Adam and Eve

74:8.1The story of the cre­ation of Uran­tia in six days was based on the tra­di­tion that Adam and Eve had spent just six days in their ini­tial sur­vey of the Gar­den. This cir­cum­stance lent al­most sa­cred sanc­tion to the time pe­riod of the week, which had been orig­i­nally in­tro­duced by the Dala­ma­tians. Adam’s spend­ing six days in­spect­ing the Gar­den and for­mu­lat­ing pre­lim­i­nary plans for or­ga­ni­za­tion was not pre­ar­ranged; it was worked out from day to day. The choos­ing of the sev­enth day for wor­ship was wholly in­ci­den­tal to the facts here­with nar­rated.

74:8.2The leg­end of the mak­ing of the world in six days was an af­terthought, in fact, more than thirty thou­sand years af­ter­wards. One fea­ture of the nar­ra­tive, the sud­den ap­pear­ance of the sun and moon, may have taken ori­gin in the tra­di­tions of the one­time sud­den emer­gence of the world from a dense space cloud of minute mat­ter which had long ob­scured both sun and moon.

74:8.3The story of cre­at­ing Eve out of Adam’s rib is a con­fused con­den­sa­tion of the Adamic ar­rival and the ce­les­tial surgery con­nected with the in­ter­change of liv­ing sub­stances as­so­ci­ated with the com­ing of the cor­po­real staff of the Plan­e­tary Prince more than four hun­dred and fifty thou­sand years pre­vi­ously.

74:8.4The ma­jor­ity of the world’s peo­ples have been in­flu­enced by the tra­di­tion that Adam and Eve had phys­i­cal forms cre­ated for them upon their ar­rival on Uran­tia. The be­lief in man’s hav­ing been cre­ated from clay was well-nigh uni­ver­sal in the East­ern Hemi­sphere; this tra­di­tion can be traced from the Philip­pine Is­lands around the world to Africa. And many groups ac­cepted this story of man’s clay ori­gin by some form of spe­cial cre­ation in the place of the ear­lier be­liefs in pro­gres­sive cre­ation—evo­lu­tion.

74:8.5Away from the in­flu­ences of Dala­ma­tia and Eden, man­kind tended to­ward the be­lief in the grad­ual as­cent of the hu­man race. The fact of evo­lu­tion is not a mod­ern dis­cov­ery; the an­cients un­der­stood the slow and evo­lu­tion­ary char­ac­ter of hu­man prog­ress. The early Greeks had clear ideas of this de­spite their prox­im­ity to Mes­o­po­ta­mia. Al­though the var­i­ous races of earth be­came sadly mixed up in their no­tions of evo­lu­tion, nev­er­the­less, many of the prim­i­tive tribes be­lieved and taught that they were the de­scen­dants of var­i­ous an­i­mals. Prim­i­tive peo­ples made a prac­tice of se­lect­ing for their “totems” the an­i­mals of their sup­posed an­ces­try. Cer­tain North Amer­i­can In­dian tribes be­lieved they orig­i­nated from beavers and coy­otes. Cer­tain African tribes teach that they are de­scended from the hyena, a Malay tribe from the lemur, a New Guinea group from the par­rot.

74:8.6The Baby­lo­ni­ans, be­cause of im­me­di­ate con­tact with the rem­nants of the civ­i­liza­tion of the Adamites, en­larged and em­bel­lished the story of man’s cre­ation; they taught that he had de­scended di­rectly from the gods. They held to an aris­to­cratic ori­gin for the race which was in­com­pat­i­ble with even the doc­trine of cre­ation out of clay.

74:8.7The Old Tes­ta­ment ac­count of cre­ation dates from long af­ter the time of Moses; he never taught the He­brews such a dis­torted story. But he did pre­sent a sim­ple and con­densed nar­ra­tive of cre­ation to the Is­raelites, hop­ing thereby to aug­ment his ap­peal to wor­ship the Cre­ator, the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, whom he called the Lord God of Is­rael.

