 Eriugena’s account of human nature is complex and fascinating because it is woven of several threads derived from a variety of sources: Maximus Confessor, Pseudo-Dionysius, Gregory of Nyssa, and last but not least, Augustine. Books Four and Five contain Eriugena’s anthropology, explicated as part of his commentary on the six days of creation (the Hexaemeron); this aspect has recently been the focus of much philosophical interest (Stock, Otten, Moran). Eriugena’s account ranges widely, treating of the creation of human nature, the Fall and the consequent division of the sexes, the meaning of human nature as made in the image and likeness of God (in imaginem et similitudinem dei), the nature of paradise to which perfected human nature will return, the nature of evil and how it relates to human will. He draws heavily on Augustine’s commentaries on Genesis, especially De Genesi ad litteram, as well as Ambrose’s De Paradiso, Basil the Great’s Homilies on the Hexaemeron and extensively on Gregory of Nyssa’s De hominis opificio. But Eriugena is never a slavish follower—he departs from Augustine on several points, including on the question of the purely spiritual nature of paradise: whether Adam’s body was animal or spiritual, and whether humans ante peccatum ever actually spent time in paradise. Eriugena adopts Gregory of Nyssa’s view that sexual difference is a result of the Fall, that the real Fall is the fall from intellect into sense, intellect distracted by the voluptuousness of sense. So, sexual difference really makes no difference for humans, or as Eriugena boldly puts it: “Man is better than sex” (homo melior est quam sexus, Periphyseon,  II.534a). This, Eriugena believes, agrees with Scripture: “in Christ there is neither male nor female” (Periphyseon, IV.795a). Thus, Eriugena’s radical Scriptural exegesis, in part building on Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus, supports original philosophical claims about the sexless nature of true, undivided, human nature.