The Testament of Adam — True Church Edition
The Testament of Adam 3
1He entered it at the third hour on Friday, and the Lord, to Him be praise! gave him the commandment, and warned him against disobedience to it. Then the Lord, to Him be praise! threw upon Adam a form of sleep, and he slept a sweet sleep in Paradise. And God took a rib from his left side, and from it He created Eve. When he awoke and saw Eve he rejoiced over her and lived with her, and she was in the pleasant garden of Paradise. God clothed them with glory and splendour. They outvied one another in the glory with which they were clothed, and the Lord crowned them for marriage, the Angels congratulated them, and there was joy there such as never has been the like and never will be till the day in which the people at the right hand shall hear the glorious voice from the Lord.
2Adam and Eve remained in Paradise for three hours. The site of Paradise was high up in the air, its ground was heavenly, raised above all mountains and hills, that were thirty spans high, that is fifteen cubits, according to the cubit of the Holy Ghost. This Paradise stretches round from the east by a wall from the hollow to the southern place of darkness where the cursed Prince was thrown, it is the place of sorrows. Eden is a fountain of God lying eastwards, to a height of eight degrees of the rising of the sun, and this is the mercy of God on which the children of men put their trust, that they shall have a Saviour from thence, because God, may He be exalted and glorified! knew in His foreknowledge what the Devil would do to Adam.
3Adam lived in the treasury of His mercy, as David the prophet said, ‘Thou hast been a fortress to us, O Lord, throughout all ages; cause us to live in Thy mercy.’ The blessed David said also in his prayer about the salvation of men, ‘Remember, Lord’ (the tree was the Cross which was planted in the middle of the earth), ‘Thy grace which thou hast wrought from all eternity’; I mean by this the mercy which God loved to extend to all men and to our weak race. Eden is the Church of God, and the Paradise in which is the altar of rest, and the length of life which God has prepared for all the saints. Because Adam was king, priest and prophet, God caused him to enter Paradise that he might minister in Eden, the Church of God the holy Lord, as Moses the holy Prophet testifies about this, saying, ‘That thou shouldest minister and declare by noble and glorious service, and keep the commandment by which Adam and Eve were brought into the Church of God.’
4Then God planted the tree of life in the middle of Paradise and it was the form of the cross which was stretched upon it, and it was the tree of life and salvation. Satan remained in his envy to Adam and Eve for the favour which the Lord shewed them, and he contrived to enter into the serpent, which was the most beautiful of the animals, and its nature was above the nature of the camel. He carried it till he went with it in the air to the lower parts of Paradise. The reason for Iblis the cursed hiding himself in the serpent was his ugliness, for when he was deprived of his honour he got into the acme of ugliness, till none of the creatures could have borne the sight of him uncovered, and if Eve had seen him unveiled in the serpent, when she spoke to him, she would have run away from him, and neither cunning nor deceit would have availed him with her; but he contrived to hide himself in the serpent, the cunning creature, to teach the birds with round tongues the speech of men in Greek and such like.
5He would bring a broad mirror with much light sending out rays; he would put it between himself and a bird, and speak what he wished that the bird should know, and when the bird heard this speech, it would glance around and look in the mirror, and see the form of a bird like itself and rejoice at it, and not doubting that it was a bird of its species that was speaking to it would listen to it and attend to its language. And it would comprehend it in a moment and talk to it. But the cursed Devil, when he entered the serpent, came towards Eve, when she was alone in Paradise away from Adam, and called her by her name. She turned to him, and looked at her likeness behind a veil, and he talked to her, and she talked to him, and he led her astray by his speech, for woman’s nature is weak, and she trusts in every word, and he lectured her about the forbidden tree in obedience to her desire, and described to her the goodness of its taste, and that when she should eat of it she should become a god; and she longed for what the cursed one made her long for, and she would not hear from the Lord, may His names be sanctified! what He had commanded Adam about the tree.
6She hastened eagerly towards it, and seized some of its fruit in her mouth. Then she called Adam, and he hastened to her, and she gave him of the fruit, telling him that if he ate of it he would become a god. He listened to her advice because he should become a god as she said. When he and she ate the deadly fruit they were bereft of their glory, and their splendour was taken from them, and they were stripped of the light with which they had been clothed. When they looked at themselves, they were naked of the grace which they had worn, and their shame was manifest to them; they made to themselves aprons of fig-leaves, and covered themselves therewith, and they were in great sadness for three hours. They did not manage to continue in the grace and the power with which the Lord had endued them before their rebellion for three hours, till it was taken from them and they were made to slip and fall down at the time of sunset on that day, and they received the sentence of God in punishment.