¶ Door Number One
¶ The First Covenant With Adam (PBUH)
¶ “And indeed We made a covenant with Adam before, but he forgot, and We found on his part no firm will-power.”
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
The story of humanity’s relationship with its Creator is the story of a Covenant. For when He created Adam (PBUH), He entered into a Covenant with him. A Covenant means a Will. For whenever a father makes a Covenant with his son or when he leaves with his son his Will, in both cases, the Covenant and the Will are legal declarations of the father’s wishes in regards to the disposal of his property and affairs. God chose and appointed Adam as a King upon creation and made him responsible over the affairs of the Garden of Eden. God declared to Adam that he may eat from any tree, plant, or fruit he wished, except for one tree that would be forbidden for him. So the Will of the Creator upon Adam (PBUH) was for Adam to become His successor on Earth and God made obedience to Adam obligatory upon everyone, and God took a Covenant from Adam (PBUH) that he takes care of His land, and God made everything permissible for Adam except for one tree. That tree in the Qur’an is called The Tree of Immortality and in the Torah and Gospels it is called The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. God gave Adam (PBUH) a single command and a single prohibition. He commanded him to multiply and forbade him from the tree.
Adam (PBUH), however, disobeyed the Will of God and broke the Covenant by eating from the forbidden tree. Imam Al-Askari (From Him is Peace) said regarding the verse of the Qur’an:
“ ‘And do not approach this tree.’ It is the tree of knowledge of Mohammed and the Family of Mohammed, (PBUH & His Family).”
Imam Al-Ridha (From Him is Peace) said:
“It is not like the trees of the world.”
So where was the Garden of Eden located? In regards to the location of the Garden of Eden, Imam Al-Sadiq (From Him is Peace) clarified it by saying:
“ ‘And We said O Adam, abide you and your wife in the Garden.’ This was one of the gardens of this world, a sun would rise upon it and a moon, and if it were from the gardens of the hereafter, Adam would have never exited from it nor would Satan have been able to enter into it.”
Thus, we can conclude that the Garden of Eden was on the Earth; however, the trees in it were not like the trees of the Earth. The word “tree” is an allegory or symbol for something else. So what does the tree represent?
In one of the prayers narrated from the Ahlul-Bayt (From Them is Peace) we read:
“We are the tree of Prophethood and the location of the message and we are the place that the angels return to…”
We also see that in reference to the tree in the Qur’an, God states:
“Have you not considered how Allah presents an example, [making] a good word like a good tree, whose root is firmly fixed and its branches [high] in the sky?”
It is clear that the word “tree” is a metaphor for words, and the complete words of God are Mohammed and the Family of Mohammed (From Them is Peace). Furthermore, the Holy Household of the Prophet interpreted the good tree to be Mohammed and the Family of Mohammed (From Them is Peace), and they interpreted the cursed tree in the Qur’an to also not be like the trees of the Earth, but rather, they interpreted it to be the Umayyad dynasty. Therefore, we may conclude from all this that the tree which Adam (PBUH) approached and which he was forbidden from was not a literal tree at all, but rather it pointed to a person.
It was narrated from Ibn Abdus who narrated from Ibn Qutaiba who narrated from Hamdan ibn Sulaiman who narrated from Al-Harwi who said:
I said to Al-Ridha (PBUH): “O son of the Messenger of God, tell me about the tree that Adam and Eve ate from, what was it? People have differed regarding this; some have said that it was wheat, others have said it was a grape tree, and others state that it was the tree of envy.” So he replied: “All of that is true.” So I said: “What does it mean that all the plants and trees that I mentioned are similar even though they are different?” So he said, “O Aba Al-Salt, the trees of the garden carried different types of fruit, so it was a wheat tree and it had in it grapes and it was not like the trees of the Earth, and verily when God honored Adam (PBUH) by commanding the angels to prostrate to him and by making him enter the garden, Adam said to himself: ‘Did God ever create a human being better than me?’ And God knew what fell into his heart, and so God called upon him and said, ‘O Adam, raise your head and look at the leg of my throne.’ And so Adam looked up and found that it was written on the leg of God’s throne: ‘There is no God but God, and Mohammed is the Messenger of God, Ali ibn Abi Talib is the Prince of the Believers and his wife Fatimah is the Mistress of all the Women of the Worlds, and Al-Hassan and Al-Hussein (PBUT) are the Masters of the Youth of Paradise.’ And so Adam (PBUH) said: ‘O Lord, who are those?’ God responded, saying: ‘They are descendants of yours to come and they are better than you and better than all of My creation and if it were not for them, I would not have created you nor would I have created heaven or hell nor would I have created the sky or the earth. Do not ever look at them with the eye of envy or else I shall remove you from My side.’ But Adam (PBUH) envied them and he wished for their rank and position and so the devil went against him and lured him until he ate from the forbidden tree. And the devil lured Eve because she envied Fatimah Al-Zahra (PBUH) so she ate from the tree like Adam did, and so God expelled them from His Garden and made them go out to the earth.”
