Narsai’s Memra 49, on Adam and Eve: O Instructive Fault!

Narsai’s Memra 49, concerning the creation and fall of Adam and Eve, as well as the story of Cain and Abel, is a typically sensitive Narsaian reading of Genesis 2-4. Narsai pays close attention to the narrative details of the Scriptural passages in question while weaving them together into one of his favorite theological themes, that of Divine Pedagogy. How did God use the creation of humanity to teach the rest of the created world about himself? How did he use the paradigmatic sins of the primordial human beings to teach them to grow? How does he use the Scriptural account of these events to teach us? God’s teaching is more than the promulgation of information; it is the formation of students into greater maturity and more perfect resemblance of the God in whose image we are created.