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| "Let us be grateful to Adam, our benefactor. He cut us out of the blessing of idleness and won for us the curse of labor." [1] — Mark Twain
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Adam was the first man created by God, according to Book of Genesis, and noted in subsequent Jewish, Christian and Islamic commentary. He is considered a prophet by the Islamic, Mormon, Mandaean and Bahá'í faiths.
2. Two accounts of the story of creation are told in the Book of Genesis:
- The first account says male and female [God] created them on the sixth day of Creation. "Adam" is a general term, like "Man", and could refer to the whole of humankind.
- The second account says that God first formed Adam out of "the dust of the ground". God then placed Adam in the Garden of Eden, giving him the commandment that "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die". God subsequently created a woman named Eve out of one of Adam's ribs. Adam and Eve were subsequently expelled from the Garden of Eden (the Fall of Man) and lost their immortality after they broke God's law. This occurred after the serpent (understood to be Satan in many Christian traditions) told Eve that eating of the tree would not result in death, but in in them being "as gods, knowing good and evil". Convinced by the serpent's argument, Eve ate of the tree and had Adam do likewise. After they were removed from the garden, Adam was forced to work hard for his food for the first time. He and Eve had many children. According to the Genealogies of Genesis, Adam died at the age of 930.
3. In Islam, Adam is considered to be the first Prophet of God and the husband of Eve (Arabic: Hawwa) who was created from Adam by the "will of God". Satan had lured Adam and Eve into disobeying God by tasting from the forbidden tree. This was Satan's first act of revenge, after being banished from the kingdom of heaven due to mankind. The Qur'an does not state or imply that it was Eve who tempted Adam to disobey God. They were both tempted by Satan and therefore equally guilty. The Qu'ran also mentions that Adam was misled by deception and he was in fact pardoned by God after much repentance. Islam indicates that because Adam was the first human, as a prophet he was also the first Muslim ("one who submitted to God"), thus teaching that the "word of God" is the oldest such religion that Islam has represented.
4. In the Bahá'í view, Adam was the first Manifestation of God in recorded history who started the Adamic cycle some 6000 years ago, culminating with Bahá'u'lláh. The Biblical story of Adam and Eve, according to Bahá'í belief, is allegorical, with Eve representing Adam's soul and the serpent representing attachment to the material world. And ever since Adam's fall, the human race has been conscious of good and evil. more... at Wikipedia
