And He Died

This morning, our journey through Genesis reaches a new benchmark, a new division, called “the book of the generations of Adam” (Genesis 5:1), which is set apart from the two divisions that came before it, the account of God's creating (Genesis 1:1–2:3) and “the generations of the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 2:4–4:26). As we closed out what heaven and earth begat, we read through the seven generations of Cain, seeing a humanity building ever higher in culture yet spiraling ever deeper in darkness (Genesis 4:16-24). Only the other week, when we read about a new son of Adam and Eve named Seth, and then his son Enosh, did we regain a glimmer of hope, relieved that Cain's isn't the only way to be human (Genesis 4:25-26). But that short note merely sets the stage for us to explore this hopeful alternative, generation after generation (Genesis 5:1-32).

Before anything else, we're reminded of what we were made to be: the image and likeness of God, bearing the blessing of the Most High, fruitfully multiplying throughout the face of the earth, bringing Eden to the ends of the world (Genesis 5:1-2). But what are we now, on the other side of snakes and sins and curses, of sacrifice and slaughter and a city? Well, Adam is still the image of God, despite two chapters of chaos and ruin.¹ But as he sires the son who's going to carry this legacy onward, Adam “fathered in his likeness, after his image, and called his name Seth” (Genesis 5:3). Seth is after Adam's image, he's in Adam's likeness, which is indirectly the image of God but filtered through what Adam has done. This is a likeness distorted by Adam's deviation. Seth – and, by implication, the line that follows him – is “a mixture of the regal image of God and the flawed image of Adam,” as one source puts it.² But despite that mixture, the legacy and blessing of Eden haven't gone away.

Starting in this line, we're treated to a whole chapter of genealogy, tracing ten generations bridging Adam on the one end and Noah on the other, though we're stopping short today. And, look, the patterns are pretty formulaic; nearly every paragraph here sounds like each of the others, swapping out some names and numbers.³ I'd bet that a bunch of us get bored and zone out when we hit these chapters of our Bible. They seem like stuffing, filler, mere connective tissue, the gristle we wish we could cut out to leave only the meat. Chewy it might be, but I'd like to suggest it's worth it this time to gnaw our way through this chapter and see if there's any juice here.

The first three names are already familiar to us: Adam, Seth, Enosh (Genesis 5:3-6). Like we heard two weeks ago, where Cain's son Enoch lent his name and labors to a city called after his name, Seth's son Enosh calls on the Lord's name and becomes a new Adam, focused on being as humbly human as he can be.⁴ And if Enosh is a new Adam, it only makes sense for him to name his son Kenan, which in Hebrew is spelled almost the same as Cain or Tubal-Cain.⁵ For that matter, most of the names that follow are eerily similar to names we've heard before in the family of Cain.⁶ Cain's got a Mehuya'el, so Seth's got a Mahalal'el, “praising God.”⁷ Cain's got an Irad, so Seth's got a Yered, “to descend.”⁸ And while both have an Enoch – we'll puzzle that out next week – if Cain's got a Metusha'el, Seth's got a Metushelach.⁹ We're forced to keep comparing Seth's family with Cain's.¹⁰

But before we keep hopping forward in time, it's worth looking side to side. Because each of these men doesn't just have a successor; he's got a broad brood. In every generation, starting with Adam, we're told that “he had other sons and daughters” (Genesis 5:4) – another point of contrast with Cain, where nothing of the sort comes up. In one Jewish tradition, after Seth, Adam and Eve have ten other children;¹¹ another Jewish tradition names an extra “twelve sons and eight daughters”;¹² and still another proclaimed that “Adam produced thirty sons and thirty daughters.”¹³ The point here is that in Seth's line, the image of God – however mixed with the likeness of Adam – is being fruitful, multiplying just as it was meant to in Eden.¹⁴ One old bishop once said that “there is an Adam, for we are from him, we being his race according to succession, and we see him through the multitude of people in succession.”¹⁵ Whenever you look in somebody's eyes, Adam and Eve peek out at you.

