Review by New York Times Review
STEPHEN GREENBLATT FOLLOWS Adam and Eve through a long arc of Western history. He begins at the beginning, with paleoanthropology, then moves on to the Babylonian epics, which influenced the early chapters of Genesis, and on to a sketch of the life of St. Augustine. From there, he arrives at the Renaissance and its depictions of the first and perfect man and woman, then Milton, of course, the age of discovery and the rationalist rejection of Adamic creation, which was a rejection as well of the belief that, as St. Augustine said, "God willed to create all men out of one, in order that they might be held in their society not only by likeness of kind, but also by bond of kindred." Europeans found that the great world teemed with people toward whom they felt little likeness and less kindred. Then Darwin emerged, upending everything all over again. And Greenblatt finally lands in his last pages at a fairly disheartening account of mating among the chimpanzees. This is the march of progress, tinged with melancholy, as always. There is, however, a complicating factor here, having to do with the question of truth. Greenblatt, an English professor at Harvard University and author of the National Book Award-winning "The Swerve," frames his inquiry in terms of truth or fiction. For him truth means plausibility, and by that measure the story of Adam and Eve is no more than a miracle of storytelling. But science tells us that Homo sapiens does indeed roughly share a single lineage, in some sense a common origin, just as ancient Genesis says it does. In the Hebrew Bible the word adam often means all humankind, mortals. Greenblatt never seems to consider why the myth might have felt so true to those who found their religious and humanist values affirmed by it - and their own deepest intuitions, which science has partly borne out. It is interesting that those who claim to defend the creation narrative from rationalist critiques ignore the fact that its deepest moral implications, a profound human bond and likeness, have been scientifically demonstrated. Greenblatt writes that the Genesis narratives of the Creation and Flood were written in contradistinction to the Babylonian narratives they resemble, to assert and preserve Hebrew religious culture. The changes made are profound. In the "Enuma Elish," the Mesopotamian origin story, warfare among the gods ends in penal servitude for the losing side. They weary of the drudgery, so, as an act of conciliation, humans are created to toil in their place. A goddess fashions them of clay, seven male and seven female, all nameless. Compare this to the solicitude the Lord shows his Adam and Eve, their freedom even to disobey and the absolute importance of their choice, dire as it is. The Genesis text grants the difficulties of human life and at the same time evokes an essential dignity, beauty and autonomy. These ancient narratives, even in their differences, are part of a genre whose insight and power are no doubt beyond the full understanding of our modern minds. They generally agree that people came late into the world, and that the world had a beginning. Accustomed as we are to knowing these things, we forget that neither is obvious. In any case, it is a tendentious reading of any ancient text that would apply modern standards of plausibility to myth. Flavius Josephus, in his "Antiquities of the Jews," written in the first century A.D., says of the second of Genesis's two creation narratives, "Moses, after the seventh day was over [that is, in the creation of Adam and Eve], begins to talk philosophically." His 18th-century editor, William Whiston, notes that, according to Josephus, "Moses wrote some things enigmatically, some allegorically, and the rest in plain words," and therefore it is possible that Josephus understood the entire story of human creation "in some enigmatical, or allegorical or philosophical sense." The first-century Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria made a straightforward translation for his Hellenized readers - in the creation of Eve, "Moses is describing nothing else on this occasion except the formation of the external sense, according to energy and according to reason." These commentaries are late on the time scale, but they show just how differently meaning can be found in texts, and therefore how differently meaning can be invested in them. With all due respect to the Enlightenment, rationalist worry about who Cain's wife could have been is naive. Greenblatt respects his subject, and still he assumes that the rationalist reading offers up the true meaning of the story. Greenblatt imposes this kind of reasoning on John Milton, no less. He writes that Milton "was convinced that everything had to spring from and return to the literal truth of the Bible's words. In the absence of that truth, Milton's Christian faith and all the positions he had taken on the basis of that faith would be robbed of their meaning." There is a special problem with the phrase "literal truth." Milton knew Hebrew. A serious student of Scripture is aware that neither English nor Latin versions can be described as "literal." When Milton's devils can sing so beautifully that their listeners forget they are in hell, when the devil Belial rejects extinction, "for who would lose, / Though full of pain, this intellectual being, / Those thoughts that wander through eternity," the poet may have in mind the Hebrew merism "good and bad," which encompasses both and all that lies between, complicating the stark English binary "good and evil." In any case, precisely his devotion to Scripture would have made his understanding of it nuanced and rich, and not in the least "literal." Milton was a major figure in the English Reformation. Scholars without a specialty in religious history are understandably reluctant to immerse themselves in all the varieties and phases of Christianity, so the pious are often all assumed to be "orthodox," as Greenblatt frequently refers to them. But Milton was among the robust and diverse part of the English population called "dissenters" or "nonconformists." He insisted on the sanctity of the individual's response to Scripture, a freedom of conscience that could never legitimately be coerced, or conformed to any orthodoxy, even willingly. Milton says it is "a general maxim of the Protestant religion" that "he who holds in religion that belief or those opinions which to his conscience and utmost understanding appear with most evidence or probability in the Scripture, though to others he seem erroneous, can no more be justly censured for a heretic than his censurers." An awareness of the religious movement that Milton identified with and championed would have also helped Greenblatt in his parsing of the poet's views on marriage. Rather than being based in hierarchy and submission, dissenters idealized marriage differently, interpreting the creation of Eve in terms like these: "Something was taken from Adam, in order that he might embrace, with greater benevolence, a part of himself. He lost, therefore, one of his ribs; but, instead of it, a far richer reward was granted him, since he obtained a faithful associate of life; for he now saw himself, who had before been imperfect, rendered complete in his wife." This is John Calvin, one of the most widely read theologians in England during Milton's lifetime and highly influential among those Milton calls Protestants. "The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve" is an ambitious attempt at an important cultural history. It is cursory, and, to the degree that its treatment of these influential texts and movements is uninformed, it is not a help in understanding them. MARILYNNE ROBINSON is the author of four novels, including "Gilead," which won the Pulitzer Prize. Her essay collection "The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought" was published in 1998.