Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

In this fascinating exploration, Greenblatt (The Swerve), a Harvard humanities professor and Pulitzer-winning author, probes the -beauty, power, and influence- that the Adam and Eve story has held through millennia. Utilizing recent archaeological discoveries, Greenblatt compares the Genesis account, first written as a -counternarrative to the Babylonian creation story- by Hebrews returning to Jerusalem from exile, to both the ancient Gilgamesh legend and long-forgotten alternative narratives recently discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, such as -The Life of Adam and Eve.- Greenblatt undertakes an in-depth analysis of key historical figures whose obsession wielded enormous impact on religion and culture: Augustine-s insistence on the story-s literal truth led to the concept of original sin; Albrecht Dürer-s engraving The Fall of Man captured -the sheer unconstrained beauty of... our first parents-; John Milton-s epic poem Paradise Lost realized them as -flesh-and-blood people.- Greenblatt then explores how the European discovery of New World natives, Voltaire-s insistence on the story-s allegorical nature, and, finally, Darwin-s evolutionary theory led to today-s widespread acceptance of the story as myth. In a beautiful closing chapter, Greenblatt studies Ugandan chimpanzees for -traces of the Bible story... the actual origins of our species.- This is an erudite yet accessible page-turner. (Sept.)

Starred Review ALA Booklist (Tue Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2017)

Starred Review Alive in the painting of van Eyck, the etching of Dürer, and the poetry of Milton, Adam and Eve fascinate Greenblatt, who marvels at how much this primal pair have shaped Western culture. Probing the history of the biblical account of human origins, readers learn how sharply it differs from the Mesopotamian creation myth that Hebrew exiles encountered during their time in Babylon. Unlike the Mesopotamian myth, which depicts Gilgamesh and Enkidu's triumph over adversity, Genesis chronicles the universal human fall consequent to Adam and Eve's partaking of forbidden fruit. Readers see how the shadows of the fallen Adam and Eve persisted in Judeo-Christian theology well as Western philosophy, art, politics, and sexual ethics. But Greenblatt persuasively argues that Adam and Eve would look different if Origen had persuaded the early church to accept his allegorical understanding of the pair. Instead, Augustine impressed on the Christian mind a sternly literal understanding of Adam and Eve, leaving later believers unprepared for Darwin's scientific explanation of human beginnings. Though not a believer himself, Greenblatt worries that the imaginative and narrative aridity of Darwin's explanation of the first hominids has made it a problematic substitute for the scriptural account of Adam and Eve. An impressively wide-ranging inquiry.

Kirkus Reviews

The Pulitzer and National Book Award winner considers the enduring appeal and manifold interpretations of the biblical account of the first humans' expulsion from paradise."How does something made-up become so compellingly real?" asks Greenblatt (Humanities/Harvard Univ.; The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, 2011, etc.), positioning himself as a secular-minded admirer of a story that religious thinkers for millennia have struggled to fit within a coherent theological framework. The author notes that this tale of humanity's origins was uncomfortably reminiscent for many early Christians of the pagan creation myths they scorned as absurd: the talking snake, the arbitrary deity, all those animals named in one day, etc. Some, like the Alexandrian scholar Origen Adamantius, tried to frame the story as an allegory about the evolution of the soul, but the interpretation that triumphed was that of St. Augustine, who insisted that the story of Adam and Eve was literally true. From that assertion flowed the concept of original sin, the denigration of sex, and the powerful strain of misogyny (it was all Eve's fault) that characterized the Catholic Church for centuries. During the Renaissance—Greenblatt's focus as a scholar and the subject of this book's best pages—artists like Albrecht Dürer and writers such as John Milton sought to give the rebellious couple of Genesis a palpable human reality in images and literature, most thrillingly in Milton's great epic Paradise Lost. When Greenblatt moves on to the challenges to belief in the literal truth of the Bible posed by Enlightenment philosophers and 19th-century scientists (culminating with Darwin's The Origin of Species), his narrative speeds up and loses focus. The author seems to be making an argument for the enduring power of stories while decrying fundamentalism, but his point isn't clear, and a final chapter positing a chimpanzee pair in Uganda as a present-day Adam and Eve is simply odd. Many fine passages charged with Greenblatt's passion and talent for storytelling can't disguise the fact that he's not quite sure what story he's trying to tell here.