Adam and Sin, Paradise and Fasting

Icon of the Creation of Adam

I’ve decided this Great Lent to start a blog series focusing on Adam, the first human and the type of all humans.   Adam has been interpreted through both Jewish and Christian writers from ancient times as the name of the first historical human being as well as an example of all humans.  In this blog series we will look at Adam in both ways, as described by Patristic writers and modern biblical scholars.

This will be a long series, something like my series commenting on Genesis 4-11.  It will consist of many quotes and some of my commentary.    I plan eventually to have it deal with Ancestral Sin, the Fall, and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise, but some of those topics are weeks away.

I will eventually gather all of the blogs into one document in PDF, for those who prefer to read it that way.

Adam is a type of all humans (1 Corinthians 15:47-49), and so his story is our story, perhaps as much as it is the story of a historical man.  Adam is blamed for both introducing sin and death into the human condition.  Adam’s story tells us why the earth we live on is not Paradise, and why it is so difficult to live on this earth.  Adam’s story also tells us something about Great Lent.  In Lent we attempt to deny ourselves and say no to our own desires – to do what Adam and Eve failed to do.  We also return in Lent to Paradise to eat the same foods which were available to Adam and Eve in their brief stay in the Garden of Delights.  It is our sign that we understand what this world is and what it is not.

Glossary

Next:  Adam, the first Human