An assessment of Eve from a liberal perspective:
1. Eve and Women
Art has always played and continues to play, an important role in the service of what has been called “gender ideology,” communicating ideas about social order through the representation of female and male sexuality. The themes and styles of works of art often function as a prescription for relationships between women and men.
Images of women and men can effectively incite both sexes to adopt certain self-images, attitudes, and behavior. Male-constructed images of women, and men, are so embedded in Western culture that they appear quite “natural.” Once it is recognized that they are constructions, it becomes necessary to ask not only how they are constructed but also why.
The constructed social relationship between women and men in the West is rooted in the Genesis story of Adam and Eve. For the last 2,500 years it has underpinned our perception of sex and gender and thereby influenced how women and men are represented in art. Any discussion of images of women and men must therefore be prefaced by an examination of the opening chapters of Genesis.
The story of Adam and Eve is a creation story, and creation stories, which are accounts of how humankind came to be, can reveal a great deal about the ethos of the culture. Stories or legends about the origin or creation of humankind offer clues about how a culture perceives the world and the relation of living things to it and to each other.
The “message” of the Judaeo-Christian creation myth, recounted in the Biblical story of Genesis 1-3, shows a particular conception of the origins of humankind. It is claimed that God created man in his own likeness, was given dominion over “every living thing”, and leave to subdue the earth with his offspring. Equally significant is the prominence given to men; God is male and his most important creation is male. The story stresses the primacy of man and the centrality of his place in the universe, while making it clear that women play a subordinate role. The story also recounts how the woman, whom Adam subsequently named Eve, was disobedient and succumbed to temptation the result of which was the expulsion of both Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.
For the past two thousand years or so the story of Adam and Eve has communicated social and religious values to Western civilization. Whether you regard the story as an innocuous folk tale or as an invidious, misogynistic tract[*], it has successfully presented its “truths” about women in particular as God-ordained and universally valid.
Throughout the Christian period, the story of Eve has provided men with the reason why they should restrain and restrict the social, sexual, religious, political, and economic freedom of women. It has also given men the justification to hold women responsible for all the misfortunes suffered by mankind.
All women are like Eve, and their only chance of redemption is to become like the Virgin Mary, another patriarchal fantasy, who represents absolute obedience and purity. The story of Eve and its many misogynistic interpretations have over the centuries defined the image of woman in Western civilization.
2. Eve in Genesis
Genesis has been subjected to any number of interpretations, none of them satisfactory to the modern mind. Though the intent of the story is clear, as a narrative it lacks sense. Even the literalists who want to read it as straight fact find themselves following pretzel-like paths of explanation.
Apart from such knotty and awkward questions as from whence came evil in a new world God proclaimed as “good,” and the incestuous situation which must have prevailed for the human race to continue (by whom did Cain father children?), a fundamental problem is the fact that the story has two different accounts of the creation of man.
The first is told briefly in Genesis 1:27: God “created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
The term “man” in this instance is to be understood in the collective sense as meaning mankind. This plural or inclusive use of the word “man” is made clear in Genesis 5:2 where it is again stated that “Male and female he created them and blessed them and called their name man on the day of their creation.” The passage therefore may be interpreted to mean that men and women were created in one act, both sexes together, equally and at the same time.
The second, much lengthier account is given in Genesis 2 and 3. Instead of simultaneous creation, the story tells first of God forming man out of the dust, breathing life into his nostrils, and setting him down in the garden of Eden.
Only after the first act of creation does the story go on to recount the making of a woman from the man’s rib, the story of the serpent’s temptation of the woman, and the subsequent expulsion of the man and the woman from the garden into our world.
Biblical scholars currently believe that the first account given in Genesis 1:27 was written much later than the second story, having been composed according to the “P” source or “Priestly Code” (so called because of its cultic interests and regulations for priests) probably by Jewish theologians around 500-400 BCE.
The longer second story, related more in the language of folklore, is derived from the “J” or “Yahwist” source (so called because it used the name Yahweh [Jehovah] for God) and was probably written down by members of Hebrew tribes around 1000-900 BCE during the time of King Solomon.
3. Eve’s Identity
Whether or not you believe the Bible was divinely inspired, the Book of Genesis has served as the primary source in the West for definitions of gender and morality.
Although much of the story of Adam and Eve can be explained within the context of Hebrew culture, and its patriarchal bias shown to be historical rather than divine in origin, it is nonetheless perceived as containing fundamental, and largely negative, “truths” about the nature of women.
For the last two thousand years or so, Eve has represented the fundamental character and identity of all women. Through Eve’s words and actions, the true nature of women was revealed; her story tells men what women are really like.
Eve represents everything about a woman a man should guard against. In both form and symbol, Eve is woman, and because of her, the prevalent belief in the West has been that all women are by nature disobedient, guileless, weak-willed, prone to temptation and evil, disloyal, untrustworthy, deceitful, seductive, and motivated in their thoughts and behavior purely by self-interest.
No matter what women might achieve in the world, the message of Genesis warns men not to trust them, and women not to trust themselves or each other. Whoever she might be and whatever her accomplishments, no woman can escape being identified with Eve, or being identified as her.
