The First Book of Adam and Eve
that you will have children as we have." This was a device of Satan to
deceive Adam.
10 Satan also thought within himself, "God at first commanded Adam
concerning the fruit of the tree, saying to him, 'Eat not of it; else
of death you shall die.' But Adam ate of it, and yet God did not kill
him; He only decreed on him death, and plagues and trials, until the
day he shall come out of his body.
11 Now, then, if I deceive him to do this thing, and to marry Eve
without God's permission, God will kill him then."
12 Therefore Satan worked this apparition before Adam and Eve; because
he sought to kill him, and to make him disappear from off the face of
the earth.
13 Meanwhile the fire of sin came over Adam, and he thought of
committing sin. But he restrained himself, fearing that if he followed
this advice of Satan, God would put him to death.
14 Then Adam and Eve got up, and prayed to God, while Satan and his
hosts went down into the river, in presence of Adam and Eve; to let
them see that they were going back to their own world.
15 Then Adam and Eve went back to the Cave of Treasures, as they
usually did; about evening time.
16 And they both got up and prayed to God that night. Adam remained
standing in prayer, yet not knowing how to pray, by reason of the
thoughts in his heart regarding his marrying Eve; and he continued so
until morning.
17 And when light came up, Adam said to Eve, "Get up, let us go below
the mountain, where they brought us gold, and let us ask the Lord
concerning this matter."
18 Then Eve said, "What is that matter, O Adam?"
19 And he answered her, "That I may request the Lord to inform me about
marrying you; for I will not do it without His permission or else He
will make us perish, you and me. For those devils have set my heart on
fire, with thoughts of what they showed us, in their sinful apparitions.
20 Then Eve said to Adam, "Why need we go below the mountain? Let us
rather stand up and pray in our cave to God, to let us know whether
this counsel is good or not."
21 Then Adam rose up in prayer and said, "O God, you know that we
transgressed against you, and from the moment we transgressed, we were
stripped of our bright nature; and our body became brutish, requiring
food and drink; and with animal desires.
22 Command us, O God, not to give way to them without Your permission,
for fear that You will turn us into nothing. Because if you do not
give us permission, we shall be overpowered, and follow that advice of
Satan; and You will again make us perish.
23 If not, then take our souls from us; let us be rid of this animal
lust. And if You give us no order respecting this thing, then sever
Eve from me, and me from her; and place us each far away from the other.
24 Then again, O God, if You separate us from each other, the devils
will deceive us with their apparitions that resemble us, and destroy
our hearts, and defile our thoughts towards each other. Yet if it is
not each of us towards the other, it will, at all events, be through
their appearance when the devils come to us in our likeness." Here Adam
ended his prayer.
Chapter LXXIII - The marriage of Adam and Eve.
1 Then God considered the words of Adam that they were true, and that
he could long await His order, respecting the counsel of Satan.
2 And God approved Adam in what he had thought concerning this, and in
the prayer he had offered in His presence; and the Word of God came to
Adam and said to him, "O Adam, if only you had had this caution at
first, before you came out of the garden into this land!"
3 After that, God sent His angel who had brought gold, and the angel
who had brought incense, and the angel who had brought myrrh to Adam,
that they should inform him respecting his marriage to Eve.
4 Then those angels said to Adam, "Take the gold and give it to Eve as
a wedding gift, and promise to marry her; then give her some incense
and myrrh as a present; and be you, you and she, one flesh."
5 Adam obeyed the angels, and took the gold and put it into Eve's bosom
in her garment; and promised to marry her with his hand.
6 Then the angels commanded Adam and Eve to get up and pray forty days
and forty nights; when that was done, then Adam was to have sexual
intercourse with his wife; for then this would be an act pure and
undefiled; so that he would have children who would multiply, and
replenish the face of the earth.
7 Then both Adam and Eve received the words of the angels; and the
angels departed from them.
8 Then Adam and Eve began to fast and pray, until the end of the forty
days; and then they had sexual intercourse, as the angels had told
them. And from the time Adam left the garden until he wedded Eve, were
two hundred and twenty-three days, that is seven months and thirteen
days.
9 Thus was Satan's war with Adam defeated.
Chapter LXXIV - The birth of Cain and Luluwa. Why they received those
names.
1 And they lived on the earth working in order to keep their bodies in
good health; and they continued so until the nine months of Eve's
pregnancy were over, and the time drew near when she must give birth.
2 Then she said to Adam, "The signs placed in this cave since we left
the garden indicate that this is a pure place and we will be praying in
it again some time. It is not appropriate then, that I should give
birth in it. Let us instead go to the sheltering rock cave that was
formed by the command of God when Satan threw a big rock down on us in
an attempt to kill us with it.
3 Adam then took Eve to that cave. When the time came for her to give
birth, she strained a lot. Adam felt sorry, and he was very worried
about her because she was close to death and the words of God to her
were being fulfilled: "In suffering shall you bear a child, and in
sorrow shall you bring forth a child."
