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“A Help Mate?” The Art of Living Together in the - Haggadahs-R-Us
“A Help Mate?”
The Art of Living Together
in the Stories of Adam and Eve
A study of contrasting views of companionship
in the Biblical Creation stories
and their interpretations in classical
and contemporary midrash and commentary,
in art and poetry
By Noam Zion, Jo Milgrom
& Gary Tishkoff
Saul Raskin
Shalom
Hartman
Institute
ש
Gedalyahu Alon 12
POB 8029
Jerusalem, Israel
About the Authors: This booklet is the outcome of many years of teaching the creation stories by the main editor--Noam Zion, together with Dr. Jo
Milgrom, Yardena Lubotzky and David and Gilit Ivgi, contributed greatly in the realm of art. Jo Milgrom gathered and processed a tremendous
amount of creative art--both ancient and modern. Yehudit Zamir, Steve Israel, and Ayala Paz commented extensively from an educational point of
view. Rabbi Gary Tishkoff took the initiative to translate this material from the Hebrew and to find the appropriate visual format to make it inviting
for the English readers. In the end the responsibility for mistakes and biased emphases falls on the main author, yet without the wisdom and insight
the above-mentioned, this material would not have seen the light of day.For reactions, suggestions &/or orders, contact Noam Zion at
zionsacs@netvision.net.il
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION TO THE THEME: COMPANIONSHIP AS A LIFELONG PROJECT ............... 1
THE BIBLICAL TEXTS OF GENESIS 1-3........................................................................................ 3
CHAPTER I - WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF COMPANIONSHIP? ....................................... 11
A. BIBLICAL COMPARISON--THE CREATION OF MALE AND FEMALE (GENESIS 1)
COMPARED WITH THE FORMATION OF MAN AND WOMAN (GENESIS 2)........................... 12
STUDY EXERCISES ......................................................................................................................................................... 15
Exercise 1 - "It is not good for man to be alone" - Creative Writing .....................................................................................................15
Exercise 2 - "A Help Mate" - A Questionnaire for Finding A Fitting Mate ..........................................................................................15
Exercise 3 - "This Time" - The Music of Love ......................................................................................................................................16
B. DISCUSSION--IS THE STORY OF BUILDING WOMAN FROM THE RIB OF MAN (GENESIS 2) CHAUVINISTIC? .................... 16
STUDY EXERCISES—Key Phrases in Genesis 2 ............................................................................................................. 17
Textual Phrases: 1) “A Help Mate” (2 )“ )עזר כנגדוThis Time” ( )זאת הפעם.............................................................................................17
Phrase 3: "And They Became One Flesh" ( )והיו לבשר אחד.....................................................................................................................18
Phrase 4: "God took one of his ribs...and built the rib...into a woman" .................................................................................................19
C. CULTURAL COMPARISON--THE CREATION OF WOMAN ACCORDING TO HESIOD'S PANDORA STORY ...................... 22
CHAPTER II - CRISES IN THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE FIRST COUPLE ..................... 25
A. THE GARDEN OF EDEN STORY AS A PLAY ENTITLED: "LOVING COUPLE IN CONFLICT" ................................................ 26
On the meaning of the Garden of Eden story ........................................................................................................................................27
B. HOW DID THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN "THE TWO LOVERS OF THE GARDEN OF EDEN" DEGENERATE? ..................... 30
STUDY EXCERCISES: Looking at the Gendered Characters of the Man and the Woman in the Garden of Eden ......... 33
Exercise 1: Image of the Woman and her Affinity to the Serpent .........................................................................................................33
Exercise 2: Image of the Woman According to Jewish and Christian Bible Commentators .................................................................33
Exercise 3: Inventing Extemporaneous Dialogue for Genesis 3: Biblio-drama .....................................................................................34
Exercise 4: A Fateful Decision—Genesis 3:6........................................................................................................................................36
C. A SURVEY OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF EATING FROM THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE......................................................... 39
D. CONCLUSION: WAS EATING FROM THE TREE OF GOOD AND EVIL BENEFICIAL OR DETRIMENTAL? .............................. 45
STUDY EXERCISE: Would you prefer to remain in the Garden of Eden? ...................................................................... 45
CHAPTER III - MODERN LITERARY MIDRASHIM ............................................................. 46
A. NESSA RAPPAPORT, “GENERATION”-THE GARDEN FROM HIS PERSPECTIVE AND FROM HERS. ...................................... 47
B. PETER PITZELE, A CONVERSATION IN THE GARDEN BY WAY OF BIBLIODRAMA ............................................................. 47
C. HOWARD COOPER, ‘AND THEY BOTH WILL MAKE IT…’ SEXUALITY, SPIRITUALITY AND STORYTELLING. .................. 61
D. MODERN POETRY ......................................................................................................................................................... 69
E. ELEANORA LEV, THE FIRST MORNING AFTER: EVE IN THE GARDEN............................................................................. 71
2
CHAPTER IV - MEDIEVAL & MODERN COMMENTATORS’ DEBATE .......................... 73
A. GENESIS 2: LOVING FRIENDS ........................................................................................................................................ 73
1. Naomi Rosenblatt, When Love Enters The World......................................................................................................... 73
2. Joel Rosenberg, The Paradigmatic Betrothal ............................................................................................................... 73
3. Maurice Lamm, The Jewish Way in Love & Marriage ................................................................................................. 74
4. John Milton, The Doctrine & Discipline of Divorce ..................................................................................................... 75
5. Montaigne, Of Friendship Among Men ........................................................................................................................ 75
6. Aelred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship ...................................................................................................................... 76
7. David Gunn & Dana Fewell, Equity Dissolves Into Hierarchy .................................................................................... 77
8. Christine de Pizan, A Woman’s Bible Commentary ..................................................................................................... 78
9. Ellen Frankel, Women “Discuss” the Garden of Eden Story ....................................................................................... 81
B. GENESIS 3: SHIFTING THE BLAME ................................................................................................................................. 83
1. Pierre Bourdieu, Baking Bread .................................................................................................................................... 83
2. Alice Bach, A Woman’s Weapon: Food........................................................................................................................ 83
3. Linda Nochlin, The Fallen Woman ............................................................................................................................... 84
4. Dana Fewell & David Gunn, The Woman is an Explorer ............................................................................................ 84
5. William Phipps, Her Husband Beside Her ................................................................................................................... 85
6. Lisa Aiken, To Be A Jewish Woman ............................................................................................................................. 85
7. Augustine, Christian Interpretations ............................................................................................................................ 87
C: GENESIS 3: THE PUNISHMENTS ..................................................................................................................................... 88
1. Mary Gordon, Happy Virgin, Cursed Mother: Church Fathers on Eve’s Curse ......................................................... 88
2. Chava Weissler, Mizvot Built into the Body: Tkhines for Niddah, Pregnancy, and Childbirth ................................... 90
3. Sarah Grimkי, Thou shalt be subject unto thy husband ................................................................................................ 93
4. Mieke Bal, Lyn Bechtel & Carol Meyers, Punishments? No, Wisdom and Maturity and Reality! ............................... 94
5. Naomi Rosenblatt, Dedication To Life, Not Immortality .............................................................................................. 95
6. Joel Rosenberg, Man’s Reconciliation with Woman After the Fall into Mortality ....................................................... 96
7. Dana Fewell & David Gunn, Shifting the Blame.......................................................................................................... 97
CHAPTER V – SUPPLEMENT ..................................................................................................... 98
A. BIBLICAL....................................................................................................................................................................... 98
1. Meir Shalev, Man, King of the Animals [To be translated] ......................................................................................... 98
2. Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith ........................................................................................... 98
3. Phyllis Trible, A Love Story Gone Awry ..................................................................................................................... 104
4. Nehama Aschkenasy, Eve’s Journey: Feminine Images in Hebraic Literary ............................................................. 112
B. GREEK--PANDORA ...................................................................................................................................................... 118
1. A Greek legend according to Hesiod .......................................................................................................................... 118
2. Edith Hamilton’s Pandora .......................................................................................................................................... 119
3. William Phipps’ Pandora ........................................................................................................................................... 119
4. Tikvah Frymer Kensky, In The Wake of Goddesses .................................................................................................... 122
C. CHRISTIAN .................................................................................................................................................................. 124
1. William Phipps, Early Church Fathers on Eve .......................................................................................................... 124
2. Rosemary Radford Reuther, Women in Christian Theology: Subordination or Equivalence? [ Forthcoming] ............. 126
3. David Feldman, Marriage in the Christian Tradition ................................................................................................ 126
D. CONTEMPORARY & EASTERN ..................................................................................................................................... 129
1. Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving ................................................................................................................................ 129
E. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY [FORTHCOMING] ................................................................ ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.
F. Appendix: Plato's Symposium on Love
3
Introduction to the Theme: Companionship as a Lifelong Project
Companionship--the ability to build a life of love and cooperation between two people - is a
difficult challenge, yet one filled with meaning. These days, when relationships are suffering such
crises, we must try to understand what the challenges and obstacles are to building an intimate life
with another. In order to deepen our understanding we can be aided by conceptions and ideas which
emerged over generations from interpretations of the Adam and Eve stories.
Our approach revolves around the first three stories of Genesis 1-2-3. Jews and Christians
wove intricate interpretations, maxims, literary spin-offs and artistic interpretations around the
Biblical text. Each interpretation combined a close reading of the text from Genesis with a critical
analysis influenced by the worldview of the interpreter.
It is interesting and even surprising to discover that the Torah dedicated its opening chapters
to the issue of relationships. The Torah is often thought of as a religious book which addresses the
nature of God (theology). The first chapter of Genesis, the story of the creation, is often seen as a
mythic proto scientific view of the world (cosmology). The entire Bible, especially much of
Genesis, appears as a genealogy of the People of Israel (national history). But it appears to us that
the focus of the first three chapters of Genesis is the relationship between men and women
(anthropology and psychology). Adam and Eve--and not God--are in the spotlight here.
Humankind--and not the patriarchs and matriarchs of Israel--star in Genesis 1-3. The relationship of
the first couple--and not the order of the Cosmos--are of interest in the opening chapters of the
Torah. Genesis 1-3 clarifies a human concern which elicits a great deal of interest even today-What are the real and ideal relations between the sexes? What is the nature of power between the
sexes? What is the goal of sharing a life with another person? What are the differences and
similarities between men and women? How does love change into guilt, trust to betrayal, oneness
to alienation? All of these concerns are spiritual questions which occupy the God of the Bible no
less than questions of the redemption of the Jewish People, the perfection of the world, and the
establishment of the order of creation.
The Rabbis also viewed the question of companionship as a concern of the highest degree;
they therefore connected it with Divine activity. Rabbi Yossi ben Halafta presents the matching of
an appropriate companion as an extremely difficult task which requires almost miraculous powers.
Human matchmaking is not viewed as a matter of natural selection and biology, but rather as an
achievement fraught with difficulties.
ד:בראשית רבה (וילנא) פרשה סח
רבי יהודה בר סימון פתח (תהלים סח) אלהים מושיב יחידים
מטרונה שאלה את ר' יוסי בר חלפתא אמרה לו לכמה,ביתה
ימים ברא הקב"ה את עולמו אמר לה לששת ימים כדכתיב
(שמות,כ) כי ששת ימים עשה ה' את השמים ואת הארץ
אמר לה,אמרה לו מה הוא עושה מאותה שעה ועד עכשיו
אשתו של,הקב"ה יושב ומזווג זיווגים בתו של פלוני לפלוני
אמרה לו ודא הוא, ממונו של פלוני לפלוני,פלוני לפלוני
אומנתיה אף אני יכולה לעשות כן כמה עבדים כמה שפחות יש
אמר לה אם קלה היא,לי לשעה קלה אני יכולה לזווגן
' הלך לו ר, קשה היא לפני הקב"ה כקריעת ים סוף,בעיניך
יוסי בר חלפתא מה עשתה נטלה אלף עבדים ואלף שפחות
והעמידה אותן שורות שורות אמרה פלן יסב לפלונית ופלונית
למחר אתון לגבה דין, וזיווגה אותן בלילה אחת,תיסב לפלוני
אמרה להון, דין רגליה תבירא, דין עינו שמיטא,מוחיה פציעא
ודין אמר לית אנא בעי, דא אמרה לית אנא בעי לדין,מה לכון
מיד שלחה והביאה את ר' יוסי בר חלפתא אמרה לו לית,לדא
אלוה כאלהכון אמת היא תורתכון נאה ומשובחת יפה אמרת.
