted to baptize my daughter shortly after her birth, but my believing friends advised against it, they said that Small child not ready for Baptism, she still does not understand anything, and it would be better if she herself comes to faith in adulthood and makes a conscious decision to be baptized.
Olga Dneprova, Ukraine
Your desire to baptize your daughter is fully justified by a number of statements by the Savior Himself: “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God” (John 3:5). “Let the children come to Me and do not scold them” (Luke 18:15-16). In the Old Testament, a covenant with God was concluded through the circumcision of infants on the eighth day, and this ceremony was a type of Baptism. Therefore, children can be baptized already from the eighth day, and in case of mortal danger and in special cases - even earlier. For example, I myself more than once had to baptize in intensive care premature babies of seven and eight months, just born. Your believing friends, who advise you to postpone Baptism until adulthood, are either too presumptuous or belong to some sect, since most Protestant sects forbid infant baptism. Of course, it is very good when a person consciously came to faith in adulthood and wants to be baptized, but where is the guarantee that all babies who are born without exception will live to this age?! And the point is not only in death, which can occur at any time and anywhere, but also in the fact that the unenlightened by Baptism with age acquires such a “scab” of all kinds of sins that it becomes a feat for him to come to faith. The fact that the child does not realize anything is made up for by the presence of godparents, whose direct duty is to help parents raise a baptized infant in the faith and introduce them to the church and church life.
The Holy Scriptures describe cases when entire families were baptized: for example, the house of Lydia (Acts 16:14-15), the house of Stephens (1 Cor. 1:16). The Apostle Peter says that the promise of Baptism "belongs to you and your children" (Acts 2:38-39), and the need for Baptism is also approved by the Council's decrees. So, Rule 72 and 110 of the Council of Carthage reads: "Whoever rejects the need for Baptism of small children and newborns from the mother's womb of children, let him be anathema."
Probably, the majority of Orthodox people, kissing the Crucifixion of Christ the Savior, paid attention to the iconography of this image, namely, in the lower part, under the base of the Calvary Cross, a skull and two crossbones are traditionally depicted.
Tradition has preserved the story according to which the Savior of the world, the Lord Jesus Christ, was crucified on the site of the ancient grave of the forefather Adam, and the blood of the God-Man, flowing down the base of the Cross, fell on the head of the first person buried here, which washed away the sin of the forefather committed in the Garden of Eden.
Any church-going person who carefully listens to the liturgical texts of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy and Life-Giving Cross, Holy Week (3rd Sunday of Great Lent) and Holy Week is familiar with the narration of this tradition.
But I encountered a certain bewilderment when I presented the first book-guide about the Holy Land, written after repeated trips to Israel, only after taking it from the printing house, to my teacher, a professor at the Kiev Theological Academy. His attention was riveted by a photograph taken by me in Hebron on the grave of the forefathers, or rather not a photograph, but a caption to it, which said: "A canopy over the burial place of Adam."
“And who then was buried on Calvary, under the place where the Savior was crucified?” - this question of the venerable professor prompted me to create a specific commentary on this signature, since information about the burial of the forefather Adam in Hebron is inaccessible in the Christian tradition. Although, on the other hand, for monotheistic Judaism, it is the cave of the forefathers in Hebron that is the place where the remains of the first man are to this day.
How to reconcile the Christian tradition and the tradition of the Midrash (Midrash - laמִדְרָשׁ, literally “study”, “interpretation”, a genre of literature of a homiletic nature, presented in the Mishnah, Tosefta, and then in the Gemara. However, very often under the name midrashi is meant a collection of texts which includes biblical exegesis, public sermons, etc., forming a consistent commentary on the books of the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament).
To do this, we will offer to visit ancient Hebron and reveal the secret of the Cave of the Forefathers - Mearat ha-Machpelah.
Hebron streets
"Gate of the South"
"Gate of the South" - this is the name Hebron received from the nomadic Semitic clans, who, driving their herds in search of new pastures, always got on the road from Jerusalem, heading to Bathsheba (Beersheba), Azot (Ashdot), Ashkelon, to this an ancient metropolis with guaranteed comfortable parking for nomads with numerous wells needed for livestock.
