The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve

By: Stephen Greenblatt

Narrated by: Stephen Hoye

Length: 11 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

Stephen Greenblatt - Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award- winning author of The Swerve and Will in the World - investigates the life of one of humankind's greatest stories.

Bolder even than the ambitious books for which Stephen Greenblatt is already renowned, The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve explores the enduring story of humanity's first parents. Comprising only a few ancient verses, the story of Adam and Eve has served as a mirror in which we seem to glimpse the whole long history of our fears and desires, as both a hymn to human responsibility and a dark fable about human wretchedness.

Tracking the tale into the deep past, Greenblatt uncovers the tremendous theological, artistic, and cultural investment over centuries that made these fictional figures so profoundly resonant in the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim worlds and, finally, so very "real" to millions of people even in the present. With the uncanny brilliance he previously brought to his depictions of William Shakespeare and Poggio Bracciolini (the humanist monk who is the protagonist of The Swerve), Greenblatt explores the intensely personal engagement of Augustine, Dürer, and Milton in this mammoth project of collective creation while he also limns the diversity of the story's offspring: rich allegory, vicious misogyny, deep moral insight, and some of the greatest triumphs of art and literature.

The biblical origin story, Greenblatt argues, is a model for what the humanities still have to offer: not the scientific nature of things but rather a deep encounter with problems that have gripped our species for as long as we can recall and that continue to fascinate and trouble us today.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©2017 Stephen Greenblatt (P)2017 Audible, Inc.

superb treatment of Augustine & John Milton

excellent literary treatment of augustine and John Milton. ties together life and art brilliantly. the movement from pre biblical myth to biblical myth was also fluid and deep. exploring the rich trade offs in different systems of thought.

Well Worth Reading

Very interesting history of the story and similar ideas. As well as the people who the story inspired. The book is very well written and researched. I highly recommend

Great start, but downhill from there

I will state at the beginning that I am a fan of neither Augustine nor Milton. Quite obviously, Augustine had a larger effect on history as he is a Church father. But, in my opinion at least, he lacks charity and a forgiving nature. His denigration of the body, after indulging himself for years, borders on being dualistic. Greenblatt’ a discussion of Augustine’s changing views on Adam seem to reveal more Augustine than about the creation story. As for Milton, “Paradise Lost” seemed an apt title to me as reading it was hell. I get more cultural nourishment watching “Rocky & Bullwinkle” reruns than I get out of being bogged down in his 17th century writing.
I did appreciate Greenblatt’s referral of Adam and Eve as a story, particularly when he brings in ‘Gilgamesh’ and ‘Enemu Elish.’ Until Augustine enters the pages, the book moved right along for me, but then it really slowed. While the end with the chimps fits in with Greenblatt’s arc of the story, it felt WAY too long for me.
So, many interesting points and thoughts, but long stretches of ennui for me.

For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return

Greenblatt traces the story/myth of Adam and Eve from its origins (a Jewish reaction to Babylonian rule and myths) down to a post-Darwin world. He focuses a lot of time on the literature (Milton), philosophy (Lucretius), doctrine (Augustine), and art (Dürer) while maintaining a rough chronology of time ( from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts*.).

It was fascinating and moved quickly. I don't think it was as good as The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, but still worth the time and energy; comparable to Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. The big negative for me was its unevenness. Some chapters made me want to eat the fruit myself. Others made me pray for banishment. OK, that is probably a tad dramatic. I thoroughly enjoyed the sections on Milton, Durer, Augustine, and the first chapters that looked at Babylon and Gilgamesh: A New English Version in relationship to the Jewish people and the story of Adam and Eve.

I also appreciated the discussion that the story of Adam and Eve invariably brings up concerning sex, guilt, marriage, gender, power, faith, science, and our need to tell each other stories and understand where we came from and where we will eventually end up.

