Adam’s Wisdom and Israel’s Law

The concept of natural law—universal moral knowledge—is often associated with Stoic philosophers, Thomas Aquinas, or the medieval Jewish rabbis. But Jews in the Second Temple period had their own model of natural law, interpreting the story of Adam and Eve so as to associate the primordial pair with "wisdom," "law," or "commandment." In this tradition, when God created humans he endowed them with moral knowledge. "Adam’s wisdom" was a common motif in Jewish literature of the Greco-Roman period.