Hebron is located in the southern part of mountainous Judea in a flourishing mountain valley, located at an altitude of 925 m above sea level and surrounded by high mountains. There are many Muslim villages around modern Hebron, whose inhabitants are engaged, as in the distant past, in agriculture and cattle breeding. You can get to Hebron today from Jerusalem along the ha-Minaro highway, bypassing Bethlehem, and then, continuing along the Okef Halkhul highway, after 16 km you will be met by gray-haired Hebron.
Under the sniper scope
Visiting this city today is fraught with certain difficulties. In modern Hebron, clashes between Jewish settlers and Arabs are very frequent. Being in the administrative subordination of the Palestinian Authority, the city is surrounded by Israeli army checkpoints, which complicates its visit. Hebron is clearly not the place where you can shine with knowledge of Hebrew. Moreover, “this is the only place in the West Bank where you should not stay overnight,” as many guidebooks of intrepid tourists and pilgrims to this biblical city warn.
If according to the modern idiom "Israel is a litmus test for the whole world", then modern Hebron is a litmus test of the Arab-Israeli confrontation. Today the city is divided into two parts: the Arab quarter and the quarter where the Jewish settlers live.
When we move from the checkpoint to the famous Cave of the Forefathers, we are a little disturbed by the close attention to any movements (in this case, yours) of Israeli patrols located almost every 50 meters. Raising your head, it is not difficult to spot snipers on the roofs of houses and on observation towers. As soon as you deviate from the route, out of nowhere, a bulletproof jeep or a dusty military Hummer with protruding antennas appears, from which you will be asked to show documents. In general, everything is intended to hint to the guest of Hebron that for the sake of his own safety, the route of the pilgrim or tourist is thought out to the smallest detail, and therefore it is not worth improvising.
It is noteworthy that there is no free communication between the quarters of Jews and Arabs, and only a foreigner, using his neutral position, can visit both parts of Hebron. Moreover, once in the Palestinian part of the city, he draws attention to the fact that here Hebron lives the usual life of Middle Eastern Arab cities with traditional traffic jams, the noise of car horns, the singing of muezzins, the inviting of street vendors, etc. Concrete barriers disappeared somewhere, patrols, snipers and miles of barbed wire...
The first real estate in the Holy Land
Among the four biblical cities of Israel (Shechem (Shechem), Bethel (Bethel), Jerusalem, Hebron) that have survived to this day, Hebron is the most ancient. Patriarch Abraham chose Hebron - Kiryat Arba as the first place to settle in the Holy Land. It was in Hebron that he bought the first plot of land - the cave of Machpelah - for the burial of his wife Sarah (Gen.23:8-17). In this cave, Abraham bequeathed to bury himself.
The text of the Holy Scripture conveys in detail the process of acquiring ownership of this particular site with a grotto in Hebron. For the patriarch Abraham, it was of fundamental importance to acquire this particular cave for the burial of Sarah. Why?
Cenotaph over the tomb of the foremother Sarah Midrash - Oral Torah, complements the biblical narrative: “Abraham discovered the secret of the cave when he was chasing an ox, which he wanted to slaughter for his three mysterious guests - angels. The ox led him straight to the cave of Machpelah. Inside, Abraham saw a bright light, part of that primordial light that God had prepared for the righteous, and breathed in the sweet fragrance emanating from the Garden of Eden. Abraham heard the voices of angels: “Adam is buried here. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will also rest here. Then Abraham realized that this cave was the entrance to the Garden of Eden, and it was from then on that he wanted to get it for burial.
The book "Zohar" confirms the narratives of the Midrash, reporting how the forefather Adam, after being expelled from the Garden of Eden, once passed by and recognized the light of Paradise in the light emanating from the cave. He realized that there was a tunnel connecting our earthly world and the Heavenly world, a tunnel through which our prayers rise to God, and souls enter Eternity after the death of the body. Therefore, Adam bequeathed to bury himself only in this cave.