Midrash Rabbah - Genesis LXVIII.4
R. Judah b. Simon commenced his exposition with,
“God makes individuals to dwell in a house” (Ps.
LXVIII, 7).
A [Roman] matron asked R. Yossi b. Halafta: 'In
how many days did the Holy One, blessed be He,
create His world?' 'In six days,' he answered. 'Then
what has God been doing since then?' 'God sits and
makes matches,' he answered, 'assigning this man to
that woman, and this woman to that man.' 'Is that
difficult?' she gibed, 'I too can do the same.'
She went and matched [her slaves], giving this man
to that woman, this woman to that man and so on.
Some time after, those who were thus united went
and beat one another, this woman saying, 'I do not
want this man,' while this man protested, 'I do not
want that woman.'
Straightway she summoned R. Yossi b. Halafta and
admitted to him: 'There is no god like your God: it
is true, your Torah is indeed beautiful and
praiseworthy, and you spoke the truth!'
1
One who is interested in the question of companionship cannot escape looking at chapters 1-3
of Genesis. These stories continue to influence western culture--by way of Christianity--and Jewish
culture. Our times are characterized by the investigation of and definition of the desired relations
between men and women, by the harsh criticism of the institution of marriage, and by coping with the
low status of women in society. We intend to join this modern discussion by closely investigating the
different views regarding companionship presented by disparate interpretations of the biblical creation
stories.
In the biblical text of Genesis 1, 2, and 3 there exist three different world views (the first
creation story, the second creation story, and the story of sin and its consequence in the Garden of
Eden story of Genesis 3). To this we shall add the famous Greek story of Pandora. In this booklet we
shall compare these world views as well as follow the continued debate in Jewish, Christian, and
artistic interpretations regarding the relationship between women and men. Through the process of
understanding different interpretations, we shall be able to clarify on the one hand how we read texts
from the past and on the other, how our beliefs develop in the present. It is not our intention to prefer
any particular interpretation of the text or to advocate a certain moral position with regard to
companionship. Our goal is to stimulate thought via renewed investigation of the biblical text. This is
our approach to the study of Torah: pluralistic and inter-disciplinary.
The Intended Audience for this Booklet
This book is aimed at teachers of Bible, Jewish thought and literature who teach at the higher
levels of high school as well as at adult education and in-service teacher enrichment institutes. The
amount of material in this booklet is purposefully excessive and varied in order to facilitate interdisciplinary creative-midrashic study of companionship as presented in the opening sections of
Genesis. It is incumbent upon the teacher to clarify the desired directions for him/herself and to
encourage the students to investigate different aspects of the theme by taking advantage of the rich
materials provided (literary analysis, philosophical essays, interpretations of rabbinic sages, artistic
midrash, modern literary midrash and more).
The aim is to ignite the imagination and to develop a dialogue between the interested learner
and the complex biblical text. From there, each student will strike out in numerous directions and will
assimilate the material in a multitude of creative ways.
2
The Biblical Texts of Genesis 1-3
Michelangelo, Creation of Man, Sistine Ceiling
3
GENESIS 1
A
1 t the beginning of God's creating
of the heavens and the earth,
2 when the earth was wild and waste,
darkness over the face of Ocean,
rushing-spirit of God hovering over the face of
the waters-3 God said: Let there be light! And there was
light.
4 God saw the light: that it was good.
God separated the light from the darkness.
5 God called the light: Day! and the darkness he
called: Night!
There was setting, there was dawning: one day.
6 God said:
Let there be a dome amid the waters,
and let it separate waters from waters!
7 God made the dome
and separated the waters that were below the
dome from the waters that were above the dome.
'בראשית א
ָָּארץ
ֶ ש ַמי ִׁם ְּו ֵאת ה
ָּ א ב ְֵּראשִׁית ב ָָּּרא אֱֹלהִׁים ֵאת ַה.
ָָּארץ ָּהי ְּתָּ ה ת ֹהּו וָּב ֹהּו
ֶ ב ְּוה,
שְך עַל ְּפנֵי תְּ הֹום
ֶ וְּח,
וְּרּו ַח אֱֹלהִׁים מ ְַּר ֶחפֶת עַל ְּפנֵי ַה ָּמי ִׁם.
ג וַי ֹאמֶר אֱֹלהִׁים:
!יְּהִׁי אֹור
ַויְּהִׁי אֹור.
ד ַוי ְַּרא ֱאֹלהִׁים ֶאת הָּאֹור כִׁי טֹוב-שְך
ֶ ֹ ; ַויַבְּדֵ ל אֱֹלהִׁים בֵין הָּאֹור ּובֵין הַח
ה ַויִׁק ְָּּרא אֱֹלהִׁים לָּאֹור יֹום,
שְך ק ָָּּרא ָּליְּלָּה
ֶ ֹ ְּולַח.
ַויְּהִׁי בֹקֶר, ַויְּהִׁי ע ֶֶרב.
יֹום ֶאחָּד.
ו וַי ֹאמֶר אֱֹלהִׁים:
יְּהִׁי ָּרקִׁי ַע בְּתֹוְך ַה ָּמי ִׁם-וִׁיהִׁי ַמבְּדִׁ יל בֵין ַמי ִׁם ָּל ָּמי ִׁם.
;ז ַויַעַש ֹ אֱֹלהִׁים ֶאת ה ָָּּרקִׁי ַע
ַויַבְּדֵ ל בֵין ַה ַמי ִׁם ֲאשֶר ִׁמתַ חַת ל ָָּּרקִׁי ַע
ּובֵין ַה ַמי ִׁם ֲאשֶר ֵמעַל ל ָָּּרקִׁי ַע.
ַויְּהִׁי כֵן.
8 God called the dome: Heaven!
There was setting, there was dawning: second
day.
ש ָּמי ִׁם
ָּ ח ַויִׁק ְָּּרא אֱֹלהִׁים ל ָָּּרקִׁי ַע.
ַויְּהִׁי ב ֹ ֶקר, ַויְּהִׁי ע ֶֶרב.
שנִׁי
ֵ יֹום.
9 God said:
Let the waters under the heavens be gathered to
one place,
and let the dry land be seen!
It was so.
ט וַי ֹאמֶר אֱֹלהִׁים:
ש ַמי ִׁם
ָּ יִׁקָּוּו ַה ַמי ִׁם ִׁמתַ חַת ַה
אֶל מָּקֹום ֶאחָּד-וְּתֵ ָּראֶה ַהי ַ ָּבשָּה.
ַויְּהִׁי כֵן.
10 God called the dry land: Earth! and the
gathering of the waters he called: Seas!
God saw that it was good.
11 God said:
Let the earth sprout forth with sprouting-growth,
plants that seed forth seeds, fruit trees that yield
fruit, after their kind, (and) in which is their seed,
upon the earth!
It was so.
12 The earth brought forth sprouting-growth,
plants that seed forth seeds, after their kind,
trees that yield fruit, in which is their seed, after
their kind.
God saw that it was good.
13 There was setting, there was dawning: third
day.
י ַויִׁק ְָּּרא אֱֹלהִׁים ַלי ַ ָּבשָּה א ֶֶרץ,
ּו ְּל ִׁמ ְּקוֵה ַה ַמי ִׁם ק ָָּּרא יַמִׁים.
ַוי ְַּרא אֱֹלהִׁים כִׁי טֹוב.
יא וַי ֹאמֶר אֱֹלהִׁים:
עֵשֶֹב ַמז ְִּׁרי ַע ז ֶַרע:ָָּארץ דֶ שֶא
ֶ ;תַ דְּ שֵא ה
ָָּארץ
ֶ עַל ה-- ֲאשֶר ז ְַּרעֹו בֹו, ע ֹשֶֹה פ ְִּׁרי ְּלמִׁינֹו, עֵץ פ ְִּׁרי.
ַויְּהִׁי כֵן.
עֵשֶֹב ַמז ְִּׁרי ַע ז ֶַרע ְּלמִׁינֵהּו:ָָּארץ דֶ שֶא
ֶ ;יב וַתֹוצֵא ה
ְּלמִׁינֵהּו, ֲאשֶר ז ְַּרעֹו בֹו, ְּועֵץ ע ֹשֶֹה פ ְִּׁרי.
ַוי ְַּרא אֱֹלהִׁים כִׁי טֹוב.
ַויְּהִׁי בֹקֶר,יג ַויְּהִׁי ע ֶֶרב.
שלִׁישִׁי
ְּ יֹום.
יד וַי ֹאמֶר אֱֹלהִׁים:
ש ַמי ִׁם יְּהִׁי
ָּ מְּא ֹר ֹת ב ְִּׁרקִׁי ַע ַה
Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses: the Schocken Bible
4
14 God said:
Let there be lights in the dome of the heavens,
to separate the day from the night,
that they may be for signs--for set-times, for days
and years,
15 and let them be for lights in the dome of the
heavens, to provide light upon the earth!
It was so.
16 God made the two great lights,
the greater light for ruling the day and the smaller
light for ruling the night,
and the stars.
17 God placed them in the dome of the heavens
18 to provide light upon the earth, to rule the day
and the night, to separate the light from the
darkness,
God saw that it was good.
19 There was setting, there was dawning: fourth
day.
ְּל ַהבְּדִׁ יל בֵין הַיֹום ּובֵין ַה ָּליְּלָּה,
שנִׁים
ָּ ; ְּוהָּיּו לְּא ֹת ֹת ּולְּמֹועֲדִׁ ים ּו ְּלי ָּ ִׁמים ְּו
ַויְּהִׁי כֵן.ָָּארץ
ֶ ש ַמי ִׁם ְּל ָּהאִׁיר עַל ה
ָּ טו ְּוהָּיּו ִׁלמְּאֹור ֹת ב ְִּׁרקִׁי ַע ַה.
שנֵי ַהמְּא ֹר ֹת ַהגְּדֹלִׁים ( ֶאת ַהמָּאֹור ַהגָּד ֹל
ְּ טז ַויַעַש ֹ אֱֹלהִׁים ֶאת
שלֶת ַה ַליְּלָּה
ֶ שלֶת הַיֹום ְּו ֶאת ַהמָּאֹור ַהקָּט ֹן ְּל ֶמ ְּמ
ֶ ) ְּל ֶמ ְּמ
ְּו ֵאת הַכֹו ָּכבִׁים.
ָָּארץ יח ְּו ִׁלמְּש ֹל
ֶ ש ָּמי ִׁם ְּל ָּהאִׁיר עַל ה
ָּ יז ַוי ִׁתֵ ן א ֹתָּ ם אֱֹלהִׁים ב ְִּׁרקִׁי ַע ַה
בַיֹום ּו ַב ַליְּלָּה-שְך
ֶ ּו ְּל ַהבְּדִׁ יל בֵין הָּאֹור ּובֵין הַח.
ַוי ְַּרא אֱֹלהִׁים כִׁי טֹוב.
ַויְּהִׁי בֹקֶר,יט ַויְּהִׁי ע ֶֶרב.
יֹום ְּרבִׁיעִׁי.
כ וַי ֹאמֶר אֱֹלהִׁים:
;יִׁש ְְּּרצּו ַה ַמי ִׁם ש ֶֶרץ נֶפֶש ַחי ָּה
ָָּארץ
ֶ וְּעֹוף י ְּעֹופֵף עַל ה-ש ָּמי ִׁם עַל
ָּ ְּפנֵי ְּרקִׁי ַע ַה.
כא ַויִׁב ְָּּרא אֱֹלהִׁים ֶאת הַתַ נִׁינִׁם ַהגְּדֹלִׁים
ְּו ֵאת כָּל נֶפֶש ַה ַחי ָּה
ְּלמִׁינֵהֶם, ֲאשֶר ש ְָּּרצּו ַה ַמי ִׁם,ֶש ֹת
ֶ ;הָּרֹמ
ְּלמִׁינֵהּו, ָּכנָּף, ְּו ֵאת כָּל עֹוף.
ַוי ְַּרא אֱֹלהִׁים כִׁי טֹוב.