As precious a truth as that is, there's another feature of this chapter that ought to grab your attention. Consider that “when Seth had lived 105 years, he fathered Enosh; Seth lived after he fathered Enosh 807 years, and had other sons and daughters; thus all the days of Seth were 912 years” (Genesis 5:6-8). Do those numbers strike you as ordinary? Do you run into many 900-year-olds when you visit the local nursing home? I doubt it.  So this seems rather... odd.

But the Bible's not alone here. In the Sumerian world, the closest thing we find to this is a list of kings who reigned before the flood.¹⁶ Eventually, these pre-flood kings would get paired with pre-flood culture-bringers who had similar-sounding names, just like the elect Sethites pair with culture-bringing Cainites with similar-sounding names.¹⁷ But this list of pre-flood kings starts with Alalim, who ruled for 28,800 years; then Alaljar took over for the next 36,000 years.¹⁸ The other pre-flood kings are like that, with the shortest ruling only 18,600 years.¹⁹ One scholar quipped that by these standards, “Methuselah would not even rate as a spring chicken!”²⁰ Side-by-side with these Sumerian fantasies, doesn't Genesis suddenly sound a lot more... reasonable?²¹

The Sumerians understandably needed to compensate for the gap between how little they knew about before the flood with how much living there was to do, so they gave outsized credit to the few names they had.²² But where the Sumerians revered these ancestors as virtual gods on earth, Genesis douses them with a dose of “much-needed realism” by toning everything back down.²³ In the humbler figures of the Bible, the ancestors before the flood each “approach a millennium but... never attain it.”²⁴ Jewish tradition thought that was significant, with one writer saying Adam “lacked seventy years from one thousand years, for a thousand years are like one day in the testimony of heaven, and therefore it was written concerning the tree of knowledge, 'In the day you eat of it, you will die'; therefore he did not complete the years of this day, because he died in it.”²⁵

Modest though they might've been in Sumer, by our standards these are still big numbers. By Israel's standards, too, since the psalmist thinks eighty years is a pretty impressive lifespan (Psalm 90:10) and since only three kings of Judah (David, Uzziah, and Manasseh) even made it past sixty, with most dying in their forties or fifties. Numbers like these would've been impressive, mysterious, otherworldly, suggesting both God's great blessing and also the great distance between pre-flood antiquity and our own day.²⁶ What do we do with those numbers?

Up to a couple centuries before Jesus, people didn't keep track of time as a continuous thing,²⁷ and genealogies in the ancient world were less about tracking history than about using symbolism to make a point.²⁸ Even now, there are cultures where people don't know their actual ages, because they don't count such things as we do.²⁹ The numbers in the Sumerian king lists all interested the Sumerians mathematically, multiples of sixties and sixty-times-sixties, since they used the base-60 number system we still use in clocks.³⁰ The numbers in the Bible don't feel totally natural either. You'll notice that each set of years, before or after the kid is born, is a set of sixty-year units plus a set of sixty-month units, sometimes with an extra seven years thrown in.³¹

But when the Sumerians listed impressive people before the flood, of course they were kings in cities – who else would be worth our attention, after all?³² But Genesis 5 doesn't worry about kings and cities; leave that to Cain's folks.³³ To be the image of God is royalty enough, and you don't have to sit on a throne to be it. Genesis has no interest in how Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, and Jared paid the bills. There's only one role that matters during their lives. And it's that they're dads. Extraordinary dads in a mysterious world, but dads all the same, raising their image-of-God kids in the love of God. Often today, the importance of a father is demeaned, despite its proven importance in a child's life. We readily think our importance is found outside the home, in what we do in the world, the impact we make on big life. But the greatness of people like Mahalalel isn't in inventing things or ruling cities or or achieving big goals or going on grand adventures. It's just enough that people like Mahalalel have sons and daughters who will carry the image of God and the blessing of life forward one more step beyond them.³⁴ That's it. That's what's called for in life, naturally speaking. To be remembered as a dad is plenty. Martin Luther, for one, thought that Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, and Jared were “the most outstanding heroes this world has ever produced.”³⁵ All because they were such faithful, righteous fathers.

