A critical analysis and comparative study of the Book of Genesis – Part IV

Dr Abdur Rahman Bhutta, Germany

Section 4: The real story of Adam^as and Eve

Before we review the above-mentioned Biblical story and try to find out its real import and interpretation, let us remind ourselves that these traditions of Genesis, as we have them today, were compiled and composed by the scribes of Israel, after their return from exile in 3^rd or 4^th centuries BC. In the centuries before their final composition, there have been additions and modifications in these traditions as established by modern Biblical research scholars. We, therefore, will have to take into consideration the basic features of the story and ignore the above-cited funny details introduced into it.

The story of Adam^as and Eve is also narrated in the Holy Quran, and we will be keeping in mind the Quranic version too, hoping that it will help us understand the true features of the story. At the end of this section, the ‘Arabian aspect’ of Adam’s^as story will also be presented in the light of historical evidence, Biblical references, and Islamic traditions.

 (4a) Adam^as and his garden

Adam^as was a rich and righteous man who owned a piece of land near Iraq in Mesopotamia. He had developed the land into an estate called the “Garden of Eden.” (Five Volume Commentary of the Holy Quran, Surah al-A‘raf, Ch.7: V.12)

As God blessed his efforts and appointed him as His Prophet, he started working for the social welfare and moral uplift of the people in the area around him. He taught them the basics of the language and agriculture; and encouraged them to cover themselves, live in communities, and help each other in various social and moral fields. Many good people, mostly youth, joined him and they began to teach and preach their new social order among the other tribes around them. (Tafsir-e-Kabir by Hazrat Mirza Bashir-ud-Din Mahmud Ahmad, Vol. 7, ed. 1986, Surah an-Naml, Ch, 27, V. 4, p. 332)

But a certain wild and wicked tribe did not like the reformatory activities of Adam^as and it turned against him. They started planning to overthrow his estate and destroy his plans to reform the community. God revealed to Adam^as the evil designs of those people and warned him “not to go near that tree (i.e., tribe).” (The tree means tribe, as we have the ‘family tree’). “Otherwise,” said God, “you will harm yourself” (Bible, “you will die”). As advised by God, Adam^as avoided contact with those mischief-mongers and continued with his mission successfully.

His enemies, however, continued to think of how to revive their relationship with Adam^as and his community in order to carry out their sinister plan against them. Soon they struck out a plan. They decided to approach Adam^as as his sincere friends and followers and try to convince him of their sincerity and get him to relax the ban that he had put on the mutual relationship. One day the chief of that devilish tribe went to see Adam^as and assured him that he and his people have now had a change of heart and that they extend to him a ‘friendly’ hand of cooperation.

That ‘devil’ argued that it would be in the interest of all of them that they should resume their mutual relations. (The Bible says that he talked to the wife first and convinced her before Adam^as was involved. Using a wife to convince a husband is quite understandable. Maybe that tribe was his wife’s maiden tribe.). According to the Holy Quran, that the devil swore to them that he was their well-wisher and a sincere adviser. He assured them that if they joined together, their mission would receive a big boost, ‘their eyes would open’ in surprise, and they would ‘live forever’.  (Five Volume Commentary of the Holy Quran, Surah al-A‘raf, Ch.7: V.21-22 and Surah Taha Ch.20: V.121-122)

(4b) Adam^as deceived

Seeing that the circumstances had changed and the grounds for the ban on mutual contact were no longer valid, Adam^as agreed to resume the mutual relationship. He had fallen into the trap laid by his enemies, and the result was disastrous. (He had gone near the ‘forbidden tree’). The people of that tribe (tree) caused serious disruption and disorder in the divine community of Adam^as and caused his downfall. (Like a serpent hidden in the grass, the devil had bitten him hidden in the guise of a friend.)

Ordinarily, simple and innocent people get very upset at even the slightest lapse on their part; and here a noble man of Adam’s^as spiritual calibre had been made to disregard a specific divine commandment, resulting in a great loss to himself and to his community. Although he and his wife had been the victims of  deception and they had not acted deliberately, nevertheless they had forgotten to keep a divine command, and their spiritual relationship with their Creator was disturbed. They, therefore, were naturally very worried and distressed.

Their “eyes opened” when they realised to their dismay that, despite all their piety and virtues, they were still only weak and vulnerable humans. Overwhelmed by their guilty conscience, Adam^as and Eve felt so ashamed of themselves as if all their garments of righteousness and innocence had been torn away from them, and they stood ‘naked’ before their Creator, afraid to face Him. They wished desperately to hide themselves somewhere if they could. (Ibid.)

