The penultimate Sunday before the Nativity of Christ, the Russian Orthodox Church celebrates the memory of the Holy Forefathers. It cannot be said that this holiday is widely known, like those dedicated to the events of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Mother of God, or the saints beloved by the people. But on this day the memory of those who, by their expectation of the coming of the Savior, their righteous life, hope and fidelity to God, made possible the coming of the Redeemer to universal salvation is honored. These are the righteous of the Old Testament. Starting from the first people - Adam and Eve - to New Testament times.

The Old Testament is rarely read in its entirety, even by believers. Perhaps due to its large volume, and also due to the fact that not everything is always clear to us in the events described in it, something causes amazement and misunderstanding. After all, we are talking about ancient times, when society did not yet know modern Christian morality. Perhaps the Old Testament is worth reading if you already have some life and theological experience behind you that allows you to understand and explain a lot. And then the people whom the Church remembers on the day of the Holy Forefathers suddenly appear from the pages of the Bible as surprisingly alive, vibrant personalities, with their own merits and demerits. Their stories turn out to be very interesting and instructive. We especially highlight those in whose family Christ was destined to be born. The Church honors the ancestors of the Lord Jesus Christ as the Holy Fathers, and their memory is celebrated separately on the last Sunday before Christmas.

On the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers, we remember the Old Testament history, beginning with the creation of the world. The Lord created the world for six days and, looking at his creation, saw that it was good. And at the end of the sixth day, He created a being who was destined to crown all created things - a being in His own image and likeness. The Lord created man. “Male and female he created them,” says the book of Genesis.

“Animals, livestock and birds received bodies and souls together at the time of creation. God honored man with many things: firstly, by creating him, as it is said, with His hand, breathing into him a soul, giving him power over paradise and over everything outside of paradise, clothing him with glory and giving him the gift of speech, reason and knowledge of the Divine” (Reverend Ephraim the Syrian “Interpretations of the Holy Scriptures”).

And the creation of Eve was completely unique, extraordinary.

“Be fruitful and multiply,” the Lord said to the first people, and for this Eve was created from Adam’s rib, but not just as a spouse from whom Adam could have offspring to fill the earth. “It is not good for man to be alone,” says the Creator. This is the beginning of love, this is salvation from the loneliness of a person to whom knowledge of the world given by the Creator will not give the fullness of being if he experiences this world alone.

And so something unique is introduced into the act of Creation. “And the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and when he fell asleep, he took one of his ribs and covered that place with flesh.” Adam, like all creatures inhabiting the first created earth, is created from the dust of the earth, but with Eve it is different. Eve is created from Adam himself, the wife is created from the husband.

“And the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.” The Lord Himself brings a woman to a man - this is how the first marriage in the history of the Universe takes place. This is a great meaning and mystery - marriage in the eyes of God occurs only between people. Man is so beautiful and so dear to the Creator that he does not release him into the world just like other created creatures, he takes a personal part in his life.

Seeing the woman created by the Lord, Adam did not remain silent. “And the man said, Behold, this is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she will be called woman, for she was taken from [her] husband.” “For Russian ears, there is no logic in this phrase: well, taken from her husband, why should she be called a wife, why, not a daughter, not a sister, not a mother-in-law, in the end. But for the Jewish reader everything was very clear here. In Hebrew, the word husband is “ish”, wife “isha”... And this is a very important statement: she was taken from isha, and therefore there will be isha.” (Deacon Andrey Kuraev, “What Adam and Eve Sinned”).

So, Adam, who names every creature, gives the woman created from him his name, recognizing in her himself, his essence, his nature... A wife is the same person as her husband, but she, having appeared on earth by the will of the Creator, sees already the Garden of Eden. And to her, to this truly heavenly creature, the Lord commands a man to cleave, leaving his father and mother. “Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife; and the [two] shall become one flesh.”

The Lord establishes the power of a husband over his wife after the Fall, which was followed by the expulsion of man from Paradise. The Lord expelled the first people, saving them from eternal existence in a darkened, fallen, humiliated state, wanting their revival and purification and their inheritance of eternal life in salvation. Salvation will come from the still distant daughter of the foremother Eve, from the Virgin, from “Her seed,” as the book of Genesis says. But before that, the foremother Eve hears from the Lord: “I will multiply your sorrow in your pregnancy; in illness you will give birth to children; and your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

“At the sight of the fruits of his sin in the present, at the thought of its future consequences, Adam, with his gaze full of tender sadness, says to his wife: “Return to me the mercy of God, return to me peace with myself; return to me the days of heaven, return my innocence, my holy love for the Lord and for yourself?" And Eve feels, understands, this look. She knows that she will give her husband very little if she lavishes earthly consolations on him without delivering heavenly joys, and realizing her powerlessness to atone for all the evil done to her husband, she begs and conjures him to constantly turn his gaze to the promised Savior, who can atone for everything. sins, restore everything destroyed and open a second paradise for the fallen human race, even more beautiful than that, the entrance to which is now guarded by the sword of the Cherubim. And at the same time, how much joy, how much consolation she brings to her husband!” (Archpriest Dimitry Sokolov “The purpose of a woman according to the teaching of the Word of God”).

Forefather Adam and foremother Eve had to wait the longest for the coming of the Savior and liberation from the power of original sin. But they were the first to be brought out of Hell by the Lord, who destroyed Hell with His miraculous Resurrection. With them began the line of Old Testament patriarchs who passionately loved God and carried out His will. From year to year, from century to century, they built a spiritual ladder, to the highest step of which the Most Pure Virgin Mary would ascend and finally connect Heaven with earth...

Marina Kravtsova

What exactly did Adam and Eve do, since the Lord kicked them out of Paradise, and moreover, that for some reason we are all paying for their actions? What are we talking about here, what forbidden fruit is this, what kind of tree of knowledge is this, why was this tree placed next to Adam and Eve and at the same time forbidden to approach it? What happened in paradise? And how does this relate to our lives, to the lives of our loved ones and friends? Why does our fate depend on an act not committed by us, and committed a very, very long time ago?

What happened in paradise? The most terrible thing that could happen between loving beings who trust each other happened there. In the Garden of Eden, something happened that, some time later, would be repeated in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Judas brought there a crowd of armed guards looking for Jesus.

Simply put, there was a betrayal in paradise.

Human betrayed his Creator, when he believed the slander against Him and decided to live solely according to his own will.

A man has learned to betray those closest to him when accused his wife of his own sin.

Human betrayed himself. After all, “to betray” literally means to convey. And man transferred himself from the good will of the God who created him to the evil will of his killer - the devil.

This is what happened in heaven. Now let’s try to find out in more detail how this all happened and why it turned out to be connected with the lives of each of us.

You can't imagine!

God created man and placed him in the place most favorable for his life. That is, to the beautiful Garden of Eden, which is also commonly called paradise. Today we can only make various assumptions and conjectures about what the Garden of Eden was like. But you can safely bet that any of these guesses will turn out to be incorrect. Why?

But because the man himself was different then - pure, joyful, not knowing worries and worries, open to the world, greeting this world with the happy and powerful smile of his master. The reason here is simple: man had not yet erased God from his life, was in close communication with Him and received from God such knowledge, consolation and gifts that we have no idea about today.

We, today, as has already been said, can only fantasize about heaven. Moreover, with effort, squeezing these fantasies through the narrow gaps between gloomy thoughts about the falling exchange rate of the ruble, grievances against the mother-in-law, worries about buying winter tires for the car, the upcoming Unified State Exam for the eldest son and a thousand other unpleasant thoughts that simultaneously torment any modern person every day with morning until night. That meager stuffing of fantasies that comes out of this mental meat grinder will be our current ideas about paradise.

Of course, the Garden of Eden was beautiful. But life with God can turn out to be paradise for a person even in the middle of a waterless desert overgrown with camel thorn bushes. And life without God and the Garden of Eden instantly turns into ordinary thickets of grass, bushes and trees. Only by understanding this can one understand everything else that happened in paradise with the first people.

Man has occupied a unique place in God's creation. The fact is that God created the spiritual world and the material world. The first was inhabited by angels - disembodied spirits (some of which subsequently fell away from God and became demons). The second is all the inhabitants of the Earth who have a body. Man turned out to be a kind of bridge between these two worlds. He was created as a spiritual being, but at the same time had a material body. True, this body was not at all the same as we know it today. This is how Saint John Chrysostom describes it: “That body was not so mortal and perishable. But just as a golden statue shines brightly, just emerging from the crucible, so that body was free from all corruption, it was neither burdened by work, nor exhausted by sweat, nor tormented by worries, nor besieged by sorrow, and no such suffering depressed it. " And Saint Ignatius (Brianchaninov) speaks of the even more amazing capabilities of the body of primordial man: “...Clad in such a body, with such sense organs, man was capable of sensual vision of spirits, to the category of which he belonged with his soul, was capable of communicating with them, to that vision of God and communication with God, which are akin to holy spirits. The holy body of man did not serve as an obstacle to this, did not separate man from the world of spirits.”

Capable of communicating with God, man could proclaim the will of God to the entire material world, over which he received enormous power from God. And at the same time, only he alone could stand on behalf of this world before its Creator.

Man was created as a king or, more precisely, a vicegerent of God on Earth. Having settled him in a beautiful garden, God gave him a commandment - to preserve and cultivate this garden. In combination with the blessing, be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, this meant that over time, man had to make the whole world a Garden of Eden.

To do this, he received the broadest powers and opportunities. The whole world happily obeyed him. Wild animals could not harm him, pathogens could not cause illness in him, fire could not burn, water could not drown, the earth could not swallow him in its abysses.