Selling the cave of Machpelah, the Hittite Efron did not know about its holiness. He did not see anything of value in this cave and initially even wanted to give it to Abraham for free, without any payment. But the acquired property was endowed with a guarantee that in the future the descendants of Abraham could own this place and be considered full owners. In the presence of all the Hittites, Abraham signed an agreement with Efron, and the exact location of the land and its boundaries were determined.
Only after the deal was in writing, and the legal ownership of the cave was determined for all future times, Abraham buried his wife. Moreover, the Midrash describes in detail the burial of Sarah, which was accompanied by miraculous phenomena: “As soon as Abraham entered the cave with the body of Sarah, Adam and Eve rose from their graves and went to meet. At the same time, they said that they felt shame for their sin: “Now that you have come here, our shame has become even greater, because we see your virtues.” “I will pray for you that you will no longer suffer from shame,” Abraham told them. Hearing these words, Adam calmed down and returned to his grave, but Eve resisted until Abraham buried her again.
Interior of Mearat HaMachpelah The Mystery of the Cave of Machpelah
The Hebrew name מַּכְפֵּלָה "Machpelah" is interpreted in rabbinical literature as referring to a double cave or referring to couples buried there.
In the burial grotto of Machpelah, according to Talmudic sources (Babylonian Talmud: Bava-Batra, 58a; Bereshit Rabbah, 58), the forefathers Adam and Eve, as well as the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their wives-foremothers: Sarah, Reveka or me. The burial of four pairs of forefathers in Hebron is expressed in another Hebron name of Hebron - קִרְיַת־אַרְבַּע "Kiryat-Arba".
And the very word חֶבְרוֹן "Hebron" goes back to the root, consisting of the letters het, bet, resh. The words haver, hibur, etc. are formed from the same letters. All of them are close in meaning and mean - "association". That is, it turns out that Kiryat Arba is the place where four couples unite (in Hebrew אַרְבַּע "arba" - four). Thus, initially Hebron in the minds of the Israelites established itself as the "city of the Forefathers."
When we talk about מְעָרַת הַמַּכְפֵּלָה “Mearat ha-Makhpelah”, or in the Russian tradition - the Cave of the Forefathers, as a rule, we mean a grandiose structure above the caves themselves. In the entire history of Hebron, only a few people had a chance to go down inside, into the caves themselves, where the biblical patriarchs were buried.
It is noteworthy that the construction of this monumental structure, located in the central part of modern Hebron with walls 12 m high, belongs to the king of Judea - Herod the Great. This majestic building consists of stone blocks (the largest of them is 7.5 x 1.4 m). Each subsequent block hangs on the previous one by only 1.5 cm. The upper edge of the blocks is wider than the bottom. The surface of the walls of Mearat HaMachpela resembles the Western Wall of the Temple Mount (Wailing Wall) in Jerusalem.
Initially, the building was, in all likelihood, without a roof. During the Byzantine era, the southern end of the building was turned into a church, consecrated in honor of Patriarch Abraham. This did not affect the ability of Jews to visit this shrine. Christians entered through one gate, Jews through another. In the VI century. according to R.H. galleries were built on all four sides. Having conquered Palestine, the Arabs entrusted the Jews, in gratitude for their support, with the supervision of the cave. The overseer of the shrine received the title "servant of the fathers of the world."
During the period of the Arab conquest, Hebron was renamed Masjid Ibrahim (Mosque of Abraham). Muslims to this day revere the Machpela Cave not only as the tomb of Abraham, but also as the place over which the prophet Muhammad flew during his journey to heaven. According to Arabic legend, when the Prophet Muhammad was flying on a horse to Jerusalem, over Hebron he heard the voice of the archangel Jabril (Gabriel): "Come down and pray, for here is the tomb of your father Abraham."
Cenotaph over the grave of Patriarch Abraham In the ninth century according to R.H. the building of the cenotaph of Joseph (according to the Muslim tradition, Joseph the Beautiful, whose body was taken out of Egypt during the Exodus, was also buried in the Cave of the Forefathers) blocked the central entrance, and later it was cut from the eastern side of the wall. The time of the existing structure dates back to 1118-1131. according to R.H. (reign of Baldwin II).