“On the Last Day,” Luther said, “we shall behold and admire their grandeur.”³⁶ But this genealogy of grandeur also brings us what one commentator dubbed “the first obituary in human history.”³⁷ “All the days that Adam lived were 930 years – and he died” (Genesis 5:5). The day came when the lips that tasted forbidden fruit could no longer describe the garden of God. The limbs that toiled at the curse-hard soil grew cold. “You are dust,” God told him, “and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19). One early Christian pictured the Lord saying to Adam: “I am consigning you to death, and the maggot and the worm will eat your body.”³⁸ Harsh, but true. Then this first obituary is echoed, generation after generation, by an “inescapable repetition” thundering forth “like a drumbeat.”³⁹ Every step of the way in this genealogy, “the shadow of death looms over the names.”⁴⁰ That chorus, “and he died” – just one word in Hebrew – is the literal last word on Adam, the last word on Seth, the last word on Enosh and Kenan and Mahalalel and Jared.⁴¹ The big numbers scattered all over the page only highlight the yawning chasm between the longest lives we can imagine and the eternity of God.⁴²

Notwithstanding the guy we'll read about next Sunday, it remains true, as the Apostle says, that “death reigned from Adam to Moses,” because from Adam “death spread to all humans” (Romans 5:12-14). From Adam on, the psalmist says, “no man can... live forever and never see the Pit” (Psalm 49:7-8). For “from the time of the first human being right down to the end of the world, it has been laid down that all must die at one time or another.”⁴³ This chapter hammers home the inevitability of death woven inseparably into this litany of life.

The Bible says that “the living know that they will die” (Ecclesiastes 9:5). But we like to pretend we don't and won't. Modern Americans are severely allergic to thinking seriously and personally about the end. It's a pretty infamous fact about us: we are deeply out of touch with our mortality.⁴⁴ Even in the modern church, caught up in that cultural stream, we have a tendency to avoid it as much as possible. We have lots of learn from early and medieval Christians, to whom “the salvation of a person consists entirely in the preparation for death.”⁴⁵

Not to put too fine a point on it, but these are questions the church should be asking you today. Every one of us here is well acquainted with the deaths of friends and family members, some of them pretty recently. Many of us are at an age of approaching “the day when the keepers of the house tremble... and the grinders cease..., before the silver cord is snapped... and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:3-7). And any of us, at any age, could die before we gather again next Sunday. James reminds us: “You don't know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14). Death is inevitable – and that's a personal message to each of us.

The question earlier Christians asked, in light of death's inevitability, was: “What kind of death do you want? What matters most when you're dying? What does it mean to die well?” Modern Americans might answer that a good death is a comfortable death, free of pain; or an accompanied death, surrounded by loved ones; or an orderly death that doesn't make too much of a mess or inconvenience people; or a dignified death that lets us keep our self-image. In Canada and Europe, increasingly this idea is taken even further to mean a scheduled, chosen, and effortless death by what they call 'medical assistance in dying,' even for the perfectly healthy.

For Christians, dying well has usually been seen very differently. The psalmist said, and Christ echoed him: “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax, melted within my breast; my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death” (Psalm 22:14-15).⁴⁶ In the sixth century, one elderly bishop grew so weak that “he no longer had the strength to spit upon the ground,” yet “he always had in everything a holy liberty... and died in perfect sanctity.”⁴⁷ Two centuries earlier, one son remembered his dad in his late nineties, “in pain often every day, sometimes hourly,” feverish and ulcerated, unable to eat, barely able to drink, “breathing shortly and with difficulty, not even perceiving those present.”⁴⁸ But the son asks, “why should it be surprising that holy men suffer ills, either for the purification of some small stain, or for proving their virtue or testing their philosophy, or for the instruction of the weaker, who learn from their example to be brave instead of faint-hearted in misfortune?”⁴⁹

When ancient Jews imagined what it was like in Adam's last days, they pictured him in the pains of the dying process, groaning deeply, announcing his “deep grief,” and asking his family to pray for him.⁵⁰ Death naturally grieves and frightens the human mind as well as body. It's okay to be scared in the face of it. It approaches as a threat to everything we know, everything we want, most especially to keep loving and being loved.⁵¹

