About the Institute
The Institute of Advanced Theology is designed to create the kind of genuine, critical understanding that will make real pluralism possible. We are not interested in general assertions of the necessity of religious tolerance. Well-meaning and useful though such imperatives are, they do not address the heart of the challenge of religious diversity. What is needed is not mere civility, but mutual understanding.
Laszlo Z. Bito (1934–2021)
Because of his involvement as a local organizer of the Hungarian Revolution, Laszlo Z. Bito (1934–2021) had to flee that country in 1956, and upon his arrival in the United States he attended and graduated from Bard College with a BA in chemistry and biology. He went on to earn a PhD in biophysics and cell biology from Columbia University, joining the Ophthalmology faculty of that university in 1965. His work there led to the development of the drug Xalatan, which has been for many years the gold standard for the treatment of glaucoma. At the age of sixty-three he retired from science to concentrate on the writing of fiction. At the time of his death his literary work included six biblical novels. The Gospel of Anonymous, released in 2011, marked his first, and until now only, novel published in English.
Eden Revisited: A Novel
by Laszlo Z. Bito
Foreword by Bruce Chilton and Afterword by Ágnes Heller
EDEN REVISITED is Hungarian writer Laszlo Bito’s vivid reimagining of the saga of the Bible’s first family that immerses us in a mythic landscape: the Garden of Eden with its “tree of bitter apples,” the forbidden fruit that Bito conceives as having hallucinogenic properties; the Outerworld—a wilderness of cliffs, caves and forests cut off from the wider world by impassable swamps and the Euphrates River, teeming with crocodiles…. Sacrilegious, erotic and inventive—Eden Revisited removes an omnipotent Creator from our origin story and challenges our notions of divinity and innocence. After reading Bito’s novel, readers will never see the immortal question “Am I my brother’s keeper?” in quite the same way. For more on and to buy Eden Revisited, visit the Publications.
Eden Revisited is an inventive and provocative novel that re-imagines the story of Adam and Eve and their sons Cain and Abel. We assume we know and understand that well-known myth, but in Laszlo Bito’s brilliant retelling, we encounter startling new meanings. A Bible story turns into a modern morality tale for our time that confronts the way we think about family, free will, evil, guilt, and the idea of God…. This book will move readers to think anew about how we might fashion an ethics of responsibility; a condition of genuine freedom without hate and intolerance. As autocracy and nativism gain popularity, Laszlo Bito’s voice is a welcome inspiration.
—Leon Botstein, Bard College, President
Eden Revisited is an inventive and provocative novel that re-imagines the story of Adam and Eve and their sons Cain and Abel. We assume we know and understand that well-known myth, but in Laszlo Bito’s brilliant retelling, we encounter startling new meanings. A Bible story turns into a modern morality tale for our time that confronts the way we think about family, free will, evil, guilt, and the idea of God…. This book will move readers to think anew about how we might fashion an ethics of responsibility; a condition of genuine freedom without hate and intolerance. As autocracy and nativism gain popularity, Laszlo Bito’s voice is a welcome inspiration.
—Leon Botstein, Bard College, President