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Summary
- The Bible never says how tall Adam and Eve were. Genesis gives the material, the relation and the commission, and no physical description at all.
- The “sixty cubits” figure comes from a hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari — Islamic tradition, not the Bible — and Muslim scholars dispute whether it describes Adam on earth or in Paradise.
- Rabbinic aggadah produced its own accounts of an enormous Adam, told as homily rather than as the plain sense of Genesis. Modern figures like 15 or 90 feet have no source.
- Scripture does mention large people — the Nephilim, the spies’ report, Goliath at six cubits and a span (about 9’9″, or 6’9″ in several older manuscripts), Og’s bed — but Adam is not among them.
- The silence is consistent: the Gospels give no description of Jesus, Isaiah 53:2 says there was nothing to look at, and 1 Samuel 16:7 says the Lord looks at the heart.
Bibliography (Click to show)
Sources: Scripture quotations from the NIV via BibleGateway (Genesis 1:27; 2:7, 23; 3:19; 6:4; Numbers 13:33; Deuteronomy 3:11; 1 Samuel 16:7; 17:4; Isaiah 53:2). The sixty-cubit tradition is Sahih al-Bukhari 3326, with the Paradise reading defended by scholars including al-Qurtubi. The Septuagint and 4QSam(a) readings of Goliath’s height at four cubits and a span are noted in standard critical apparatus and in most modern study Bibles.
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