Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan

The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan is a Christian extracanonical work found in Ge'ez, translated from an Arabic original.

It does not form part of the canon of any known church, but is a late part of the broad family of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha literature which includes the Life of Adam and Eve, Apocalypse of Adam, Testament of Adam and Books of Adam. It does not make any claims as to its authorship, and thus is technically not pseudepigrapha, a word meaning "falsely ascribed to an author who did not actually write it."

Editions and translations

It was first translated from the Ge'ez Ethiopic version into German by August Dillmann.[1] It was first translated into English by S. C. Malan[2] from the German of Ernest Trumpp. The first half of Malan's translation is included as the "First Book of Adam and Eve" and the "Second Book of Adam and Eve" in The Lost Books of the Bible and the Forgotten Books of Eden. The books mentioned below were added by Malan to his English translation; the Ethiopic is divided into sections of varying length, each dealing with a different subject.

Content

Books 1 and 2 begin immediately after the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, and end with the testament and translation of Enoch. Great emphasis is placed in Book 1 on Adam's sorrow and helplessness in the world outside the garden.

In Book 2, the "sons of God" who appear in Genesis 6:2 are identified as the children of Seth, and the "daughters of men" as women descended from Cain, who successfully tempt most of the Sethites to come down from their mountain and join the Cainites in the valley below, under the instigation of Genun, son of Lamech. This Genun, as the inventor of musical instruments, seems to correspond to the Biblical Jubal; however he also invents weapons of war. The Cainites, descended from Cain the first murderer, are described as exceedingly wicked, being prone to commit murder and incest. After seducing the Sethites, their offspring become the Nephilim, the "mighty men" of Gen. 6 who are all destroyed in the deluge, as also detailed in other works such as I Enoch and Jubilees.

Books 3 and 4 continue with the lives of Noah, Shem, Melchizedek, etc. through to the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in AD 70. The genealogy from Adam to Jesus is given, as in the Gospels, but including also the names of the wives of each of Jesus' ancestors, which is extremely rare.

Textual origin

The Cave of Treasures is a Syriac work containing many of the same legends; indeed, as Malan remarks, a whole body of stories expanding upon the Old Testament is found in the Talmud, in the Koran, and in other late antique texts.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Dillmann, A. (1853). Das christliche Adambuch des Morgenlandes. Göttingen: Dieterich. OCLC 230747084
  2. ↑ Malan, S. C. (1882). The Book of Adam and Eve: Also called the conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan, a book of the early Eastern Church. London, Williams and Norgate; repr. Kiesinger 2003, Gorgias Press 2010.

The First Book of Adam and Eve and the Second Book of Adam and Eve, Malan's translation as modernized by Dennis Hawkins:

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