Amidst that natural unease, though, early and medieval Christians were keenly aware that the final hours of life in the body are also the devil's last chance to tempt you. So they expected – and were right to expect – that your dying hours might well entail “a fierce spiritual battle,”⁵² a “hand-to-hand combat..., a fight to the finish with everything at stake.”⁵³ You might be tempted with doubt and disbelief, wondering if there really is a God and an afterlife, or if this won't just be the abyss.⁵⁴ You might be tempted with despair in the face of your regrets and sins, thinking there's no more chance for God to save you.⁵⁵ Or on the other side, you might be tempted with presumption, figuring that God's boundless love leaves no room for judgment and that yesterday's grace is today's guarantee.⁵⁶ You might be tempted to lose patience with the suffering, to rail at how unfair this all is, or to be tied up by old bitterness.⁵⁷ Or you might be tempted to cling in your heart to all the things you just aren't ready to give up, looking back with longing at the life you leave.⁵⁸ Can we die well despite the desperate devil?

Yes. And the first thing we can do is be honest. Like Adam, acknowledge the pain. Like Adam, acknowledge the grief. But remember, as the Apostle says, that “death spread to all humans because all sinned” (Romans 5:12). Uncomfortable doesn't mean unfair. By all means, if palliative care can lighten the load, let it. But we need to be patient with what God calls us to – with the pain, with the grief, with the goodbyes to family and friends and everything else we had spent our lives pretending mattered so much. It means humbling ourselves as our dignity, our strength, our independence, our pride, our identity, and ultimately our life are all stripped away.⁵⁹ As Erasmus put it, “we must ascend the cross naked with our Lord, far from all earthly desires...”⁶⁰

Then, when we face death, it's natural and right for us to look back over our lives, our history. It's instinct, the proverbial life flashing before the eyes. But as we're being honest, the history we review is hardly perfect. And we know, as we approach that hour, that “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). Jews imagined Adam saying to Eve on his deathbed: “We do not know how we will meet the One who made us, whether he will be angry with us or turn around to show us mercy.”⁶¹ In the face of death, one of the most important things we can do is repent of what we've done – to be sorry for those sins and, confessing them to God, to seek his mercy, trusting he's always more eager to forgive than we are to ask it.⁶²

But in equal measure, a good death is one of releasing old grievances. Just as Jesus prayed forgiveness for those who were actively mocking and crucifying him, to die well calls for freely extending forgiveness to those whose deeds burdened you.⁶³ To share Christ's cross in death – which is the only way to die in Christ – is to imitate his forgiveness, remembering he himself said that “if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:15). Don't die with a heart weighed down. Let go. The good news, as you look over your life of joys and pains, of rights and wrongs both done and received, is that a Christian can never die alone. A Christian dies as a member of the Body of Christ, part of a grand communion with a history centered on the cross of Jesus.⁶⁴ It isn't just your life that can flash before your eyes; it's Christ's.

We know, too, that “without faith, it is impossible to please God, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him” (Hebrews 11:6). Jesus tells us this is the crucial factor that makes death not deadly: “Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live” (John 11:25). Against the devil's temptation to doubt, a good death means putting faith in Jesus, believing his good news of salvation, leaning in trust on his grace. “The most effective solace of all,” it's been said, “is never to move the eyes of faith from Christ, who gave himself completely for us, whom we have as our advocate before God.”⁶⁵ That's why medieval Christians recited the Creed and Scripture around the beds of the dying, to remind them what they believe, to help them zero in on that bedrock truth that's deeper than the cracks of death.⁶⁶

Likewise, against the devil's temptation to despair, a good death calls for hope in the promises of the God “who gives life to the dead” and even now is “able to do what had had promised” (Romans 4:17-22). “We hope for what we do not see” (Romans 8:25), and nowhere is that more needful and relevant than the hour of death. Death asks us to face its dark silence with a determined hope and courageous love for the God who beckons us to an unfamiliar home on the other side of the sightless canyon.⁶⁷ “Fixed there [on Christ's cross] by three nails – faith, hope, and love – let us persevere unshakeably, fighting Satan to the end with all our strength until he is conquered and we pass over into eternal rest through the protection and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.”⁶⁸