(4c) Adam^as taken to task

Their Creator saw the mistake that they had made and how they were now suffering for it. He said to them, “Did I not forbid you that tree and tell you: verily, Satan is to you an open foe?” They showed their remorse and repented, but that was not enough. God asked them to beg His pardon in these words:

“They said, ‘Our Lord, we have wronged ourselves; and if Thou forgive us not and have not mercy on us, we shall surely be of the lost.’”. (Surah al-A‘raf, Ch.7: V.23-24)

They begged God’s pardon, and their prayer was accepted, and thus the spiritual damage was repaired, but the physical and social damage suffered by them was still there. To repair that damage and to save them from further harm, God warned them that there were enemies around in that area and that they and their members, therefore, should leave that place and migrate to another safer land. (Five Volume Commentary of the Holy Quran, Surah al-A‘raf, Ch.7: V.22-25 and Surah Taha Ch.20: V.122-124)

(4d) The damage repaired

The Bible says that Adam and Eve covered their nakedness with the ‘leaves of fig tree’. In the Quran, it is mentioned that they used ‘leaves of the garden’ to cover themselves. In the language of the visions, ‘the leaves’ mean, among other things, the ‘noble progeny’ and ‘righteous youth’ of a community. [Dreams and Their Meanings in the Old Arab Tradition by Yehia Gouda, Vantage Press, 2006, p. 304] So in these symbolic words, it is said that, in order to cover their weaknesses and to repair the damage done to the community, Adam^as rallied around him noble youngmen of the community, trained and organised them, and thus rebuilt the social structure and physical strength of the society. (Ibid.)

Of course, in their new homeland, he and his people had to work really hard. As the Bible puts it “in the sweat of their face,” they had to remove “thorns and thistles” of that foreign land so as to settle there and to cultivate it “to grow the plants of the field and eat their bread.” However, despite all the hardships and opposition, they were eventually able to achieve their mission of reforming and improving the community.

(4e) Where did Adam^as migrate to?

Before we proceed further with the Biblical account of Adam and his ‘sin’, let us try to find out where Adam^as could have migrated to, after his so-called ‘fall’ in the Garden of Eden. In the history of Arabia and in some Islamic traditions, we have many strong clues on this issue. The knowledge gained in this respect will also help us understand the other difficult situations that we might encounter as we go further in our study of Genesis.

 (4e-i) Adam^as in Arabia

Some Islamic traditions mention Adam^as to have lived in Arabia where he is said to have built the ‘Ka‘bah’ which has been a holy place for the Arabs throughout their known history. Even some non-Muslim scholars have admitted that “the Ka‘bah has been held sacred from the time immemorial” and that “[…] the tradition represents the Ka‘bah as from the time immemorial the scene of pilgrimage from all quarters of Arabia. So extensive a homage must have had its beginning in an extremely remote age”. (Diodorus Siculus and William Muir, as cited in the Five Volume Commentary of the Holy Quran, Surah al-Hajj, Ch.22: V.30)

The Holy Quran confirms these observations about the Ka‘bah by calling it “the first House founded for mankind is that at Becca” (Surah Aal-e-Imran, Ch.3: V.97), a very “Ancient House” (Surah Al-Haj, Ch,22: V.30,34); and “Allah has made the Ka‘bah, the inviolable House, as a means of support and uplift for mankind,” (Surah Al-Ma’idah, Ch.5: V.98). Now, if not a holy man like Adam^as, who else could have thought of making a house for Allah in that “extremely remote age” when our civilisation had not even dawned?.

The traditions have it that Adam^as and Eve lived there with their children and were buried there near Ka‘bah. (Encyclopaedia of Islam, under ‘Adam’ by Tottoli Roberto) It appears that after the ‘mishap’ in the ‘garden of Eden’, Adam^as was advised by God to migrate with his family and followers to the western part of the Arabian Peninsula known as the ‘Hijaz’ and settle there along the coast of the Red Sea. They gradually multiplied and developed into various tribes which spread over a large part of the Arabian peninsula. Over the centuries, however, most of these ‘original inhabitants of Arabia’ vanished from the face of the earth for various reasons and came to be called the “Perishing Arabs” (Al-Arab al-Ba’ida). (Sirat Khatam an-Nabiyyin^sa by Hazrat Mirza Bashir Ahmad^ra, under ‘[Arabia and its] Inhabitants’)

 (4e-ii) Noah^as and his sons in Arabia

Some of the surviving tribes of Adam’s^as progeny multiplied further and spread in the southwestern part of Arabia till the area became overpopulated. They, therefore, had to move gradually northward along the coast of the Red Sea, and entering the Fertile Crescent, they populated Mesopotamia and the areas around it.