Some records of pilgrims who visited Hebron in the early Middle Ages have survived to this day. Here, for example, is what the Jewish pilgrim Benjamin of Tudella recorded in 1173: “And in the valley there is an elevation called Abraham. The Gentiles erected six tombs there, naming them after Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob and Leah, and they tell the erring that these are the tombs of the forefathers. If a Jew pays an Ismaili watchman, he will open the iron gate to the cave for him. From there you need to go down with a candle in your hand to the third cave, where there are six graves. On one side are the graves of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and opposite the graves of Sarah, Rebekah and Leah.
Petahya from Regensburg, as well as Yaakov ben Nathaniel Cohen testify that for the "baksheesh" it was possible to penetrate into the very burial vault of the forefathers. Thanks to the records of pilgrims, it can be concluded that the burial crypt of the forefathers was a double cave connected by a passage, it is possible that there is another, inner cave.
But in 1267, the Mamluk sultan Baibars I forbade Christians and Jews from entering the prayer halls of Mearat ha-Makhpela, although Jews were allowed to climb five, and later seven steps along the outer side of the eastern wall and lower notes with requests to God into the hole in the wall near the fourth step. This hole, passing through the entire thickness of the wall of 2.25 m and leading into the caves under the floor of the building, was first mentioned in 1521 and, apparently, was made at the request of the Jews of Hebron upon payment of a significant amount.
The decree of Sultan Baybars I on the ban on visits by infidels-non-Orthodox Mearat Ha-Makhpela was observed until the 20th century. Although there were exceptions, in 1862, due to the specific relations between Turkey and Great Britain, the Ottoman authorities of Hebron allowed Prince Edward of Wales to visit the cave of Machpela, who had the personal permission of Sultan Abdulazis I himself. Thus, he became the first Christian who six centuries later (since 1267) was able to get to Mearat ha-Machpelah.
Cenotaph over Rebekah's Tomb Only in 1967, after the Six-Day War, the access of the heterodox (Jews and Christians) was officially reopened after a 700-year break. Today, the territory of the monument is run by the Muslim community, but part of the complex functions as a synagogue.
The burial crypt of the biblical patriarchs itself has been surrounded by riddles since archaic times. The stories and legends that began to take shape around the cave of the forefathers in Hebron are permeated with mysticism and mystery.
So, in one of the stories it is reported that after the fall of the First Temple in Jerusalem, the Lord sent the prophet Jeremiah to Hebron to the grave of the forefathers with news of what had happened, and then, having learned about the fall of the Temple, the forefathers tore their clothes and wept bitterly.
In 1643, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire visited Mahpelu. While inspecting the mosque, the sultan accidentally dropped his saber into a hole in the floor, through which it fell into the burial grotto of the patriarchs. By order of the Sultan, several servants were lowered on ropes for a saber, but all of them were taken out of the cave dead. Local Muslim residents, even under pain of death, refused to go down into the grotto. Then one of the Sultan's advisers advised him to demand that the Jews get a saber.
Avram Azulai (author of several books, including the most famous "Chesed le Abraham") took on this mission and descended into the cave. There he met Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, and other forefathers, who announced to him that he must leave the earthly world. However, in order to prevent the Sultan's wrath from provoking the persecution of the Jews of Hebron, Abraham Azalai was allowed to be the first person in history to return from the cave of the forefathers. The saber was returned to the Sultan, and a day later Abraham Azulai died.
Geographically, Hebron is included in the so-called "Jerusalem speleorion". This region impresses with its variety of speleoforms. So, the limestones of Ofra are huge karst fields cut by vertical fireplaces up to 50 meters deep, the limestones of Beit Shemesh are developed horizontal caves, the area of Bethlehem and Hebron are whole karst systems, often flooded with underground collectors.
