I was just reading a review of David Brooks’s new book, from which I learned that Brooks is quite taken with the essay “The Lonely Man of Faith” by Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik. In this essay, Rabbi Soloveitchik postulated that, in the Garden of Eden, there were two Adams: “Adam I,” who was a man of creative action, and “Adam II,” who was devoted to obeying God.

It looks like that’s as far as Brooks and Soloveitchik take the story. But I suspect that there must have been substantial evolution since the Garden of Eden, through at least ten more Adams — because, in the 1960s, we heard reports of “Adam XII,” who appears to have been a policeman.

(An explanatory link, for readers under the age of 40.)