And this almost sovereign ruler of the world received only one prohibition from God: « And the Lord God commanded the man, saying: Of every tree of the garden thou shalt eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest of it thou shalt die"(Genesis 2:16-17).

This is the only prohibition that man violated in the Garden of Eden. The man who had everything decided that in order to be completely happy, he still had to do what he couldn’t do.

The sandbox is mined

But Why did God plant such a dangerous tree in paradise? Just hang a sign on him with a skull and crossbones: “Don’t interfere - he’ll kill you.” What a strange idea - in the middle of the most beautiful place on the planet, to hang deadly fruits on the branches? It’s as if a modern architect, when planning a kindergarten, suddenly for some reason designed a small minefield on the playground, and the teacher then said: “Children, you can play everywhere - on the slide, on the carousel, and in the sandbox. But don’t even think about coming here, otherwise there will be a big bang-badabum and a lot of trouble for all of us.”

Here it is immediately necessary to clarify: the prohibition on eating the fruits of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil did not mean at all that a person without these fruits knew nothing about good and evil. Otherwise, what was the point of giving him such a commandment?

Chrysostom writes: “Only those who by nature do not have reason do not know good and evil, but Adam possessed great wisdom and could recognize both. That he was filled with spiritual wisdom, see its discovery. “God brought the beasts to him,” it is said, “to see what he would call them, and that whatever a man called every living soul, that would be its name” (Genesis 2:19). Think of the wisdom of the one who could give names to the various breeds of cattle, reptiles and birds. God himself accepted this naming of names so much that he did not change them and even after the Fall did not want to abolish the names of animals. It is said: Whatever a man calls every living soul, that is its name... So, he who knew so much, did you really, tell me, not know what was good and what was evil? What will this be consistent with?”

So, the tree was not a source of knowledge about good and evil. And its fruits were not poisonous either, otherwise God would be like the alternatively gifted kindergarten architect already mentioned here. And it was called that for one simple reason: a person had ideas about good and evil, but only theoretical ones. He knew that good was in obedience and trust in the God who created him, and evil was in violating His commands. However, in practice, he could know what good is only by fulfilling the commandment and not touching the forbidden fruits. After all, even today any of us understands: knowing about good and doing good are very different from the same thing. Just like knowing about evil and not doing evil. And in order to translate your knowledge about good and evil into a practical plane, you need to make some effort. For example, in a situation where a loved one in the heat of the moment said something offensive to you, the good thing, of course, would be to remain silent in response, wait until he cools down, and only then calmly and lovingly find out what made him so angry. And the evil in this situation, just as certainly, would be to say all sorts of nasty things to him in response and quarrel for long painful hours, or even days. Each of us knows about this. But, alas, it is not always possible to use this knowledge in a real conflict.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is named so in the Bible because it was an opportunity for the first people to experimentally demonstrate their desire for good and aversion from evil.

But man was not created as a robot, rigidly programmed for only goodness. God gave him freedom of choice, and the tree of knowledge became for the first people exactly the point where this choice could be put into practice. Without it, the Garden of Eden, and indeed the entire beautiful world created by God, would have turned out to be just a golden cage with ideal conditions for a person. And the essence of God’s prohibition boiled down to a caring warning addressed to people who were free in their decision, as if they were being told: “You may not listen to Me and do it your own way. But know that such disobedience is death for you, who were created by Me from the dust of the earth. Behold, I also leave open to you the path of evil, on which inevitable destruction awaits you. But this is not why I created you. Strengthen yourself in goodness through the renunciation of evil. This will be your knowledge of both.”

But - alas! - people did not heed this warning and decided to learn evil through the rejection of good.

We are not to blame!

The Bible goes on to describe the events in the Garden of Eden as follows: “The serpent was more cunning than all the beasts of the field that the Lord God had created. And the serpent said to the woman: Did God truly say: You shall not eat from any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent: We can eat fruit from the trees, only from the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, God said, do not eat it or touch it, lest you die. And the serpent said to the woman: No, you will not die, but God knows that on the day that you eat of them, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil. And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes and desirable because it gave knowledge; and she took of its fruit and ate; And she gave it also to her husband, and he ate” (Genesis 3:1–6).

The serpent here refers to Satan - the head of the angels who fell away from God and turned into demons. One of the most powerful and beautiful spirits, he decided that he did not need God and turned into Satan - the irreconcilable enemy of God and His entire creation. But Satan, of course, could not cope with God. And therefore he directed all his hatred at the crown of God’s creation - at man.

In the Bible Satan is called the father of lies and murderer. We can see both in the passage from Genesis quoted above. Satan created a false story that made God look like an envious deceiver afraid of human competition. And people who have already received so many gifts and blessings from God, who knew Him, communicated with Him and from the experience of this communication were convinced that He is good, suddenly they believed this dirty lie. And they decided to taste the fruits from the forbidden tree in order to become “like the gods”.

But instead, they just discovered that they were naked, and began to urgently build themselves primitive clothes from tree leaves. And when they heard God’s voice calling them, they were afraid and began to hide between the trees of paradise from the One who planted this paradise for them.

Traitors are always afraid of meeting those they betrayed. A what the first people did was a real betrayal of God. Satan subtly hinted to them that by eating the forbidden fruits, they could become like God, become equal to their Creator. Which means living without Him. AND people believed this lie. Believed Satan and stopped believing God.

This terrible changeling was the main tragedy of what happened in paradise. People refused to obey God and voluntarily gave themselves over to the devil.

God forgave them for this first betrayal and gave them a chance to return to Himself, but people did not want to take advantage of it. The wife began to justify herself by saying that the snake had seduced her. And Adam completely blamed his wife and... God for his crime of the commandments, who gave him such a “wrong” companion. Here it is, the last conversation of people with God in paradise: “...didn’t you eat from the tree from which I forbade you to eat? Adam said: The wife whom You gave me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate. And the Lord God said to the woman: Why have you done this? The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate” (Genesis 3:11–13).

So the first man betrayed God, his wife and himself in paradise. Created to reign over the material world, he turned into a pitiful creature, hiding in the bushes from his Creator and reproaching Him for the wife ... which You gave me. This is what made him so poisoned by the lies he received from Satan. Once having fulfilled the will of God's enemy, man himself became God's enemy.

Saint Theophan the Recluse writes: “The falling away from God was accomplished completely with disgust by a certain hostile rebellion against Him. That is why God retreated from such criminals - and the living union was interrupted. God is everywhere and contains everything, but He enters into free creatures when they surrender themselves to Him. When they are contained within themselves, then He does not violate their autocracy, but, preserving and containing them, does not enter inside. So our ancestors were left alone. If they had repented sooner, perhaps God would have returned to them, but they persisted, and despite obvious accusations, neither Adam nor Eve admitted that they were guilty.”

All in Adam

That's all, actually. Having betrayed God, people fell away from the source of their life. And they began to slowly die. Thus, a branch broken off from its native trunk still remains green for some time in the roadside dust, but its further fate is predetermined and inevitable. The beautiful human body, shining with the beauty and power of God being with it, immediately turned into a miserable body, subject to disease and the threats of the elements, when God departed from it. And paradise itself - the meeting place of man and God on earth - became for man a place of fear and torment. Now, having heard the voice of his Creator, he, overcome with horror, rushed around the Garden of Eden in search of shelter. Leaving such a person in heaven would be senseless cruelty.

So, according to the Bible, man was expelled from heaven, became a vulnerable, mortal and subject to Satan being. This was the beginning of human history. All these terrible changes in human nature, associated with the falling away of the first people from God, were inherited by their descendants, and therefore by us, and our friends, and all contemporaries.

Why did this happen? Because man was designed to be constantly with God and in God. This is not some additional bonus to our existence, but its most important basis, the foundation. With God, man is the immortal king of the universe. Without God - a mortal being, a blind tool of the devil.

A series of births and deaths did not bring a person closer to God. On the contrary, each generation, living in spiritual darkness, accepted more and more new shades of evil and betrayal, the seeds of which were sown by sinners back in paradise. Macarius the Great writes: “... Just as Adam, who violated the commandment, accepted the leaven of evil passions in himself, so those born from him, and the entire race of Adam, by succession, became partakers of this leaven. And with gradual success and growth, sinful passions have already multiplied in people so much that they extended to adultery, lewdness, idolatry, murder and other absurd deeds, until all of humanity was soured with vices.”

This, in a nutshell, is the connection between what happened in paradise to the forefathers of mankind and how we are forced to live today.

From the Book of Genesis you know that after God created the heavens and the earth and all their hosts, and blessed every living soul to be fruitful and multiply, He began to work on His main creation - man. And He created him in His own image, in the image of God, created him as lord over all creation and gave everything into his hand.

The literal understanding of the Holy Book gave rise to many legends about the creation of the world and the first man, but none of them revealed to humanity the secret of Divine Providence. Modern sciences have worked hard to say their word about man, his purpose and the meaning of life, but man as the main figure of all the Biblical Scriptures has not yet been discovered, studied or described by anyone.

The creation of man and God's great order in relation to it for the creation itself remains still a mystery.

The literal, external understanding of God's Holy Scriptures has closed humanity's access to the Holy of Holies and keeps them captive to delusion and ignorance. Practicing in earthly wisdom, man deviated from the paths destined for him by God to the heights of the glory and greatness of God, and brought the spiritual Word down to the flesh. And about us today, as well as thousands of years ago, we can say in the words of Solomon from his Book of Wisdom: “... we have lost our way from the path of truth, and the light of truth did not shine on us, and the sun did not illuminate us. We were filled with the works of iniquity and destruction and walked through impassable deserts, but we did not know the way of the Lord” (Wis. 5:6,7).

