Eve and Adam

A reader on the 2,000-year-old debate about the meaning of the story of Adam and Eve.

"The editors have performed a great service in making widely available a documentary history of the interpretation of the Eve and Adam story." —Publishers Weekly

"This fascinating volume examines Genesis 1-3 and the different ways that Jewish, Christian, and Muslim interpreters have used these passages to define and enforce gender roles. . . . a 'must' . . . " —Choice

"Wonderful! A marvelous introduction to the ways in which the three major Western religious traditions are both like, and unlike one another." —Ellen Umansky, Fairfield University

No other text has affected women in the western world as much as the story of Eve and Adam. This remarkable anthology surveys more than 2,000 years of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim commentary and debate on the biblical story that continues to raise fundamental questions about what it means to be a man or to be a woman. The selections range widely from early postbiblical interpretations in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha to the Qur'an, from Thomas Aquinas to medieval Jewish commentaries, from Christian texts to 19th-century antebellum slavery writings, and on to pieces written especially for this volume.