Adam and Eve–Early Biblical Interpretation

Shalom to all,

We will be starting a 3 part study group on the story of Adam and Eve, just like the study group we did on the creation of the world in December.

The story of Adam and Eve and their life in the Garden of Eden fascinated the Bible’s earliest interpreters, since it seemed to concern the very nature of the human species. 

It will not take too many evenings of your time—3 Wednesdays and that is it! Feb 20, 27 and March 6 

 Prompt starting and ending — 730-930 PM

The group will meet at the rabbi’s townhouse in Norbrook. Light refreshments will be offered.

We will be using James Kugel’s Traditions of the Bible ebook. Please bring a laptop or tablet with the ebook already downloaded. If you do not have the ebook, just let the rabbi know when you register and he will send it to you. (You can print out the section instead but it is many pages and will kill too many trees.)

Registration required. Free for members.

Commitment to attend all 3 sessions.

This biblical story was probably written about more than any other. Not coincidentally, readers today are likely to have great difficulty looking at this story “without blinders.” For the importance of this episode to the Bible’s ancient interpreters has given their interpretations of it a unique staying power.

Who nowadays, for example, does not automatically think of the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden as telling about some fundamental change that took place in the human condition, or what is commonly called the Fall of Man? And who does not think of the “serpent” in the story as the devil, or paradise as the reward of the righteous after death? Yet a careful reading of the Bible itself shows that none of these things is said explicitly by the text-they are all a matter of interpretation.