4 But when Adam saw the distress in which Eve was, he got up and prayed
to God, and said, "O Lord, look at me with the eye of Your mercy, and
bring her out of her distress."
5 And God looked at His maid-servant Eve, and delivered her, and she
gave birth to her first-born son, and with him a daughter.
6 The Adam rejoiced at Eve's deliverance, and also over the children
she had borne him. And Adam ministered to Eve in the cave, until the
end of eight days; when they named the son Cain, and the daughter
Luluwa.
7 The meaning of Cain is "hater," because he hated his sister in their
mother's womb; before they came out of it. Therefore Adam named him
Cain.
8 But Luluwa means "beautiful," because she was more beautiful than her
mother.
9 Then Adam and Eve waited until Cain and his sister were forty days
old, when Adam said to Eve, "We will make an offering and offer it up
in behalf of the children."
10 And Eve said, "We will make one offering for the first-born son and
then later we shall make one for the daughter."
Chapter LXXV - The family revisits the Cave of Treasures. Birth of
Abel and Aklia.
1 Then Adam prepared an offering, and he and Eve offered it up for
their children, and brought it to the altar they had built at first.
2 And Adam offered up the offering, and asked God to accept his
offering.
3 Then God accepted Adam's offering, and sent a light from heaven that
shown on the offering. Adam and his son drew near to the offering, but
Eve and the daughter did not approach it.
4 Adam and his son were joyful as they came down from on the altar.
Adam and Eve waited until the daughter was eighty days old, then Adam
prepared an offering and took it to Eve and to the children. They went
to the altar, where Adam offered it up, as he was accustomed, asking
the Lord to accept his offering.
5 And the Lord accepted the offering of Adam and Eve. Then Adam, Eve,
and the children, drew near together, and came down from the mountain,
rejoicing.
6 But they returned not to the cave in which they were born; but came
to the Cave of Treasures, in order that the children should go around
in it, and be blessed with the tokens brought from the garden.
7 But after they had been blessed with these tokens, they went back to
the cave in which they were born.
8 However, before Eve had offered up the offering, Adam had taken her,
and had gone with her to the river of water, in which they threw
themselves at first; and there they washed themselves. Adam washed his
body and Eve hers also clean, after the suffering and distress that had
come over them.
9 But Adam and Eve, after washing themselves in the river of water,
returned every night to the Cave of Treasures, where they prayed and
were blessed; and then went back to their cave, where their children
were born.
10 Adam and Eve did this until the children had been weaned. After
they were weaned, Adam made an offering for the souls of his children
in addition to the three times every week he made an offering for them.
11 When the children were weaned, Eve again conceived, and when her
pregnancy came to term, she gave birth to another son and daughter.
They named the son Abel and the daughter Aklia.
12 Then at the end of forty days, Adam made an offering for the son,
and at the end of eighty days he made another offering for the
daughter, and treated them, as he had previously treated Cain and his
sister Luluwa.
13 He brought them to the Cave of Treasures, where they received a
blessing, and then returned to the cave where they were born. After
these children were born, Eve stopped having children.
Chapter LXXVI - Cain becomes jealous of Abel because of his sisters.
1 And the children began to grow stronger and taller; but Cain was
hard-hearted, and ruled over his younger brother.
2 Often when his father made an offering, Cain would remain behind and
not go with them, to offer up.
3 But, as to Abel, he had a meek heart, and was obedient to his father
and mother. He frequently moved them to make an offering, because he
loved it. He prayed and fasted a lot.
4 Then came this sign to Abel. As he was coming into the Cave of
Treasures, and saw the golden rods, the incense and the myrrh, he asked
his parents, Adam and Eve, to tell him about them and asked, "Where did
you get these from?"
5 Then Adam told him all that had befallen them. And Abel felt deeply
about what his father told him.
6 Furthermore his father, Adam, told him of the works of God, and of
the garden. After hearing that, Abel remained behind after his father
left and stayed the whole of that night in the Cave of Treasures.
7 And that night, while he was praying, Satan appeared to him under the
figure of a man, who said to him, "You have frequently moved your
father into making offerings, fasting and praying, therefore I will
kill you, and make you perish from this world."
8 But as for Abel, he prayed to God, and drove away Satan from him; and
did not believe the words of the devil. Then when it was day, an angel
of God appeared to him, who said to him, "Do not cut short either
fasting, prayer, or offering up an offering to your God. For, look,
the Lord had accepted your prayer. Be not afraid of the figure which
appeared to you in the night, and who cursed you to death." And the
angel departed from him.
9 Then when it was day, Abel came to Adam and Eve, and told them of the
vision he had seen. When they heard it, they grieved much over it, but
said nothing to him about it; they only comforted him.
10 But as to the hard-hearted Cain, Satan came to him by night, showed
himself and said to him, "Since Adam and Eve love your brother Abel so
much more than they love you, they wish to join him in marriage to your
beautiful sister because they love him. However, they wish to join you
in marriage to his ugly sister, because they hate you.