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The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve: The Story That Created Us QUOTES

The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve: The Story That Created Us QUOTES

1 " Eve is a figure for the soul that each human should love. The commandment to be fruitful and multiply did not originally refer to the flesh but to “a spiritual brood of intellectual and immortal joys filling the earth. "

― Stephen Greenblatt , The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve: The Story That Created Us

2 " In Gilgamesh the human formed from clay is a wild man, with flowing hair (possibly all over his body) and the strength and manner of life of the animals. In Genesis the clay human is created “in the image of God” and has from the beginning the status of one who is not a companion to the other animals but of one who dominates them. "

― Stephen Greenblatt , The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve: The Story That Created Us

3 " You bitches, sows, screech-owls, night owls, she-wolves, blood suckers, [who] cry “Give, give! without ceasing” (Prov. 30:15–16). Come now, hear me, harlots, prostitutes, with your lascivious kisses, you wallowing places for fat pigs, couches for unclean spirits, demi-goddesses, sirens, witches, devotees of Diana, if any portents, if any omens are found thus far, they should be judged sufficient to your name. For you are the victims of demons, destined to be cut off by eternal death. From you the devil is fattened by the abundance of your lust, is fed by your alluring feasts. "

― Stephen Greenblatt , The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve: The Story That Created Us

4 " progress—like those cartoons that begin with an ape and end with a man sitting at a computer—now gets lost in a hundred detours and false starts, intersecting paths and dead ends. It is difficult to find the story line in a tangled bush. Evolutionary theory is not threatened by the disappearance of the main highway. On the contrary, from the beginning Darwin insisted on the randomness of mutations, followed by the editing of natural selection, that lead to the emergence of new species. Still, it is disquieting to look around and see a wilderness of discontinuous and crisscrossing tracks. David Pilbeam once published a book called The Ascent of Man. It is not at all clear that he would do so today. Nonetheless, most of us, including evolutionary biologists, continue to search for and construct stories "

― Stephen Greenblatt , The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve: The Story That Created Us