According to Ancient Near East legend Adapa of Eridu was a mortal man, but a sage with god-like insight and wisdom. According to some versions of the myth, he was the son of the god Ea (yes, pronounced like the first part, or the shortened version, of the name of the God of Abraham in scripture). The story, from at least 1370 B.C., is that he was summoned before the Sky God Anu to account for a rash action. He followed the advice of his patron god, and possible father, Ea, who told him to refrain from eating or drinking while he was before the gates of heaven. It turned out that Anu had relented on the idea of punishing Adapa and instead offered him the one thing he needed to become a god himself- immortality. This was to be obtained by eating something, but Adapa declined the food that Anu offered him on Ea's advice, thus costing himself, and mankind as a whole somehow, immortality.
Some have attempted to connect him to the biblical Adam. The parallels are pretty obvious, but the connection has not been well-accepted in scholarly circles. The account is so old that it doesn't fit the template that is the current rage these days- that Genesis was written by unknown priests after the captivity in Babylon, based on stories they learned while captive. This is of course nonsense, the ancestors of the children of Israel were from the same region and would have had their own independent accounts of many events. Like Orwell once said, "Some ideas are so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them."
At any rate, it is not surprising that these same scholars go to great lengths to discount the idea that Adapa from Sumerian legend is none other than Adam from the book of Genesis. If you take the Jewish view of the material, which the church has unfortunately adopted without re-examining in the light of Christ, then they do seem different. Adapa is not the father of the whole human race. Though he does spend time before "heaven's gates" which could be an echo of Eden, there is no mention of a wife being fashioned for him, or any role in his fall.
On the other hand, the Christ-centered model restores Adam to his New Testament role as a figure of Christ (Rom. 5:14), not the founder of the human race. There were already other people around when God formed Adam. Presumably he did learn wisdom from his time with the LORD God in the garden, and could share that with others after his expulsion. So the Adam of the Christ-centered model does sound a lot more like Adapa from Sumerian myth. Many of the details of the account would be adapted to Sumerian culture, and it discretely makes it seem like Adam lost his (and our) chance for immortality through obedience to Ea rather than disobedience. It is classic blame-shifting.
As for which version of the story sounds like the original and which the derivative version, I ask you to use your experience in human behavior. The Sumerian version has the human getting the shaft from a rather callous Anu simply because Adapa was trying to do the right thing and follow Ea's instructions. In Genesis it is man's disobedience and lack of trust in God that caused them to lose access to the Tree of Life which could have made them immortal. To me, the Sumerian account sounds like the blame-shifter's version of what happened compared to Genesis which describes human behavior as it really is. In real life, we rarely get in trouble for following God's wishes too closely, but rather by disregarding them and choosing our own ways. Then we still blame God for our troubles, as it says in Proverbs, the foolishness of man subverts his own way, and then he frets against The LORD.
Ea has similarities to God the Son in the Genesis accounts and Anu to God the Father. At least according to the Christ-centered model. I am not ready to spell them all out here. I need to study this in more depth, but right now it seems likely that Adapa is connected to Adam, at least as seen in the Christ-Centered Model for early Genesis.
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