In order to get at least a little closer to the mystery of the creation of man, I will lead you into Scripture along an already beaten path: we will look through its texts at the words “man”, “Adam”, “Eve”. But to make it clearer for you, I will start right with you, with where you are now, who you are and what path you need to go through in order to take the path of the Lord.

When you came into this world, you received a physical body and remain in it. You were born in this body and you have a mother and you have a father. You received a body, but consciousness and words were not yet inside you. Your parents gradually and painstakingly sowed the seed-word into you, and it entered into you and filled you with growing life. You still didn’t understand or know anything, but the words sown in you sprouted, and at first they were like weak sprouts, like grass. So the words became your life, you began to live it.

And at the beginning your life was infantile, but it grew and gained experience. The words remained the same, but their content in you grew and increased.

You were born and received the body of a boy or a girl, and the physiology of the body with its needs was reflected in your psyche, and the entire experience of your life was reflected in your mind. Biologically, you have grown up, become adults and can no longer return to childhood, but in your psyche, in your thoughts, everything you have lived is reflected, and it has formed into an individuality, which we call the outer man. And an adult can return in his thoughts to any period of his life, because in them he stores everything that he has lived.

In the Holy Scriptures this process is described in a few words. At the time when the Lord God created the heavens and the earth and everything in them, He “sent no rain upon the earth, neither was there any man to till the earth, but steam rose from the earth and watered the whole face of the earth” (Genesis 2:5 ,6). Let us also remember the Apostle James, who says: “... what is your life? A vapor that appears for a little while and then disappears” (James 4:14).

So, what is your life? Life is thinking. As is the thinking, so is life. You live in your thoughts. And if these thoughts reflect only the life of your physical body, and everything connected with its maintenance, this is a vapor that appears for a short time, because with the death of the physical body it disappears. The life of a vapor is as temporary as the life of a fleshly body. The temporary mind is a servant of the body and takes care of what the body wants: it goes to the store, to the market, stands at the stove, chops wood. This is not done by the physical body, but by the mind, which owns the body and does everything for it. And such intelligence is called steam in Scripture. But then the time comes, and the physical body is destroyed: if there is no master, there is no need for a servant, because there is no one else to serve.

When God said: “Let us create man in Our image, in Our likeness...”, man already existed, but he was like steam emanating for a short time, and now it was necessary to create man in the image and likeness of God. And this process begins to take place both with you and with every mind that is ripe to take into itself the breath of life - spiritual thinking.

So, before the creation of man, steam irrigated the entire face of the earth. The earth, as we already know, is the mind. The face of the earth, or the face of the mind, are the thoughts that determine its life; these are feelings and desires that encourage a person to move and develop. The earth then lived and produced from itself only what steam could do. But the time comes when God sends rain to the earth - knowledge from heaven, and this happens when there is a mind capable of accepting it and cultivating the earth with it.

The earth must bear fruit, give birth to new life, and for this we need a person to cultivate it.

“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). The first man - Adam - was created from the dust of the earth. What are the dust of the earth? These are words and thoughts about the earthly world. They are likened in Scripture to fine dust, which easily rises and is carried away by the wind. And so God combines this dust with water, forming clay, and, like a potter sculpting pots, He sculpts a person. From earthly words, from earthly concepts about the earthly world, He creates a forehead capable of reflecting the world around him and cognizing the laws of material life.

Adam, created from the dust of the earth, is an external man who does not yet know the spiritual. But God does not stop there, He continues the process of creation further and breathes the breath of life into man, after which man becomes a living soul. The breath of life, as we already know, is spiritual thoughts. Man, Adam, reason (this means the same thing) acquires knowledge of the Divine. And this still weak sprout of Divine life already has in itself the beginning of immortal existence.

The breath of life is the Word of God, the seed that must in time germinate and be revealed in the fullness of the Divine. Through this seed the soul becomes alive. And God breathes it in where everyday life and everyday thinking have reached the required level of maturity. And many, whom we call people, are not yet ripe for the breath of God, and they still have to learn lessons in material life.

It is necessary to understand that in Scripture not every soul is called a man, but only a living soul, living with spiritual thoughts. There is a soul-vapor, it is neither alive nor dead. A dead soul is one that was alive, had the breath of life, but then lost it, as happened to Adam and Eve when they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

There are high souls that belong to people, and there are low ones, which in Scripture are called creeping things, animals and reptiles on the earth. Adam the earthy is a high living soul from which the genealogy of God’s people on earth begins. This is not a primitive man, as some believe. He lived in a world where science and culture were at a high level, and there were religions, and there was a priesthood, but there was no breath of God in all this. Adam was the first God's mind to take into itself thinking from another world - the world of Divine nature.

A living soul, which has the breath of God in it, is God’s most precious thing, and He does not for a moment abandon His work on it, for He grows Himself in it.

God plants a paradise for Adam in Eden in the east and places it in a garden for man to cultivate and maintain the garden. And he could eat from every tree, except that which was in the middle of Paradise.

The Garden of Eden is a symbol of spiritual knowledge provided by the Creator to His human creation, so that he would be nourished from it and filled with wisdom, and keep it within himself as a precious experience. And every tree in that garden (and a tree is a teaching) could give him knowledge of life, without limiting his mind into the narrow framework of determining what is good and what is evil. From any tree he could naturally grow and improve.

Therefore, God commanded man: “... but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil... for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die” (Genesis 2:17).

What kind of tree is this, and what kind of death awaits those who eat from it? The knowledge of good and evil is given only by the law, which specifically speaks about what is good and what is bad, about what a person should do and what he should not do. And to everyone who comes to him, the law says that by fulfilling it, he will receive encouragement and will live by it, and if he does not fulfill it, he will be punished by it.

We already know that the law given through Moses to the people of Israel, in its commandments and decrees, concentrated in itself the entire paradise and everything necessary for the spiritual growth of man. But to the untrained mind, not fed by the other trees of paradise, it became a set of external rules and instructions. They had neither the strength nor the knowledge to fulfill the law spiritually. They approached it with earthly thoughts and began to fulfill it literally, and died by death. A whole army of legislators has appeared, strictly monitoring their external implementation. And as the Apostle Paul said: “... whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth is stopped, and the whole world becomes guilty before God, because by the works of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight; For by the law is the knowledge of sin” (Rom 3:19-20).

Thus, when Adam approached the law, the law demanded fulfillment from him. Adam, not having sufficient knowledge for its spiritual fulfillment, began to fulfill it literally, and the breath of death entered him, pushing away the breath of life.

But as we read the Scripture further, we learn that before eating from the forbidden tree, “The Lord God formed out of the ground every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought it to man, to see what he would call them, and what he would call them. man is every living soul, that was its name. And the man gave names to all the livestock, and to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field…” (Genesis 2:19-20). And in the first chapter of Genesis, God blessed man and said: “... be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God gave every kind of grass and every kind of tree for man to eat.

What does it mean? God created every thought and every knowledge, and the pre-Adamic mind already had at its disposal a wealth of knowledge, but there was no one to give all this the breath of life, to subjugate and dominate everything and put it in order according to the inner meaning. And Adam, as God’s mind, had to master all this, fill it with God’s life. And he becomes the first shepherd, leading natural souls, who know only earthly things, to God.

Giving names and titles to everything, Adam comprehends the inner content of things and creates a doctrine of the Divine, and he himself becomes the bearer of knowledge, which for almost a millennium (930 years) nourishes Adam’s numerous offspring.

The words “eat” and “eat” in Scripture mean “teach” and “learn.” “My food,” says the Lord, “is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to finish His work” (John 4:34).

So for the earthy Adam, every soul that did not know God was food. In order to do this job, Adam needed an assistant like him. “And the Lord God created a woman from a rib taken from a man and brought her to the man. And the man said, Behold, this is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she will be called woman, for she was taken out of man” (Gen. 2:22-23).

The Apostle Paul reminds us: “...man was not created for woman, but woman for man...Nevertheless, neither man is made without the wife, nor is the woman without the man, in the Lord. For as the wife is from the husband, so is the husband through the wife; all things are from God” (1 Cor 11:9,11,12).

According to Scripture, a husband is a shepherd, a preacher, and he becomes a husband when he has a wife - the church, his flock. The Lord creates it from a human rib. The rib is Adam’s faith, for by faith everything is created, by faith everything is overcome, by faith everything is acquired. And the wife became bone of bone, flesh of Adam’s flesh: with what Adam lived, with what he thought, with what he breathed, he filled his wife with it. And they both lived in the paradise of Eden and were able to feed on all the knowledge of God and grow.

Now let’s look again at what Scripture says: “And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27). And further we read: “This is the genealogy of Adam: when God created man, in the likeness of God he created him, male and female he created them, and blessed them, and called their name man...” (Genesis 5:1,2).

So who did God call the name “man”? - “... he created them male and female... and called their name man...” Think carefully about the words spoken. This is not an androgyne in the generally accepted sense in which some teachings consider the first man. Here the main meaning of Scripture is hidden for us, that under the word “man,” in addition to the usual meaning, stands God’s family, which God creates in order to give birth to His children on earth.

“And Adam called his wife’s name Eve, for she became the mother of all living” (Gen. 3:20). Eve is the first church of God on earth, the mother of all living, not living according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit, and from her begins the race of God on earth.

