Interreligious Aspects in the Narrative of the Burial of Adam in Pirkei De-Rabbi Eliezer

CHAPTER 7 Interreligious Aspects in the Narrative of the Burial of Adam in Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer

Adiel Kadari

The traditions on Adam’s burial place in the rabbinic literature are replete with points of contact with Christian texts and traditions, some of a polemical nature, while others attest to the influence of Jewish traditions on Christians, and vice versa. Genesis (5:5) speaks of Adam’s death, but without mention- ing his burial. This detail of Adam’s “biography” was rounded out in the apocryphal literature and various aggadic traditions. Scholars have addressed the relationship between the midrashic tradition of Adam’s burial in the Cave of Machpelah and the Christian tradition of his interment at Golgotha, the site of the Crucifixion. In this article I will discuss the narrative of the preparation of Adam’s grave in the late midrashic composition Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer. Along with its drawing upon the classic midrashic rabbinic literature, this work, which is dated to the eighth century, characteristically evinces diverse connections to non-rabbinic traditions, the Second Temple period apocryphal literature,1 and Christian and Muslim traditions. I will indicate the points of contact between the Jewish and Christian narrative and interpretive traditions regarding this narrative, while relating to the questions: What conceptual meaning is given to the narrative of Adam’s burial? What theological, reli- gious, or other needs does it serve? How is it incorporated in the entire story of Adam’s life, as it is set forth in the midrash Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer?

1 In his introduction to Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer, Gerald Friedlander indicated many connections between this work and Second Temple period literature: Gerald Friedlander, Pirkei de Rabbi Eliezer: The Chapters of Rabbi Eliezer the Great (New York: Hermon, 1981), Introduction, xxi–lii. Other scholars, however, found his arguments to be insufficiently grounded. Notwithstanding this critique, the general argument regarding the early traditions that found their way to Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer is accepted in the scholarly literature. See the discussion by Chanoch Albeck in Yom-Tov Lipman (Leopold) Zunz, Ha-Derashot be-Yisrael (Gottesdienstlichen Vortrage der Juden historisch Entwickelt) [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1974),136–40; Menahem Kister, “Ancient Material in Pirqe de-Rabbi Eli’ezer: Basilides, Qumran, the Book of Jubilees,” in “Go Out and Study the Land” (Judges 18:2): Archaeological, Historical and Textual Studies in Honor of Hanan Eshel, ed. Aren M. Maeir, Jodi Magness, and Lawrence H. Schiffman (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 69–93.

The account of the preparation of Adam’s grave in chapter 20 of Pirkei de- Rabbi Eliezer follows the portrayal of his expulsion from the Garden of Eden and his repentance:2

Adam sat and meditated in his heart. He said, “I know that death will remove me [to] ‘the house assigned for all the living’ [Job 30:28].” Adam said, “While I am yet [alive], I will build for myself a beit malon [grave] for my repose.” He dug and built a beit malon for his repose beyond Mount Moriah. Adam said, “If in the case of the Tablets, just because in the future they will be written by the finger of the Holy One, blessed be He, the waters of the Jordan are destined to flee before them, how much more so will this be the case regarding my body, which His two hands kneaded, and into my nostrils He blew the breath of life? After my death they will come and take my bones and make them into an image for idolatry. Rather, I will put my coffin deep down, beneath the cave and within the cave.” Therefore it is called the Cave of Machpelah, which is a double [kefulah] cave. There Adam was put and his helper, Abraham and his helper, Isaac and his helper, Jacob and his helper. It therefore is called Kiriath-arba, after the four [arba] couples, about whom Scripture writes: “Yet he shall come to peace, he shall have rest on his couch who walked straightforward” [Isa 57:2].

The continuation of this midrashic composition (chapter 36) relates that the Cave of Machpelah was revealed to Abraham when the three angels came to visit him and he wanted to prepare a meal for them:

He ran to fetch a calf. But the calf fled from before him, and went in the Cave of Machpelah. Abraham went in after it, and he found there Adam and his helper lying there upon their beds. They slept, lights were kin- dled above them, and a fine scent was about them, like a pleasing odor. Therefore he desired to have the Cave of Machpelah as a burial site. (Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, chapter 36)

As Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer has it, Abraham purchased the field in Hebron following the revelation of the cave in which Adam and Eve were buried.3

2 Quotations are based Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, trans. Gerald Friedlander (New York: Hermon, 1981). 3 R. David Luria suggested that the connection between the Abraham and the angels narrative and the Cave of Machpelah is based on the similarity of bakar (herd) and kever (grave/