The Greek Life of Adam and Eve is a brooding epic that explores experiences of disease death
and hope through a riveting reinvention of the stories of Adam and Eve Cain and Abel and
Seth. Now for the first time Jack Levison offers the English-speaking world its first
comprehensive commentary on this saga. The introduction offers analyses sweeping in scope and
rich in detail for which no comparable discussions exist in any language. Chapter one details
literary character-narrative flow characters and reconstructions of literary growth. With
consummate clarity chapter two brings order to the scholarly chaos surrounding Greek
manuscripts Greek text forms versions (Latin Armenian Georgian Slavonic) and the history
of research. Chapter three investigates provenance: external references to the Greek Life and
evidence for either a Jewish or Christian origin Levison demonstrates that arguments for
either a Jewish or Christian provenance cannot bear the weight scholars have laid on them. The
commentary is equally comprehensive with far-reaching discussions of the Greek illuminated by
the foreground of Jewish scripture and the milieu of ancient Greek and Hebrew literature. With
a fresh translation and bibliography.