But let's return to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. “And the serpent said to the woman, No, you will not die, but God knows that on the day that you eat of them, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil. And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes and desirable because it gave knowledge; and she took of its fruit and ate; and she gave it also to her husband, and he ate. And the eyes of them both were opened…” (Genesis 3:4-7). And then the Lord God said: “Behold, Adam has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil...” (Genesis 3:22).

In the lecture on good and evil, I already told you what kind of processes are hidden in these words, and I will speak in more detail in the lecture about the image and likeness of God.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil gave Adam the knowledge that God has two opposites in Himself: good and evil, light and darkness, image and likeness. God created man in His image, and through eating from the tree, man also acquired his likeness: having known life, he also knew death; Having known the light, he plunged into darkness. Until Adam ate the law, he was in faith, and the breath of life was with him. But Adam, who did not know the law and was not prepared to fulfill it, resorted to the carnal mind, which is vapor. And the steam brought it to its literal fulfillment. The fruit of fulfilling the law was a carnal thought - death, and with it, as an instrument, he was killed. Thus, Adam became the bearer of life through the breath of God and the bearer of death through eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Having eaten from the tree, Adam entered under the rule of the law, and so that he would not remain forever in its power, God expels him from paradise. It is written: “And the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden.” There was, of course, no physical expulsion, as you now know. All spiritual processes occur in the human mind according to the laws of the Word, which lie in it and are steadily fulfilled. When Adam ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he stopped eating from other trees, stopped cultivating and maintaining the garden, and the garden in his mind withered, it withered and could not bear fruit. With the loss of spiritual thoughts, paradise in Adam's mind ceased to be paradise, but became the earth from which Adam was taken.

Now you understand that the fall of Adam and Eve has nothing to do with carnal life. The Fall is a spiritual process associated with thinking. The fall of Adam is that he was brought down from the breath of life to the breath of death. And it only seems to us, humans, that Adam and Eve did something base, and God kicked them out of paradise for this. For God, this is a natural working process of human creation, and it always happens, and not just in ancient times.

But you must remember that literal, external thinking limits the mind to a narrow understanding of what can and cannot be done. Spiritual thoughts open up space for research and knowledge, without blaming or punishing anyone, but allowing everything to grow and rise freely.

So, after eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam acquired the image and likeness of God. But, having acquired them, he did not know either one or the other in order to master them perfectly. And now, in order to discover the image of God in himself and become like God, he has to go through the likeness, grow in everything external, in sin. And for this, he will earn bread for himself by the sweat of his brow, cultivating his mind, and God will send him rains from heaven, and then come to him Himself to help him return to his Father’s house perfect.

You will say, but it is written that God said to Adam: “Cursed is the earth for your sake; with sorrow you will eat from it all the days of your life; it will produce thorns and thistles for you; And you will eat the grass of the field, and by the sweat of your brow you will eat bread, until you return to the ground from which you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you will return” (Genesis 3:17-19).

God is Love, and God is all knowledge and all perfection, He loves His creation, and He never curses in the sense that we humanly understand. And all the words that are terrible in our opinion, coming from the mouth of God, hide in themselves the laws that make up His will, according to which each of His creation, be it high or low, is determined in its place according to its level of development and understanding.

Adam received goodness in his thoughts, like a seed, but it did not become his life, because goodness must be grown in yourself - then you yourself will be good. Violation of God's commandment not to eat was predetermined by God as a natural process of human evolution. The same thing happens to you: when you read the Bible, you enter heaven and inhale the breath of life, breathe it, but you do not yet receive life itself.

The life of God is eternal, and it is not given to a person just like that, it must be sown and grown within oneself, and the fruits of the spirit must be produced. And to do this, you need to leave paradise into your mind and begin to cultivate it, prepare it for new thinking. For only through fulfilling the Word of the Scriptures will you be able, by removing thorns and thistles, to grow within yourself the Garden of Eden and the tree of life in the midst of Paradise. But only by the fruits will you know whether it is heaven or not. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law,” says the Apostle Paul (Gal. 5:22-23).

“Adam said: The wife whom You gave me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate. And the Lord God said to the woman: Why have you done this? The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate” (Genesis 3:12-13). These words, literally interpreted, have put women in a humiliated position for thousands of years. There is still an opinion that Eve is to blame for everything, and she was a woman. And many troubles befall the woman: she is neglected by her husbands, the state and even religion.

It is necessary to understand that in the Lord there are neither men nor women, for the Lord is the Spirit, He is the Word, full of grace and truth. And physical gender does not matter before Him. The Lord needs a sound mind, a pure heart and sincere faith. You are men and women in this world, but in the Lord you are neither men nor women. In the Lord you become a church governed by the Doctrine that is Jesus Christ.

Adam, as a preacher, filled Eve the church with his knowledge and was the head of Eve, just as Christ is the head of the church. And Eve was not a physical woman, but she was a priesthood raised by Adam. And everything that is written in Scripture about a woman and a wife is connected with the church, with the flock, and everything that is said about a man and a husband is said about the preacher and his teaching, who has within himself the seed to continue his life.

Both in the material world and in the spiritual world, everything is renewed and continues through birth. The Church must be a spiritual family, renewed in its children: daughters are the future churches, and sons are future shepherds, patriarchs. And as the Apostle Paul says: “A bishop must be blameless, the husband of one wife... A deacon must be the husband of one wife...” (1 Tim 3:2,12). And in the same letter Paul says: “Let the woman study in silence with all submission; But I do not allow a wife to teach, nor to rule over her husband, but to be in silence. For Adam was created first, and then Eve; and it was not Adam who was deceived; But the woman was deceived and fell into transgression…” (1 Tim 2:11-14).

Here Paul is not talking about a carnal family, but about a spiritual one. A bishop must be blameless and a man of one church, and a deacon must also be a man of one church. For the Lord said: what God has joined together, let not man put asunder. For the two have become one body. And I remind you again: the Bible is a spiritual book and does not interfere with the works of the flesh.

The error came from a literal understanding, for when people began to fulfill the law, knowledge was superseded. It was supplanted by the deadly letter. Humanity comes and goes, but the law still exists. And the younger generation inherits from their parents their misconceptions, concepts and customs. But the Lord’s Teaching about the resurrection from the dead, about the birth from above, about the Kingdom of Heaven remains incomprehensible, because it requires spiritual thinking about these processes.

“Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and said, “I have acquired a man from the Lord.” And she also gave birth to his brother, Abel. And Abel was a shepherd of sheep, and Cain was a farmer” (Gen. 4:1,2). Adam is the head of Eve, and the head of Adam is Christ, the Lord; and Adam knew Eve through the Lord, through the Word, full of grace and truth. Through the Word, sons - preachers - are born to Eve: Cain is the bearer of external, earthly knowledge, and Abel is the bearer of spiritual knowledge.

When Cain and Abel make a sacrifice before God, Abel's sacrifice is accepted, but Cain's is not. And then Cain rebels against his brother and kills him. The concept of physically killing Abel still exists in religion. But you know that in spiritual translation the word “kill” means “convince.”

Adam, in the person of his sons Abel and Cain, has two sides to himself: Abel is the breath of life, the day hidden in the night. He is still weak, he is like God’s breath in the mind of Adam and does not have the strength to grow without cover; Cain is the skin of Adam, the external content, the night, he is the gain from eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Having killed Abel, Cain took him inside himself, and now they, both internal - life and external - death, will go together and gain strength.

Cain is a man from the serpent, from earthly wisdom, external teaching and external church. Having absorbed Abel within himself, he grows and establishes himself in this world, acquiring new qualities so that the incorruptible can grow in corruption.

Cain is a farmer and brings the fruits of understanding to the Lord. He is the beginning of the likeness of God, the bearer of evil and sin, he is the seed of the serpent. Cursing Cain, the Lord puts him in His place, establishing him in external service.

But in Cain, as the germ of God’s life, there is Abel, and his blood cries out from the earth to the Lord his God in order to grow and be filled from Him and fill the earth.

Cain hides from the face of the Lord and becomes an exile and wanderer on earth. In response to his fear that anyone who meets him might kill him, the Lord told him: “For this reason, whoever kills Cain will have sevenfold revenge. And the Lord gave Cain a sign, so that no one who met him would kill him” (Genesis 4:15).

How should we understand these words? In short, we can answer this way: whoever convinces Cain, whoever removes Cain from himself, will receive the fruit of seven days - eternal life, will comprehend the spiritual and return to heaven. But until this process is completed, no one can kill Cain. Cain is the fruit of the devil, and he will grow, develop, fertilize, give new seeds and fruits until he becomes fit to bear the fruit of Abel. In Cain all external knowledge is located and grows, and in him, in his womb, the fruit of the spirit - Abel - ripens and strengthens.

Cain is in each of us, and as we enter the spirit, he dies, giving way to Abel.

Cain and Abel in a new union give Seth, and in it Adam receives new content, a new seed for the continuation of offspring. Seth gave birth to Enosh, and with him people began to call on the name of the Lord God.

The life that God breathed into Adam continues in his children. And God carefully watches over his seed, which from generation to generation grows in quality, strength, and abilities. And life comes to Enoch, and in him he receives grace from the Lord. Then life comes to Noah, and in him, in his ark and in his family, it achieves high righteousness and faith. Then Abraham appears - the father of the multitude, the great patriarch who gave birth to the people of God - Israel. This life is constantly being tempered and gaining strength in the numerous men of Israel until it reaches its perfection in the Son of Man. And as the Apostle Paul said: “The first man Adam became a living soul; and the last Adam is a life-giving spirit. But not the spiritual first, but the spiritual, then the spiritual. The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven” (1 Cor 15:45-47).