In the West, the story of Eve has served over the centuries as the principal document in support of measures and laws to curtail and limit the actions, rights, and status of women. The Pseudo-St. Paul, for example, in his Pastoral Epistle to St. Timothy, could cite Genesis as the reason why women should not be allowed to teach or to tell a man what to do:
For I do not allow woman to teach, or to exercise authority over men; but she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. (1 Timothy 2:12-14)
The early Christian theologian Tertullian (c. 155/160-220 CE) reminded women that they all share Eve’s “ignominy…of original sin and the odium of being the cause of the fall of the human race”:
Do you not believe that you are (each) an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives on even in our times and so it is necessary that the guilt should live on, also. You are the one who opened the door to the Devil, you are the one who first plucked the fruit of the forbidden tree, you are the first who deserted the divine law; you are the one who persuaded him whom the Devil was not strong enough to attack. All too easily you destroyed the image of God, man. Because of your desert, that is, death, even the Son of God had to die. ( The Apparel of Women , Book I, Chapt. 1)
During the Middle Ages, St. Bernard of Clairvaux could claim in his sermons, without contradiction, that Eve was “the original cause of all evil, whose disgrace has come down to all other women.”
This perception of Eve has endured with remarkable tenacity, and persists today as a major stumbling-block in attempts by women to correct gender-based inequalities between the sexes. Consciously or unconsciously, it continues to serve as the ultimate weapon against women who wish to challenge male hegemony.
It is so deeply rooted in the socio-religious psyche of Western civilization that attempts to discredit it, or dismiss it, or simply ignore it as self-serving patriarchal fiction and myth-making have met with little success. One strategy has been to adopt a revisionist approach to the story itself and to re-read it, and re-interpret it, in feminist terms. It has been argued that Genesis 2-3 is not inherently patriarchal and efforts have been made to recover it from centuries of misogynist reading.
Phyllis Trible, Professor of Sacred Literature at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, for example, holds that far from being a secondary or dependent being, Eve is in fact the “culmination” of creation.
The argument that the order of creation, in which Adam was created first and Eve second, indicates hierarchy and therefore Adam’s superiority ignores the fact that animals were created before Adam. As Adam is superior to the animals, then the hierarchy of creation should be reversed, and Eve seen as God’s ultimate creation.
Trible also argues that at the time of their creation, Adam and Eve were equals and that the inequality between them enters only after Genesis 3:16 as a consequence of disobedience. In other words, inequality between the sexes was not originally part of the divine plan. It would therefore follow that attempts by feminists today to restore equality are in keeping with God’s original plan.
A point made by Trible and others is that at the time of creation in Genesis 2:7, ha-’adam , which has been conventionally translated as “man,” “the man” ( ha read as the definite article “the”), or “Adam,” had no gender. Gender comes into existence only with the creation of woman in Genesis 2:22, following which, in 2:23, the “earth-creature” or “groundling” (suggested alternative translations of ha-’adam ) is sexually differentiated as “man” ( ish ), and woman as ishah .
A note can be added here on the word “rib.” Sarah Roth Lieberman points out that the Sumerian word “ ti ” means both “rib” and “to make alive.” In ancient Mesopotamia, Ninti, whose name means both “lady of the rib” and “lady who makes alive,” is the goddess created by Nimhursag to heal Enki’s sick rib. The double meaning may explain why Eve, who is called “mother of all living” (Genesis 3:20), was created from Adam’s rib (an otherwise very odd piece of male anatomy to chose). Unfortunately, in the Bible, the association is lost because the Hebrew words for “rib” and “life” are two different words with unrelated roots.
Attempts have also been made to correct the popular belief that Eve was a temptress who tempted Adam into eating the fruit despite the fact that according to Genesis 3:6, after she ate the fruit herself, she then “gave some to her husband and he ate.”
This simple, and by any other measure, generous and unselfish act of sharing has, in a list assiduously compiled by Jean Higgins, been variously interpreted over the centuries by Biblical scholars and commentators to mean that Eve “tempted, beguiled, lured, corrupted, persuaded, taught, counseled, suggested, urged, used wicked persuasion, led into wrongdoing, proved herself an enemy, used guile and cozening, tears and lamentations, to prevail upon Adam.”
In the Vulgate, St. Jerome uses the word seducta to describe Eve’s transgression clearly implying that she used her sex to tempt, or seduce, Adam into disobedience. Such damning commentary has long supported the wide-spread conviction that Eve tempted Adam to sin and was therefore responsible for Adam’s fall.
However, despite the sometimes ingenious efforts by feminists in particular, it has proved remarkably difficult to correct popular belief and redefine Eve in more positive terms.
The negative view of Eve and of women in general has been constantly reinforced in the West over the centuries. In a medieval liturgical drama of the story of Adam and Eve, acted both inside and outside of many churches, at the moment of their Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Adam, after hurling a wailing Eve to the ground, kicking her, and dragging her by the hair, cries out in fury and dismay:
Oh, evil woman, full of treason….
Forever contrary to reason,
Bringing no man good in any season:
Our children’s children to the end of time
Will feel the cruel whiplash of your crime!
Moreover this view of Eve and of women in general has been insinuated into the culture to such an extent that both men and women believe it defines a natural condition of women. It is a pernicious view and the degree to which it continues to subtly influence in negative ways our perception of women must be constantly born in mind.
________
* Holwick: certainly other understandings are also possible; it is apparent the author has a low view of Scripture.