As we fight that good fight to our last, our weapon is our worship. One of our most detailed early portrayals of a natural Christian death is a fourth-century woman named Macrina. Her brother, an eyewitness, tells us how, even while “fever was consuming her vital force,” she unflinchingly turned her thoughts to “contemplation of higher things.”⁶⁹ And “the nearer she approached her exodus, the more clearly she discerned the beauty of the Bridegroom and the more eagerly she hastened to the One for whom she longed.” She had her bed turned to face east, the direction of worship, and “spoke from then on to God in prayer, making appeal with her hands.”⁷⁰ Once her voice was gone, she mouthed a song of thanksgiving and then “brought to a close both her prayer and her life.”⁷¹ Of another woman it was said that “her death took on the semblance of a sacred ceremony.”⁷² Other great Christians died after receiving communion,⁷³ or while meditating on what was being sung in church.⁷⁴

To die well, like the saints of old, means accepting our dying for Jesus' sake and asking him to use them for good, to sanctify you and to bless others. Dying well means becoming a priest offering the sum total of your living and dying to God on the cross of Christ.⁷⁵ But since we can rarely tell when we'll die, the only wise life is to practice for death.⁷⁶ As they say: “Die before you die so you don't die when you die.” “For none of us lives to himself,” adds the Apostle, “and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's” (Romans 14:7-8). Live like that, and when the time comes (and come it will), you almost can't help but die well.⁷⁷

The Apostle equally says that “what you sow does not come to life unless it dies, and what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel” (1 Corinthians 15:36-37). St. Augustine urges that “those righteous people of old who pleased God during the earliest periods of the human race,” the people we read about in Genesis 5, “will attain the resurrection of eternal life... precisely because they will be restored to life in Christ.”⁷⁸ And we share the same promise: “As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive!” (1 Corinthians 15:22). 'And-he-died' isn't the final word after all. Jesus Christ – “the son of Adam, the son of God” (Luke 3:38) – is the First Word before every genealogy, the Last Word beyond every obituary, the Infinite Word bigger than every number, the True Word above every doubt, the Word of Love to catch us in the deathly chasm! Amen.

1  Johnson T. K. Lim, Grace in the Midst of Judgment: Grappling with Genesis 1-11 (De Gruyter, 2002), 161.

2  Bill T. Arnold, Genesis, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge University Press, 2008), 86.

3  Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis, Christian Standard Commentary (Holman Reference, 2023), 254-255.

4  Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 113; Bryan C. Hodge, Revisiting the Days of Genesis: A Study of the Use of Time in Genesis 1-11 in Light of Its Ancient Near Eastern and Literary Context (Wipf & Stock, 2011), 129.

5  Richard S. Hess, Studies on the Personal Names of Genesis 1-11 (Eisenbrauns, 2009), 68; Bryan C. Hodge, Revisiting the Days of Genesis: A Study of the Use of Time in Genesis 1-11 in Light of Its Ancient Near Eastern and Literary Context (Wipf & Stock, 2011), 130.

6  Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 72; John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 115; David Fohrman, The Beast That Crouches at the Door: Adam & Eve, Cain & Abel, and Beyond (Maggid, 2021), 186.

7  Richard S. Hess, Studies on the Personal Names of Genesis 1-11 (Eisenbrauns, 2009), 68; Bryan C. Hodge, Revisiting the Days of Genesis: A Study of the Use of Time in Genesis 1-11 in Light of Its Ancient Near Eastern and Literary Context (Wipf & Stock, 2011), 129.

8  Richard S. Hess, Studies on the Personal Names of Genesis 1-11 (Eisenbrauns, 2009), 69-70.

9  Richard S. Hess, Studies on the Personal Names of Genesis 1-11 (Eisenbrauns, 2009), 71; Bryan C. Hodge, Revisiting the Days of Genesis: A Study of the Use of Time in Genesis 1-11 in Light of Its Ancient Near Eastern and Literary Context (Wipf & Stock, 2011), 129-130.