Thus, man (Adam, the mind), created by God from the dust of the ground, passes through many lives and reaches the image of God in Jesus Christ. And God did not leave man anywhere, but led him and created until he created a model of His perfection in man and for man. And God gave us all the laws of this process in His Scriptures. And in them He laid down His methodology, His medicine, His pedagogy, and His psychology for the formation and education of God’s family.

God, the Creator and Maker of man, never abandoned His creation, but always led and educated it, and gave His commandments, so that man, having gone through evil, through all its untruths, would be tempered in the fiery crucible, become wise with knowledge and virtues, and then would cry to the Lord his God: “God of the fathers and Lord of mercy, who created all things by Your word and created man by Your wisdom, so that he would rule over the creatures You created and rule the world holy and justly, and carry out judgment in the righteousness of the soul! Grant me the wisdom that sits before Your throne, and do not cast me away from Your servants...” (Wis 9:1-4).

And so Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came into the world to save the lost. He came as eternal life. The earthly world had already been created, and the people of God were created, but they came to such an error from which only the Creator Himself could lead them. But He comes to earth no longer as the Creator, but as the Father through His Only Begotten Son, to beget man from the Divine nature.

So, the first man was a creation from the dust of the earth and was created in this world. Now a person must be born again, from the Word. In order to complete this process, God prepared for a long time in the bosom of His Son, measured and weighed Him, tested and tested - and raised the Son of God, giving Him that fullness and measure that could give salvation. Just as a potter makes pots and fires them in a fiery furnace, so God gave birth and tested His Son, who is able to reveal to people the image of the Most High God.

Remember how God tested Job, through what crucible of trials he put him through in order to strengthen him in faith and truth. This is how God tests every person: for a small person there are small trials, and for those who are larger, more serious trials are given. Christ said to His disciples: “Whoever loves Me will keep My Word, My Heavenly Father will also love him, and We will come to him and make our abode with him.”

Whoever loves knowledge will keep it. It is impossible to keep something in yourself without loving. Only in life can you test and test your knowledge and your love. And if they have passed the test of strength, then they are suitable for building a spiritual house. “Blessed is the man who endures temptation, for when he is tested he will receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to those who love Him” (James 1:12).

In the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon it is written: “God created man for incorruptibility and made him the image of His eternal existence...” (Wis. 2:23). Apocryphal texts mention that God, having created Adam, told him that after 5,500 years He would make him God and seat him at His right hand. And God fulfilled His promise: Adam, created from the dust of the earth, Adam of the earth, who received the breath of life from God, went through all the trials and reached God, becoming a Man from heaven.

His wife Eve also went a long way, giving birth to numerous sons and daughters, until she achieved purity and righteousness in the person of Saint Anna, which allowed her to give the world the Virgin Mary - Heavenly Eve, who gave birth to the Firstborn of God.

The Holy Book, the Bible, contains many secrets. To understand it, you need to work hard in it and work a lot on yourself, for it opens only to the worker.

Remember: you were bought by the Lord with a price and should not be slaves of men. Only the Lord is your master and judge. Keep His commandments, and may the truth be revealed to you. He calls us to leave our former way of life and take upon ourselves the image of God in Christ Jesus, and renew our minds through His Word. Amen.

(Word of the Father)

What exactly did Adam and Eve do, since the Lord kicked them out of Paradise, and moreover, that for some reason we are all paying for their actions? What are we talking about here, what forbidden fruit is this, what kind of tree of knowledge is this, why was this tree placed next to Adam and Eve and at the same time forbidden to approach it? What happened in paradise? And how does this relate to our lives, to the lives of our loved ones and friends? Why does our fate depend on an act not committed by us, and committed a very, very long time ago?

What happened in paradise? The most terrible thing that could happen between loving beings who trust each other happened there. In the Garden of Eden, something happened that, some time later, would be repeated in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Judas brought there a crowd of armed guards looking for Jesus. Simply put, there was a betrayal in paradise.

Adam and Eve betrayed their Creator when they believed the slander against Him and decided to live solely according to their own will.

A man learned to betray those closest to him when he accused his wife of his own sin.

The man betrayed himself. After all, “to betray” literally means to convey. And man transferred himself from the good will of the God who created him to the evil will of his killer - the devil.

This is what happened in heaven. Now let’s try to find out in more detail how this all happened and why it turned out to be connected with the lives of each of us.

You can't imagine!

God created man and placed him in the place most favorable for his life. That is, to the beautiful Garden of Eden, which is also commonly called paradise. Today we can only make various assumptions and conjectures about what the Garden of Eden was like. But you can safely bet that any of these guesses will turn out to be incorrect. Why?

But because the man himself was different then - pure, joyful, not knowing worries and worries, open to the world, greeting this world with the happy and powerful smile of his master. The reason here is simple: Adam and Eve had not yet erased God from their lives, they were in close communication with Him and received from God such knowledge, consolation and gifts that we have no idea about today.

We, today, as has already been said, can only fantasize about heaven. Moreover, with effort, squeezing these fantasies through the narrow gaps between gloomy thoughts about the falling exchange rate of the ruble, grievances against the mother-in-law, worries about buying winter tires for the car, the upcoming Unified State Exam for the eldest son and a thousand other unpleasant thoughts that simultaneously torment any modern person every day with morning until night. That meager stuffing of fantasies that comes out of this mental meat grinder will be our current ideas about paradise.

Of course, the Garden of Eden was beautiful. But life with God can turn out to be paradise for a person even in the middle of a waterless desert overgrown with camel thorn bushes. And life without God and the Garden of Eden instantly turns into ordinary thickets of grass, bushes and trees. Only by understanding this can one understand everything else that happened in paradise with the first people.

Man has occupied a unique place in God's creation. The fact is that God created the spiritual world and the material world. The first was inhabited by angels - disembodied spirits (some of which subsequently fell away from God and became demons). The second is all the inhabitants of the Earth who have a body. Man turned out to be a kind of bridge between these two worlds. He was created as a spiritual being, but at the same time had a material body. True, this body was not at all the same as we know it today. This is how the saint describes it: “That body was not so mortal and perishable. But just as a golden statue shines brightly, just emerging from the crucible, so that body was free from all corruption, it was neither burdened by work, nor exhausted by sweat, nor tormented by worries, nor besieged by sorrow, and no such suffering depressed it. " And the saint speaks about the even more amazing capabilities of the body of primordial man: “...Clad in such a body, with such sense organs, man was capable of sensual vision of spirits, to the category of which he belonged with his soul, was capable of communicating with them, of that vision of God and communication with God, which are akin to holy spirits. The holy body of man did not serve as an obstacle to this, did not separate man from the world of spirits.”

Capable of communicating with God, man could proclaim the will of God to the entire material world, over which he received enormous power from God. And at the same time, only he alone could stand on behalf of this world before its Creator.

Man was created as a king or, more precisely, a vicegerent of God on Earth. Having settled him in a beautiful garden, God gave him a commandment - to preserve and cultivate this garden. Combined with the blessing, be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, this meant that over time, man had to make the whole world a Garden of Eden.

To do this, he received the broadest powers and opportunities. The whole world happily obeyed him. Wild animals could not harm him, pathogens could not cause illness in him, fire could not burn, water could not drown, the earth could not swallow him in its abysses.

And this almost sovereign ruler of the world received only one prohibition from God: “And the Lord God commanded man, saying: Of every tree of the garden thou shalt eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it, for on the day on which If you eat of it, you will die” ().

It was this only prohibition that man violated in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve, who had everything, decided that in order to be completely happy they still had to do something that was impossible.

The sandbox is mined

But why did God plant such a dangerous tree in paradise? Just hang a sign on him with a skull and crossbones: “Don’t interfere - he’ll kill you.” What a strange idea - in the middle of the most beautiful place on the planet, to hang deadly fruits on the branches? It’s as if a modern architect, when planning a kindergarten, suddenly for some reason designed a small minefield on the playground, and the teacher then said: “Children, you can play everywhere - on the slide, on the carousel, and in the sandbox. But don’t even think about coming here, otherwise there will be a big bang-badabum and a lot of trouble for all of us.”

Here it is immediately necessary to clarify: the prohibition on eating the fruits of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil did not mean at all that a person without these fruits knew nothing about good and evil. Otherwise, what was the point of giving him such a commandment?

Chrysostom writes: “Only those who by nature do not have reason do not know good and evil, but Adam possessed great wisdom and could recognize both. That he was filled with spiritual wisdom, see its discovery. “God brought,” it is said, the animals to him, “to see what he would call them, and so that whatever a man calls every living soul, that would be its name” (). Think of the wisdom of the one who could give names to the various breeds of cattle, reptiles and birds. God himself accepted this naming of names so much that he did not change them and even after the Fall did not want to abolish the names of animals. It is said: Whatever a man calls every living soul, that is its name... So, he who knew so much, did you really, tell me, not know what was good and what was evil? What will this be consistent with?”

Adam and Eve - why do we pay for the sin of Adam and Eve?

