The Adam and Eve stories are a foundational myth in the Jewish and Christian worlds, and the way they were recounted reveals a great deal about those doing the retelling. How did the Armenians retell these stories? What values do these retellings express about men and women, their life in the world, sin and redemption? Presented here are twelve hundred years of Armenian telling of the Genesis 1–3 stories in an unparalleled collection of all significant narratives of Adam and Eve in Armenian literature—prose and poetry, homilies and commentaries, calendary and mathematical texts—from its inception in the fifth century to the seventeenth century. This seminal resource contributes to the lively current discussion of how biblical and apocryphal traditions were retold, embroidered, and transformed into the lenses through which the Bible itself was read.

Michael E. Stone is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Religion and Armenian Studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the author of numerous works on early Jewish and Christian pseudepigraphic literature. He is author or co-author of over fifty different books, including, most recently, An Editio Minor of the Armenian Version of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (Peeters) and Armenian Apocrypha Relating to Abraham (Society of Biblical Literature).