Since ancient times, the caves in this area have been used by man as warehouses, housing, livestock pens, workshops, etc. Today, at the corner of the majestic Mearat ha-Machpela, you can see a classic karst sinkhole with a diameter of 6 meters and a depth of 5 meters. The bottom of the sinkhole is cemented, and the guides, when asked what kind of deepening it is, have been answering for several decades that it is a “pool”. In fact, according to the geological map, this is an exposed fragment of the fault, which, 30 km to the east, ends with an active stream flowing into the Dead Sea.
After Hebron was captured by the Israel Defense Forces on June 8, 1967 during the Six-Day War and non-Muslims were again allowed to enter the building above the burial vault of the patriarchs, many speculated that attempts to enter the burial chamber through a narrow opening in the floor of the mosque (which, when - the saber of the Sultan fell). The diameter of the opening did not exceed 30 cm.
Moshe Dayan (ex-Minister of Defense of Israel) narrates about the first visit to the burial vault after a 700-year break in his book “Living with the Bible”: not afraid not only of spirits and demons, the existence of which has not been proven, but also of snakes and scorpions, which are a very real danger. ... Having descended into the cave with a flashlight and a camera, she took photographs and sketches of what she saw with a pencil. It turned out that there are tombstones in the dungeon, Arabic inscriptions of the 10th century. according to R.Kh., niches, steps that lead upstairs, although the entrance is sealed up, moreover, no traces of the door were visible in the photographs.
Michal herself later described her speleological expedition:
“On Wednesday, October 9, 1968, my mother asked me if I would agree to go down into the dungeon under Mearat ha-Machpelah. …
The car started, and soon we were in Hebron ... I got out of the car, and we went to the mosque. I saw an opening through which I had to go down. They measured it, its diameter was 28 cm. They tied me with ropes, gave me a lantern and matches (to determine the composition of the air below) and began to descend. I landed on a pile of papers and paper money. I ended up in a square room. Opposite me were three headstones, the middle one taller and more ornate than the other two. There was a small square opening in the wall opposite. At the top, the rope was loosened a little, I climbed through it and found myself in a low, narrow corridor, the walls of which were carved into the rock. The corridor was in the shape of a rectangular box. At the end of it there was a staircase, and its steps rested against a sealed wall ... I measured out the narrow corridor with steps: it was 34 steps. When descending, I counted 16 steps, and when ascending, only fifteen. I went up and down five times, but the result was the same. Each step was 25 cm high. I climbed the steps for the sixth time and knocked on the ceiling. There was an answering knock. Came back. They gave me a camera, and I went down again and photographed the square room, gravestones, corridor and stairs. She got up again, took a pencil and paper and went down again and made sketches. She measured the room in steps: six by five. The width of each tombstone was equal to one step and the distance between the tombstones was also one step. The width of the corridor was one step, and its height was about one meter.
They pulled me out. While climbing, I dropped the flashlight. I had to go down and up again. Michal".
In addition to this description of the burial crypt under Mearat ha-Machpelah, there is simply no more detailed one. Thanks to this modest description, we, at least approximately, will be able to imagine the interior of the burial grotto of the patriarchs.
Today, the opening through which Michal descended into the crypt is closed with a stone slab, no one else descended into the dungeon, this is closely monitored by the mosque guards and the Israeli police. The only hole in the grotto that is open is the hole located under the canopy on four pillars, into which, according to Muslim custom, an unquenchable lamp is lowered. The flickering of a burning lamp can be seen by looking inside the hole. The light of the lamp is intended to remind all visitors of Mearat ha-Machpel about the light of the Garden of Eden, which, according to legend, the forefather Adam saw here.
Canopy over Adam's tomb Controversy over the burial place of the forefather Adam
The early Christian tradition about the burial of Adam, as we indicated above, is associated with an elevation outside the Jerusalem fortress wall, where the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified. This place was called Mount Golgotha. Origen wrote about this, saying that “on the Place of the Skull, where the Jews crucified Christ, the body of Adam rested, and the shed blood of the Savior washed the bones of Adam, reviving the whole human race in his face.”