More than a thousand years later, when Noah’s^as flood occurred in that area, Noah^as, the ‘second Adam’, too migrated with his family and followers down to the same southwestern area of Arabia of the  Hijaz where the Ka‘bah was. According to South Arabian tradition, Shem, the son of Noah, founded Ma‘rib, the capital of Yemen which was located near Sana‘a which is now the modern capital of Yemen. (Five Volume Commentary of the Holy Quran, Surah al-Baqarah, Ch. 2, V. 128 and Surah al-Hajj, Ch.22: V.30)

How, after the Flood, the tribes springing from Shem and Ham (the sons of Noah) migrated to, and spread over all the Arabian Peninsula, is described by a Biblical dictionary/commentary as follows:

“[…] Arabia eventually became the home of many of the post-Flood families listed in Genesis chapter ten. In the Semitic branch, Joktan (Arabic ‘Qahtan’) fathered the heads of some thirteen different Arabian tribes; while three of Aram’s descendants, Uz, Gether and Mash appear to have settled in the North of Arabia and Syrian desert […] From the Hamitic branch several descendants of Cush, including Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah and his sons Sheba, Dedan and Sebteca seem to have occupied mainly the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula – Gen.10:7”. (Aid to Bible Understanding by Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, New York, USA, ed.1971, under ‘Arabia’)

Since most of these early Arabian tribes were descendants of Joktan (Qahtan), the 3rd grandson of Shem (the son of Noah), these Arabian tribes have been termed as ‘Qahtanite’ (or ‘Qahtani Arabs’). Historically they are now regarded as the ‘Original inhabitants of Arabia’ (Arab-e-arba). (Sirat Khatam an-Nabiyyin^sa by Hazrat Mirza Bashir Ahmad^ra, under ‘[Arabia and its] Inhabitants’)

(4e-iii) Abraham’s^as son and grandsons in Arabia

To complete the genealogy of the Arabs, it may be mentioned here that almost a thousand years after Noah’s^as progeny had populated the Arabian Peninsula, a similar repopulation of the Peninsula took place through the progeny of Abraham^as, another Prophet of God. Abraham^as took his family and traveled all the way from the land of Canaan to the land of Hijaz in western Arabia and settled there near the Ka‘bah, the Sacred House of Allah (Surah Ibrahim, Ch.14: V.38). This time the family consisted of only two persons: Hagar, the wife of Abraham^as, and Ishmael^as, his firstborn.

Ishmael^as grew up, married, and had twelve sons who fathered twelve tribes that spread over most of the Arabian Peninsula and came to be called ‘Al-Arab Al-Musta‘rabah’ (Immigrant Arabs or Arabicised Arabs). After the name of ‘Adnan’, a famous grandson of Ishmael, these Arabs are also called ‘Adnani Arabs’ or ‘Adnanites’ as against ‘Qahtani Arabs’ or ‘Qahtanites’ who are the descendants of Noah^as through ‘Qahtan’ (Joktan) and are regarded as the ‘original Arabs’ as already mentioned. (Ibid.)

The same Biblical dictionary/commentary mentions the spread of the descendants of Ishmael^as in Arabia as follows:

“ISHMAELITE: A descendant of Ishmael, the firstborn of Abraham by Hagar, the Egyptian handmaid of Sarah (Gen.16: 1-4, 11). Ishmael, in turn, married an Egyptian by whom he had twelve sons (Nebaioth, Kedar, Abdeel, Mibsam, Mishma, Dumah, Massa, Hadad, Tema, Jetur, Naphish, and Kedemah), the chieftains of various Ishmaelite clans. (Gen. 21:21; 25:13-16) […] As God had promised, the Ishmaelites grew to become ‘a great nation’ that ‘could not be numbered for multitude’. (Gen.17:20; 16:10).