כב ַויְּב ֶָּרְך א ֹתָּ ם אֱֹלהִׁים לֵאמ ֹר:
ּורבּו
ְּ פְּרּו-;ּו ִׁמלְּאּו ֶאת ַה ַמי ִׁם ַביַמִׁים
ָָּארץ
ֶ ְּוהָּעֹוף י ִֶׁרב ב.
ַויְּהִׁי בֹקֶר,כג ַויְּהִׁי ע ֶֶרב.
יֹום ֲחמִׁישִׁי.
20 God said:
Let the waters swarm with a swarm of living
beings, and let fowl fly above the earth, across the
dome of the heavens!
21 God created the great sea-serpents
and all living being that crawl about, with which
the waters swarmed, after their kind,
God saw that it was good.
22 And God blessed them saying:
Bear fruit and be many and fill the waters in the
seas,
and let the fowl be many on earth!
כד וַי ֹאמֶר אֱֹלהִׁים:
23 There was setting, there was dawning: fifth
ָָּארץ נֶפֶש ַחי ָּה ְּלמִׁינָּּה
ֶ תֹוצֵא ה:
day.
ְּב ֵהמָּה ו ֶָּרמֶש ֹ ְּו ַחי ְּתֹו א ֶֶרץ ְּלמִׁינָּּה.
24 God said:
Let the earth bring forth living beings after their
kind,
herd-animals, crawling things, and the wildlife of
the earth after their kind!
It was so.
25 God made the wildlife of the earth after their
kind, and the herd-animals after their kind, and all
crawling things of the soil after their kind.
God saw that it was good.
26 God said:
Let us make humankind, in our image, according
to our likeness!
Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea,
the fowl of the heavens, animals, all the earth,
and all crawling things that crawl about upon the
earth!
27
God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God did he create it,
male and female did he create them.
ַויְּהִׁי כֵן.
ָָּארץ ְּלמִׁינָּּה
ֶ כה ַויַעַש ֹ אֱֹלהִׁים ֶאת ַחי ַת ה
ְּו ֶאת ַה ְּב ֵהמָּה ְּלמִׁינָּּה ְּו ֵאת כָּל ֶרמֶש ֹ ָּהאֲדָּ מָּה ְּלמִׁינֵהּו,
ַוי ְַּרא ֱאֹלהִׁים כִׁי טֹוב.
כו וַי ֹאמֶר אֱֹלהִׁים:
נַעֲשֶֹה ָאדָּ ם ְּב ַצ ְּלמֵנּו כִׁדְּ מּותֵ נּו-ש ַמי ִׁם
ָּ ְּוי ְִּׁרדּו בִׁדְּ גַת ַהי ָּם ּובְּעֹוף ַה
ָָּארץ
ֶ ּו ַב ְּב ֵהמָּה ּו ְּבכָּל ה
ָָּארץ
ֶ הָּרֹמֵש ֹ עַל ה,ֹּו ְּבכָּל ה ֶָּרמֶש.
כז ַויִׁב ְָּּרא אֱֹלהִׁים ֶאת הָָּאדָּ ם ְּב ַצלְּמֹו-; ְּב ֶצלֶם אֱֹלהִׁים ב ָָּּרא א ֹתֹו
זָּכָּר ּונְּ ֵקבָּה ב ָָּּרא א ֹתָּ ם.
כח ַויְּב ֶָּרְך א ֹתָּ ם אֱֹלהִׁים.
וַי ֹאמֶר ָּלהֶם אֱֹלהִׁים:
ּורבּו
ְּ פְּרּו-ש ָּה
ֻׁ ָָּארץ ְּו ִׁכ ְּב
ֶ ּו ִׁמלְּאּו ֶאת ה
5
28 God blessed them,
God said to them:
Bear fruit and be many and fill the earth
and subdue it!
Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl
of the heavens, and all living things that crawl
about upon the earth!
29 God said:
Here, I give you
all plants that bear seeds that are upon the face of
all the earth,
and all trees in which there is tree fruit that bears
seeds,
for you shall they be, for eating;
30 and also for all the living things of the earth,
for all the fowl of the heavens, for all that crawls
about upon the earth in which there is living
being-all green plants for eating.
It was so.
31 Now God saw all that he had made,
and here: it was exceedingly good!
There was setting, there was dawning: the sixth
day.
ש ַמי ִׁם
ָּ ּורדּו בִׁדְּ גַת ַהי ָּם ּובְּעֹוף ַה
ְּ
ָָּארץ
ֶ ֶש ֹת עַל ה
ֶ הָּרֹמ,ּו ְּבכָּל ַחי ָּה.
כט וַי ֹאמֶר אֱֹלהִׁים:
ִׁהנֵה נָּתַ תִׁ י ָּלכֶם
ָָּארץ
ֶ ֲאשֶר עַל ְּפנֵי כָּל ה,; ֶאת כָּל עֵשֶֹב ז ֵֹר ַע ז ֶַרע
ֲאשֶר בֹו פ ְִּׁרי עֵץ ז ֵֹר ַע ז ַָּרע, ְּו ֶאת כָּל ָּהעֵץ-; ָּלכֶם י ִׁ ְּהי ֶה לְָּא ְּכלָּה
ש ַמי ִׁם
ָּ ָָּארץ ּו ְּלכָּל עֹוף ַה
ֶ ל ּו ְּלכָּל ַחי ַת ה
ֲאשֶר בֹו נֶפֶש ַחי ָּה,ָָּארץ
ֶ ּולְּכ ֹל רֹומֵש ֹ עַל ה- ֶאת כָּל י ֶֶרק עֵשֶֹב לְָּא ְּכלָּה.
ַויְּהִׁי כֵן.
, ַויְּהִׁי ע ֶֶרב. ְּו ִׁהנֵה טֹוב מְּא ֹד--לא ַוי ְַּרא אֱֹלהִׁים ֶאת כָּל ֲאשֶר עָּשָֹּה
ַויְּהִׁי בֹקֶר.
ששִׁי
ִׁ יֹום ַה.
GENESIS 2
'בראשית ב
1 Thus were finished the heavens and the earth,
with all of their array.
2 God had finished, on the seventh day, his work
that he had made,
and then he ceased, on the seventh day, from all
his work that he had made.
3 God gave the seventh day his blessing, and he
hallowed it, for on it he ceased from all work, that
by creating, God had made.
ָָּארץ ְּוכָּל ְּצ ָּבָאם
ֶ ש ַמי ִׁם ְּוה
ָּ א ַויְּכֻׁלּו ַה.
ֲאשֶר עָּשָֹּה; ַויִׁשְּב ֹת בַיֹום,שבִׁיעִׁי ְּמלַאכְּתֹו
ְּ ב ַויְּכַל אֱֹלהִׁים בַיֹום ַה
ֲאשֶר עָּשָֹּה,שבִׁיעִׁי ִׁמכָּל ְּמלַאכְּתֹו
ְּ ַה.
שבִׁיעִׁי ַויְּקַדֵ ש א ֹתֹו
ְּ ג ַויְּב ֶָּרְך אֱֹלהִׁים ֶאת יֹום ַה,
ֲאשֶר ב ָָּּרא אֱֹלהִׁים ַלעֲשֹֹות,שבַת ִׁמכָּל ְּמלַאכְּתֹו
ָּ כִׁי בֹו.
ָָּארץ ְּב ִׁהב ְָּּרָאם
ֶ ש ַמי ִׁם ְּוה
ָּ ד ֵאלֶה תֹולְּדֹות ַה.
4 These are the begettings of the heavens and the
earth: their being created.
At the time of YHWH, God's making of earth and
heaven,
5 no bush of the field was yet on the earth,
no plant of the field had yet sprung up,
for YHWH, God, had not made it rain upon earth,
and there was no human/adam to till the
soil/adama-6 but a surge would well up from the ground and
water all the face of the soil;
7 and YHWH, God, formed the human, of dust
from the soil,
he blew into his nostrils the breath of life and the
human became a living being.
ש ָּמי ִׁם
ָּ בְּיֹום עֲשֹֹות י ְּהֹוָּה אֱֹלהִׁים א ֶֶרץ ְּו,
ָָּארץ
ֶ ה וְּכ ֹל שִֹׁי ַח ַהשָּדֶ ה ט ֶֶרם י ִׁ ְּהי ֶה ב,
ְּוכָּל עֵשֶֹב ַהשָּדֶ ה ט ֶֶרם י ִׁ ְּצמָּח
(ָָּארץ
ֶ כִׁי ֹלא ִׁה ְּמטִׁיר י ְּהֹוָּה אֱֹלהִׁים עַל ה
)וְָּאדָּ ם ַאי ִׁן ַלעֲב ֹד ֶאת ָּהאֲדָּ מָּה-שקָּה ֶאת כָּל ְּפנֵי ָּהאֲדָּ מָּה
ְּ ָָּארץ ְּו ִׁה
ֶ ו ְּואֵד י ַ ֲעלֶה מִׁן ה.
ָּעפָּר מִׁן ָּהאֲדָּ מָּה--ז ַוי ִׁיצֶר י ְּהֹוָּה אֱֹלהִׁים ֶאת הָָּאדָּ ם-ש ַמת ַחי ִׁים; ַויְּהִׁי הָָּאדָּ ם ְּלנֶפֶש ַחי ָּה
ְּ ִׁ ַויִׁפַח ְּב ַאפָּיו נ.
ִׁמקֶדֶ ם,;ח ַויִׁטַע י ְּהֹוָּה אֱֹלהִׁים גַן ְּבעֵדֶ ן
ֲאשֶר יָּצָּר, ַוי ָּשֶֹם שָּם ֶאת הָָּאדָּ ם.
6
8 YHWH, God, planted a garden in Eden/Landof-Pleasure, in the east,
and there he placed the human whom he had
formed.
9 YHWH, God, caused to spring up from the soil
every type of tree, desirable to look at and good
to eat,
and the Tree of Life in the midst of the garden
and the Tree of the Knowing of Good and Evil.
10 Now a river goes out from Eden, to water the
garden,
and from there it divides and becomes four
stream-heads.
11 The name of the first one is Pishon/Spreader-that is the one that circles through all the land of
Havila, where gold is;
12 the gold of that land is good, there too are
bdellium and the precious-stone carnelian.
13 The name of the second river is
Gihon/Gusher--that is the one that circles through
all the land of Cush.
14 The name of the third river is Hiddekel/Tigris-that is the one
that goes to the east of Assyria.
And the fourth river--that is Perat/Euphrates.
15 YHWH, God, took the human and set him in
the garden of Eden,
to work it and to watch it.
16 YHWH, God, commanded concerning the
human, saying:
From every (other) tree of the garden you may
eat, yes, eat,
17 but from the Tree of the Knowing of Good and
Evil-you are not to eat from it,
for on the day that you eat from it, you must die,
yes, die.
18 Now YHWH, God, said:
It is not good for the human to be alone,
I will make him a helper corresponding to
him.
19 So YHWH, God, formed from the soil every
living-thing of the
field and every fowl of the heavens
and brought each to the human, to see what he
would call it;
and whatever the human called it as a living
being, that became its name.
ְּלמ ְַּראֶה
ט ַוי ַ ְּצ ַמח י ְּהֹוָּה אֱֹלהִׁים מִׁן ָּהאֲדָּ מָּה כָּל עֵץ נֶ ְּחמָּד
ְּועֵץ הַדַ עַת טֹוב ו ָָּּרע, ְּועֵץ ַה ַחי ִׁים בְּתֹוְך ַהגָּן,וְּטֹוב ְּל ַמ ֲאכָּל.
י ְּונָּהָּר יֹצֵא ֵמעֵדֶ ן ְּל ַהשְּקֹות ֶאת ַהגָּן,
ְַּאר ָּבעָּה ָּראשִׁים
ְּ ּו ִׁמשָּם יִׁפ ֵָּרד ְּו ָּהי ָּה ל:
הּוא הַסֹבֵב ֵאת כָּל א ֶֶרץ ַה ֲחוִׁילָּה--יא שֵם ָּה ֶאחָּד פִׁישֹון,
ָָּארץ ַה ִׁהוא טֹוב
ֶ יב (ּוזֲהַב ה.) ֲאשֶר שָּם ַהזָּהָּב,
;שָּם ַהבְּדֹלַח ְּו ֶאבֶן הַשֹהַם
הּוא הַסֹובֵב ֵאת כָּל א ֶֶרץ כּוש--שנִׁי גִׁיחֹון
ֵ ;יג ְּושֵם ַהנָּהָּר ַה
הּוא הַהֹלְֵך קִׁדְּ ַמת אַשּור--שלִׁישִׁי חִׁדֶ קֶל
ְּ ;יד ְּושֵם ַהנָּהָּר ַה
ְּו ַהנָּהָּר ה ְָּּרבִׁיעִׁי הּוא פ ְָּּרת.
