book, the Paradise narrative. Baptism is regularly understood by the early Syriac Fathers (and of course many others) as a re-entry into Paradise,25 an eschatological Paradise even more glorious than the primordial Paradise of the Genesis narrative. Now these writers were quick to observe that, according to the biblical text, Adam and Eve had marital intercourse only after their expulsion from Paradise (Genesis 4:1); they therefore deduced that sexual abstinence was a characteristic of marital life