Imam Ahmed Al-Hassan (From Him is Peace) clarified that Eve envied Fatimah (From Her is Peace) especially because Fatimah was the forbidden tree. When Adam (PBUH) found out that God created a woman better than Eve, he went to Fatimah (From Her is Peace) and attempted to have intercourse with her, and this is why Eve envied Fatimah, because Adam wanted her. But Adam could not have intercourse with her. The Prince of the Believers Ali ibn Abi Talib (From Him is Peace) came and threw Adam (PBUH) outside of the Garden of Eden. Here is a section of the Gnostic Gospel On the Origin of the World which was found in Nag Hammadi, and it mentions some details of the story, confirming what the Imam (From Him is Peace) has said:
After the day of rest, Sophia sent her daughter Zoe, called Eve, as an instructor to raise Adam, in whom there was no soul, so that the children he would engender might be vessels of light. [When] Eve saw her male partner on the ground, she felt sorry for him and said, “Adam, live! Get up from the ground!” At once her word became an accomplished deed. When Adam got up, at once he opened his eyes, and he saw her and said, “You will be called the Mother of the living, because you have given me life.” The authorities were told that their modeled body was alive and had gotten up, and they were greatly troubled. They sent seven archangels to see what had happened. They came to Adam, and when they saw Eve speaking with him, they said to each other, “Who is this enlightened woman? She looks like what appeared to us in the light. Come, let’s seize her and ejaculate our semen into her, so that she may be unclean and unable to ascend to her light, and her children will serve us. But let’s not tell Adam, because he is not one of us. Instead, let’s put him to sleep and suggest to him in his sleep that Eve came from his rib, so that the woman may serve and he may rule over her.” Since Eve was a heavenly power, she laughed at what they had in mind. She blinded their eyes and secretly left something that resembled her with Adam. She entered the tree of knowledge and stayed there. The rulers chased her, and she revealed to them that she had entered the tree and had become a tree. The blind powers fell into great fear and ran away. Later, when they recovered their sight, they came to [Adam]. They saw a female like that woman with him, and they were troubled and thought this was the true Eve…
Of course, not everything written in the Nag Hammadi manuscript is completely correct or free from distortion but what is notable and clear from the manuscript is:
- In the Garden of Eden there is a woman who is the origin of life and who is the tree (this is Zoe/Al-Zahra/the true and original Eve whom the likeness of Eve is a copy of).
- The woman who became the tree shares the same spiritual rank as the creator of Adam’s soul.
Imam Ahmed Al-Hassan (From Him is Peace) has stated that Adam (PBUH) is the son of the Prince of the Believers Ali ibn Abi Talib (From Him is Peace) in the soul world, and that it is Ali (From Him is Peace) who is the direct creator of Adam’s soul (PBUH). The soul world and its relationships are something which we will expand upon in a later Door. Mohammed ibn Sinan narrated from Ibn Abbas who said:
We were with the Prophet of God (PBUH & His Family) and Ali ibn Abi Talib (PBUH) approached. The Prophet said to him, “Greetings to the one whom God created before the creation of his father by forty thousand years.” So we said: “O Prophet of God, was the son before the father?” So he said: “Yes, verily God created me and Ali from one light before the creation of Adam by this time period, then God divided that light into two halves, then He created everything from my light and the light of Ali (PBUH), then He made us abide to the right of His throne, and we glorified Him and then the angels glorified Him, and we praised Him and so they praised Him, and we worshiped Him and so they worshiped Him, and thus all those who praised and worshiped Him learned how to do so from Ali (PBUH).”