שמ ְָּּרּה
ָּ ְּל ָּעבְּדָּ ּה ּו ְּל,טו ַוי ִׁ ַקח י ְּהֹוָּה אֱֹלהִׁים ֶאת הָָּאדָּ ם ַויַנִׁחֵהּו ְּבגַן עֵדֶ ן.
טז ַויְּצַו י ְּהֹוָּה אֱֹלהִׁים עַל הָָּאדָּ ם לֵאמ ֹר:
;מִׁכ ֹל עֵץ ַהגָּן ָאכ ֹל ת ֹאכֵל
ֹלא ת ֹאכַל ִׁממֶנּו--יז ּו ֵמעֵץ הַדַ עַת טֹוב ו ָָּּרע,
מֹות תָּ מּות--כִׁי בְּיֹום ֲא ָּכלְָּך ִׁמ ֶמנּו.
יח וַי ֹאמֶר י ְּהֹוָּה אֱֹלהִׁים:
ֹלא טֹוב הֱיֹות הָָּאדָּ ם ְּלבַדֹו:
ֶאעֱשֶֹה לֹו ֵעזֶר ְּכנֶגְּדֹו.
יט ַויִׁצֶר י ְּהֹוָּה אֱֹלהִׁים מִׁן ָּהאֲדָּ מָּה כָּל ַחי ַת ַהשָּדֶ ה ְּו ֵאת כָּל
מַה יִׁק ְָּּרא לֹו,ש ַמי ִׁם; ַויָּבֵא אֶל הָָּאדָּ ם ל ְִּׁראֹות
ָּ עֹוף ַה
(הּוא שְּמֹו--)וְּכ ֹל ֲאשֶר יִׁק ְָּּרא לֹו הָָּאדָּ ם נֶפֶש ַחי ָּה.
ש ַמי ִׁם ּולְּכ ֹל ַחי ַת
ָּ כ ַויִׁק ְָּּרא הָָּאדָּ ם שֵמֹות ְּלכָּל ַה ְּב ֵהמָּה ּולְּעֹוף ַה
ַהשָּדֶ ה; ּולְָּאדָּ ם ֹלא ָּמצָּא ֵעזֶר ְּכנֶגְּדֹו.
ַוי ִׁישָּן--כא ַויַפֵל י ְּהֹוָּה ֱאֹלהִׁים תַ ְּרדֵ מָּה עַל הָָּאדָּ ם
ַויִׁסְּג ֹר בָּשָֹּר תַ חְּתֶ נָּה-- ַויִׁקַח ַאחַת ִׁמ ַצלְּע ֹתָּ יו.
ֲאשֶר ָּלקַח מִׁן הָָּאדָּ ם,כב ַויִׁבֶן י ְּהֹוָּה אֱֹלהִׁים ֶאת ַה ֵצלָּע--
7
20 The human called out names for every herdanimal and for the
fowl of the heavens and for every livingthing of the field,
but for the human, there could be found no
helper corresponding to him.
21 So YHWH, God, caused a deep slumber to fall
upon the human, so that he slept,
he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in
its place.
22 YHWH, God, built the rib that he had taken
from the human into a woman
and brought her to the human.
23 The human said:
This-time, she-is-it!
Bone from my bones,
flesh from my flesh!
She shall be called Woman/Isha,
for from Man/Ish she was taken!
24 Therefore a man leaves his father and his
mother and clings to his wife,
and they become one flesh.
ְּל ִׁאשָּה.
ַוי ְּ ִׁב ֶא ָּה אֶל הָָּאדָּ ם.
כג וַי ֹאמֶר הָָּאדָּ ם:
ַה ַפעַם,ז ֹאת-;ּובָּשָֹּר ִׁמבְּש ֹ ִָּׁרי ֶעצֶם ֵמ ֲע ָּצמַי
לְּז ֹאת יִׁק ֵָּרא ִׁאשָּה-כִׁי ֵמאִׁיש ֻׁל ֳקחָּה ז ֹאת.
כד עַל כֵן י ַ ֲעזָּב אִׁיש ֶאת ָאבִׁיו ְּו ֶאת אִׁמֹו
ְּוהָּיּו ְּלבָּשָֹּר ֶאחָּד--וְּדָּ בַק ְּב ִׁאשְּתֹו.
שתֹו וְֹּלא י ִׁתְּ בשָּשּו
ְּ הָָּאדָּ ם ְּו ִׁא,שנֵיהֶם עֲרּומִׁים
ְּ כה ַויִׁהְּיּו.
25 Now the two of them, the human and his wife,
were nude, yet they were not ashamed.
Genesis 3
1 Now the snake was more shrewd than all the
living-things of the
field that YHWH, God, had made.
It said to the woman:
Even though God said: You are not to eat from
any of the trees in the garden...!
2 The woman said to the snake:
From the fruit of the (other) trees in the garden
we may eat,
3 but from the fruit of the tree that is in the midst
of the garden,
God has said:
You are not to eat from it and you are not to
touch it,
lest you die.
4 The snake said to the woman:
Die, you will not die!
5 Rather, God knows
that on the day that you eat from it, your eyes will
be opened
and you will become like gods, knowing good
and evil.
6 The woman saw
that the tree was good for eating
and that it was a delight to the eyes,
and the tree was desirable to contemplate.
She took from its fruit and ate
and gave also to her husband beside her,
'בראשית ג
שר עָּשָֹּה י ְּהֹוָּה אֱֹלהִׁים
ֶ ֲא,א ְּו ַהנָּחָּש ָּהי ָּה עָּרּום מִׁכ ֹל ַחי ַת ַהשָּדֶ ה.
וַי ֹאמֶר אֶל ָּה ִׁאשָּה:
?"ַאף כִׁי ָאמַר אֱֹלהִׁים "ֹלא ת ֹאכְּלּו מִׁכ ֹל עֵץ ַהגָּן
ב וַת ֹאמֶר ָּה ִׁאשָּה אֶל ַהנָּחָּש:
; ִׁמפ ְִּׁרי עֵץ ַהגָּן נ ֹאכֵל
ָאמַר אֱֹלהִׁים-- ֲאשֶר בְּתֹוְך ַהגָּן,ג ּו ִׁמפ ְִּׁרי ָּהעֵץ:
פֶן תְּ מֻׁתּון,ֹלא ת ֹאכְּלּו ִׁממֶנּו וְֹּלא תִׁ גְּעּו בֹו.
ד וַי ֹאמֶר ַהנָּחָּש אֶל ָּה ִׁאשָּה:
;"ֹלא "מֹות תְּ מֻׁתּון
כִׁי בְּיֹום ֲא ָּכ ְּלכֶם ִׁממֶנּו,ה כִׁי י ֹדֵ ַע אֱֹלהִׁים- ִׁו ְּהי ִׁיתֶ ם כֵאֹלהִׁים, ְּונִׁ ְּפקְּחּו עֵינֵיכֶם:
י ֹדְּ עֵי טֹוב ו ָָּּרע.
ו וַתֵ ֶרא ָּה ִׁאשָּה כִׁי טֹוב ָּהעֵץ ְּל ַמ ֲאכָּל
ַש ֹכִׁיל
ְּ ְּוכִׁי תַ ֲאוָּה הּוא ָּלעֵינַי ִׁם ְּונֶ ְּחמָּד ָּהעֵץ ְּלה-;וַתִׁ קַח ִׁמפ ְִּׁריֹו וַת ֹאכַל
וַי ֹאכַל וַתִׁ תֵ ן גַם ְּלאִׁישָּּה-- ִׁעמָּּה.
ֵירמִׁם הֵם
ֻׁ כִׁי ע, ַוי ֵדְּ עּו:שנֵיהֶם
ְּ ז וַתִׁ ָּפ ַק ְּחנָּה עֵינֵי.
ַויַעֲשֹּו ָּלהֶם חֲג ֹר ֹת, ַוי ִׁתְּ פְּרּו ֲעלֵה תְּ ֵאנָּה.
8
and he ate.
7 The eyes of the two of them were opened
and they knew then
that they were nude.
They sewed fig lives together and made
themselves loincloths.
8 Now they heard the sound of YHWH, God,
(who was) walking about in the garden at the
breezy-time of the day.
And the human and his wife hid themselves from
the face of YHWH, God, amid the trees of the
garden.
9 YHWH, God, called to the human and said to
him:
Where are you?
10 He said:
I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was
afraid, because I am nude,
and so I hid myself.
11 He said:
Who told you that you are nude?
From the tree about which I command you not to
eat,
have you eaten?
12 The human said:
The woman whom you gave to be beside me,
she gave me from the tree,
and so I ate.
13 YHWH, God, said to the woman:
What is this that you have done?
The woman said:
The snake enticed me,
and so I ate.
14 YHWH, God, said to the snake:
Because you have done this,
damned be you from all the animals and from all
the living-things of the field;
upon your belly shall you walk and dust shall you
eat, all the days of you life.
15 I put enmity between you and the woman,
between your seed and her seed:
they will bruise you on the head, you will bruise
them on the heel.
16 To the woman he said:
I will multiply, multiply your pain (from) your
pregnancy,
with pains shall you bear children.
Toward your husband will be your lust,
yet he will rule over you.
שמְּעּו ֶאת קֹול י ְּהֹוָּה אֱֹלהִׁים ִׁמתְּ ַהלְֵך ַבגָּן לְּרּו ַח הַיֹום
ְּ ִׁ ח ַוי.
ט ַויִׁק ְָּּרא.ַוי ִׁתְּ ַחבֵא הָָּאדָּ ם ְּו ִׁאשְּתֹו ִׁמ ְּפנֵי י ְּהֹוָּה אֱֹלהִׁים בְּתֹוְך עֵץ ַהגָּן
י ְּהֹוָּה אֱֹלהִׁים ֶאל הָָּאדָּ ם וַי ֹאמֶר לֹו:
? ַאיֶכָּה
י וַי ֹאמֶר:
ִׁירא
ָּ ָּוא--ש ַמעְּתִׁ י ַבגָּן
ָּ ; ֶאת קֹלְָּך
ָּו ֵא ָּחבֵא--כִׁי עֵיר ֹם ָאנֹכִׁי.
יא וַי ֹאמֶר:
?כִׁי עֵיר ֹם ָּאתָּ ה מִׁי ִׁהגִׁיד לְָּך
ֲאשֶר ִׁצּוִׁיתִׁ יָך--ֲהמִׁן ָּהעֵץ
ָָּא ָּכלְּת--? ְּל ִׁבלְּתִׁ י ֲאכָּל ִׁממֶנּו
יב וַי ֹאמֶר הָָּאדָּ ם:
ֲאשֶר נָּתַ תָּ ה ִׁעמָּדִׁ י, ָּה ִׁאשָּה,
וָּאֹכֵל--הִׁוא נָּתְּ נָּה לִׁי מִׁן ָּהעֵץ.
יג וַי ֹאמֶר י ְּהֹוָּה אֱֹלהִׁים ָּל ִׁאשָּה:
?מַה ז ֹאת עָּשִֹׁית
וַת ֹאמֶר ָּה ִׁאשָּה:
וָּאֹכֵל-- ַהנָּחָּש ִׁהשִׁיַאנִׁי.
יד וַי ֹאמֶר י ְּהֹוָּה אֱֹלהִׁים אֶל ַהנָּחָּש:
כִׁי עָּשִֹׁיתָּ ז ֹאת-;ָארּור ַאתָּ ה ִׁמכָּל ַה ְּב ֵהמָּה ּומִׁכ ֹל ַחי ַת ַהשָּדֶ ה
עַל גְּחֹנְָּך תֵ לְֵך ְּו ָּעפָּר ת ֹאכַל כָּל יְּמֵי ַחי ֶיָך.