In the IV century. according to R.H. this tradition has become almost universally accepted. In Pseudo-Athanasius we can read that Christ suffered in the place "where, as the Jewish teachers say, was the tomb of Adam." St. Epiphanius in Panarion even pointed out that the skull of Adam was indeed found on Golgotha. The same tradition was carried on by St. Basil the Great and St. John Chrysostom and many other Fathers of the Church.
In the Gospel, the Lord often calls Himself the Son of Man, which in Hebrew sounds like בֵן-אָדָם "Ben Adam" - "Son of Adam". The Church develops the doctrine of Christ as a typological correspondence to the first man. The Apostle Paul speaks of Christ as a "new", "second" Adam. “The first Adam was created by a living soul,” wrote St. Ambrose of Milan, the second is the life-giving Spirit. This second Adam is the Christ.” The Lord Jesus Christ was comprehended in the patristic teaching as a kind of antitype of Adam. If the biblical forefather fell into original sin and doomed mankind to death, then Christ, the second Adam, cleansed people from sin and delivered them from death.
The typological rapprochement between Christ and the forefather Adam led to a rapprochement, as well as the identification of the holy places associated with them. In parallel, two traditions began to exist, each of which claimed that the biblical forefather Adam was buried, according to one version, in Hebron, and according to another, in Jerusalem on Mount Golgotha. Not only that, bliss. Jerome of Stridon, in his commentary on Ephesians 5:14, even expressed doubt that Adam's tomb was at the site of Christ's crucifixion. Other church writers were equally critical of this version. The English pilgrim Zewulf, who visited Jerusalem during the era of the Crusaders, as well as John of Würzburg, who described the holy places of Palestine, who were undoubtedly familiar with the tradition of venerating Golgotha as the tomb of Adam, nevertheless claimed that Adam was buried in Hebron.
How to reconcile these two traditions that have the right to exist? Light is shed by the apocryphal manuscript "The Cave of Treasures", dated to the 7th century BC. according to AD, written in Syriac. This manuscript tells that the patriarch Noah saved the remains of Adam and Eve from the flood and after the completion of the flood they were again buried in Hebron. Patriarch Noah bequeathed only the skull and two bones to Shem, his son, to be buried in Jerusalem, where, according to the archaic idea, the center of the earth was located.
It should be noted that the Talmudic sources identify the son of Noah Shem and Melchizedek, king of Salem, arguing that this is one and the same person (in the original language מלכי-צדק "Malki-Tzedek" means "my righteous king" or "king of righteousness", which according to some exegetes, cannot be a proper name). Well, if we compare the years of the life of Shem and Abraham, we can see that Shem really could live in the time of Abraham, which allowed their legendary meeting to take place after Abraham's victory over the coalition of monarchs of Mesopotamia.
And this fact allows for the hypothesis that Sim personally confirmed to Abraham, on the one hand, the return of the remains of Adam and Eve to the burial grotto of Machpel after the Flood, and on the other hand, the transfer, according to the will of the father, Patriarch Noah, of the head and two bones to ancient Salem ( Jerusalem), where he himself settled after the Flood and was "a priest of the Most High God (Gen. 14:18)".
Thus, the ancient name of the mountain "Golgotha" is also explained, which in Hebrew sounds like "Gulgolet" (גוּלגוֹלֶת), which translates as "skull". Consequently, the two traditions do not contradict one another - being buried in Hebron, the head of the forefather Adam was transferred to Jerusalem and buried in the ground at the place where the Lord Jesus Christ would later be crucified, whose Blood, falling on the remains of the biblical forefather, would wash away original sin.
In fact, this little-known Syrian apocrypha explains where the icon-painting tradition of the Orthodox Church adopted the image of the skull and bones at the base of the Calvary Cross.
Adam's chapel. Cleft under Golgotha. Church of the Resurrection Today, in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, in the aisle of the Crucifixion in the rock, you can see a crevice (a consequence of the earthquake that accompanied the death of the Savior), through which the Blood of the Son of God, according to Tradition, having fallen on the skull of the forefather Adam, washed away the sin of the first person. It was here, back in the time of the Crusaders, in the Church of the Resurrection that a chapel-chapel was consecrated in honor of the forefather Adam.
