The Greek Life of Adam and Eve

1260 Pages·2023·3.98 MB·English

by  John R. Levison

John R. Levison
The Greek Life of Adam and Eve
Commentaries on
Early Jewish Literature
(CEJL)
Edited by
Loren T. Stuckenbruck
and
Pieter W. van der Horst · Hermann Lichtenberger
Doron Mendels · James R. Mueller
De Gruyter
John R. Levison
The Greek Life
of Adam and Eve
De Gruyter
ISBN 978-3-11-075588-6
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-075644-9
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-075652-4
ISSN 1861-6003
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021953273
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet
at http://dnb.dnb.de.
© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Typesetting: Dörlemann Satz GmbH & Co. KG, Lemförde
Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck
www.degruyter.com
To
Priscilla
my lifelong love
in prayer and in service

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ...................................... IX
Abbreviations .......................................... XV
INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1: The Greek Life of Adam and Eve as Literature ........ 3
Chapter 2: Manuscripts, Greek Text Forms, and Versions ........ 31
Chapter 3: Origin of the Greek Life of Adam and Eve . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Chapter 4: Translation ................................... 155
COMMENTARY – TEXT, TRANSLATION, AND NOTES
Excursus: Significant Additions and Revisions in Translation ...... 173
GLAE 1 ............................................... 175
GLAE 2.1–3.1 .......................................... 211
GLAE 3.2–4.2 .......................................... 250
GLAE 5–6 ............................................. 281
GLAE 7–8 ............................................. 312
GLAE 9 ............................................... 362
GLAE 10–12 ........................................... 387
GLAE 13 .............................................. 435
GLAE 14 .............................................. 459
GLAE 15 .............................................. 478
GLAE 16 .............................................. 493
GLAE 17 .............................................. 511
GLAE 18–19 ........................................... 533
GLAE 20 .............................................. 569
GLAE 21 .............................................. 588
GLAE 22 .............................................. 612
GLAE 23 .............................................. 639
GLAE 24 .............................................. 652
GLAE 25 .............................................. 668
VIII Table of Contents
GLAE 26 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 685
GLAE 27 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 703
GLAE 28 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 722
GLAE 29 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 739
GLAE 30 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 763
GLAE 31 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 768
GLAE 32 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 787
GLAE 33 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 805
GLAE 34 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 840
GLAE 35 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 849
GLAE 36 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 865
GLAE 37 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 881
GLAE 38 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 909
GLAE 39 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 934
GLAE 40 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 952
GLAE 41 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 999
GLAE 42 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1006
GLAE 43 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1049
Translations of Ancient Sources Used in This Commentary . . . . . . . 1069
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1072
Index of References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1089
Index of Names and Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1208
Acknowledgements
When I hold this commentary in my hands, Priscilla and I will have cele-
brated our fortieth wedding anniversary. I am cowed by the realization that
I’ve spent half of my married life with the obligation—for many years it
proved more obligation than opportunity—to write this commentary. Dur-
ing that time, I’ve garnered so many debts, and amassed so many acknowl-
edgments, that I had better get down to it.
My first yearlong stretch of research devoted to this commentary began
in 2000, in the bucolic confines of the National Humanities Center, tucked
into the loblolly pines a few miles from Duke University, where I had been
teaching at the time. In a lovely office with a view to the forest and in the
company of intellectually alert colleagues, including my delightful next-
door neighbor, Kate Lowe, my walking-partner, Dennis Romano, and an
affable senior colleague, Tom Laqueur, I set out to write—not quite this
commentary, but a few articles that would feed it, such as one on funerals
in the writings of Josephus. That year, I also published Texts in Transition:
The Greek Life of Adam and Eve, a sort of prolegomenon to the commen-
tary.
I continued to write articles and give papers on the Life of Adam and
Eve, but I proved prodigal: much of my passion for the next two decades
lay with ancient pneumatology. When I finally directed more of my atten-
tion to the Greek Life, it was with extensive support, not least from Dean
Craig Hill, who authorized my research leave in 2018–19, and the generous
funding of the W. J. A. Power Chair of Old Testament Interpretation and
Biblical Hebrew at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist Uni-
versity, which I have been privileged to hold since 2015.
The Power Chair has funded a steady flow of stellar doctoral students,
each of whom has worked efficiently, carefully, and reliably: William Glass,
Andrew Klumpp, Lane Davis, and Kelsey Spinnato. Each has done the
unimaginably delicate, detailed, and difficult work of indexing, proofing,
organizing, collating, searching ancient indexes and databases, and, in the
case of Kelsey, wrestling an edited book, The Pursuit of Life: The Promise
and Challenge of Palliative Care, into publishable form. Kelsey worked
tirelessly to the end—an act of sheer collegiality and friendship—during
our last afternoon together, before sending the final proofs and indexes to
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110756449-201
X Acknowledgements
De Gruyter. I have said dozens of times that the greatest asset of the Power
Chair is the opportunity it has given me to work with a succession of stun-
ning SMU doctoral students.
The Power Chair has also afforded me the opportunity to view original
manuscripts of the Greek Life of Adam and Eve. In 2016, I travelled to
Greece. In Athens, I visited the Ethnikē Bibliothēkē tēs Hellados. On the
island of Andros, I visited Monē tēs Hagias. Our visit to Andros demands
more than a mere mention; it was quite the adventure. It began right here in
Dallas, on the Southern Methodist University campus, with our colleague
in the Lyle School of Engineering, Panagiotis (Panos) Papamichalis. Panos
used family connections in Greece to connect us with the remote and nearly
inaccessible Monē tēs Hagias; I sat in Panos’ office as he negotiated, I think,
in Greek. With the connection ably made, we travelled to Athens and took
the ferry from the mainland to Andros off-season in high winds—so high
that the return ferry trip had to be postponed. We rented a small Fiat in the
quiet but blustery port. The next morning, we jolted and puttered up the
mountainside to a monastery, where we were warmly welcomed. Inside the
doorway stood a young woman, Vicky Vasilikipetsas, donning a University
of British Columbia sweatshirt. Vicky translated for us the entire time. The
monastery had only two sisters left, who embodied the quintessence of
hospitality. We visited relics, the chapel, and then we were invited into their
homey dining room for a considerable lunch. When it was time to look at
the manuscript, octogenarian Sister Parthenia energetically fetched it from
a back room in a Ziploc bag. We sat elbow to elbow at the dining room
table, as Sister Parthenia turned every page, reading through the Greek
Life of Adam and Eve line by line. What a treasure—yes, the manuscript,
but even more the chance to sit with lovely people in a warm dining room
at the crest of a mountain in a remote monastery on a Greek island. I tell
this story because it is one thing to acknowledge the generous funding that
made it possible and quite another to describe the adventure we had thanks
to that funding.
Early the next summer, in 2017, thanks again to the Power Chair, I
viewed manuscripts in Italy in magnificent libraries: in Venice, the Bibli-
oteca Nazionale Marciana; in Milan, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana; in the
Vatican City, the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana; and in Brescia, the Bibli-
oteca Queriniana, which was actually a gorgeous public library accessible
to anyone who cared to visit. I left that library in possession of a beautiful
book of library holdings; this book, a gift from the warm and generous
librarians, still graces our home.
The summer of 2018 found Priscilla and me in Oxford. Thanks to a
Sam Taylor Award, I was able to do essential research in the spectacular