God created Adam (PBUH) with His Hand as stated in the verse from the Qur’an:
“Allah asked, “O Iblis! What prevented you from prostrating to what I created with My Own Hands?”
Thus, Ali (From Him is Peace) is the Hand of God who directly created Adam (PBUH). Ahmed ibn Mohammed ibn Abi Nasr narrated from Hassan Al-Jammal who narrated from Hashim ibn Abi Ammar Al-Janbi who said:
“I heard the Prince of the Believers say: ‘I am the Eye of God and I am the Hand of God and I am the Side of God and I am the Door of God.’ ”
As for the location of the Garden of Eden, it was in present-day Iraq. In the Qur’an it says:
“And He taught Adam all of the names.” And in the Bible it says: “Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.”
Imam Ahmed Al-Hassan (From Him is Peace) clarified this matter and said that God told Adam (PBUH) to name everything from the animals and plants and all else, and anything that Adam chose as a name for it became its name, and as for the qur’anic verse which states,
“And He taught Adam all of the names,”
this means that God taught Adam (PBUH) the incarnations of all of the angels.
Imam Ahmed Al-Hassan (From Him is Peace) said to me regarding this matter:
And “Tell them their names,” meaning their incarnations, he told them in that time because the angels didn’t know their own incarnations, they know that they had incarnations before they incarnated in the present but they did not know what their incarnations were in the previous worlds. It is similar to now, the believers do not know their incarnations and you inform them of their incarnations, the people ask about their incarnations because they know they incarnated before but they do not know who they are.
As for the age of Adam and Eve in the garden and their appearance, Imam Ahmed Al-Hassan (From Him is Peace) said:
They (PBUT) were youth, Eve was nine years old and Adam was twelve. However, in that time a nine-year-old was an adult who had a menstrual cycle and appeared like an eighteen-year-old today. And Adam who was twelve years old, had the appearance of a twenty-four-year-old today. So, their appearance in that time was double their age in today’s years. And both of them appeared suddenly on Earth when created.
Imam Ahmed Al-Hassan (From Him is Peace) also said that Eve was not the one who ate from the tree, rather it was only Adam (PBUH). Furthermore, what has been written about Eve being the one who first ate from the tree and being the cause of why Adam (PBUH) ate from the tree is false and lies.
The divine punishment for breaking the Covenant was swift and fiercely intense. As a result, Adam, Eve, and Azazel were exiled from the Garden of Eden and it was said to them:
“Descend as enemies to one another and you shall have an abode on the Earth and pleasure in it for a while.”
And God said to Satan:
“Lead to destruction those whom you can among them with your seductive voice, and make assaults on them with your cavalry and infantry and mutually share with them in wealth and children and promise them, verily the promises of Satan are not except lies.”
