Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets. S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
soon as it reached his eyes Adam opened them, and saw the throne of God with the inscription upon it: “There is no God but God, and Mohammed is His prophet.” Then the soul ran into his ears, and Adam heard the song of the angels; thereupon his tongue was unloosed, for by this time the soul had reached it, and he said, “Praise be to Thee, my Creator, one and only!” And God answered him: “For this purpose are you made. You and your successors must pray to me, and you will find mercy and loving-kindness at my hands.” Then the soul penetrated all the members, reaching last of all the feet of Adam, which receiving strength, he sprang up, and stood upon the earth. But when he stood upright he was obliged to close his eyes, for the light of God’s throne shining directly into them blinded them. “What light is this?” he asked, as he covered his eyes with one hand, and indicated the throne with the other. “It is the light of a prophet,” God answered, “who will spring from thee in later ages. By mine honor I swear, for him alone have I created the world. In heaven he bears the name of the much lauded, and on earth he will be called Mohammed. Through him all men will be led out of error into the way of truth.”
God then called all created animals before Adam, and told him their names and their natures. Then He called up all the angels, and bade them bow before Adam, the man whom He had made. Israfiel obeyed first, and God gave to him in recompense the custody of the Book of Fate; the other angels obeyed in order; only Eblis refused, in the pride of his heart, saying, “Why shall I, who am made of fire, bend before him who is made of earth?” Therefore he was cast out of the angel choirs, and was forbidden admission through the gates of Paradise. Adam also was led out of Paradise, and he preached to the angels, who stood before him in ten thousand ranks, a sermon on the power, majesty, and goodness of God, and he showed such learning and knowledge—for he could name each beast in seventy languages—that the angels were amazed at his knowledge, which excelled their own. As a reward for having preached this sermon, God sent Adam a bunch of grapes out of Paradise by the hands of Gabriel.19
In the Midrash, the Rabbinical story is as follows: “When God wished to make man, He consulted with the angels, and said to them, We will make a man in our image. Then they said, What is man, that you regard him, and what is his nature? He answered, His knowledge excels yours. Then He placed all kinds of beasts before them, wild beasts and fowls of the air, and asked them their names, but they knew them not. And after Adam was made, He led them before him, and He asked Adam their names, and he replied at once, This is an ox, that is an ass, this is a horse, that is a camel, and so forth.”20
The story told by Tabari is somewhat different.
When God would make Adam, He ordered Gabriel to bring Him a handful of every sort of clay, black, white, red, yellow, blue, and every other kind.21 Gabriel went to the middle of the earth to the place where now is Kaaba. He wished to stoop and take the clay, but the earth said to him, “O Gabriel, what doest thou?” And Gabriel answered, “I am fetching a little clay, dust, and stone, that thereof God may make a Lord for thee.” Then the earth swore by God, “Thou shalt take of me neither clay nor dust nor stone; what if of the creatures made from me some should arise who would do evil upon the earth, and shed innocent blood?” Gabriel withdrew, respecting the oath, and took no earth; and he said to God, “Thou knowest what the earth said to me.”
Then God sent Michael and bade him fetch a little mud. But when Michael arrived, the earth swore the same oath.
And Michael respected the oath and withdrew.
Then God sent Azrael, the angel of death. He came, and the earth swore the same oath; but he did not retire, but answered and said, “I must obey the command of God in spite of thine oath.”
And the angel of death stooped, and took from forty ells below the earth clay of every sort, as we have said, and therefrom God made Adam.
No one in the world had seen a form like that of Adam. Hâreth or Satan went to look at him. Adam had lain stretched in the same place for the space of about forty years. No one thought of him or knew what sort of a thing he was. Hâreth coming up to him, saw him stretched from east to west, of huge size and as dry as dry palm leaves. Then Hâreth pushed Adam, and the dry earth rattled. Hâreth was astonished. He examined the form more attentively, and he found that it was hollow. Then he went to the mouth and crept in at it, and crept out again and let the angels know the doubt that was in his breast, for he said, “This creature is nothing, its inside is empty, and a hollow thing can easily be broken. Now that God has made him, He has given him the empire of the world, but I will fight against him and drive him from the earth as I drove out the Jins. What is your advice?”
The angels answered, “O Hâreth, if we overcame the Jins it was in obedience to God’s command. Now that God has created this thing, if He orders us to submit to it, we must do so.” Now when Hâreth saw that the angels thought otherwise, he changed his discourse and said, “You speak the truth, I agree with you, but I wanted to prove you.”
When God gave the soul to Adam, it entered his throat and passed down into his bosom and belly, and wherever it passed, the earth, the clay, the dust, and the black mud became bones, nerves, veins, flesh, skin, and the like. And when his soul entered his head, Adam sneezed, and said, “Praise be to God.” And when he turned his head, he saw Paradise and all its delights; and when the soul entered his belly, he wanted to eat, so he tried to rise and get some food, but the soul had not yet reached his extremities, which were as yet mere clay, so Gabriel said: “O Adam, don’t be in a hurry.”22 Then follows the story of Eblis refusing to adore Adam. According to another version of the Mussulman story, the soul showed such repugnance to enter the body, that the angel Gabriel took a flageolet, and sitting down near the head of the inanimate Adam, played such exquisite melodies that the soul descended to listen, and in a moment of ecstasy entered the feet, which began immediately to move. Thereupon the soul was given command by Allah not to leave the body again till special permission was given it by the Most High.23
In the Talmud we are told that the Rabbi Meir says that the dust from which Adam was made was gathered from all parts of the earth: the Rabbi Hoshea says that the body of the first man was made of dust from Babel; the head, of earth from the land of Israel, and the rest of his limbs from the soil of other countries: but the Rabbi Acha adds that his hinder quarters were fashioned out of clay from Acre.24 When Adam was made, some of the dust remained over; of that God made locusts.25
A Rabbinical tale is to this effect. God was interrupted by the Sabbath in the midst of creating fauns and satyrs, after He had made man, and was obliged to postpone their completion till the Sunday, consequently these creatures are misshapen. A Talmudic account of the way in which were spent the hours of the day in which Adam was made, is sufficiently curious.
At the first hour, God gathered the dust of the earth; in the second, He formed the embryo; in the third, the limbs were extended; in the fourth, the soul was given; at the fifth hour Adam stood upright; at the sixth, Adam named the animals. Having done this, God asked him, “And I, what is my name?”
Adam replied—“Jehovah.”
At the seventh hour, Adam married Eve; at the eighth, Cain and his sister were born; at the ninth, they were forbidden to eat of the tree; at the tenth hour Adam fell; at the eleventh he was banished from Eden; and at the twelfth, he felt the sweat and pain of toil.26
In the Apocryphal Little Genesis, we are told that Adam did not disobey God till the expiration of the seventh year, and that he was not punished till forty-five days after. It adds, that before the Fall, Adam conversed familiarly with the animals, but that by the Fall they lost the faculty of speech.
God, say the Rabbis, made Adam so tall that his head touched the sky; and the tree of life, planted in the midst of the garden of Eden, was so broad at the base that it would take a good walker five years to march round it, and Adam’s proportions accorded with those of the tree. The angels murmured, and told God that there were two sovereigns, one in heaven and one on earth. Thereupon God placed his hand on the head of Adam and reduced him to a thousand cubits.27
To the question, How big was Adam? the Talmud replies, He was made so tall that he stood with his head in heaven, till God pressed him down at the Fall. Rabbi Jehuda says, that as he lay stretched on the earth he covered