But instead of settling down (they built only a few cities), they preferred the nomadic way of life. Ishmael^as himself was “a Zebra of a man”, that is, a restless wanderer who roamed the Wilderness of Paran and lived by his bow and arrows. His descendants were likewise tent dwelling bedouins for the most part, a people who ranged over the Sinai Peninsula from ‘in front of Egypt’, that is to the East of Egypt and across North Arabia as far as Assyria”. (Aid to Bible Understanding by Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, New York, USA, ed.1971, under ‘Ishmaelite’)

(4f) Arabia, a ‘reservoir’ for the human population

How from the very early times the Arabian Peninsula has been instrumental in populating our earth at large, is summed up by a well known historian as follows:

“The surface of Arabia is mostly desert with a narrow margin of habitable land around the periphery. The sea encircles this periphery. When the population increases beyond the capacity of the land to support it, the surplus must seek elbow room. But this surplus cannot expand inwards because of the desert, nor outward on account of the sea, a barrier which in those days was well-nigh impassable. The overpopulation would then find one route open before it on the western coast of the peninsula leading northward and forking at the Sinaitic peninsula to the fertile valley of Nile”. (History of the Arabs From the Earliest Times to the Present by Philip K. Hitti, ed.7, 1960, Ch.1, p. 10)

It has been mentioned already that the Prophets Adam^as, Noah^as and Abraham^as had appeared more or less a thousand years apart from each other; and that their generations having populated the Arabian Peninsula, migrated northwards along the coast of the Red Sea, into the Fertile Crescent and spread over the surrounding areas. Referring to this cycle of human influx, the same historian writes:

“A comparative examination of the dates quoted above, suggested to certain Semitists the notion that in recurrent cycles of approximately one thousand years Arabia, like a mighty reservoir, became populated to the point where overflow was inevitable. These same scholars would speak of the migrations in the terms of “waves” Accepting Arabia – Najad or Al-Yaman – as the homeland and the distributing centre of the Semitic peoples does not preclude the possibility of their having once before at a very early date, constituted with another member of the white race, the Hamites, one community somewhere in eastern Africa. It was from this community that those who were later termed ‘Semites’ crossed over into the Arabian peninsula, possibly at Ba’b-al-Mandab. This would make Africa the probable Semito-Hamitic home; and Arabia the cradle of the Semitic people and the centre of their distribution. The Fertile Crescent was the scene of their civilization”. (Ibid., Ch. 1,  p. 13)

 (4f-i) The Arabs and the science of genealogy

One of many peculiarities of Arabs, has been their keen interest and pride in their ancestry and genealogy; and it would be  interesting and useful to read some details in this respect from the same renowned historian. He writes:

“In the purity of his blood, his eloquence and poetry, his sword and horse, and above all in his noble ancestry (nasab), the Arabian take infinite pride. He is excessively fond of prodigious genealogies and often traces his lineage back to Adam. No people other than the Arabians, have ever raised genealogy to the dignity of science. […]

“The memory and consciousness of this national distinction among the Arabs is reflected in their own traditional genealogies. They divide themselves first into two groups: extinct (ba’idah) including Thamud, ‘Ad – both of koranic fame – Tasim and Jadi’s; and surviving (baqiyah) […]

“Next, the genealogists proceed to subdivide the surviving Arabians into two ethnic stocks: Arabian Arabs (Aribah) and Arabicized Arabs (Mustaribah). The ‘Aribah’, according to them are ‘Yamanites’, descended from Qahtan (the Joktan of the Old Testament) and constitute the aboriginal stock; the ‘musta‘ribah’ are the Hijazis, Najdis, Nabataeans and Palmyrenes, all descended from ‘Adnan’, an offspring of Ishmael and ‘naturalised’ in the land”. (Ibid. Ch. 3 and 4, p. 28, 30-32)

(4f-ii) The Arabian peninsula, once a green and grassy land

The Arabian Peninsula is largely a dry, barren desert land but it was not so in earlier times. We are told that:

“In earlier times the Atlantic westerlies, which now water the highlands of Syria – Palestine, must have reached Arabia undrained, and during a part of the Ice Age, these same desert lands must have been pre-eminently habitable grasslands. Since the ice sheet never extended south of the great mountains in Asia Minor, Arabia was never made uninhabitable by glaciation. Its deep, dry wadi beds still bear witness to the erosive power of the rain-water that once flowed through them”. (Ibid., Ch. 2, p. 14)

So we see that in early times Arabia was a green and grassy land; and was capable of sustaining primitive humans. Adam^as and his progeny could have lived and flourished here before some of their tribes migrated North and spread far and wide in Mesopotamia where centuries later Noah^as was sent to guide and reform them.

In the light of historical, Biblical, as well as Islamic traditions, we have discovered a very important ‘Arabian background’ to the story of Adam^as; and have also found out that Arabia in fact has been “a reservoir and the distribution centre” of the ancient people which we shall be dealing with, in our study of Genesis.

Next, we will go further to examine the story of “Adam and his sin” as narrated in Genesis and preached in Judeo-Christian theology.