10  Tremper Longman III, Genesis, Story of God Bible Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2016), 98.

11  Jubilees 4:8-10, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:61.

12  Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities 1.2, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:304.

13  Greek Life of Adam and Eve 5.1, in John R. Levison, The Greek Life of Adam and Eve (De Gruyter, 2023), 156.

14  Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 40; Brian Neil Peterson, Genesis: A Pentecostal Commentary (Brill, 2022), 65.

15  Epiphanius of Salamis, Ancoratus 58.8, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 128:143.

16  Helge S. Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading (Brill, 2011), 92-93.

17  Richard S. Hess, “The Genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 and Comparative Studies: Evidence for a Seam,” in Richard E. Averbeck and K. Lawson Younger, Jr., eds., An Excellent Fortress for His Armies, a Refuge for the People: Egyptological, Archaeological, and Biblical Studies in Honor of James K. Hoffmeier (Eisenbrauns, 2020), 146-147.

18  Sumerian King List, lines 1-10, at <https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section2/tr211.htm>.

19  Sumerian King List, lines 11-35, at <https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section2/tr211.htm>.

20  K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Eerdmans, 2003), 443.

21  John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 114; Brian Neil Peterson, Genesis: A Pentecostal Commentary (Brill, 2022), 67.

22  Craig Olson, How Old Was Father Abraham? The Genesis Lifespans in Light of Archaeology (Trowel Press, 2023), 93-94.

23  Craig Olson, How Old Was Father Abraham? The Genesis Lifespans in Light of Archaeology (Trowel Press, 2023), 126.

24  David W. Cotter, Genesis, Berit Olam (Liturgical Press, 2003), 47; cf. Joseph E. Coleson, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 191.

25  Jubilees 4:30, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:63-64.

26  Bryan C. Hodge, Revisiting the Days of Genesis: A Study of the Use of Time in Genesis 1-11 in Light of Its Ancient Near Eastern and Literary Context (Wipf & Stock, 2011), 134.

27  Craig Olson, How Old Was Father Abraham? The Genesis Lifespans in Light of Archaeology (Trowel Press, 2023), 51-54.

28  Daniel D. Lowery, Toward a Poetics of Genesis 1-11: Reading Genesis 4:17-22 in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context (Eisenbrauns, 2013), 82-86.

29  James McKeown, Genesis, Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary (Eerdmans, 2008), 46.

30  Daniel D. Lowery, Toward a Poetics of Genesis 1-11: Reading Genesis 4:17-22 in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context (Eisenbrauns, 2013), 185-187; Craig Olson, How Old Was Father Abraham? The Genesis Lifespans in Light of Archaeology (Trowel Press, 2023), 92.

31  Paul Copan and Douglas Jacoby, Origins: The Ancient Impact and Modern Implications of Genesis 1-11 (Morgan James Faith, 2011), 133-134; Loren D. Haarsma, When Did Sin Begin? Human Evolution and the Doctrine of Original Sin (Baker Academic, 2021), 132; Craig Olson, How Old Was Father Abraham? The Genesis Lifespans in Light of Archaeology (Trowel Press, 2023), 117-125.

32  Helge S. Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading (Brill, 2011), 240.

33  John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 114.

34  Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis, Christian Standard Commentary (Holman Reference, 2023), 266.

35  Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 5:1, in Luther's Works 1:334.

36  Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 5:1, in Luther's Works 1:334.

37  Bill T. Arnold, Genesis, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge University Press, 2008), 87.

38  Testament of Adam 3.2, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:994.

39  Bill T. Arnold, Genesis, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge University Press, 2008), 87; Ingrid Faro, Evil in Genesis: A Contextual Analysis of Hebrew Lexemes for Evil in the Book of Genesis (Lexham Press, 2021), 49.

40  Mitchell L. Chase, Short of Glory: A Biblical and Theological Exploration of the Fall (Crossway, 2023), 149.

41  Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis, Christian Standard Commentary (Holman Reference, 2023), 270.

