A. Orbe, Sleep and Paradise, St. Irenaeus Epideixis 13 (trans. El Paraíso y el sueño).docx

Antonio Orbe, "Paradise and Sleep (Irenaeus, Epid. 13)", Gregorianum vol.48 no.2 (1967): 346-349.


"…and God "cast a deep sleep upon Adam and put him to sleep"…sleep not being in Paradise, it came upon Adam by the will of God" (Epideixis, 13).

The biblical account (Gen 2.21) has been normally situated in Paradise. There Adam used to live and it was there that the Lord caused the dream out of which Eve came.
The gnostic teachings are much less explicit. They give the impression that the dream in Paradise perturbed them, and they prefer to locate him with the human creation (plasis) in anticipation and elevating the man to Eden. I would like to carry the investigation down this path.
The theme of "the dream and paradise" came to me from a short line in St. Irenaeus' Epideixis. The Saint supposes the first man was inside Paradise, the same as the biblical account.
So, while man was walking around Paradise God brought before [him] all the animals and commanded [him] to give names to them all, and "whatever Adam called each living being its name." And He decided also to make a helper for the man, for, in this manner, "God said 'It is not good for man to be alone, let us make him a helper fit for him'", since among all the other living things no helper was found equal and like to Adam; and God Himself "case a deep sleep upon Adam and put him to sleep," and, that a work might be accomplished out of a work, sleep not being in Paradise, it came upon Adam by the will of God; and God "took one of Adam's ribs and filled up flesh in its place, and He built up the rib which He took into a woman and, in this way, brought [her] before Adam." And he, seeing [her], said, "This at last is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman', for she was taken from her man."
There is a curious element, which goes beyond the scriptural text and presents itself here as something certain. "In Paradise there was no dream". And, because there was not, the cause was that someone affirmingly inspired him. So, it was like "that sleep that does not exist in Paradise came down upon Adam by the will of God." V. Faldati notes, "So what is in the text can be quite obscure."
St. Irenaeus does not appear to have invented such an element. Theophilus of Antioch omits it. Could it be one of so many residual rabbinic traditions, latently insinuated in the Epideixis?
Paradise, according to the Talmudic conception, is the place where God communicates himself to the just, and where these are consecrated to his adoration. The midrash of the Psalms (Ps 11.7) says of his inhabitants, that they contemplate the face of God. In the earliest Christian literature vestiges of the same idea abound. St. Irenaeus himself indicates so a little earlier: "And so beautiful and good was the Paradise, [that] the Word of God was also walking in it: He would walk and talk with the man prefiguring the future, which would come to pass, that He would dwell with him and speak with him, and would be with mankind, teaching them righteousness."
Out of Paradise (the locus of man's conversation with the Word of God) to Paradise (the "Temple of God") there was only one way. And some have taught confidently, from the most remote antiquity, uncovering in the prescription of Lev 12.2-5 the mystery of Adam's exaltation to the "Temple of God" (i.e., Paradise), the 40 days of his creation (plasis).
The Temple of God, the locus of man's conversation with the Word, is incompatible with the dream. Sleep should not enter into Paradise.
But, St. Irenaeus says something more. He goes so far as to say that Paradise is not a suitable place for sleep, to the extent that "sleep not being [as a matter of fact] in Paradise." Adam's conversation with the Word was not—according to Genesis—continual. It was, at the most, according to Irenaeus (Epid. 12), frequent. Why suppress sleep?
It is not worth invoking the Jewish doctrine that situated Adam's sin on the first day of his creation, before night arrived. The proposal of St. Irenaeus is general without any limitation of time. Neither is it appropriate to discern any mysterious sense of the dream. The Scripture knows indubitably various types of dreaming. But, neither the ending nor the context of Epid. 13 authorize another meaning that the normal, in its application to a sensible man. In contrast to the gnostics, Irenaeus has a marked tendency to emphasize the normal sense, physical, human phenomena. This occurs notably with death. Dream, then, is no exception.
Therefore, we encounter the problem. What necessity caused Adam to sleep by the affirming will of God? Why did it not already exist in Paradise?
Responding to us from the Ethiopic book of Adam, the first man used to live in Paradise so full of divine gifts that he could not dispose himself to exercise earthly tasks. The bodily sleep was incompatible with celestial life, to which the divine gifts called him. With his senses dominated by the life of the Spirit (nous), man used to live the life of angels, and like them he was continuously attending to God.
Such a solution, perfectly consonant with the doctrine of Philo and of many Hebrew documents, can be sensed in St. Ignatius' recommendations to Polycarp: "Devote yourself to unceasing prayers", he writes, "…Keep alert with an unresting spirit." Philo speaks of "the inexhaustible and unyielding vision of the mind" through the true light born in itself; and furthermore, "from the restless eye of God." Epictetus applies the adjective "always active" (akoimēton) to a spirit, or demon (daimon).
St. Ignatius goes one step further. The title "Pastor of souls" falls to the spirit by which is possessed. Polycarp has always been awake as one who acquired the unresting spirit similar the "vigilant ones" (ergēgoroi), also known as "the ones who never sleep".
No other philosophy is hidden in the phrase of Irenaeus. Upon being moved to the Garden of Delights, man received as a gift the spirit which does not sleep "in order to cultivate it and take care of it", until he begins to live like the angels, in constant vigil and adoration of God.
The lack of sleep was indicative of divinity or possession of the divine. Ancient paganism, just as Judaism and the first Christian generations, understood it in art. The image of the "opened eyes" of the crucified one especially demonstrates divinity.
Sleep is indispensable for the health of mortals, and one recognizes material existence as the cause of the need for sleep. God has not assigned sleep nor nutrients. He is "restless" (auptnos), the same as "immortal." While mortals, dominated by the material, live in a dream and require one who wakes them and illumines them.
When Adam was raised to Paradise, he did not lose the original "mud". His divine and angelic life without sleep attested reasonably to the fact that life is one of grace. At least, according to Irenaeus.
Such a mentality is still felt later among the religious. The spiritual man, full of God, has been made sleepless (auptnos), superior to resting of the senses.
The myth of the first man being as hopeless as a worm getting dragged through the mud (barro), who was not god, not even spiritual, was testifying not only before the Gnostics, but before the Archons, the shapers (plasmadores) of Adam who was not god nor even spiritual. If dreaming is inappropriate to God, so will similar phenoma be for Adam. And by these phenoman one will be known if he is filled with God.
One problem from this point. Since dreaming is inappropriate to God and even of Paradise, how can God fill Adam with it?
St. Irenaeus employs a formula somewhat different from the biblical account: "sleep not being in Paradise, it came upon Adam by the will of God". The dream that normally would not have fallen over the first man, fell upon him by the approving will of God. This is without a doubt because in itself sleep was not sinful, and for Adam there was a serious circumstance for it.
Sleep was not sinful in itself. The dream provoked in Adam, suspending on its own the divine union or contemplation, and closing his eyes toward God, could have been sinful. But the Lord had put the first man in Paradise, "positively" in order to have angelic life, in continual flame. The suspension in the divine theoria, carried out 'by the will of God' and for the highest ends, could be not only lawful but even praiseworthy. The same one who exalted Adam to an angelic way of life he was the agent of withdrawing that way of life from him for a time.
St. Irenaeus claims the movement of God: "in order to realize a work apart from another work". The mystery of the reign and the uniqueness of God should manifest itself in the reign and uniqueness of the origin of the human species. They were not thinking that one god had formed man and another had formed woman.
The state of sleep took place as a corporeal act because of his human and material nature rather than the wakefulness of his angelic nature. Furthermore, the origin of woman had to invoke the marital act as ordained but also distracting from God, as the same relationship of man in union with God. So much the dream as the conjugal act contrasts to the characteristic tension of the divine theoria. And it is natural that woman's origin resides in sleep with prayer suspended, for just as the act of one day leaving man for God himself while relaxing the senses.


