50 Fun Facts About Adam and Eve

Which fruit, never actually named in Genesis, do Western European artists most often show Adam and Eve eating?

An apple became the usual choice in medieval art, a habit often put down to Latin, in which the words for the fruit and for wrongdoing look almost identical.

From which part of Adam's body did God make Eve while Adam lay in a deep sleep?

A rib was taken while Adam slept, and when he woke he greeted Eve as bone of his bones and gave her the name Woman.

Which artist painted The Creation of Adam, with two almost-touching fingers, on the Sistine Chapel ceiling?

Michelangelo left a gap of less than an inch between the two index fingers, which some scholars read as a sign that people can never quite reach the divine.

Which talking creature tempts Eve in Genesis 3, where it is called craftier than any other wild animal?

The serpent is never called Satan in Genesis, an identification later readers added, and its punishment is to crawl on its belly.

Which tree's leaves did Adam and Eve sew together to cover themselves after eating the forbidden fruit?

Fig leaves went on to become art's standard cover-up: painters, sculptors and later censors used them to hide nudity.

Which author's Narnia books call human children Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve?

C. S. Lewis built the phrase into a prophecy: the White Witch's rule ends when two boys and two girls of that descent fill four thrones.

Which son of Adam and Eve, a farmer and their firstborn, became the first murderer in the Bible?

Cain was sent off to wander for the killing, yet God put a protective sign on him so that nobody who found him would strike him.

Which festive decoration is linked to a prop in medieval plays about Adam and Eve performed each 24 December?

The Christmas tree may descend from the paradise tree, a fir hung with fruit that stood for Eden on the name day of Adam and Eve.

What job did God give Adam in Genesis 2 when every animal and bird was brought before him?

Naming them showed that no animal was a fitting partner for Adam, and it is at that point that God puts him into a deep sleep.

Which English poet, blind by the time he wrote it, retold Adam and Eve's story in Paradise Lost?

John Milton composed the whole epic aloud, dictating its lines to friends and assistants who wrote them down for him.

According to Genesis 2:7, what did God shape into the first man, Adam, before breathing into him?

Dust from the ground is also where Adam's story ends: God later tells him he was taken from it and will return to it.

In Genesis 2:18, God decides to make a helper for Adam because it is not good for him to be what?

Alone is the first thing in the Bible that God calls not good, and the animals are paraded past Adam before a true partner is made.

The tree Adam and Eve were told never to eat from gave the knowledge of what, according to Genesis 2?

Good and evil is what the tempter promised Eve she would know, just as God does; a second special tree in Eden offered endless life.

On which day of creation does Genesis 1 say God made humans, male and female, in his own image?

The sixth day also brought the land animals, and it is the only day on which God looks at his work and calls it very good.

What question did God call out to Adam as he hid in the garden after eating the forbidden fruit?

"Where are you?" is the first question God asks in the Bible, and Adam replies that he hid because he was naked and afraid.

What did God make to clothe Adam and Eve just before sending them out of the Garden of Eden?

Coats of skin replaced the leaf coverings the couple had stitched for themselves, a last act of care before they were sent away.

Which experience did God tell Eve would become far more painful because she ate the forbidden fruit?

Childbirth is only half of Eve's sentence in Genesis 3:16, which goes on to say that her husband will rule over her.

Which two prickly plants did God say the cursed ground would grow for Adam after the forbidden fruit?

Thorns and thistles turned farming into a struggle: God told Adam he would eat from the ground only through hard labour, every day until he died.

After Eve is made, Genesis 2:24 says a man will leave his parents, join his wife, and the two will be what?

One flesh became the Bible's standard picture of marriage: in the Gospels, Jesus quotes this very verse when he is asked about divorce.

Into which part of Adam, newly formed from the ground, did God breathe the breath of life in Genesis 2:7?

His nostrils took in the breath of life, and only at that moment, Genesis says, did the figure God had formed become a soul.

Which son of Adam and Eve kept sheep and brought God an offering from the firstborn of his flock?

Abel had his offering accepted while his older brother's was passed over, and the jealousy that followed ended in the Bible's first killing.

Adam lived 930 years in Genesis 5, but which of his descendants lived 39 years longer?

Methuselah is credited with 969 years, the longest lifespan in the Bible, and some suspect an ancient mix-up of months and years behind such figures.

Genesis 2 ends by saying Adam and Eve were both naked in the garden and did not feel what?

Shame arrives only after the forbidden fruit: their eyes are opened, they realise they are unclothed, and they hurry to cover up.

In Genesis 1, God blesses the first man and woman and tells them to be fruitful and do what?

Multiply and fill the earth is the first instruction God gives to people, and it comes with charge of the fish, the birds and every animal.

Which son was born to Adam and Eve after one of their first two sons had killed the other?

Seth was welcomed by Eve as a replacement appointed by God, and Genesis runs the family line that leads to the Flood through him.

Which heavenly beings did God station east of Eden, with a flaming sword, after driving out Adam and Eve?

Cherubim and the turning sword blocked the way to the tree of life, so that the exiled couple could never eat from it and live forever.

According to Genesis 3:20, Adam named his wife Eve because she would be the mother of whom?

