Abstract

The discussion uses an extract from the Nag Hammadi „Apocalypse of Adam“ (NHC V,5) to throw light on the distinctive features of Old Testament interpretation in Gnostic writings. The biblical narrative describing „Adam and Eve´s Fall“ fascinated the Gnostics, because it dealt with the central questions of man´s origin and nature. The Coptic Apocalypse of Adam, which shows evidence of a complex textual history, borrows fundamental aspects of the paradise story (such as the creation of Adam and Eve from the soil, desire, knowledge, the entrance of the creator, and mortality), but subjects them to a polemical reinterpretation characteristic of Gnostic writing in general (in this case with a denouement dictated by fate, the denial of „the Fall of Man“, a destructive intervention by the „evil“ Demiurge, and an exoneration of the humans). The story, however, is structured around motifs that are absent from Genesis: The protagonist is a more or less divine, perfect being, whose pride provokes the deadly attack by the angry god, and the drama ends with punishment in „darkness“. A prime candidate for an underlying text is Ezekiel 28, which is well known to have much in common with the account in Genesis. A comparison of the Gnostic version of Adam´s „Fall“ with the prophet´s lament on the „downfall of the mighty ruler“ shows that the representation of man´s beginnings in ApcAd owes a lot to Ezekiel 28:11-19 (LXX). The discussion comes to the conclusion: Ezekiel 28 is the mythological foundation on which the story of man`s origin and Fall in the Apocalypse of Adam is based