ְּואֵיבָּה ָּאשִׁית בֵינְָּך ּובֵין ָּה ִׁאשָּה טו
ּובֵין ז ְַּרעֲָך ּובֵין ז ְַּרעָּּה
הּוא י ְּשּופְָּך ר ֹאש ְּו ַאתָּ ה תְּ שּופֶנּו ָּעקֵב.
טז אֶל ָּה ִׁאשָּה ָאמַר:
ַארבֶה ִׁעצְּבֹונְֵך ְּוהֵרֹנְֵך
ְּ ;ה ְַּרבָּה
; ְּב ֶעצֶב תֵ לְּדִׁ י ָּבנִׁים
שְך תְּ שּו ָּקתֵ ְך
ֵ ְּואֶל אִׁי-וְּהּוא י ִׁ ְּמשָּל בְָּך.
יז ּולְָּאדָּ ם ָאמַר:
שתֶ ָך וַת ֹאכַל מִׁן ָּהעֵץ
ְּ ש ַמעְּתָּ לְּקֹול ִׁא
ָּ כִׁי,
" ֲאשֶר ִׁצּוִׁיתִׁ יָך לֵאמ ֹר "ֹלא ת ֹאכַל ִׁממֶנּו
9
17 To Adam he said:
Because you have hearkened to the voice of your
wife
and have eaten from the tree about which I
commanded you, saying:
You are not to eat from it!
Damned be the soil of your account,
with painstaking-labor shall you eat from it, all
the days of your life.
18 Thorn and sting-shrub let it spring up for you,
when you (seek to) eat the plants of the field!
19 By the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread,
until you return to the soil,
for from it you were taken.
For you are dust, and to dust shall you return.
20 The human called his wife's name:
Havva/Life-giver!
For she became the mother of all the living.
21 Now YHWH, God, made Adam and his wife
coats of skins and clothed them.
22 YHWH, God, said:
Here, the human has become like one of us, in
knowing good and evil.
So now, lest he send forth his hand
and take also from the Tree of Life
and eat
and live throughout the ages...!
23 So YHWH, God, sent him away from the
garden of Eden, to work the soil from which he
had been taken,
24 He drove the human out
and caused to dwell, eastward of the garden of
Eden,
the winged-sphinxes and the flashing, everturning sword
to watch over the way to the Tree of Life.
--ֲבּורָך
ֶ ֲרּורה ָּהאֲדָּ מָּה ַבע
ָּ א:
; ְּב ִׁעצָּבֹון ת ֹא ֲכ ֶלנָּה כ ֹל יְּמֵי ַחי ֶיָך
;יח וְּקֹוץ וְּדַ ְּרדַ ר תַ ְּצמִׁי ַח לְָּך
וְָּא ַכלְּתָּ ֶאת עֵשֶֹב ַהשָּדֶ ה.
יט ְּבזֵעַת ַאפֶיָך ת ֹא ַכל ֶלחֶם-ָּ כִׁי ִׁמ ֶמנָּה ֻׁל ָּקחְּת,;עַד שּובְָּך אֶל ָּהאֲדָּ מָּה
כִׁי ָּעפָּר ַאתָּ ה ְּואֶל ָּעפָּר תָּ שּוב.
כִׁי הִׁוא ָּהי ְּתָּ ה אֵם כָּל חָּי,כ ַויִׁק ְָּּרא הָָּאדָּ ם שֵם ִׁאשְּתֹו ַחּוָּה.
כא ַויַעַש ֹ י ְּהֹוָּה אֱֹלהִׁים לְָּאדָּ ם ּו ְּל ִׁאשְּתֹו כָּתְּ נֹות עֹור ַוי ַ ְּל ִׁבשֵם.
כב וַי ֹאמֶר י ְּהֹוָּה אֱֹלהִׁים:
הֵן הָָּאדָּ ם ָּהי ָּה כְַּאחַד ִׁממֶנּו
;לָּדַ עַת טֹוב ו ָָּּרע
שלַח י ָּדֹו
ְּ ִׁ פֶן י, ְּועַתָּ ה-ְּו ָּלקַח גַם ֵמעֵץ ַה ַחי ִׁים
ָּוחַי לְּעֹלָּם,וְָּאכַל.
ֲאשֶר ֻׁלקַח,ש ְּלחֵהּו י ְּהֹוָּה אֱֹלהִׁים ִׁמגַן עֵדֶ ן ַלעֲב ֹד ֶאת ָּהאֲדָּ מָּה
ַ ְּ כג ַוי
; ִׁמשָּם
כד ַויְּג ֶָּרש ֶאת הָָּאדָּ ם.
שכֵן ִׁמקֶדֶ ם ְּלגַן עֵדֶ ן ֶאת ַהכ ְֻּׁרבִׁים
ְּ ַ ַוי
ְּו ֵאת ַלהַט ַהח ֶֶרב ַה ִׁמתְּ ַה ֶפכֶת
-- ִׁלשְּמ ֹר ֶאת דֶ ֶרְך עֵץ ַה ַחי ִׁים.
10
Chapter I - WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF COMPANIONSHIP?
11
A. BIBLICAL COMPARISON--The creation of male and female (Genesis 1) compared with the
formation of man and woman (Genesis 2)
Both biblical scholars and orthodox Jewish philosophers, like Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik,
emphasize the differences of style, content, and meaning of the two stories of human creation in
Genesis 1 & 2. We shall begin with a simple exercise: the formation of a table which emphasizes the
differences between the two stories, in light of which we shall be able to discuss the significance of
these differences.
Genesis 1:26-28
26 God said:
Let us make humankind, in our image, according to our likeness!
Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the heavens,
animals, all the earth, and all crawling things that crawl about upon the earth!
27
God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God did he create it,
male and female did he create them.
28 God blessed them,
God said to them:
Bear fruit and be many and fill the earth and subdue it!
Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the heavens,
and all living things that crawl about upon the earth!
Genesis 2:7-9; 15-24
7 and YHWH, God, formed the human, of dust from the soil,
he blew into his nostrils the breath of life and the human became a living being.
8 YHWH, God, planted a garden in Eden/Land-of-Pleasure, in the east,
and there he placed the human whom he had formed.
9 YHWH, God, caused to spring up from the soil every type of tree, desirable to look at and good to eat,
and the Tree of Life in the midst of the garden and the Tree of the Knowing of Good and Evil.
15 YHWH, God, took the human and set him in the garden of Eden, to work it and to watch it.
16 YHWH, God, commanded concerning the human, saying:
From every (other) tree of the garden you may eat, yes, eat,
17 but from the Tree of the Knowing of Good and Evil--you are not to eat from it,
for on the day that you eat from it, you must die, yes, die.
18 Now YHWH, God, said:
It is not good for the human to be alone, I will make him a helper corresponding to him.
19 So YHWH, God, formed from the soil every living-thing of the field
and every fowl of the heavens and brought each to the human, to see what he would call it;
and whatever the human called it as a living being, that became its name.
20 The human called out names for every herd-animal and for the fowl of the heavens
and for every living-thing of the field,
but for the human, there could be found no helper corresponding to him.
21 So YHWH, God, caused a deep slumber to fall upon the human, so that he slept,
he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in its place.
22 YHWH, God, built the rib that he had taken from the human into a woman
and brought her to the human.
23 The human said:
This-time, she-is-it!
Bone from my bones,
flesh from my flesh!
She shall be called Woman/Isha,
for from Man/Ish she was taken!
24 Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his woman, and they become one flesh.
12
Genesis 1
Genesis 2
-"Briah" (creation) by fiat, by word or command.
Creatio ex nihilo (creating something from nothing)
after planning and discussing.
-Resemblance to God and the angels ("Let us make
humankind in our image, according to our
likeness!")
-"Yetzirah" (formation) by physical, sensual action
from earthy material and from the breath of God.
-External resemblance to the earth, on one hand,
("the human/adam [is] dust from the soil/adama")
and yet internal resemblance to Divine spirit/wind
("he blew into his nostrils the breath of life") on the
other hand.
-The human's purpose is to work the soil and make
it fertile ("to work it and to watch it" - "and there
was no human/adam to till the soil/adama"); being
that the human came from the soil, the human and
the soil have a symbiotic relationship.
-The human’s purpose is to rule ("subdue" and "have
dominion over") the world and the animals and fruit
of the earth as the steward of God who creates and
rules by speaking; hierarchical relationship between
human and the earth is similar to rule of God over
earth.
-The Creator's name is: "Elohim" (God). Elohim is
presented as a ruler, planner, and caretaker of the
world, who finds only the "good" and the "very
good".
-The Creator's name is: "YHWH, God" (Elohim).
YHWH, God is presented as a craftsman who tries
to fashion the world by trial and error and fill in
what is missing ("YHWH, God had not made it
rain upon earth, and there was no human/adam to
till the soil/adama;...it is not good for the human to
be alone").
-YHWH, God prepares a protected place, a
completed area for the human who needs only to till
and watch it ("Garden of Eden") without substantial
change or development.
-YHWH, God cautions and restricts the human use
of nature ("you are not to eat from it, for on the day
that you eat from it, you must die, yes, die.")
-Fruitfulness is not at all mentioned. In its place the
union of "becoming one flesh" is offered as a way
to overcome loneliness and leaving one's parents.
This is seen as the primary reason for a man and
woman to be in relationship. Therefore, their
names man and woman ("ish" and "isha") sound
alike and appear to come from the same root. This
emphasizes the origin and shared purpose of union
and completeness.
-Completeness of man by virtue of woman after
identifying his lack (needs a "helper corresponding
to him") highlights woman as a creature who
arrives late and without forethought ("for the human
there could be found no helper corresponding to
him" while trying out all the creatures until the
woman was fashioned).
-Fashioned from the substance of the soil and the
breath of God ("human/adam") and built from the
tzelah side/rib of the human's body
("woman/isha").
-The first human gives names to the animals and to
the woman. In addition, this human also changes
its own name to "ish" at the moment it calls its
helper "isha".
-The man breaks out in spontaneous speech when
the woman is brought to him ("This-time, she-is-it!
Bone from my bones, flesh from my flesh!").
-Elohim blesses humankind with the challenge of
bursting forth and populating and mastering the entire
world from one end to the other ("Bear fruit and be
many and fill the earth").
-Elohim blesses humankind by opening up before
them possibilities of continued creation ("that by
creating, God had made").
-Fruitfulness is means to governance/mastery of the
world. Development and expansion of the race typify
the essence of the relationship between male and
female hence, their names: "Nikavah" (female-a
biological description of the woman's body as a tool
for pregnancy) and "Zachar" (male) are names which
emphasize the cooperative roles of woman and man.
-Equality of the creation ("male and female God
created them") and equal responsibility to fulfill their
purpose ("Bear fruit and be many and fill the earth
and subdue it"). Together they are called "Adam"
(humankind) ("and God called them: 'Humankind'"
Gen. 5:2).
-Creation from the image ("Let us make humankind,
in our image, according to our likeness!")
-Elohim give names to all the creatures. Humans are
called by different names ("male" and "female") from
different roots (“zachar” and “nekevah”).
-There is no discourse between the male and female,
only instructions for joint endeavors.
More differences include: Genesis 1 has a God who knows only good – very good - and who has completed the Divine plan
and celebrated Shabbat. The human being is created to be in the image of that God with power to conquer and to rule. But
Genesis 2 has a God who knows of good and evil and tries to prevent human beings from getting that divine knowledge.
13
That God knows of no completion and no Shabbat, but there is a place which a Garden of Eden rather than a time which is
holy. Genesis 1 knows of only general names, while Genesis 2 has private names including the names given to man and
woman and names given by man.
Now that we have looked at the differences between the two creation stories let us deepen our search
in order to understand its meaning.
It is possible to interpret the differences between these chapters in a variety of ways. There are those
who emphasize the equality between the sexes as presented in chapter 1 as opposed to the primacy and
supremacy of masculinity which is presented in chapter 2. Others see the first creation story as a
masculine creative process (a calling into being by fiat, through speech, of something from nothing)
and the second creation story as being feminine (sensual, physical, intimate--a “fashioning” and a
“begetting”, not a creation). Still others distinguish between the creation of extroverted people whose
destiny is to burst forth, populate and govern the world in one story, as opposed to the more
introverted, sensitive, lyrical couple who prefer to remain in the protected Garden of Eden. We
recommend reading the article by Rabbi Soloveitchik which appears in the supplement of this booklet.