So, the tree was not a source of knowledge about good and evil. And its fruits were not poisonous either, otherwise God would have turned out to be like the alternatively gifted architect of a kindergarten already mentioned here. And it was called that for one simple reason: a person had ideas about good and evil, but only theoretical ones. He knew that good was in obedience and trust in the God who created him, and evil was in violating His commands. However, in practice, he could know what good is only by fulfilling the commandment and not touching the forbidden fruits. After all, even today, any of us understands: knowing about good and doing good is very much not the same thing. Just like knowing about evil and not doing evil. And in order to translate your knowledge about good and evil into a practical plane, you need to make some effort. For example, in a situation where a loved one in the heat of the moment said something offensive to you, the good thing, of course, would be to remain silent in response, wait until he cools down, and only then calmly and lovingly find out what made him so angry. And the evil in this situation, just as certainly, would be to say all sorts of nasty things to him in response and quarrel for long painful hours, or even days. Each of us knows about this. But, alas, it is not always possible to use this knowledge in a real conflict.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is named so in the Bible because it was an opportunity for the first people to experimentally demonstrate their desire for good and aversion from evil.

But man (Adam and Eve) was not created as a robot, rigidly programmed for only good. God gave him freedom of choice, and the tree of knowledge became for the first people exactly the point where this choice could be put into practice. Without it, the Garden of Eden, and indeed the entire beautiful world created by God, would have turned out to be just a golden cage with ideal conditions for man. And the essence of God’s prohibition boiled down to a caring warning addressed to people who were free in their decision, as if they were being told: “You may not listen to Me and do it your own way. But know that such disobedience is death for you, who were created by Me from the dust of the earth. Behold, I also leave open to you the path of evil, on which inevitable destruction awaits you. But this is not why I created you. Strengthen yourself in goodness through the renunciation of evil. This will be your knowledge of both.”

But - alas! - people did not heed this warning and decided to learn evil through the rejection of good.

We are not to blame!

The Bible goes on to describe the events in the Garden of Eden as follows: “The serpent was more cunning than all the beasts of the field that the Lord God had created. And the serpent said to the woman: Did God truly say: You shall not eat from any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent: We can eat fruit from the trees, only from the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, God said, do not eat it or touch it, lest you die. And the serpent said to the woman: No, you will not die, but God knows that on the day that you eat of them, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil. And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes and desirable because it gave knowledge; and she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave it to her husband, and he ate” ().

The serpent here refers to Satan - the head of the angels who fell away from God and turned into demons. One of the most powerful and beautiful spirits, he decided that he did not need God and turned into Satan - the irreconcilable enemy of God and His entire creation. But Satan, of course, could not cope with God. And therefore he directed all his hatred at the crown of God’s creation - at man.

In the Bible, Satan is called the father of lies and a murderer. We can see both in the passage from Genesis quoted above. Satan created a false story that made God look like an envious deceiver afraid of human competition. Both Adam and Eve, who had already received so many gifts and blessings from God, who knew Him, communicated with Him and were convinced from the experience of this communication that He was good, suddenly believed this dirty lie. And they decided to taste the fruits from the forbidden tree in order to become “like the gods.”

But instead, they just discovered that they were naked, and began to urgently build themselves primitive clothes from tree leaves. And when they heard God’s voice calling them, they were afraid and began to hide between the trees of paradise from the One who planted this paradise for them.

Traitors are always afraid of meeting those they betrayed. And what the first people did was a real betrayal towards God. Satan subtly hinted to them that by eating the forbidden fruits, they could become like God, become equal to their Creator. Which means living without Him. And people believed this lie. They believed Satan and stopped believing God.

This terrible changeling was the main tragedy of what happened in paradise. People refused to obey God and voluntarily gave themselves over to the devil.

Adam and Eve - why do we pay for the sin of Adam and Eve?

God forgave them for this first betrayal and gave them a chance to return to Himself, but Adam and Eve did not want to take advantage of it. The wife began to justify herself by saying that the snake had seduced her. And Adam completely blamed his wife and... God, who gave him such a “wrong” companion, for his crime of the commandments. Here it is, the last conversation of people with God in paradise: “...didn’t you eat from the tree from which I forbade you to eat? Adam said: The wife whom You gave me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate. And the Lord God said to the woman: Why have you done this? The wife said: the serpent deceived me, and I ate” ().

So the first man betrayed God, his wife and himself in paradise. Created to reign over the material world, he turned into a pitiful creature, hiding in the bushes from his Creator and reproaching Him for the wife ... which You gave me. This is what made him so poisoned by the lies he received from Satan. Once having fulfilled the will of God's enemy, man himself became God's enemy.

The saint writes: “The falling away from God was accomplished completely with disgust by a certain and hostile rebellion against Him. That is why God retreated from such criminals - and the living union was interrupted. God is everywhere and contains everything, but He enters into free creatures when they surrender themselves to Him. When they are contained within themselves, then He does not violate their autocracy, but, preserving and containing them, does not enter inside. So our ancestors were left alone. If they had repented sooner, perhaps God would have returned to them, but they persisted, and despite obvious accusations, neither Adam nor Eve admitted that they were guilty.”

All in Adam

That's all, actually. Having betrayed God, Adam and Eve fell away from the source of their life. And they began to slowly die. Thus, a branch broken off from its native trunk still remains green for some time in the roadside dust, but its further fate is predetermined and inevitable. The beautiful human body, shining with the beauty and power of God being with it, immediately turned into a miserable body, subject to disease and the threats of the elements, when God departed from it. And paradise itself - the meeting place of man and God on earth - became for man a place of fear and torment. Now, having heard the voice of his Creator, he, overcome with horror, rushed around the Garden of Eden in search of shelter. To leave such a person in heaven would be senseless cruelty.

Thus, according to the word of the Bible, man found himself expelled from paradise and became a vulnerable, mortal being subject to Satan. This was the beginning of human history. All these terrible changes in human nature, associated with the falling away of the first people from God, were inherited by their descendants, and therefore by us, and our friends, and all contemporaries.

Why did this happen? Because man was designed to be constantly with God and in God. This is not some additional bonus to our existence, but its most important basis, the foundation. With God, man is the immortal king of the universe. Without God - a mortal being, a blind tool of the devil.

A series of births and deaths did not bring a person closer to God. On the contrary, each generation, living in spiritual darkness, accepted more and more new shades of evil and betrayal, the seeds of which were sown by sinners back in paradise. Macarius the Great writes: “... Just as Adam, who transgressed the commandment, accepted the leaven of evil passions in himself, so those born from him, and the entire race of Adam, by succession, became partakers of this leaven. And with gradual success and growth, sinful passions have already multiplied in people so much that they extended to adultery, lewdness, idolatry, murder and other absurd deeds, until all of humanity was soured with vices.”

This, in a nutshell, is the connection between what happened in paradise to the forefathers of mankind and how we are forced to live today.

Probably, the majority of Orthodox people, when venerating the Crucifixion of Christ the Savior, paid attention to the iconography of this image, namely, in the lower part, under the base of the Calvary Cross, a skull and two crossed bones are traditionally depicted.

Tradition has preserved the story according to which the Savior of the world, the Lord Jesus Christ, was crucified on the site of the ancient grave of the forefather Adam, and the blood of the God-man flowing down the base of the Cross fell on the head of the first man buried here, thereby washing away the sin of the forefather committed in the Garden of Eden.

Any churchgoer who listens carefully to the liturgical texts of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross, the Week of the Worship of the Cross (3rd Sunday of Great Lent) and Holy Week is probably familiar with the narrative of this legend.

But I encountered a certain bewilderment when I presented the first guide book about the Holy Land, written after repeated trips to Israel, to my teacher, a professor at the Kyiv Theological Academy, just after picking it up from the printing house. His attention was drawn to the photograph I took in Hebron at the grave of our forefathers, or rather not a photograph, but a caption to it, which said: “A canopy over the burial place of Adam.”

“And who then is buried on Golgotha, under the place where the Savior was crucified?” - this question from the venerable professor prompted me to create a certain commentary on this signature, since information about the burial of the forefather Adam in Hebron is not readily available in the Christian tradition. Although, on the other hand, for monotheistic Judaism, it is the cave of the forefathers in Hebron that is the place where the remains of the first man are to this day.

How to reconcile the Christian tradition and the tradition of Midrash (Midrash - laמִדְרָשׁ, literally “study”, “interpretation”, a genre of literature of a homiletical nature, presented in the Mishnah, Tosefta, and then in the Gemara. However, very often the name midrash refers to a collection of texts which includes biblical exegesis, public sermons, etc., forming a coherent commentary on the books of the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament).

To do this, we will propose to visit ancient Hebron and reveal the secret of the Cave of the Forefathers - Mearat HaMachpela.

Streets of Hebron

"Gateway of the South"

“Gateway of the South” - this is the name Hebron received from the nomadic Semitic clans, which, driving their herds in search of new pastures, necessarily ended up along the road from Jerusalem, heading to Beersheba (Beersheba), Azoth (Ashdot), Ashkelon, to this an ancient metropolis with guaranteed comfortable parking for nomads with numerous wells necessary for livestock.

Hebron is located in the southern part of mountainous Judea in a lush mountain valley, located at an altitude of 925 m above sea level and surrounded by high mountains. Around modern Hebron there are many Muslim villages, the inhabitants of which are engaged, as in the distant past, in agriculture and cattle breeding. Today you can get to Hebron from Jerusalem along the HaMinaro highway, bypassing Bethlehem, and then, continuing along the Okef Halkhul highway, after 16 km you will be greeted by gray-haired Hebron.

Under the sniper's sight

Visiting this city today is fraught with certain difficulties. In modern Hebron, clashes between Jewish settlers and Arabs occur very often. Administered by the Palestinian Authority, the city is surrounded by Israeli army checkpoints, making it difficult to visit. Hebron is clearly not the place where you can shine with your knowledge of Hebrew. Moreover, “this is the only place in the West Bank where you should not stay overnight,” as many guidebooks warn intrepid tourists and pilgrims to this biblical city.

