CHAPTER 1

ADAM AND THE GARDEN OF EDEN

This book is based upon the Bible and Torah (1 st five books of the Bible), as well as upon the history of African, Islamic, European, African-American and Christian historians to help us acquire an accurate knowledge of people and places in the Bible. We begin with Adam, being created as the crowning act of God's creation. "Man was to bear God's image, both in outward resemblance and in character... His countenance bore the ruddy tint of health and glowed with the light of life and joy."(1)

Genesis 2:7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life: and man became a living soul.

We can see that man was created from soil which is the dust of the ground. The richest soil on the earth is black. We have different shades of soil from the red clay used to make brick to the brown colored soil most often found on farms. "The name Adam in Hebrew is Adham, which means 'red' or taken out of red earth. Perhaps Adam was formed from 'red' or clay earth. According to the 'Hebrew‑Greek Key Study Bible', the name Adam means 'reddish brown' (See Figure 1.1). I find the color 'red' extremely interesting as it relates to Black and 'colored' people’... Secular anthropologists and respected scientists whose findings were published in Newsweek and National Geographic have concluded that 'Adam' and 'Eve' were African (dark). Pictures of a Black Adam and Eve appear on the front cover of the January 11, 1988 issue of Newsweek."(2)