The ideal of the Garden of Eden, as presented in chapter 2, is not perfect from the outset--from the
creation of the world--but rather, the ideal develops as a result of what is sensed to be lacking; from
the concealment and the search for what is complementary, until the proper mate is found with whom
cooperation flourishes.
The earth is at first presented as lacking something:"no bush of the fields was yet on the earth...and
there was no human to till the soil". God extracts from the earth both water ("a surge would well up
from the ground and water all the face of the soil") and the first human ("God formed the human, of
dust from the soil") in order that they endeavor together, in a cooperative effort of work and
fruitfulness.
The human who was created alone and placed in Eden, is also presented as lacking--lacking a partner.
The human's partner is found only after some effort. At first God identifies the feelings of the human's
yearnings: loneliness ("it is not good for the human to be alone") and therefore forms from the soil
"every living-thing of the field and every fowl of the heavens". Unsurprisingly, none of the creatures
save the human from its loneliness so the Torah reiterates and emphasizes that "for the human, there
could be found no helper". The solution comes from “building” woman from his “side”. The desired
woman appears as if from a dream after the human awakens from a deep sleep. Perhaps the woman is
the realization of his dream.
The man responds to his "find"--the woman who was “constructed” for him--with a sentence which
can be read as a love poem. His first utterance which is quoted in the bible is a song of praise for his
companion who completes him, is his equal, is one who saves him. (It is important to emphasize that
the term "ezer" in the bible is not meant as help mate in the sense of a maid, but rather in the sense of a
redeemer. Compare Psalms 121: "I lift my eyes to the mountains from whence will come "ezri"--my
helper/redeemer). We must pay attention to the lyrical structure of the sentence, to the repetition of the
sound of "zot" ("this/she”) and to the doubling of words ("etzem me-atzmi"--"bone from my bones").
This-time, she-is-it!
Bone from my bones, flesh from my flesh!
She shall be called Woman/Isha,
for from Man/Ish she was taken.
The human develops sexual consciousness after being divided into male and female. In the poem he
points out that her name will be "woman" and that his new name will be "man". Folk etymology of
this verse identifies these words "man" and "woman" as deriving from the same root. "Human"
14
("adam") is identified with its origins: "soil" ("adama"). "Man" expresses his internal identification
with his other half: "from man she was taken".
Additionally, the Bible teaches a social and psychological lesson from this first process of forming
woman from man, a lesson which applies to all couples in every generation: "Therefore a man leaves
his father and his mother and clings to his woman, and they become one flesh" (Genesis 2:24). The
man must break away from his parents and his past, in order to cling to his mate. The "bond" of
marriage even precedes the "bond" of an infant to its parents. There is no negative meaning intended
behind the severance of bonds with one’s parents, rather, what is stressed is the fulfillment of an urge,
the need for self completion, for maturation. The man embarks upon his journey of maturation
seeking the other who completes him. Today we relate to this process of searching as the period of
maturation, which is usually accompanied by being somewhat estranged from the family. Man's
connection to woman is preferred over his connection to the soil.
STUDY EXERCISES
Here we suggest a number of exercises for studying this comparison between the two creation stories,
and for clarification of personal positions of each student regarding this subject.
Exercise 1 - "It is not good for man to be alone" - Creative Writing
How did God notice that man was not happy, that his situation was "not good" despite the fact that
God prepared for him a garden of delicacies, the Garden of Eden? How did God recognize that the
animals were not fit to be a "helper corresponding to him"?
Divide into small groups and imagine you are angels who have descended to observe man's
life. Try describing his life and identifying what distresses him (describe what keeps him busy day
and night, how he prepares food, how he walks, the expression on his face, his conversations,
moods, etc.). Try imagining what's missing for this man before the creation of animals? How
would he respond to the suggestion that animals be his help mates? What would he write in his
personal diary after meeting the animals and naming them?
Read out loud a number of descriptions.
Discuss: What does man lack: in his daily life of work, housing, food? In his sex life? In his
emotional life? In his social life? Try formulating what is the biblical stance with regard to
companionship.
Exercise 2 - "A Help Mate" - A Questionnaire for Finding A Fitting Mate
Read again Genesis 1:26-28 and Genesis 2:7-9; 15-24 and identify the different desired characteristics
for a mate according to each description. For example, in Genesis 1 biological fertility is required,
while in Genesis 2 the ability to adapt oneself to the needs of one’s mate is necessary. Likewise, in
Genesis 1 the desire to travel throughout the world and to meet challenges is essential ("fill the earth
and subdue it"), while in Genesis 2 one must possess the ability to nurture and faithfully preserve one
place ("to work and to watch/tend/guard").
Read Rabbi Soloveitchik’s article and add additional attributes to both lists.
15
Change the desired attributes into questions and create two questionnaires for finding a
fitting mate as is customary in "matching" services. Conduct interviews with friends in order to
identify the traits of their desired mate. For instance, "Do you like working in gardens?" (Genesis
2 "to work it"). "Are you orderly and neat and able to oversee the work of others? (Genesis 1 "rule
over"). Do you like love poetry? (Genesis 2 "This-time, she-is-it! Bone from my bones")....
Exercise 3 - "This Time" - The Music of Love
Bring love songs for discussion in class--both recordings of music along with the lyrics. Notice the
characteristics and different feelings which are expressed in the songs: loneliness, yearning, desire, joy,
happiness, etc. Check to see if the lyrics contain associations with the Garden of Eden or the Song of
Songs. Are there references to or metaphors of God, spirituality, heavenliness, dreams? What do you
prefer and why? Explain which songs paint a more realistic picture of reality and of companionship.
Are there songs which deal only with the physical side relationships, while others address only the
spiritual? Draw a comparison between the feelings and themes which arise in love songs and those
which we discussed in the bible.
B. DISCUSSION--Is the story of building woman from the rib of man (Genesis 2) chauvinistic?
Does the story of the creation of woman, in the second creation story, come to establish the denigrated
status of women from birth and their natural subordination to men, or does this story argue the equality
of the sexes as in the first creation story--"male and female did he create them" (Genesis 1:26-28)?
This discussion which occupies many biblical commentators today, in the age of the feminist
revolution, also occupied commentators in previous generations as we shall presently see. The
importance of this discussion is manifest in that thinkers saw--and still see--in these Genesis stories an
attempt to define the ideal and natural way of the world.
In order to engage in a meaningful discussion on this matter, we shall carefully examine a number of
textual expressions. We shall scrutinize each expression in light of the central question: "How does
each expression add to the understanding of the ideal relationship between man and woman?"
16
STUDY EXERCISES—Key Phrases in Genesis 2
Phrase 1--"A Help Mate"
Phrase 2--"This Time"
Phrase 3--"They Became One Flesh"
Phrase 4--"God Took One of His Ribs/Sides"
Divide the students into small groups and ask them to look-up the commentaries of two of the four
expressions under discussion. Every group should first try to offer its own understanding of the
expressions, then check the meanings according to several translations, commentaries, and a
dictionary. Afterwards, the groups should read the traditional sources cited below and try to organize
them according to categories (for example, which commentaries deal with physical needs, and which
with spiritual ones? Which commentaries are chauvinistic or lead to a chauvinistic reading of the
texts? Which commentaries are to their liking and which repulse them? etc.)*
Rashi (11th cent., France)
Abraham Ibn Ezra (12th cent., Spain)
"A Help Mate Opposite Him"--If he
merits, she will be a Help Mate; if not,
she will oppose him.
"Helper"--"Two are better than one...because if one
falls, the other will raise him/her; while if each were
alone and fell, there would be no one to offer help".
(Ecclesiastes 4:9)
“Akedat Yitzhak” Textual Phrases:
Hiyya bar Gamda (3rd cent. Eretz
th
1) “A Help Mate” ( עזר
(14 cent., Spain)
Yisrael Amora)
God's wisdom saw that a 2 )“ )כנגדוThis Time” ( זאת
Continues Rabbi Ya’akov’s words:
man and his wife should )הפעם
Such a man is not complete, as it is
not merely join sexually
written: "Male and Female God created
as do beasts. Rather,
them and blessed them and called them
they should have a
'Adam'" (Gen. 5:2)--both of them
special, personal
together are called "Adam". (Genesis
connection. God will
Rabbah)
strengthen their love and
friendship so that they
completely and fully
help one another in all
matters.
Ya’akov (3rd cent. Eretz
Yisrael Amora)
Every man without a woman
is left without good, without
a helper, without joy, without
blessing, and without
atonement.... (Genesis
Rabbah)
Elazar (3rd cent. Eretz Yisrael Amora)
Why is it written: "This-time, she-is-it!
Bone from my bones, and flesh from
my flesh" (Gen. 2:23)? This teaches us
that Adam had intercourse with all the
beasts and animals yet his passions
were not cooled. (Genesis Rabbah)
*We tried to organize the commentaries regarding "A Help Mate" according to subject matter rather than chronologically,
from help in the physical sense, to help and completion in the emotional and spiritual sense.
17
Maharal of Prague (17th cent.)
Male and Female are two opposites. If they merit it,
they join into one complete force because all opposites
unite into one force...yet when they do not deserve it,
then, because they are opposites, they will oppose one
another.
The commentaries we have cited indicate rather different approaches to the connections between man
and woman. While Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra emphasizes the physical benefit of social
companionship, Rabbi Ya'akov emphasizes the emotional support. Rabbi Elazar compares sexual
union with animals to that which takes place between humans, while the author of Akedat Yitzhak
focuses on the multifaceted nature of human friendship.
Rashi and the Maharal try to explain the additional term "opposite" (k'negdo) by trying to understand
how the relationship between man and woman can sometimes be unbelievably close while at other
times repulsive and argumentative. (For example, in the Garden of Eden story we shall see how in
light of God's accusations the man blames the woman rather than defending her). According to them
the flip-flopping relationship between man and woman is due to the inherent "oppositeness" of one
from the other.
Phrase 3: "And They Became One Flesh" ()והיו לבשר אחד
Rashi (11th century French Commentator)
A child is created by both of them and thus their flesh becomes one (the child is the one who unites the
parents).
Ramban (13th century Spanish Commentator--also known as Nachmanides)
It appears to me that beasts and animals are not attached to their females, but that the male goes to any
female he finds and mates with her. This is why the Torah writes that the female human comes from
the bones and flesh of the male so that when he cleaves to her, they reunite into one flesh. Man will
then desire that she only be with him and men will view their mates as if they were of the same flesh.
According to the saying: "Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and
they become one flesh" a man will leave his biological parents and find a stronger carnal connection
with his wife who comes from a different family. What's the reason for this preference? Rashi
believes that the child they have together consolidates the family while Ramban believes that their
connection is not dependent upon sexual relations exclusively or even offspring, but rather their choice
to be exclusively with each other which makes them into a biological family.
What's your opinion regarding the "wonder" that couples prefer one another over their "flesh and
bone" biological families of parents and siblings?
Have you ever met parents whose feelings are mixed when their son or daughter, whom they raised,
prefers to be with their boy/girlfriend and not to stay at home with their family? Describe the
situations you've seen. What do you think about this phenomenon?
18
Phrase 4: "God took one of his ribs...and built the rib...into a woman"
()ויקח אחת מצלעותיו…ויבן יהוה אלהים את הצלע…לאשה
Many have understood the word "tzelah" as "rib" thereby emphasizing the subordination and
degradation of woman compared to man. Yet Rashi and Ibn Ezra, in light of the midrash of Rabbi
Yermiah ben Elazar, interpret "tzelah" as one of two "sides" of the human. Before the operation, the
human was androgynous; afterwards, the human was separated into a man and a woman.
Rabbi Yermiah ben Elazar (3rd-4th century Eretz Yisrael Amora)
'בראשית רבה פרשה ח' סימן א
אמר.)כו:וַי ֹאמֶר אֱֹלהִׁים נַעֲשֶֹה ָאדָּ ם ְּב ַצ ְּלמֵנּו כִׁדְּ מּותֵ נּו (בר א
בשעה שברא הקב"ה את אדם.רבי ירמיה בן אלעזר
זָּכָּר ּונְּ ֵקבָּה: הדא הוא דכתיב, אנדרוגינוס בראו,הראשון
ב:שמָּם ָאדָּ ם (בר ה
ְּ ַויִׁק ְָּּרא ֶאת...)ב ְָּּרָאם.