Scholars have long been perplexed as to the meaning of Satan sharing with humans in their wealth and children. Imam Ahmed Al-Hassan (From Him is Peace) has unveiled this mystery and revealed the reality. It is as it is written. Iblis or Azazel (May God curse him) went to Eve in physical form and deceived her into having sexual relations with him on the Earth; thus, Eve became pregnant with Cain (May God curse him), and Cain is the biological son of Iblis (May God curse him) and NOT the son of Adam (PBUH). This story is mentioned in the Jewish narrations:
Wickedness came into the world with the first being born of woman, Cain, the oldest son of Adam. When God bestowed Paradise upon the first pair of mankind, He warned them particularly against carnal intercourse with each other. But after the fall of Eve, Satan, in the guise of the serpent, approached her, and the fruit of their union was Cain, the ancestor of all the impious generations that were rebellious toward God, and rose up against Him. Cain’s descent from Satan, who is the angel Samael, was revealed in his seraphic appearance. At his birth, the exclamation was wrung from Eve, “I have gotten a man through an angel of the Lord.” Adam was not in the company of Eve during the time of her pregnancy with Cain. After she had succumbed a second time to the temptations of Satan, and permitted herself to be interrupted in her penance, she left her husband and journeyed westward, because she feared her presence might continue to bring him misery. Adam remained in the east. When the days of Eve to be delivered were fulfilled, and she began to feel the pangs of travailing, she prayed to God for help. But He hearkened not unto her supplications. “Who will carry the report to my Lord Adam?” she asked herself. “Ye luminaries in the sky, I beg you, tell it to my master Adam when ye return to the east!” In that self same hour, Adam cried out: “The lamentation of Eve has pierced to my ear! Mayhap the serpent has again assaulted her,” and he hastened to his wife. Finding her in grievous pain, he besought God in her behalf, and twelve angels appeared, together with two heavenly powers. All these took up their post to right of her and to left of her, while Michael, also standing on her right side, passed his hand over her, from her face downward to her breast, and said to her, “Be thou blessed, Eve, for the sake of Adam. Because of his solicitations and his prayers I was sent to grant thee our assistance. Make ready to give birth to thy child!” Immediately her son was born, a radiant figure. A little while and the babe stood upon his feet, ran off, and returned holding in his hands a stalk of straw, which he gave to his mother. For this reason he was named Cain, the Hebrew word for stalk of straw. Now Adam took Eve and the boy to his home in the east. God sent him various kinds of seeds by the hand of the angel Michael, and he was taught how to cultivate the ground and make it yield produce and fruits, to sustain himself and his family and his posterity. After a while, Eve bore her second son, whom she named Hebel, because, she said, he was born but to die.
After Adam (PBUH) was expelled from the Garden of Eden, he and Eve repented for their envy and disobedience. God forgave them and reinstated the First Covenant even though it had been broken. Thus far, we have learned several points. First, we have learned about the condition of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Everything was permissible for them except for one thing (approaching the tree). Second, the origin of all sin was envy. Third, the First Covenant consisted of a single commandment and forbiddance. This was the appropriate law and jurisprudence for their time and circumstances. It was the only rule that Adam and Eve needed because there were no other human beings alive but them. There were no violations during that time, nor were there any transgressions that required laws to be established. Only Adam, Eve, the Family of Mohammed, the angels, and the spiritual beings (PBUT) existed. The jurisprudence would eventually evolve and adapt according to changing conditions, circumstances, and needs. Now, let us examine a few situations that happened in the time of Adam (PBUH) and the generations that followed that warranted a change in jurisprudence.
“So the Nafs (self) of Cain encouraged him and made fair seeming to him the murder of his brother; so he murdered him and became one of the losers.”
Before Cain killed Abel there were no laws regarding murder, nor were there any legal punishments, for it had never happened before to the human race. Therefore, when Cain murdered Abel, we find that neither Adam (PBUH) nor the Lord executed any sort of punishment upon him. What’s known in the jurisprudence of most religions is that the penalty for murder is death. However, under the religion, jurisprudence, and law of Adam (PBUH) (i.e. the Adamic Law), Cain is not punished or executed by death. On the contrary, he goes forth and gets married, continues his normal life building cities and spreading his seed throughout the Earth. Perhaps the reader finds this strange, but how can one be punished when they never broke a law? Furthermore, why would there be a law for a crime that has never been committed nor thought of?
Now Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out to the field.” While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” “I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The Lord said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.” Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” But the Lord said to him, “Not so; anyone who kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the Lord put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. So Cain went out from the Lord’s presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Cain made love to his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch. To Enoch was born Irad, and Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael was the father of Methushael, and Methushael was the father of Lamech.