If, according to the modern idiom, “Israel is a litmus test for the whole world,” then modern Hebron is a litmus test for the Arab-Israeli confrontation. Today the city is divided into two parts: the Arab quarter and the quarter where Jewish settlers live.

When we move from the checkpoint to the famous Cave of the Forefathers, we are a little worried by the close attention to any movements (in this case, yours) of Israeli patrols located almost every 50 meters. Looking up, it is not difficult to spot snipers on rooftops and observation towers. As soon as you deviate from the route, out of nowhere a bulletproof jeep or a dusty military Hummer with protruding antennas appears, from which you will definitely be asked to present documents. In general, everything is intended to hint to the guest of Hebron that for the sake of his own safety, the route of a pilgrim or tourist has been thought out to the smallest detail, and therefore there is no need to improvise.

It is noteworthy that there is no free communication between the Jewish and Arab quarters, and only a foreigner, taking advantage of his neutral position, can visit both parts of Hebron. Moreover, once in the Palestinian part of the city, he draws attention to the fact that here Hebron lives the usual life of Middle Eastern Arab cities with traditional traffic jams, the noise of car horns, the chanting of muezzins, the calling of street vendors, etc. The concrete barriers have disappeared somewhere, patrols, snipers and kilometers of barbed wire...

First property in the Holy Land

Among the four biblical cities of Israel (Shechem (Shechem), Bethel (Beth-El), Jerusalem, Hebron) that have survived to this day, Hebron is the most ancient. Patriarch Abraham chose Hebron-Kiryat Arba as the first place to settle in the Holy Land. It was in Hebron that he bought the first plot of land - the Cave of Machpelah - for the burial of his wife Sarah (Gen. 23: 8-17). Abraham bequeathed to bury himself in this cave.

The text of the Holy Scriptures conveys in detail the process of acquiring ownership of this particular plot with a grotto in Hebron. For Patriarch Abraham it was fundamentally important to acquire this particular cave for the burial of Sarah. Why?

Cenotaph over the tomb of the foremother Sarah

Midrash - Oral Torah, complements the biblical narrative: “Abraham discovered the secret of the cave when he was chasing an ox, which he wanted to slaughter for his three mysterious guests - the angels. The ox led him straight to the Cave of Machpelah. Inside, Abraham saw a bright light, part of that primordial light that God prepared for the righteous, and inhaled the sweet aroma emanating from the Garden of Eden. Abraham heard the voices of angels: “Adam is buried here. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will also rest here.” Then Abraham realized that this cave was the entrance to the Garden of Eden, and from then on he wanted to get it for burial.”

The Book of Zohar confirms the narrations of the Midrash, reporting how the forefather Adam, after being expelled from the Garden of Eden, once passed by and recognized the light of Paradise in the light emanating from the cave. He realized that there was a tunnel connecting our earthly world and the Heavenly world, a tunnel through which our prayers ascend to God, and souls enter Eternity after the death of the body. Therefore, Adam bequeathed to bury himself only in this cave.

Selling the cave of Machpelah, the Hittite Ephron had no idea about its holiness. He did not see anything valuable in this cave and initially even wanted to give it to Abraham for free, without any payment. But the acquired property was endowed with a guarantee that in the future the descendants of Abraham would be able to own this place and be considered the rightful owners. In the presence of all the Hittites, Abraham signed an agreement with Ephron, and the exact location of the land plot and its borders were determined.

Only after the deal was formalized in writing, and legal ownership of the cave was determined for all times to come, did Abraham bury his wife. Moreover, the Midrash describes in detail the burial of Sarah, which was accompanied by miraculous phenomena: “As soon as Abraham entered the cave with Sarah’s body, Adam and Eve rose from their graves and headed towards the meeting. At the same time, they said that they felt shame for their sin: “Now that you have come here, our shame has become even greater, since we see your virtues.” “I will pray for you so that you will no longer suffer from shame,” Abraham told them. Hearing these words, Adam calmed down and returned to his grave, but Eve resisted until Abraham buried her again.”

Interior of Mearat HaMachpela

The Mystery of the Cave of Machpelah

The Hebrew name מַּכְפֵּלָה "Machpelah" is interpreted in rabbinic literature as indicating a double cave or referring to the couples buried there.

In the burial grotto of Machpelah, according to Talmudic sources (Babylonian Talmud: Bava-Batra, 58a; Bereshit Rabba, 58), the forefathers Adam and Eve, as well as the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their foremother wives: Sarah, Rebekah, were buried or me. The burial of four pairs of forefathers in Hebron is expressed in another Hebrew name for Hebron - קִרְיַת־אַרְבַּע “Kiryat Arba”.

And the word itself חֶבְרוֹן “Hebron” goes back to the root, consisting of the letters het, bet, resh. The words haver, hibur, etc. are formed from the same letters. All of them are close in meaning and mean “unification”. That is, it turns out that Kiryat Arba is the place where four couples unite (in Hebrew אַרְבַּע “arba” - four). Thus, Hebron was initially established in the minds of the Israelis as the “city of the Forefathers.”

When we talk about the Mearat HaMachpelah, or in the Russian tradition the Cave of the Forefathers, as a rule, we mean a grandiose structure above the caves themselves. In the entire history of Hebron, only a few people had the opportunity to go down inside, into the caves themselves, where the biblical patriarchs were buried.

It is noteworthy that the construction of this monumental structure, located in the central part of modern Hebron with walls 12 m high, belongs to the king of Judea, Herod the Great. This majestic structure consists of stone blocks (the largest of them is 7.5 x 1.4 m). Each subsequent block overhangs the previous one by only 1.5 cm. The upper edge of the blocks is wider than the lower one. The surface of the walls of Mearat HaMachpela resembles the Western Wall of the Temple Mount (Wailing Wall) in Jerusalem.

Initially, the structure was, in all likelihood, without a roof. During the Byzantine era, the southern end of the building was turned into a church, consecrated in honor of the Patriarch Abraham. This did not in any way affect the ability of Jews to visit this shrine. Christians entered through one gate, Jews through another. In the VI century. according to R.H. galleries were built on all four sides. Having conquered Palestine, the Arabs entrusted the Jews, in gratitude for their support, with supervision of the cave. The overseer of the shrine received the title “servant of the fathers of the world.”

During the Arab conquest, Hebron was renamed “Masjid Ibrahim” (Mosque of Abraham). To this day, Muslims reverence the Machpelah Cave not only as the tomb of Abraham, but also as the place over which the Prophet Muhammad flew during his journey to heaven. According to Arab legend, when the Prophet Muhammad was flying on horseback to Jerusalem, over Hebron he heard the voice of the Archangel Jebril (Gabriel): “Go down and pray, for here is the grave of your father Abraham.”

Cenotaph over the tomb of Patriarch Abraham

In the 9th century. according to R.H. the building of Joseph's cenotaph (according to Muslim tradition, Joseph the Beautiful, whose body was taken from Egypt during the Exodus, was also buried in the Cave of the Forefathers) blocked the central entrance, and subsequently it was cut through the eastern side of the wall. The existing structure dates back to 1118-1131. according to R.H. (reign of Baldwin II).

Some records of pilgrims who visited Hebron in the early Middle Ages have survived to this day. Here, for example, is what the Jewish pilgrim Benjamin of Tudella wrote down in 1173: “And in the valley there is a hill called Abraham. Gentiles erected six tombs there, calling them after Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob and Leah, and they tell those who are mistaken that these are the tombs of their forefathers. If a Jew pays an Ishmaelite watchman, he will open the iron gate to the cave for him. From there you need to go down with a candle in your hand to the third cave, where there are six graves. On one side are the graves of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and opposite are the graves of Sarah, Rebekah and Leah.”

The fact that it was possible to penetrate into the burial crypt of the forefathers through “baksheesh” is evidenced by Petahya from Regensburg, as well as Jacob ben Nathaniel Cohen. Thanks to the records of pilgrims, it can be concluded that the burial crypt of the forefathers was a double cave connected by a passage; it is possible that there is another, internal cave.

But in 1267, the Mamluk Sultan Baybars I forbade Christians and Jews from entering the prayer halls of Mearat HaMachpela, although Jews were allowed to climb five, and later seven steps along the outer side of the eastern wall and lower notes with requests to God into the hole in the wall near the fourth step. This hole, passing through the entire thickness of the wall of 2.25 m and leading into the caves under the floor of the structure, was first mentioned in 1521 and, apparently, was made at the request of the Jews of Hebron upon payment of a significant sum.

The decree of Sultan Baybars I banning non-Orthodox infidels from visiting Mearat HaMachpela was observed until the twentieth century. Although there were exceptions, in 1862, thanks to the specific relations between Turkey and Great Britain, the Ottoman authorities of Hebron allowed Prince Edward of Wales to visit the Machpelah Cave, who had the personal permission of Sultan Abdul Azis I himself. Thus, he became the first Christian who, six centuries later, (from 1267) was able to get to Mearat HaMachpela.

Cenotaph over Rebekah's tomb

It was only in 1967, after the Six-Day War, that access for non-Orthodox (Jews and Christians) was officially reopened after a 700-year hiatus. Today, the site of the monument is administered by the Muslim community, but part of the complex functions as a synagogue.

The burial crypt of the biblical patriarchs itself has been surrounded by mysteries since archaic times. The stories and legends that began to take shape around the cave of the forefathers in Hebron are permeated with mysticism and mystery.

Thus, one of the stories reports that after the fall of the First Temple in Jerusalem, the Lord sent the prophet Jeremiah to Hebron to the grave of the forefathers with the news of what had happened, and then, having learned about the fall of the Temple, the forefathers tore their clothes and wept bitterly.