בשעה שברא הקב"ה את אדם.א"ר שמואל בר נחמן
גב לכאן- דיו פרצופים בראו ונסרו ועשאו גביים,הראשון
ַויִׁקַח ַאחַת ִׁמ ַצלְּע ֹתָּ יו (בר: והכתיב: איתיבון ליה.וגב לכאן
: היך מה דאת אמר, מתרין סטרוהי: כא)? אמר להון:ב
כ) דמתרגמינן:שכָּן (שמות כו
ְּ ּו ְּל ֶצלַע ַה ִׁמ: ש ְּכנָּא וגו
ְּ ' ְּו ִׁל ְּסטַר ַמ
Genesis Rabbah 8:1
1. AND GOD SAID: LET US MAKE MAN, etc. (I,
26) R. Jeremiah b. Leazar said: When the Holy
One, blessed be He, created Adam, He created him
an hermaphrodite [bi-sexual],2 for it is said, Male
and female created He them and called their name
Adam (Gen:V, 2).3 R. Samuel b. Nahman said:
When the Lord created Adam He created him
double-faced, then He split him and made him of
two backs, one back on this side and one back on
the other side. To this it is objected: But it is
written, And He took one of his ribs, etc. (Gen. II,
21)?4 [Mi-zalothaw means] one of his sides, replied
he, as you read, And for the second side (zela’) of
the tabernacle, etc. (Ex.XXVI 20).
____________________
(2) Normally androgynous means one whose genitals are
male and female; but here it means two bodies, male and
female, joined together.
(3) Thus Adam himself was originally male and female.
(4) This certainly implies that woman was a separate
creation.
Rashi (11th century French Commentator)
"One of his sides"--this means that the human was initially created two-faced.
Abraham Ibn Ezra (12th century Spanish Commentator)
There were two sides as in: "The second side of the tabernacle" (Exodus 26:6)
19
SUMMING UP: Is Genesis 2 a Chauvinistic Story or a Tale of Equality?
Some of the traditional and modern commentators see the formation of woman from man's "tzelah" as
an expression of her natural subordination to her husband. Therefore they contrast this Divinely
established natural hierarchy with the tragic reversal of roles when the man listened to the woman's
advice regarding the tree of knowledge. Yet the modern Bible scholar and Protestant theologian,
Phyllis Trible, adamantly claims that there is no hint of second-class status or subordination of woman
to man in Genesis 2. She brings a list of accepted claims which express inequality between man and
woman in Genesis 2 and refutes them one by one.
Claims of Subordination
Claims of Equality
Man was created first, therefore he is more highly
valued. The woman was created only at the end of
the process. She was the second one created,
therefore she has second-class status.
Woman is last like the jewel in a crown. In the
story of creation--male and female were created last
according to the rule that "the last is best" and they
are destined to rule everything which preceded
them.
The story of the search for and creation of woman
is a long one and therefore indicates its importance
in the completion of creation. The woman arives at
the end since she is the long-awaited solution.
Man needs woman as one who redeems him—a
"helper" in the sense of savior. She completes him
and without her, man would remain essentially "not
good".
Woman is created by cutting in half the human in
which each half is called a side (as in the side of the
tabernacle).*
Woman was created to satisfy the needs of man as a
help-mate: a servant.
Woman was created from a rib--an unimportant and
secondary bone. In fact, contrary to nature, woman
comes out of man; she is denied even her natural
function of birthing and that function is given to man.
Man names woman which expresses his power over
her just as he named animals and has dominion over
them.
The human invents new names to call each side:
"man" and "woman" to indicate their mutual
yearning for one another. If we are more precise
we see that the man did not name his mate but
rather prophesied the she "would be called woman
because from man was she taken".
Woman was built by God from material which was
taken from man; therefore what is formed is of
higher quality and status than the original material.
Woman was created from man and is therefore
dependent upon him and inferior to him.
Didactic Suggestion: In order to enliven the argument we presented the material in a polarized
manner oscillating between subordination and equality. One could stage a debate between two
students, each asked to defend or refute the claim that this second creation story is chauvinistic. Each
side could be armed with the above mentioned points. At the conclusion of this staged debate, each
student in the class would receive this chart and be asked to develop his/her own personal position
while refuting the opposite claim.
In conclusion, there are commentators who view the formation of woman and man's reaction to her as
the climax of creation. The connection between the man and woman, one of love between
companions, is the deepest and most meaningful connection created. As described in the Seven
Wedding Blessings which are offered to the bride and groom: "Be exceedingly happy, loving
companions, as happy as the happiness experienced in the ancient Garden of Eden. Blessed are You,
God, who formed the human." Such commentators view the Garden of Eden as a the ideal model of
equality and unification of hearts.
*
Checking the concordance reveals that the only biblical use of the word "tzelah" is as "side", "wall", or "room" in a
building; "tzelah" is not used in the bible as reference to a bone of the body (rib). Therefore, it's preferable to translate
"tzelah" here in Genesis as "side". The term "tzelah" was taken from the realm of building (as in: "to build the sides of the
tabernacle") and transposed to "building a woman".
20
Nonetheless, there are other commentators who find proof in this story of the subordination of woman
to man; subordination of the "less good" to the "better", of the second class to the primary person.
There are midrashim which emphasize the unsavory side of woman, which is hinted at in her creation,
and actualized in her nature when she latter eats from the tree of knowledge. Woman is presented in
these midrashim not only as less good and subordinate, but as evil and even as a creature around
whom one should be cautious.
For example, Rabbi Levi saw in the creation of woman (Gen. 2) a hint of her corruption in Gen. 3.
Her deficiencies are a result of her essence against which even God seemingly cannot be defended.
Her creation from a simple rib should have insured that she be essentially humble and subordinate.
Yet despite her natural position, she constantly aspires to pervert all possible attributes of the body.
ב:'בראשית רבה י"ח
רבי יהושע דסכנין בשם ר' לוי אמר ויבן כתיב התבונן מאין
לבראתה אמר לא אברא אותה מן הראש שלא תהא מיקרת
ראשה לא מן העין שלא תהא סקרנית ולא מן האוזן שלא
תהא צייתנית ולא מן הפה שלא תהא דברנית ולא מן הלב
שלא תהא קנתנית ולא מן היד שלא תהא ממשמשנית ולא
אלא ממקום שהוא צנוע באדם מן הרגל שלא תהא פרסנית
אפי' בשעה שאדם עומד ערום אותו המקום מכוסה ועל כל
אבר ואבר שהיה בורא בה היה אומר לה תהא אשה צנועה
אשה צנועה אעפ"כ (משלי א) ותפרעו כל עצתי לא בראתי
)אותה מן הראש והרי היא מיקרת ראשה שנאמר (ישעיה ג
ותלכנה נטויות גרון ולא מן העין והרי היא סקרנית שנאמר
(שם ) ומסקרות עינים ולא מן האוזן והרי היא צייתנית
שנאמר (בראשית יח) ושרה שומעת פתח האהל ולא מן
הלב והרי היא קנתנית שנאמר (שם ל) ותקנא רחל באחותה
ולא מן היד והרי היא ממשמשנית שנאמר (שם לא) ותגנוב
רחל את התרפים ולא מן הרגל והרי היא פרסנית שנאמר
(שם לד) ותצא דינה:
Genesis Rabbah 18:2
R. Joshua of Siknin said in R. Levi's name: WAYYIBEN
is written, signifying that He considered well
(hithbonnen) from what part to create her. Said He: 'I will
not create her from [Adam's] head, lest she be swelledheaded5; nor from the eye, lest she be a coquette6; nor
from the ear, lest she be an eavesdropper; nor from the
mouth, lest she be a gossip; nor from the heart, lest she be
prone to jealousy; nor from the hand, lest she be lightfingered7; nor from the foot, lest she be a gadabout; but
from the modest part of man, for even when he stands
naked, that part is covered.’ And as He created each limb
He ordered her, ‘Be a modest woman.’
Yet in spite of all this, you have set at nought alI My
counsel, and would none of My reproof (Prov. 1:25). I
did not create her from the head, yet she is swelledheaded, as it is written, They walk with stretched-forth
necks (Isa. 3:16); nor from the eye, yet she is a coquette:
And wanton eyes (ib.); nor from the ear, yet she is an
eavesdropper: Now Sarah listened in the tent door (Gen.
18:10); nor from the heart, yet she is prone to jealousy:
Rachel envied her sister (Gen. 30:1); nor from the hand,
yet she is light-fingered: And Rachel stole the teraphim
(Gen. 31:19); nor from the foot, yet she is a gadabout:
And Dinah went out, etc. (Gen. 34:1).
.
(5) Others read: light-headed, i.e. frivolous.
(6) Lit. ‘a looker’-ogling men.
(7) Lit. ‘one who touches things’-i.e. thievish.
21
C. CULTURAL COMPARISON--The creation of woman according to the Pandora story-Hesiod's version of the Greek myth
[see also chapter V, section B of this booklet]
It is impossible to understand the Western and the Jewish relationship to companionship in general
and to the nature of women in particular without looking at Greek mythology. The Pandora story
greatly influenced Christian theologians and some of the Jewish thinkers who commented on the
Garden of Eden story. They viewed the role of the woman as a temptress who brings punishment
upon Adam and all of humanity after him. The folktale about Pandora includes many parallels to the
biblical story of Genesis 1-3 such as the woman being as a present from god to man ("pan-dora"-encompasses all the gifts or presents from all the gods). Nevertheless, there are significant differences
between the Pandora story and the biblical one.
We suggest asking the students to compare the biblical and Greek stories. Some will emphasize the
similarities, others the differences. To help the teacher, we've provided a table of similarities and
differences. The Pandora text appears in the appendix.
Pandora
Genesis 1-3
The woman is built by the gods as a poisoned
trick/gift to the man because of the strife, jealousy,
and vengefulness which the gods felt after being
fooled by Prometheus.
The woman is built artificially from a glittering
exterior and interior (kalon kakon).
The woman is built by God as a gift to man
because of God's concern for man's loneliness
("it is not good for the human to be alone").
The woman is constructed from man's side and
therefore completes him, though there is no
mention of external qualities of beauty or
attractiveness.
God views man as a vulnerable creature about
which God cares and therefore prepares the
Garden of Eden with pleasant trees.
God tries to prevent man from eating from the
tree of knowledge and knowing evil.
Man happily receives woman, God's gift, and
later regrets it and says: "the woman whom you
gave to be beside me, she gave me from the tree".
The man was ungrateful for God’s goodness, for
his woman is a good gift.
"Eve"="Mother of all life" gives life to man
through his offspring thus compensating for the
loss of immortality.
The woman is curious to learn and therefore goes
against the wishes of her husband.
The woman entraps the man betraying her
mission as a "help mate". By nature she is good
and only due to an erroneous choice does she go
astray and betray her true purpose.
The woman is seduced by the snake but she does
not seduce the man. She merely gives a taste to
the man who is standing by her.
The woman does not obey her husband nor God
but only the snake and her eyes which are
attracted to the tree of knowledge.
The gods wanted to enslave man and feared that the
man would rise above this degraded status.
The gods wanted man to open Pandora's Box and
discover evil.
Man ("Epimetheus"--one who thinks after acting as
opposed to "Prometheus" who thinks before acting)
willfully accepts the gift ("dora") of woman
because of her outward brilliance and afterwards
regrets it.
A “midrash” on "Pandora" is that she is composed
of all the evil "gifts" of the gods especially for man.
Pandora is unabashedly inquisitive and goes against
her husband's warnings.
The woman causes the man to fail, which is her
god-given role; the nature of woman is evil.
The woman entices the man.
The woman does not obey her husband but does
obey the gods and thereby fulfills their plan.
22
Some rabbinic midrashim take basic elements of the Pandora story and combine them with the Garden
of Eden story. For example, Eve's preparation as a beautiful bride complete with ornaments and hair
braided by God--reminds us explicitly of how Pandora was prepared as bait for the man.