Crime, corruption, murder, robbery, and wars all increased in the generations following Adam. The children of Cain filled the Earth with injustice and tyranny until Noah (PBUH), the promised Savior and Riser from the family of Adam (PBUH), arrived. During the years and generations between Adam and Noah (PBUT), the children of Adam used taqiyah or precautionary dissimulation (concealing one’s true beliefs for fear of harm). So, they hid everything that they had learned from Adam and the Prophets between Adam and Noah (peace be upon them all) in fear of their lives from the children of Cain. Even the animals changed and were fearful of humans. Abi Abdullah (From Him is Peace) said:
Verily Cain approached Seth (PBUH) and said to him: “My father gave you from the knowledge that he had, and I was older than you and had more of a right to this knowledge than you, but because I murdered his son, he became angry with me and preferred you with this knowledge over me. I swear by God, if you mention anything from the knowledge which you have inherited from your father in order that you show off in front of me and act like you are better, I shall kill you as I killed your brother.” Seth then hid everything he had of the knowledge he earned until the state of Cain and his rule comes to an end. And for that reason we practice dissimulation (taqiyah), because we have an example in the son of Adam, and Seth told his son about the Covenant in secret, and since Seth passed the Will to his son, by God, the sunnah has been to pass down the Will, scholar to scholar, and they would open the Will every year on one particular day and they would talk about how their father gave them a prophecy and glad tidings concerning the coming of Noah (PBUH).
There are a few important points we need to highlight:
- First, the lack of laws and jurisprudence that related to punishing crimes in the time of Adam (PBUH) led to Cain and his descendants’ rise to power, and led to the children of Adam becoming weak and oppressed in the land. As a result, the divine laws and jurisprudence would have to be updated and expanded upon to address changes in circumstances.
- Second, since Adam and Eve were the only two humans on the Earth in the beginning, everything was permissible to them, and the spread of the human race happened through incestual marriages. There was nothing which forbade marriages between first-degree relatives. This matter continued to happen until it was outlawed in future Covenants.
- Third, the war between good and evil is actually a war between the seed and descendants of Adam (PBUH) and the seed and descendants of Iblis (May God curse him). From Adam (PBUH) came every believer and from Iblis came every disbeliever and tyrant.
Finally, Jesus the Messiah (PBUH) in the Gospels, in the book of John (Chapter 8) confirms that the disbelievers are all from the lineage of Iblis and are his children, while the believers are the children of Adam (PBUH) and the children of God:
“Abraham is our father,” they answered. “If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do what Abraham did. As it is, you are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. You are doing the works of your own father.” “We are not illegitimate children,” they protested. “The only Father we have is God himself.” Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”
¶ Sources
- The Holy Bible, Book of Genesis, Chapter 1, Verses 26-31
- Exegesis of Al-Imam Al-Askari (PBUH), Attributed to Al-Imam Al-Askari, p. 221
- Bihar Al-Anwar, Al-Allamah Al-Majlisi, Vol. 11, p. 165
- Tafsir Al-Qummi, Ali ibn Ibrahim Al-Qummi, Vol. 1, p. 43
- Nahjul-Balagha, Sermons of Imam Ali, Vol. 1, p. 215
- The Holy Qur’an, Chapter 14 (Ibrahim), Verse 24
- Tafsir Noor Al-Thaqalayn, Al-Shaikh Abdul Ali Aroussi Al-Howayzi, Vol. 3, p. 179
- Bihar Al-Anwar, Al-Allamah Al-Majlisi, Vol. 11, pp. 164-165
- On the Origin of the World - The Nag Hammadi Scriptures, Marvin Meyer, pp. 214-215
- Bihar Al-Anwar, Al-Allamah Al-Majlisi, Vol. 25, p. 24
- The Holy Qur’an, Chapter 38 (Ṣād), Verse 75
- Al-Kafi, Al-Shaikh Al-Kulayni, Vol. 1, p. 145
- The Holy Qur’an, Chapter 2 (Al-Baqarah), Verse 31
- The Holy Bible, Book of Genesis, Chapter 2, Verse 19
- The Holy Qur’an, Chapter 2 (Al-Baqarah), Verse 31
- The Holy Qur’an, Chapter 2 (Al-Baqarah), Verse 33
- The Holy Qur’an, Chapter 7 (Al-Araf), Verse 24
- The Holy Qur’an, Chapter 17 (Al-Isra), Verse 64
- The Legends of the Jews, Louis Ginzberg, Vol. 1, Chapter 3, pp. 105-107
- The Holy Qur’an, Chapter 5 (Al-Ma’idah), Verse 30
- The Holy Bible, Book of Genesis, Chapter 4, Verses 8-18
- Bihar Al-Anwar, Al-Allamah Al-Majlisi, Vol. 11, p. 241
- The Holy Bible, Book of John, Chapter 8, Verses 39-47