St. Irenaeus of Lyons, On the Apostolic Preaching, trans. John Behr. PPS 17 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press), 48. Hereafter, citation will read "Preaching" followed by the paragraph number.
Ibid.
Here the passive voice ("are consecrated") versus the reflexive voice ("consecrate themselves") is unclear.
Cf. F. Weber, Jüdische Theologie, Leipzig 1897, p.164; see also 345.
Cf. Orientalia christiana periodica 29 (1963) 305ff.
Preaching, 12.
"Speak to the people of Israel, saying, If a woman conceives and bears a male child, then she shall be unclean seven days. As at the time of her menstruation, she shall be unclean. And on the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. Then she shall continue for thirty-three days in the blood of her purifying. She shall not touch anything holy, nor come into the sanctuary, until the days of her purifying are completed. But if she bears a female child, then she shall be unclean two weeks, as in her menstruation. And she shall continue in the blood of her purifying for sixty-six days." (ESV)
Cf. L. Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, vol.V, p.107, n.97 and p.112, n.104.
The 'Bereschit Rabba' distinguishes three in Gen 2.19 (cf. Gen 2.21; 15.12; 1 Sam 26.2;Isa 29.10).
A. Dillmann, Das christlische Adambuch des Morgenlandes (Jarhb. D. bibl. Wissenschaft V, 1853) p.14: "Sie waren noch voll von den Gnadengaben des Lichtreichs, sie hatten noch keinen Sinn für das irdische Wesen". Another passage, certainly corrupted, from the same book (ibid, p.35) in L. Troje, Adam und Zoë, Heidelberg 1916, p.59 n.1.
Cf. Orient. christ. period. 29 (1963) 326ff.
To Polycarp 1.3.
Mut. nom. 5.
Ibid. 40.
Meditaciones I.14, 12; cf. Waldemar Deonna, Le Symbolisme de l'Oeil, Paris 1965, p.134ff (L'oeil et la vigilance).
Very common category of angels in 1 Enoch. These can be found in W. Bousset, H. Gressmann, Die Religion des Judentums, tübingen 1926, p.322 n.2; J. Michl, art. Engel II (jüdisch), en : Reallexikon f. Ant. U. Christentum, Bd. V, col. 65.
Cf. 1 Enoch 39, 12, 13; 40.2; cf. 61.42, 71.7.
Cf. Gen 1.28-29.
See A. Grillmeier, Der Logos am Kreuz, München 1956, p.87 et passim; W. Deonna, o.c., p.140.
Cf. Aristotle, On Sleep 2.455b 17-22.
Cf. Corpus Hermeticum, I.15 ed. Nock-Festugière, p.12.2.
A frequent theme in Gnosticism. Cf. Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies V.14.2; 17.8; Ibid. V.7.30, 32
barro
Cf. R. Reitzenstein, Historia Monarchorum 91, 93, 95f et passim; L. Troje, Adam und Zoë 26., n.1.
plasmadores, cf. Isa 44.99ff.
See El sueño de Adán entre los gnósticos del siglo II, en Estudios Eclesiásticos, 41 (1966), p.388.
Emphasis original.
Following U. Faldati: "affinchè un'opera scaturisse dall'opera'. L.M Friodevaux: 'afin de réaliser une oeuvre tirée d'une autro oeuvre' (probably ergon ex ergou as in v.23).
Cf. 1 Cor. 7.5.


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