All the living fits her name, which echoes the Hebrew word for life, and Adam gives it just after God tells him that he will die.

Which river, still on maps today, does Genesis 2 list with the Pishon and Gihon as flowing out of Eden?

The Euphrates and the Tigris, another of Eden's four rivers, are why some scholars place the garden in southern Mesopotamia, near the Persian Gulf.

God tells the tempter in Eden that Eve's offspring will bruise its head while it bruises his what?

Heel against head made this verse famous: Christians call it the protevangelium, or first gospel, reading it as a promise that the devil would be defeated.

To which land, east of Eden, did Adam and Eve's eldest son go to live after killing his brother?

Nod comes from the Hebrew root for wandering, which fits a man condemned to roam, and English later turned it into a joke name for sleep.

Which American humorist wrote comic diaries for both Adam and Eve, modelling Eve on his own wife Livy?

Mark Twain wrote Eve's Diary just after his wife died, and it may have been meant as a last love letter to her.

In some Jewish folklore, who was Adam's first wife, made from the same clay and unwilling to submit to him?

Lilith argued that being created in the same way made the two of them equals; the oldest surviving version of the tale is the medieval Alphabet of Ben Sira.

Geneticists' 'Eve', the most recent female-line ancestor of everyone alive, is named after which part of the cell?

The mitochondria carry DNA that is handed down only by mothers, and the woman named after them was far from the only one alive in her day.

In the Quran, which figure is cast out of heaven for refusing to bow down before the newly made Adam?

Iblis argued that he was made from fire and so outranked a creature of clay; the Quran names him eleven times, mostly over this refusal.

Which Saudi port city, whose name is linked to the Arabic for grandmother, has a site venerated as Eve's tomb?

Jeddah's tomb was demolished in 1928 and sealed with concrete in 1975 by religious authorities who disapprove of pilgrims praying at graves.

On which island is Adam's Peak, whose summit rock some traditions call the footprint Adam left after paradise?

Sri Lanka's sacred mountain draws pilgrims of several faiths, because Buddhists hold that the same hollow in the rock is the footprint of the Buddha.

In which US state is Adam-ondi-Ahman, where Latter-day Saint teaching says Adam and Eve lived after Eden?

Missouri mattered twice to the founder of the church: his contemporaries said he also placed the Garden of Eden itself there, near the town of Independence.

Which Christian doctrine, shaped by Augustine, holds that everyone is born sharing in Adam's disobedience?

Original sin owes its name to Augustine, the first writer to use the phrase, who coined it while arguing against the followers of Pelagius.

What two-word name do Christians give to Adam and Eve's move from innocent obedience to guilty disobedience?

The Fall is a mainly Christian reading of Eden: Judaism and Islam tell the same story without the idea of guilt passed down the generations.

Which Gospel traces the family line of Jesus all the way back to Adam, whom it calls the son of God?

Luke works backwards from Jesus to the first man, whereas the other Gospel family tree starts with Abraham and runs forwards.

Which apostle, writing to the Christians of Corinth, called Jesus the last Adam?

Paul set the two figures side by side, writing that everyone dies in the first Adam and that everyone will be made alive in Christ.

Which American novelist took a phrase from the story of Adam and Eve's sons as the title East of Eden?

John Steinbeck regarded the 1952 family saga as his greatest work, and its opposite brothers Cal and Aron echo the pair in Genesis 4.

Which Dutch painter showed God presenting Eve to Adam in the left panel of The Garden of Earthly Delights?

Hieronymus Bosch set that calm scene beside a crowded centre panel and a right-hand panel that is usually read as a vision of hell.

Which body feature did the 1857 book Omphalos argue Adam and Eve must have had, though never born?

Navels gave the book its title, the Greek word for one: Philip Gosse held that God made a world that already looked old, right down to the rings inside tree trunks.

Which New Testament woman is given the devotional title New Eve by Christian writers?

The Virgin Mary earned the title through a contrast drawn as early as Justin Martyr: Eve disobeyed and brought death, while she obeyed.

According to Christian legend, Adam's skull lies buried beneath which hill in the Holy Land?

Golgotha means the place of the skull, and the chapel beneath its rock in Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre is known as the tomb of Adam.

Which Austrian composer cast Adam and Eve as a bass and a soprano in his oratorio The Creation?

Joseph Haydn brings the couple on only in the third part, still happy in Eden, and they are usually sung by the soloists who play two archangels.

Which German artist's 1504 engraving of Adam and Eve includes a cat, a rabbit, an ox and an elk?

Albrecht Dürer used the four animals to stand for the four temperaments, and the cat ignores a nearby mouse because Eden is still at peace.

Which Florentine painter showed Adam and Eve driven from Eden in a 1420s fresco in the Brancacci Chapel?

Masaccio painted the pair unclothed; a later Medici grand duke had leaves added for decency, and restorers removed them in the 1980s.

Which brothers painted the Ghent Altarpiece, whose outermost panels show near life-size nudes of Adam and Eve?

The van Eycks' frank nudes did not stay on view: in the nineteenth century the two panels were replaced with copies that showed the figures clothed.