18 Facts About Adam

Adam is the first human-being aware of God, and features as such in various belief systems.

Similar to the Biblical account, the Quran has Adam placed in a garden where he sins by taking from the Tree of Immortality, so loses his abode in the garden.

In Gnostic belief-systems, the bodily creation of Adam is viewed in a negative light.

In Genesis, the name "Adam" is given to the first human.

God notes that "It is not good that the man should be alone" and brings the animals to Adam, who gives them their names, but among all the animals there was not found a companion for him.

Woman convinces Adam to do likewise, whereupon they become conscious of their nakedness, cover themselves, and hide from the sight of God.

God passes judgment, first upon the serpent, condemned to go on his belly, then the woman, condemned to pain in childbirth and subordination to her husband, and finally Adam, who is condemned to labour on the earth for his food and to return to it on his death.

The chapter notes that Adam had other sons and daughters after Seth, but does not name them.

Adam's story was greatly developed, during the Middle Ages, in the tradition of Aggadic midrashim, the Zohar and Jewish mysticism.

Adam ate the fruit unaware of what he was doing, and was filled with grief.

The idea of original sin is not found in Judaism nor in Islam, and was introduced into Christianity by the Apostle Paul, drawing on currents in Hellenistic Jewish thought which held that Adam's sin had introduced death and sin into the world.

Sin, for Paul, was a power to which all humans are subject, but Christ's coming held out the means by which the righteous would be restored to the Paradise from which Adam's sin had banished mankind.

Adam did not conceive of this original sin of Adam as being biologically transmitted or that later generations were to be punished for the deeds of a remote ancestor.

In Mandaeism, Adam is considered the founder of the religion and the first prophet.

Adam is viewed as the propagator of kushta or divine truth.

However, according to the Hypostasis of the Archons, a spirit descends on the physical Adam and gives him a living soul.

Adam is considered an important prophet of God in Druze faith, being among the seven prophets who appeared in different periods of history.

Some Mongolian Christians and Muslims thought Adam was the same person as Gautama Buddha.