The poet Lucille Clifton uses the phrase "and so they went out" to describe the departure of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Yet the phrase also aptly describes the many versions of the stories of Adam and Eve as they began to circulate about the turn of the Common Era: they too "went out", and the appearance of these stories in multiple versions and languages attests both to their widespread popularity and to their ongoing appeal in the world of antiquity. Nor is their appeal simply confined to antiquity - these stories continue to fascinate today, and the various versions of these apocryphal "Books of Adam and Eve" have begun to command considerable attention in the academic world. Thus far, the scholarly community has concentrated principally on the complex tradition-history of these texts, and has produced detailed analyses of their date, provenance and language. But, however, the process of the reshaping and transformation of the Adam and Eve stories within the "Books of Adam and Eve" has not yet been studied as thoroughly as it warrants. This book sets out to help redress this imbalance.While clearly indebted to earlier studies, the book's focus is primarily upon conceptual, literary, and thematic issues. By making use contemporary critical methods such as literary-critical analysis, ritual theory, and social-scientific taxonomy, the book explores how these stories represent a profound transformation and reshaping of ancient attitudes to gender, body, sexuality, sin, social hierarchies, and human aspirations. Taken together, the conclusions demonstrate just how radically the biblical traditions enshrined within the "Books of Adam and Eve" have been transformed and redeployed to suit the circumstances and needs of later authors.