Bible Study
Women: In the Beginning
by J. Ann Craig
Editor’s note: Before reading this Bible study, read Genesis 1-2:4a. Biblical quotes in the article are from the New Revised Standard Version.
Do you know the difference between good and evil? Should you know? What would humanity be like if no one knew the difference between good and evil? Would it be paradise?
The author of Genesis thought so. Perhaps the animal world suggested a relatively idyllic world where there were no ethical decisions to be made. Animals simply eat, sleep, reproduce and die. There is something enviable about not having to decide about social issues, where to send your kids to school, which church to join. Greed, shame and murder play minimal roles in the social lives of animals.
Maybe it would be paradise.
But conscious, ethical decision-making is part of what it means to be human. The teller of Eve and Adam’s story deftly wove the tale to help us understand why humans are like we are.
The story is central to our religious tradition. It has been told and re-told, interpreted and re-interpreted. For at least 2,000 years, Eve has been blamed for the fall of humanity. Sin itself has been laid at the feet of women.
So it behooves us to look again at the story of Eve and Adam when we talk about women and the church, and when we talk about women in society. In the Western world, issues such as pay disparity, gender stereotyping, spouse abuse, even rape, are rooted in this interpretation of Eve and Adam’s story. Women internalize the belief that they are inferior. Men internalize the belief that they are superior.
Christians continue to debate whether the story is myth or history. Such debate too often overshadows a close look at the story’s meaning and the corruption of it to support the subordination. Let us look closely at the text to find out what it really says.
The creation story
In Genesis 1-2:4a, we find the cosmological story of the creation. In six days, the elements of creation come into being. God considers it all "good."
Creation culminates in creation of humankind or Adam.
In Genesis 1:26-27, we read:
Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have domination over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth."
So God created humankind in God’s image,
in the image of God God created them;
male and female God created them.
Adam is a play on words -- the Hebrew word adamah means dirt or dust. So Adam -- a proper name for a male –- also suggests a general term about humans who are made from the stuff of earth. Rather than referring to the male, it refers to both female and male who are created by God, in the image of God.
In this version of creation, females and males together have dominion over other species.
Now turn to Genesis 2:4b-25, the second creation story, and the story that introduces Eve and Adam. Take a few minutes to read this passage then continue this Bible study.
While some folks read this as a more detailed version of the first creation story, biblical research reveals it is a separate story, with a separate style and separate author. The first story is on a grand scale, while this story is up close and personal: God walks in the garden, plants trees, and breathes life into Adam.
This story, and others in the same style, embarrassed early Christians. Greek cosmology was grand and static. There was no embodied God. Instead, God was far beyond this earth, which was seen as a cheap imitation of the real spiritual world.
Although we have incorporated much of this Greek thinking into contemporary Christianity, the Hebrew God is an earthy God, a God who created a mud creature -- Adam.
In this second version, there is another play on word adamah -- dirt. This time, the first created person is hadamah, which means creature rather than man. Once Eve is brought forth from the one body, the male is called "ish" and the female is isha. They are co-created out of one body. Only after creation of both do they assume their respective genders.
Translation looses these subtle but important distinctions. The characterization of Eve as the source of evil was well established by the time the Bible was translated into English. Incorporating and communicating these nuances would have undermined long-held beliefs, even world order based on subordination of women.
The order of creation of female and male has long been an underpinning of the belief in the inferiority of women. 1 Timothy 2:8-15 argues for silencing women based on the belief that Adam was formed before Eve.
Timothy 2:14 says:
...and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.
Placing blame
Inaccuracies in traditional reading and interpretation of Genesis become apparent through a closer look at the original language. A contemporary bumper sticker that quips, "Adam was a rough draft," is an attempt to claim the being created second makes Eve more valuable. Though some may like the idea of reversing the long-held belief that being created first makes Adam superior, the bumper sticker, like the traditional interpretation, misses the point. Eve and Adam were created together.
Another look at 1 Timothy raises another concern. The author ignores the passivity of Adam when Eve offers him the fruit. Adam takes and eats without question. Eve and Adam both pass the buck when God confronts them. Adam says:
The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate (Genesis 3:12).
In a sense, Adam is blaming God because God gave him the woman.
The woman says: The serpent tricked me, and I ate (Genesis:3 -12).
So who then, if anyone, is responsible for sin?
It is neither Eve nor Adam who is responsible for introducing sin. Neither is either cursed. It is the serpent who was responsible. God turns to the serpent and curses it.
For Eve and Adam, there is no curse, only a reflection of how life tends to be:
Life is not easy because humans now know things that it would seem only God should know. Humanity now knows how to embody good and evil.
The acts that follow can be seen as gifts. Adam gives Eve her name not because she is evil but because she was the mother of all living (Genesis 3:20).
In the next verse, God gives them clothing, and then says in Genesis 3:22:
The man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil...
God sends Eve and Adam forth from the garden. If there was to be a condemnation, this is where it would fall. But there is no cursing. Eve and Adam leave the garden with the trappings of culture and life -- clothing, agriculture, family.
In God’s image
Today, though we have techniques to minimize pain at childbirth, agriculture is mechanized in many places in the world and male domination is decreasingly assumed, we face variations on the same life challenges. Some claim women should avoid using pain-relief techniques during childbirth because the pain was "meant to be." Others point to Genesis to justify men’s domination of women.
Our task as Christians is to read and re-read Scripture, recognizing that God’s truths are constantly being revealed to us. We must remove cultural trappings so long intwined with the story of Eve and Adam. For example, we can note that it was the author of 1 Timothy, not God in Genesis nor Christ of our New Testament, who concluded childbirth is the source of women’s salvation.
Like Eve and Adam, we are created in the image of God. That knowledge can guide us as we sort out that which is good and that which is evil.
J. Ann Craig is executive secretary for spiritual and theological development for the Women's Division.