Stephen Greenblatt returns to The Commonwealth Club to explore the value of the humanities by investigating the literary, artistic and cultural life of one of humankind’s greatest stories: Adam and Eve. With the insight, eloquence and erudition that have characterized his previous award-winning and best-selling books, Greenblatt looks at the origins of this biblical story, tracking its first written form back to the Hebrews’ exile in Babylon. He animates the sexual and moral conflicts that led Augustine to enshrine the story at the center of Christian faith. Greenblatt also limns the narrative’s diverse offspring: rich allegory, vicious misogyny and astonishing artistic representation. 

Greenblatt awakens us to the strangeness and wealth of a tale that generations have found profoundly meaningful; he reminds us that it has not been that long since it was mortally dangerous to question the story’s literal truth. Hear what Greenblatt thinks has been both gained and sacrificed as interpretations of the story of our first human ancestors have evolved throughout western culture.