In 1643, Machpela was visited by the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. While inspecting the mosque, the Sultan accidentally dropped his saber into a hole in the floor, through which it fell into the funeral grotto of the patriarchs. By order of the Sultan, several servants were lowered onto ropes behind the saber, but they were all taken out of the cave dead. Local Muslim residents, even under pain of death, refused to go down to the grotto. Then one of the Sultan's advisers advised him to demand that the Jews take out a saber.

Avram Azulai (author of several books, including the most famous Chesed le-Abraham) took on this mission and descended into the cave. There he met Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah and other forefathers, who announced to him that he must leave the earthly world. However, in order to prevent the Sultan's anger from provoking the persecution of the Jews of Hebron, Abraham Azalay was allowed to be the first person in history to return from the cave of the forefathers. The saber was returned to the Sultan, and a day later Abraham Azoulay died.

Geographically, Hebron is part of the so-called “Jerusalem speleological region”. This region impresses with its diversity of speleological forms. Thus, the limestones of Ofra are huge karst fields, cut by vertical fireplaces up to 50 meters deep, the limestones of Beit Shemesh are developed horizontal caves, the area of ​​Bethlehem and Hebron are entire karst systems, often watered by an underground sewer.

Since ancient times, caves in this area have been used by humans as warehouses, living quarters, cattle pens, workshops, etc. Today, at the corner of the majestic Mearat HaMachpela, you can see a classic karst sinkhole with a diameter of 6 meters and a depth of 5 meters. The bottom of the hole is cemented, and guides, when asked what kind of depression this is, have been answering for several decades that it is a “pool.” In fact, according to the geological map, this is an exposed fragment of a fault, which, 30 km to the east, ends with an active stream flowing into the Dead Sea.

After Hebron was captured by the IDF on June 8, 1967, during the Six-Day War, and non-Muslims were again allowed to enter the building above the burial crypt of the patriarchs, many assumed attempts to enter the burial chamber through a narrow opening in the floor of the mosque (which when Then the Sultan's saber fell. The diameter of the opening did not exceed 30 cm.

Moshe Dayan (ex-Minister of Defense of Israel) talks about his first visit to the burial crypt after a 700-year interval in his book “Living with the Bible”: “The first to go down it was Michal, the daughter of one of our officers, a thin twelve-year-old girl, brave and quick-witted, not afraid not only of spirits and demons, the existence of which has not been proven, but also of snakes and scorpions, which are a very real danger. ...Going down into the cave with a flashlight and a camera, she took photographs and pencil sketches of what she saw. It turned out that in the dungeon there are tombstones and Arabic inscriptions from the 10th century. according to R.H., niches, steps that lead upstairs, although the entrance was sealed, moreover, no traces of the door were visible in the photographs.”

Michal herself later described her speleological expedition:

“On Wednesday, October 9, 1968, my mother asked me if I would agree to go down into the dungeon under Mearat HaMachpela. ...

The car started moving, and soon we were in Hebron... I got out of the car and we went to the mosque. I saw an opening through which I had to go down. They measured it, its diameter was 28 cm. They tied me up with ropes, gave me a lantern and matches (to determine the composition of the air below) and began to lower me. I landed on a pile of papers and paper money. I found myself in a square room. Opposite me were three tombstones, the middle one taller and more decorated than the other two. There was a small square opening in the opposite wall. At the top, the rope was released a little, I climbed through it and found myself in a low, narrow corridor, the walls of which were carved into the rock. The corridor was shaped like a rectangular box. At the end of it there was a staircase, and its steps rested on a sealed wall... I measured out the narrow corridor with steps: it was 34 steps long. On the way down, I counted 16 steps, but on the way up, only fifteen. I went up and down five times, but the result remained the same. Each step was 25 cm high. I climbed the steps for the sixth time and knocked on the ceiling. There was an answering knock. Came back. They gave me a camera, and I went down again and photographed the square room, the tombstones, the corridor and the stairs. She went up again, took a pencil and paper, and went down again and sketched. She measured the room in steps: six by five. The width of each tombstone was one step and the distance between the tombstones was also one step. The width of the corridor was one step, and its height was approximately one meter.

They pulled me out. While climbing, I dropped my lantern. We had to go down again and go up again. Michal."

Apart from this description of the burial crypt under Mearat HaMachpela, there is simply no more detailed description. Thanks to this modest description, we will be able to, at least approximately, imagine the interior of the funeral grotto of the patriarchs.

Today, the opening through which Michal descended into the crypt is closed with a stone slab; no one else has descended into the dungeon; this is closely monitored by the mosque guards and the Israeli police. The only opening into the grotto that is open is the hole located under the canopy on four pillars, into which an unquenchable lamp is lowered, according to Muslim custom. The flickering of a burning lamp can be seen by looking inside the hole. The light of the lamp is intended to remind all visitors to Mearat HaMachpela of the light of the Garden of Eden, which, according to legend, was where the forefather Adam saw.

Canopy over Adam's Tomb

Controversy surrounding the burial site of forefather Adam

The early Christian tradition about the burial of Adam, as we indicated above, is associated with the elevation behind the Jerusalem fortress wall, where the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified. This place was called Mount Golgotha. Origen also wrote about this, saying that “on the Place of Execution, where the Jews crucified Christ, the body of Adam rested, and the shed blood of the Savior washed the bones of Adam, reviving the entire human race in his person.”

In the 4th century. according to R.H. this legend has become almost universally accepted. In Pseudo-Athanasius we can read that Christ suffered in the place “where, as the Jewish teachers say, was the grave of Adam.” St. Epiphanius even pointed out in Panarion that the skull of Adam was actually found on Golgotha. The same tradition was supported by St. Basil the Great and St. John Chrysostom and many other Church Fathers.

In the Gospel, the Lord often calls Himself the Son of Man, which in Hebrew sounds like בֵן-אָדָם “Ben Adam” - “Son of Adam.” The Church is developing the doctrine of Christ as a typological correspondence to the first man. The Apostle Paul speaks of Christ as the “new”, “second” Adam. “The first Adam was created with a living soul,” wrote St. Ambrose of Milan, - the second is the life-giving Spirit. This second Adam is Christ.” The Lord Jesus Christ was interpreted in the patristic teaching as a kind of antitype of Adam. If the biblical forefather fell into original sin and doomed humanity to death, then Christ, the second Adam, cleansed people from sin and delivered them from death.

The typological rapprochement of Christ and the forefather Adam entailed a rapprochement, as well as identification of the holy places associated with them. In parallel, two traditions began to exist, each of which claimed that the biblical forefather Adam was buried, according to one version, in Hebron, and according to the other, in Jerusalem on Mount Golgotha. Moreover, blessed one. Jerome of Stridon, in his commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians (5:14), even expressed doubt that Adam’s grave was located at the site of Christ’s crucifixion. Other church writers were equally critical of this version. The English pilgrim Zewulf, who visited Jerusalem during the Crusader era, as well as John of Wurzburg, who described the holy places of Palestine, who were undoubtedly familiar with the tradition of venerating Golgotha ​​as the tomb of Adam, nevertheless argued that Adam was buried in Hebron.

How can these two valid traditions be reconciled? The apocryphal manuscript “Cave of Treasures,” dated to the 7th century, sheds light. according to R.H., written in Syriac. This manuscript tells that the patriarch Noah saved the remains of Adam and Eve from the flood and after the completion of the flood they were again buried in Hebron. Patriarch Noah bequeathed only a skull and two bones to Shem, his son, to be buried in Jerusalem, where, according to the archaic idea, the center of the earth was located.

It should be noted that Talmudic sources identify Noah's son Shem and Melchizedek, king of Salem, claiming that they are one and the same person (in the original language מלכי-צדק "Malki-Tzedek" means "my righteous king" or "king of righteousness", which according to some exegetes, it cannot be a proper name). Well, if you compare the years of life of Shem and Abraham, you can see that Shem could actually live during the time of Abraham, which allowed their legendary meeting to take place after Abraham’s victory over the coalition of monarchs of Mesopotamia.

And this fact allows for the hypothesis that Shem personally confirmed to Abraham, on the one hand, the fact of the return after the Flood of the remains of Adam and Eve to the burial grotto of Machpelah, and on the other hand, the transfer, according to the will of his father, Patriarch Noah, of the head and two bones to ancient Salim ( Jerusalem), where he himself settled after the Flood and was “a priest of the Most High God (Gen. 14:18).”

This explains the ancient name of the mountain “Golgotha”, which in Hebrew sounds like “Gulgolet” (גוּלגוֹלֶת), which is translated as “skull”. Consequently, the two legends do not contradict one another - being buried in Hebron, the head of the forefather Adam was transferred to Jerusalem and interred in the place where the Lord Jesus Christ would later be crucified, whose Blood, falling on the remains of the biblical forefather, would wash away original sin.

In fact, this little-known Syrian apocrypha explains where the iconographic tradition of the Orthodox Church received the image of the skull and crossbones at the base of the Calvary Cross.

Adam's chapel. Cleft under Golgotha. Church of the Resurrection

Today in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, in the chapel of the Crucifixion in the rock, you can see a crevice (a consequence of the earthquake that accompanied the death of the Savior), through which, according to Tradition, the Blood of the Son of God, falling on the skull of the forefather Adam, washed away the sin of the first man. It was here, back in the times of the Crusaders, that a chapel in honor of the forefather Adam was consecrated in the Temple of the Resurrection on this site.