42  R. R. Reno, Genesis, Brazos Theological Commentary (Brazos Press, 2010), 112; Joseph E. Coleson, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 185.

43  Desiderius Erasmus, Preparing for Death, in The Collected Works of Erasmus 70:405.

44  Lawrence R. Samuel, Death, American Style: A Cultural History of Dying in America (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013).

45  Columba Thomas, tr., The Art of Dying: A New Annotated Translation (National Catholic Bioethics Center, 2022), 86.

46  Matthew Levering, Dying and the Virtues (Eerdmans, 2018), 167.

47  Gregory of Tours, Life of the Fathers 4.5, in Translated Texts for Historians 1:27.

48  Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 18.28, 38, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 22:141, 152.

49  Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 18.28, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 22:140-141.

50  Greek Life of Adam and Eve 5.5; 9.1-3, in John R. Levison, The Greek Life of Adam and Eve (De Gruyter, 2023), 156-158.

51  Matthew Levering, Dying and the Virtues (Eerdmans, 2018), 22, 130.

52  Matthew Levering, Dying and the Virtues (Eerdmans, 2018), 146.

53  Desiderius Erasmus, Preparing for Death, in The Collected Works of Erasmus 70:425.

54  Columba Thomas, tr., The Art of Dying: A New Annotated Translation (National Catholic Bioethics Center, 2022), 43.

55  Columba Thomas, tr., The Art of Dying: A New Annotated Translation (National Catholic Bioethics Center, 2022), 51; Desiderius Erasmus, Preparing for Death, in The Collected Works of Erasmus 70:439.

56  Columba Thomas, tr., The Art of Dying: A New Annotated Translation (National Catholic Bioethics Center, 2022), 69.

57  Columba Thomas, tr., The Art of Dying: A New Annotated Translation (National Catholic Bioethics Center, 2022), 59.

58  Columba Thomas, tr., The Art of Dying: A New Annotated Translation (National Catholic Bioethics Center, 2022), 77.

59  Matthew Levering, Dying and the Virtues (Eerdmans, 2018), 134.

60  Desiderius Erasmus, Preparing for Death, in The Collected Works of Erasmus 70:450.

61  Greek Life of Adam and Eve 31.4, in John R. Levison, The Greek Life of Adam and Eve (De Gruyter, 2023), 165.

62  Matthew Levering, Dying and the Virtues (Eerdmans, 2018), 77.

63  Desiderius Erasmus, Preparing for Death, in The Collected Works of Erasmus 70:433-434.

64  Matthew Levering, Dying and the Virtues (Eerdmans, 2018), 73.

65  Desiderius Erasmus, Preparing for Death, in The Collected Works of Erasmus 70:436.

66  Columba Thomas, tr., The Art of Dying: A New Annotated Translation (National Catholic Bioethics Center, 2022), 48.

67  Matthew Levering, Dying and the Virtues (Eerdmans, 2018), 27-28, 149.

68  Desiderius Erasmus, Preparing for Death, in The Collected Works of Erasmus 70:450.

69  Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Macrina 20.4, in Anna M. Silvas, Macrina the Younger, Philosopher of God (Brepols, 2008), 129.

70  Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Macrina 25.1-2, in Anna M. Silvas, Macrina the Younger, Philosopher of God (Brepols, 2008), 133.

71  Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Macrina 27.1-3, in Anna M. Silvas, Macrina the Younger, Philosopher of God (Brepols, 2008), 135-136.

72  Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 8.22, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 22:116-117.

73  Gregory the Great, Dialogues 2.37 and 4.16, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 39:107-108, 210.

74  Gregory of Tours, Life of the Fathers 6.7, in Translated Texts for Historians 1:40.

75  Matthew Levering, Dying and the Virtues (Eerdmans, 2018), 117, 167.

76  Desiderius Erasmus, Preparing for Death, in The Collected Works of Erasmus 70:398.

77  Desiderius Erasmus, Preparing for Death, in The Collected Works of Erasmus 70:417.

78  Augustine of Hippo, The Grace of Christ and Original Sin 2.26 §31, in The Works of St. Augustine I/23:450.