The antediluvian period is the time period chronicled in the Bible between the fall of man and the Genesis flood narrative in biblical cosmology. The term was coined by Thomas Browne. The narrative takes up chapters 1–6 of the Book of Genesis. The term found its way into early geology and science until the late Victorian era. Colloquially, the term is used to refer to any ancient and murky period.
The Creation, beginning of the Antediluvian (i.e., Pre-Flood) world. (Artist's rendition by James Tissot.)
Noah prepares to leave the antediluvian world, Jacopo Bassano and assistants, 1579
Strata of "Secondary rock", Lyme Regis
The Deluge subsides, thought in early geology to be responsible for the formation of sediments, with only traces of the antediluvian world. Thomas Cole, 1829
The fall of man, the fall of Adam, or simply the Fall, is a term used in Christianity to describe the transition of the first man and woman from a state of innocent obedience to God to a state of guilty disobedience. The doctrine of the Fall comes from a biblical interpretation of Genesis, chapters 1–3. At first, Adam and Eve lived with God in the Garden of Eden, but the serpent tempted them into eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which God had forbidden. After doing so, they became ashamed of their nakedness and God expelled them from the Garden to prevent them from eating the fruit of the tree of life and becoming immortal.
Adam, Eve, and a female serpent at the entrance to Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France. The portrayal of the image of the serpent as a mirror of Eve was common in earlier Christian iconography as a result of the identification of women as the ones responsible for the fall of man and source of the original sin.
The Fall and Expulsion from Paradise, fresco painted by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, Vatican City (1510–1564)
A lion-faced, serpentine deity found on a Gnostic gem in Bernard de Montfaucon's L'antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures may be a depiction of the Demiurge.
Persian miniature depicting the expulsion of Adam and Eve, observed by the angel Riḍwan, the Serpent, the Peacock, and Iblīs.