* Moroni 10: 3

Great humanist

There’s no greater hater of pre-modernity than a renaissance lit/Shakespeare guy, and Greenblatt is the best of his type. So if you expect a lot of sacred reverence you won’t find it. But he’s so erudite and fun that I think everyone can get a lot out of it - he makes learning easy.

just Ok

the book had a good start but it became obtuse in the final touches. it really needed to explore Adam and Eve on a specific level and go with it. It was all over the place and at the end dealing with the monkeys and chimpanzees it seem to have lost it's connection to the book itself. the book made a good start but it finished poorly.

Not a simple read, but worth it.

In typical Greenblatt style this is well written and detailed dive into a side of the Adam and Eve saga. Loved his literary reviews, and as others have noted at times they are VERY detailed, but for me that detail is precisely the point. Explaining why a story about creation has so many varied interpretations and why we would want ANY of them is a complicated topic. The question of “why do we exist” is vexing and many different answers have been given. The story arc takes us through so many different world views, perspectives, and brings you back feeling the better for that journey. I will cherish reading this again and again as it’s has so many interesting details that my tiny mind just cannot comprehend.

Disappointing..

A mocking sceptic view of the story of Adam and Eve and its results.. calling it the best fantasy and fiction... disappointing..

Starts strong but quickly falls into postmodernism

Started strong and is masterfully read by one of my favorite narrators; however things quickly fall apart into postmodern deconstructionism.
If your primary takeaway from Hesiod and the Genesis author about Pandora and Eve is that women are at fault for all the worlds ills and Zeus/Dyeus (“Order”) always wins (because latent misogyny) your grasp of the mythological archetypes is simplistic at best.
Since the author was incapable of relating it I’ll summarize it here.
Men and Women have dualistic sexual strategies that both compete and compliment eachother.
Fundamentally sperm is cheap and eggs are expensive. Men want to spread seed to ensure that at least some of that seed survives to adulthood. Men are (in general) more biologically driven to invest because we can never be sure if what comes out is actually ours (unless we stick around and actively mate guard/invest).
Women want the best seed and provisioning their sexuality can purchase in the moment. Biologically they care little for long term strategies because they know on a subconscious level that anything that comes out of them is in fact theirs and as long as they are fertile they can make more.
These underlying dualistic reproductive strategies are why love is such a complex and dualistic state of being that is both the destroyer of worlds and the giver of hope!
This is the dualism being poetically illustrated in these great human narratives and while they have been used by the ignorant to justify just abut every moral movement under the sun; this doesn’t mean that misogyny is their “latent” purpose.

Dissappointing, yet interesting

Two of the major sets of commentary are given short shrift. While there is mention of Jewish and Islamic traditions they are mostly set aside as contrasts against the more influential Christian traditions, because this book is really about how the story influenced Western Civilization.

Even when they were mentioned it was too frequently without proper chronological context. Islamic traditions of the story came hundreds of years after Augustin, and the comparison of his work, that of Muslims, and that of Jews seems out of place in the chapters that relate to his establishment of a literal tradition among Catholics. More appropriate it would have been to examine the departures of Islam from Augustine, not the reverse. The cross currents between Judaism and Islam seem to have been more fruitful than those of Jesuits, yet they are mentioned only in passing.

Further, without the viewpoints offerred in the very rich mystical traditions of Judaism and Islam, which examine the allegories in ways that are much more interesting and relevant to cosmogony and psychology as today we understand it, the story told is incomplete, leaving the impression that these scholars were simpletons.

Emptying these traditions of adult -level meaning by relating only to their children's stories literal version (after a short detour explaining how allegory lost out to literalism in the Catholic dogma - the actual "original sin"), treating them as plagiarisms of earlier Babylonian works that are clumsily rewritten, summarizes the historical view of western scholars but limiting it to that results primarily in an examination of Europe's and Catholicism's evolutions and interpretations of the story. That's interesting but that us only one part of the story, and it is not really about Adam and Eve influencing Europe as it is Europe influencing Adam and Eve - the relegation of the story to fairy tale status, with nothing to learn from.

I'd have liked to have known much more about the evolution of the story in Oriental cultures, which, though having had debates between literalists and proponents of allegory as well, its allegorical mystical treasury would have rounded out and completed this book, showing there is still much tone learned from it. Without it, it is partial at best