74:8.8In his early teach­ings, Moses very wisely did not at­tempt to go back of Adam’s time, and since Moses was the su­preme teacher of the He­brews, the sto­ries of Adam be­came in­ti­mately as­so­ci­ated with those of cre­ation. That the ear­lier tra­di­tions rec­og­nized pre-Adamic civ­i­liza­tion is clearly shown by the fact that later ed­i­tors, in­tend­ing to erad­i­cate all ref­er­ence to hu­man af­fairs be­fore Adam’s time, ne­glected to re­move the tell­tale ref­er­ence to Cain’s em­i­gra­tion to the “land of Nod,” where he took him­self a wife.

74:8.9The He­brews had no writ­ten lan­guage in gen­eral us­age for a long time af­ter they reached Pales­tine. They learned the use of an al­pha­bet from the neigh­bor­ing Phil­is­tines, who were po­lit­i­cal refugees from the higher civ­i­liza­tion of Crete. The He­brews did lit­tle writ­ing un­til about 900 B.C., and hav­ing no writ­ten lan­guage un­til such a late date, they had sev­eral dif­fer­ent sto­ries of cre­ation in cir­cu­la­tion, but af­ter the Baby­lo­nian cap­tiv­ity they in­clined more to­ward ac­cept­ing a mod­i­fied Mes­o­po­ta­mian ver­sion.

74:8.10Jew­ish tra­di­tion be­came crys­tal­lized about Moses, and be­cause he en­deav­ored to trace the lin­eage of Abra­ham back to Adam, the Jews as­sumed that Adam was the first of all man­kind. Yah­weh was the cre­ator, and since Adam was sup­posed to be the first man, he must have made the world just prior to mak­ing Adam. And then the tra­di­tion of Adam’s six days got wo­ven into the story, with the re­sult that al­most a thou­sand years af­ter Moses’ so­journ on earth the tra­di­tion of cre­ation in six days was writ­ten out and sub­se­quently cred­ited to him.

74:8.11When the Jew­ish priests re­turned to Je­ru­sa­lem, they had al­ready com­pleted the writ­ing of their nar­ra­tive of the be­gin­ning of things. Soon they made claims that this recital was a re­cently dis­cov­ered story of cre­ation writ­ten by Moses. But the con­tem­po­rary He­brews of around 500 B.C. did not con­sider these writ­ings to be di­vine rev­e­la­tions; they looked upon them much as later peo­ples re­gard mytho­log­i­cal nar­ra­tives.

74:8.12This spu­ri­ous doc­u­ment, re­puted to be the teach­ings of Moses, was brought to the at­ten­tion of Ptolemy, the Greek king of Egypt, who had it trans­lated into Greek by a com­mis­sion of sev­enty schol­ars for his new li­brary at Alexan­dria. And so this ac­count found its place among those writ­ings which sub­se­quently be­came a part of the later col­lec­tions of the “sa­cred scrip­tures” of the He­brew and Chris­tian re­li­gions. And through iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with these the­o­log­i­cal sys­tems, such con­cepts for a long time pro­foundly in­flu­enced the phi­los­o­phy of many Oc­ci­den­tal peo­ples.

74:8.13The Chris­tian teach­ers per­pet­u­ated the be­lief in the fiat cre­ation of the hu­man race, and all this led di­rectly to the for­ma­tion of the hy­poth­e­sis of a one­time golden age of utopian bliss and the the­ory of the fall of man or super­man which ac­counted for the nonu­topian con­di­tion of so­ci­ety. These out­looks on life and man’s place in the uni­verse were at best dis­cour­ag­ing since they were pred­i­cated upon a be­lief in ret­ro­gres­sion rather than pro­gres­sion, as well as im­ply­ing a venge­ful De­ity, who had vented wrath upon the hu­man race in ret­ri­bu­tion for the er­rors of cer­tain one­time plan­e­tary ad­min­is­tra­tors.

74:8.14The “golden age” is a myth, but Eden was a fact, and the Gar­den civ­i­liza­tion was ac­tu­ally over­thrown. Adam and Eve car­ried on in the Gar­den for one hun­dred and sev­en­teen years when, through the im­pa­tience of Eve and the er­rors of judg­ment of Adam, they pre­sumed to turn aside from the or­dained way, speed­ily bring­ing dis­as­ter upon them­selves and ru­inous re­tar­da­tion upon the de­vel­op­men­tal pro­gres­sion of all Uran­tia.

74:8.15[Nar­rated by Solo­nia, the se­raphic “voice in the Gar­den.”]