15/05/2025
Adam and Eve’s Birthday
(photo by Victor Ribas: 'Adam and Eva', 2017, linear laser photography, 2/10)
We know the birthdays of all famous people. Everyone has a birthday-even Jesus Christ has two. The matriarchs and patriarchs from biblical stories also have birthdays we know. But Adam, who is basically the main person in the Bible, is left out, along with Eve. No one knows their birthday.
If you ask something like ChatGPT, it’ll say:
“There is no generally accepted or historically confirmed date for the birth of the first man, Adam, you’re talking about. His ‘birthday’ isn’t celebrated in any known calendar.”
Or: “Unfortunately, it’s impossible to establish the exact date of Adam’s birth, but according to Jewish tradition, the creation of Adam happened in 3761 BC.”
Well, at least we know the biblical age of the First Man. But if we could figure out which day after the creation of the world he was born, we could even calculate the exact birthday. The Bible (Genesis 1:26–31) says God created man-male and female-at the end of the sixth day:
“And there was evening, and there was morning-the sixth day.”
Jewish tradition doesn’t object: Adam and his wife Chava (Eve) were created on the sixth day of creation. That day is the first of Tishrei-the holiday of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. The Talmud tractate Sanhedrin even details the events of the sixth day: first Adam was created, and then, on the same day, Eve was created from his rib.
From a scientific point of view, the concept of a “first person” is more complicated, since science observes the evolutionary development of humans as living beings and as a species over millions of years. Science doesn’t say anything about the soul, or about that special property that makes humans different from other living creatures.
Well, according to Darwin, we should be celebrating the birthday of some monkey who said, “That’s it, I’m human now!” But that’s a good day, too. It really fits as the Birthday of Humanity. But Darwin suggests looking even deeper-past monkeys, who themselves came from cold-blooded creatures: fish gave rise to amphibians, who gave rise to reptiles, who became mammals, who became primates. And humans come from those mammals. And there’s proof: fossils of transitional forms (I’d object to the idea that these are just 3D-printed models). Another piece of evidence: at early stages, a human embryo repeats features of fish-it has a tail and gill slits. The tail, as a vestige, is present in everyone as the coccyx, and in some people, whose genes get activated in a strange way, as an actual tail-an atavism. A small one. I’ve seen the marks left after surgery to remove it.
No, we won’t celebrate the birthdays of everyone who came before humans. Although, it would be fun to fill the empty spots in the calendar with a Fish’s Birthday, a Lizard’s Birthday. Dinosaur’s Birthday would be great!
Let’s drink to the Dinosaur!
And since I’ve found out, not with ChatGPT but with Perplexity, that Adam and Eve were born on the first day of Tishrei, and this year that will be September 23 (starting at sunset on September 22 and lasting until the evening of September 23), I suggest celebrating Adam and Eve’s Birthday on September 23. But that’s just this year-you’ll have to check the Jewish calendar each time. But you should start celebrating in the evening of the 22nd.
The idea for Adam and Eve’s Birthday came to me today, and here’s a list of some interesting people I know who were born on May 15:
L. Frank Baum, 1856 – American writer, author of “The Wizard of Oz.”
Pierre Curie, 1859 – French physicist, Nobel laureate.
Jasper Johns, 1930 – American artist.
Madeleine Albright, 1937 – first female U.S. Secretary of State.
Brian Eno, 1948 – British musician, composer, and producer.
The starting point for my Adam and Eve photo series was the well-known symbolic meanings of Adam and Eve in art and philosophy. So, back in 2017, I reached out to experts-philosophers (especially those with a good background in religious studies) and even rabbis, more than one.
I knew that Adam and Eve are the most powerful and multi-layered symbols in the history of world art. They’re the solid foundation where the key questions of human existence are reflected: origin, free will, responsibility, sin, love, and hope for salvation. They’re at the core of all Renaissance painting, which grew out of religious tradition and still uses the idea of the beginning of humankind and the birth of human life. This is often depicted in scenes of the creation of Adam and Eve. In Michelangelo’s fresco “The Creation of Adam,” the focus is on the moment when the Creator transfers the energy of life and the soul to man. This symbolizes not just the physical beginning, but also the birth of the personality, spirit, and soul-that’s what sets humans apart from other beings (sorry, dear ChatGPT and your colleagues-you have neither bodies nor souls, just a brain, and even that’s electric, but that’s our salvation!). The gesture of their hands about to touch has become the emblem of the creative impulse connecting the divine and the human.
The idea of free will and responsibility comes from the story of the Fall, which in its literal sense now only interests schoolkids. But its deeper meaning is always relevant. The choice to learn something new, without knowing what the consequences will be, faces many people-scientists, inventors, politicians. The temptation to taste the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge symbolizes the first attempt by humans to understand the world on their own, to learn to make decisions and be responsible for them. Political analogies are always relevant-you just need to match the characters to their prototypes and put the right figures in their places in the biblical composition.
Eve’s role in art and ancient literature is unexpectedly modern-Eve is often shown as a strong person, consciously taking a risk, while Adam is depicted next to her as someone who shares her choice and fate.
The theme of lost innocence and expulsion from paradise exists as a symbol of lost harmony, the transition from carefree childhood to adult life, where you have to make your own choices. In painting, this moment is shown very emotionally by the expressions of grief, shame, and despair on the faces of the ancestors.
In my Adam and Eve series, I was interested in the ideal of human beauty. My characters aren’t just young and beautiful-they have long hair, like in Dürer’s paintings, athletic bodies, and they only do good deeds. Wine and beer-only at the openings. I wanted to think they fit the image of ideally human people. I still think so.
Dürer and Michelangelo also chose ideal models-they had to make them embody the ideal proportions of the human body, made “in the image and likeness of God.” In his interpretation, Michelangelo focuses not only on the Fall, but also on humanity’s drive for knowledge, inner strength, and the tragic beauty of the human condition. Their bodies became the standard of beauty and harmony, and the obvious differences between male and female became a symbol of the fullness of human nature.
In his works, Dürer draws the viewer’s attention to what is common and what is different in the male and female, to the ideal of physical and spiritual beauty.
Adam and Eve in art are universal images that, for centuries, have remained symbols of beginnings, choice, responsibility, loss and hope, as well as the embodiment of ideals of human beauty and love.
When choosing models for my projects, I try to make sure they match these ideals not just on the outside, but on the inside, too. That’s why I consider this work a masterpiece in every way-the models and their characters are perfect in everything.
My characters didn’t even know each other-I photographed them at different times. But in a single diptych, they look whole, embodying the idea of the first couple (we don’t know if it was for love or by divine design). The moment they’re in is their first meeting, that moment of recognition and surprise that there’s someone just like you, but different. We’re all kind of the same, but each of us is a little different. Apparently, to really reflect the symbol of marriage, love, and the beginning of the human family, I need to find another couple. I think I already have another Adam and Eve as a symbol of the family-a very pregnant Eve and an Adam with a very “tail-like” feature. I’ll tell you about this pair next time.
How about celebrating Adam and Eve’s Day on September 22?