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 8, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Alive in the painting of van Eyck, the etching of Dürer, and the poetry of Milton, Adam and Eve fascinate Greenblatt, who marvels at how much this primal pair have shaped Western culture. Probing the history of the biblical account of human origins, readers learn how sharply it differs from the Mesopotamian creation myth that Hebrew exiles encountered during their time in Babylon. Unlike the Mesopotamian myth, which depicts Gilgamesh and Enkidu's triumph over adversity, Genesis chronicles the universal human fall consequent to Adam and Eve's partaking of forbidden fruit. Readers see how the shadows of the fallen Adam and Eve persisted in Judeo-Christian theology as well as Western philosophy, art, politics, and sexual ethics. But Greenblatt persuasively argues that Adam and Eve would look different if Origen had persuaded the early church to accept his allegorical understanding of the pair. Instead, Augustine impressed on the Christian mind a sternly literal understanding of Adam and Eve, leaving later believers unprepared for Darwin's scientific explanation of human beginnings. Though not a believer himself, Greenblatt worries that the imaginative and narrative aridity of Darwin's explanation of the first hominids has made it a problematic substitute for the scriptural account of Adam and Eve. An impressively wide-ranging inquiry.--Christensen, Bryce Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this fascinating exploration, Greenblatt (The Swerve), a Harvard humanities professor and Pulitzer-winning author, probes the "beauty, power, and influence" that the Adam and Eve story has held through millennia. Utilizing recent archaeological discoveries, Greenblatt compares the Genesis account, first written as a "counternarrative to the Babylonian creation story" by Hebrews returning to Jerusalem from exile, to both the ancient Gilgamesh legend and long-forgotten alternative narratives recently discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, such as "The Life of Adam and Eve." Greenblatt undertakes an in-depth analysis of key historical figures whose obsession wielded enormous impact on religion and culture: Augustine's insistence on the story's literal truth led to the concept of original sin; Albrecht Dürer's engraving The Fall of Man captured "the sheer unconstrained beauty of... our first parents"; John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost realized them as "flesh-and-blood people." Greenblatt then explores how the European discovery of New World natives, Voltaire's insistence on the story's allegorical nature, and, finally, Darwin's evolutionary theory led to today's widespread acceptance of the story as myth. In a beautiful closing chapter, Greenblatt studies Ugandan chimpanzees for "traces of the Bible story... [in] the actual origins of our species." This is an erudite yet accessible page-turner. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Greenblatt (John Cogan Univ. Professor of the Humanities, Harvard Univ.; The Swerve) explores one of humanity's most extraordinary stories: the biblical account of Adam and Eve. Beginning with its written origins during the Hebrews' exile in Babylon surrounded by competing Mesopotamian creation myths, and continuing through Darwinian evolution, Greenblatt thoughtfully meanders through various understandings of this narrative over time. Two of the most prominent figures in the book are -Augustine, who set Western Christendom on a course away from an allegorical interpretation toward a more strictly literal one, and poet John Milton, whose Paradise Lost was, in many ways, the culmination of Augustine's vision. Ironically, the more real Adam and Eve appeared, the more problematic a literal interpretation became for many readers. In the end, Greenblatt hopes to rescue the story from the misogynistic and sexually oppressive consequences of an Augustinian interpretation and restore its creative and imaginative power as enduring literature. While readers with a special interest in one of the many subfields touched upon may wish for more, Greenblatt has shaped an enjoyable and well-paced narrative that effectively draws from many disciplines. -VERDICT Recommended for readers attentive to deep truths embedded in a good story. [See Prepub Alert, 3/13/17.]- Brian Sullivan, Alfred Univ. Lib., NY © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The Pulitzer and National Book Award winner considers the enduring appeal and manifold interpretations of the biblical account of the first humans' expulsion from paradise."How does something made-up become so compellingly real?" asks Greenblatt (Humanities/Harvard Univ.; The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, 2011, etc.), positioning himself as a secular-minded admirer of a story that religious thinkers for millennia have struggled to fit within a coherent theological framework. The author notes that this tale of humanity's origins was uncomfortably reminiscent for many early Christians of the pagan creation myths they scorned as absurd: the talking snake, the arbitrary deity, all those animals named in one day, etc. Some, like the Alexandrian scholar Origen Adamantius, tried to frame the story as an allegory about the evolution of the soul, but the interpretation that triumphed was that of St. Augustine, who insisted that the story of Adam and Eve was literally true. From that assertion flowed the concept of original sin, the denigration of sex, and the powerful strain of misogyny (it was all Eve's fault) that characterized the Catholic Church for centuries. During the RenaissanceGreenblatt's focus as a scholar and the subject of this book's best pagesartists like Albrecht Drer and writers such as John Milton sought to give the rebellious couple of Genesis a palpable human reality in images and literature, most thrillingly in Milton's great epic Paradise Lost. When Greenblatt moves on to the challenges to belief in the literal truth of the Bible posed by Enlightenment philosophers and 19th-century scientists (culminating with Darwin's The Origin of Species), his narrative speeds up and loses focus. The author seems to be making an argument for the enduring power of stories while decrying fundamentalism, but his point isn't clear, and a final chapter positing a chimpanzee pair in Uganda as a present-day Adam and Eve is simply odd. Many fine passages charged with Greenblatt's passion and talent for storytelling can't disguise the fact that he's not quite sure what story he's trying to tell here. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