קישוטים לחוה
קשטה ככלה ואחר כך:אמרו בשם ר' שמעון בן יוחאי
אתה סבור שמתחת: אמר ר' חמא בר חנינא.הביאה לו
חרוב אחד או שקמה אחת הביאה לו? אלא משקשטה
זהו,בעשרים וארבעה מיני תכשיטין אחר כך הביאה לו
אבן יקרה מסכתך-אלהים היית כל- "בעדן גן:שנאמר
א:)'בראשית רבה י"ח.
Eve’s Adornments
It is taught in the name of R. Simeon ben Yohai:
God Himself adorned Eve like a bride and brought
her to Adam. In this connection, R. Hama bar
Hanina said: What do you suppose--that He brought
Eve to Adam [as one might bring something found]
under a carob tree or a sycamore tree? The fact is
that only after He had decked her out with twentyfour kinds of finery [the one’s mentioned in Isaiah
3:18-24] did He bring her to Adam. Thus: "Thou
wast in Eden the garden of God; every precious
stone was your covering" (Ezekiel 28:13) (Genesis
Rabbah 18:1).
" מאי דכתיב "ויבן ה' את הצלע:דרש רבי שמעון בן מנסיא
מלמד שקלעה הקדוש ברוך הוא לחוה והביאה לאדם
שכן בכרכי הים קורין לקליעתא בנייתא (ברכות,הראשון
)ס"א ע"א.
R. Simeon ben Menasya expounded the verse "And
with the rib which the Lord God had taken from the
man, He plaited the hair (banah) of the woman and
brought her unto the man" (Genesis 2:22). The word
banah suggests that the Holy One plaited Eve’s hair
and brought her [thus adorned] to Adam, for in
cities far beyond the sea a woman’s plaited hair is
called binyata (Berachot 61a).
מיכאל וגבריאל הם היו שושבינין:אמר ר' יהודה בר' סימון
ג:)'של אדם הראשון (בראשית רבה י"ח.
R. Judah son of R. Simon said: Michael and
Gabriel were Adam’s escorts [best men] who
brought in Eve (Genesis Rabbah 18:3).
" )?שם( "ויביאה אל האדם,ברבבות של מלאכי השרת
וזימן הקדוש, ומשחקין לפניהם כבתולות,בקול רינה ושירה
א-ב"ה שניהם לסעודה על מעדני גן עדן (אותיות דר"ע
)אתב"ש.
"She was brought to Adam"--By thousands of
ministering angels singing and performing before
them as virgins, and the Holy One invited them
both to dine on delicacies of the Garden of Eden.
(Midrash Otiot R. Eliezer)
Yet the rabbis turn the meaning of these details on their head. According to the rabbis, external beauty
is to awaken sexual attraction for man's benefit. God's role is to be the matchmaker and arrange and
sanctify the marriage. The midrashim emphasize the harmony between the divine and human interests
as well as between the man and woman--who is God's gift. Both the bible and the rabbis take the
opposite stance than that of the Pandora legend.
Conclusion:
Myths and Relationships Between Man & Woman in the Past and Present
We have engaged in comparing the image of woman and relationships via myths--central folktales of
biblical culture, Greek culture, and the culture created by rabbinic culture. These myths are not meant
to be factual, scientific descriptions of the creation of woman. Yet they bequeath to every society a
familiar cultural structure with which to understand the complex world around them. Every myth or
master story offers a prism through which one sees the world, in which community experiences are
repeated summarized. Is the myth fact or fiction? For each community or people, the myth is true not
only because it describes the beginning of history, but mostly because the character type cast in the
myth is strengthened and anchored in daily life. Yet every myth also distorts, generalizes, and presents
one-sided stereotypes such as the myth that all women are like Pandora--beautiful externally yet the
source of unending trouble inside.
23
It is impossible to get rid of all myths because they help us organize reality and without them the
countless number of facts would be confusing. Yet it is possible and even desirable to examine
myths critically, to refine, reexamine and even create alternative myths* which express new values
and understandings. For example: Those who believe in the equality of the sexes can develop the
creation myth in a way which emphasizes the first creation story of Genesis 1 which tells of equality
and complete cooperation between man and woman. As long as society becomes more egalitarian,
the egalitarianism presented in Genesis 1 will be accepted as true by men and women alike. As long
as men and women live a cooperative, loving, and deeply equal life together, and minimize
competition, tension, and interdependency, then the tendency to accept Pandora's story as the master
story of Western Civilization will disappear.** Yet men and women who feel that there is a
difference in character--and not just in biology--between men and women will need a creation story
which explains these fundamental differences. The myth must fit the understanding of the believer.
*
Educational suggestion: Ask the students to create their own myth about the creation of the first man and woman and their
meeting then compare the values and life experiences which it expresses with the myths--the cultural master stories--we
studied in this booklet.
**
The Christian approach to Original Sin: Christianity, based upon early midrashim (such as the Will of Jacob's children
and Ben Sirah) on many mythological stories (like Pandora) and on a misogynistic Greek tradition, developed the extreme
view that the woman was guilty of causing man's death. Her sexuality is an instrument to bring down all men; Original Sin
makes us mortal. Only a virgin--Mary, mother of Jesus--can atone for Eve's sin. This view is central to Christian theology
and became crystallized in Augustinian theology--a Roman theologian from North Africa (fourth century). This outlook
greatly influenced Christian art which dealt with the Garden of Eden story. For the rabbis, the concepts of Original Sin or
the "Fall" are not central ones. Nonetheless, there exist a number of voices in rabbinic midrashim which hint at this
approach.
24
Chapter II - CRISES IN THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE FIRST
COUPLE
25
A. The Garden of Eden Story as a Play Entitled: "Loving Couple in Conflict"
By comparing the creation of man and woman in Genesis 1 and 2 we succeeded in fleshing out the
purpose of companionship. Yet we all feel the vast abyss which exists between the real and the ideal
in human relations in general, and between companions in particular. Chapter 3 of Genesis is a
continuation of the creation of man and woman from Genesis 2. It is an explanation of the gap
between the ideal life expressed by the "loving companions of the Garden of Eden" on the one hand,
and its confrontation with the reality of work, pain, alienation, guilt, and mortality on the other hand.
We shall dedicate this chapter to a close reading of the Eden story by turning it into a kind of play
which deals with the--perhaps all too typical--crisis of companionship. At the outset of this literary
analysis we shall be aided by a modern thinker, Phyllis Trible, who divides the story into certain
scenes* under the title “A Love Story Gone Awry”.
Act 1: The Formation of Adam and the Discovery of a Help Mate: Genesis 2:4-24.
1) Introduction-Genesis 2:4-7: The soil is lacking without a human.
2) Scene I-Genesis 2:7-8: The human is formed from the soil and placed in the Garden of Eden as a
mate to the soil who needs the human "to work it and to watch it" (v. 15).
3) Scene II-Genesis 2:9-17: God plants “every type of tree, desirable to look at and good to eat” (v. 9)
in the Garden yet prohibits eating from the tree of knowledge. The solitary human receives a secure,
well-tended place for enjoyment and comfort, yet is warned about lurking dangers.
4) Scene III-Genesis 2:18-20: The sexual/emotional loneliness of the human gives rise to a
disappointing search for a help mate amongst the animals of the field (“but for the human, there could
be found no helper corresponding to him” (v. 20)).
5) Scene IV-Genesis 2:21-24:
-Building woman from man by dividing the human into two separate sexes.
-Finding a help mate; man spontaneously speaks/sings a love poem/song ("This time,
she-isit!..." (v. 22).)
-"And they become one flesh" (v. 24) as a symbol of romantic union which concludes the period of
loneliness for the human.
*
A Didactical Suggestion: Ask the students to divide the story as they see fit into scenes, and to justify their divisions and
give an appropriate title to each scene. Afterwards, one can compare the students' divisions with Phyllis Trible’s divisions.
Therefore, it's not a good idea to reveal Trible's entire structure before the students have a chance to cope with the text.
26
Act 2: The First Couple in Crisis: Genesis 2:25-3:7
Turning point of the story: Disobedience toward God
1) Introduction-Genesis 2:25-3:1: Innocent, naked humans (who are unencumbered by clothes)
confront the wiliness of the serpent (who is unencumbered by morality).
2) Scene I-Genesis 3:1-5: Conversation with Temptation. The serpent tempts the woman not to obey
God's prohibitions which were supposed to protect their innocence.
3) Scene II-Genesis 3:6-7: Transgression of the Law. The man and woman eat from the tree of
knowledge.
Act 3: Harmony Disintegrates: Genesis 3:8-19
1) Scene I-Genesis 3:8-13: The Trial. The accused hide and God interrogates them; the man and the
woman take the witness stand.
2) Scene II-Genesis 3:4-19: The Judgement. Punishments meted out to the serpent, the woman and the
man: measure for measure.
Act 4: Partial Reconciliation and New Ways of Coping with the Consequences of Eating from
the Tree of Knowledge: Genesis 3:20-24
1) Scene I-Genesis 3:20: Man calls the woman, "Eve" and recognizes her as the "Life-giver!...Mother
of all the living" (v. 20)--a new source of the continuity of life (because of or despite eating from the
tree of knowledge).
2) Scene II-Genesis 3:21: A covering of skin. God is at least partially reconciled with the humans and
covers up their nakedness and shame.
3) Scene III-Genesis 3:22-24: Banishment from the Garden of Eden. God sets sentinels at the gate to
Eden in order to prevent fruit from the tree of life from being eaten.
On the meaning of the Garden of Eden story
The story of love between the man and woman ("And they become one flesh" Genesis 2:24) and its
degeneration to the point of separation and mutual accusations of wrongdoing (“The woman whom
you gave to be beside me, she gave me from the tree” Genesis 3:12) provides the key to understanding
human relations in general and the relationship between men and women in particular. Both ancient
and modern commentators discovered in this story profound insights about the nature of people and
about the source of evil and alienation in the world. One should not relate to the story as a naive
child's fable with nothing to say about the evolution of the human species, but rather, as a story which
addresses issues of eternal human concerns. In its biblical context the story deals with the relationship
between men and women in Genesis 3 as a beginning point from which to understand the essential gap
between the ideal harmony of Creation as summarized by God--"God saw that is was very good"
(Genesis 1:31)--and the reality of alienation which God describes before causing the flood: "God saw
that the evil on the earth was plenty" (Genesis 6:5). Both polar judgements of "very good" and "very
evil" are exaggerations. They define the potential for perfection and the potential for anarchy. The
27
Bible does not presume the world to be entirely evil after the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, yet it
is clear that all of Creation was distanced from the innocence and ideal cooperation that could have
existed in the universe.
The appearance of the serpent symbolizes the beginning of the decline in which the natural trust
between all aspects of the Creation in Eden were deleteriously affected. For example, the harmony
between the man and the earth was marred. The connection of give and take between the man who
works the soil and derives benefit for himself and for the soil turns to one of constant strife as the man
sweats by his brow and the earth grows thistles and thorns. The trust which had existed between
humans and animals, between humans and God, and between the man and woman turns into a
complicated maze of distrust, fears and accusations which give birth to distance, defensiveness and
alienation. The equality between the sexes turns into the man's attempt to rule over the woman. All
these problems, difficulties and complications--familiar to us in each generation--are explained by the
Bible as a result of the free choice of man and woman--who could have chosen differently--and not as
bitter, blind fate. And from this springs optimism and the source of hope for even a partial return to
the Garden of Eden, to balance, to harmony. There always exists the hope that people will
contemplate their actions, mend their ways and at least partially restore the world to some semblance
of tranquillity, trust, balance and calm as existed in Eden. This is Isaiah's messianic dream which
describes a world of balance and plenty, of justice and truth in which there are no predators and no
prey. A world in which none will cause fear, and none will destroy (Isaiah 11).
The Wrong Choice--Submission to Desires or Shirking of Responsibilities?
Commentators in every generation have tried to identify the essence of the sin and the amount of
responsibility each player bears in the drama before us--the snake, the woman, and the man. Lessons
were drawn from this story in order to warn people of external and internal temptations which
continually threaten to ensnare them. An entire tradition developed which equates the snake with the
evil impulse, and the evil impulse in turn has been identified with the woman so that women in
general, and the sexual urge in particular are viewed as great dangers. ("Rabbi Hanina says: 'Because
Eve was created, Satan was created as well'" Genesis Rabbah 17). According to this approach eating
the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge--submitting to this urge and violating God's command--caused
The Fall. Yet, according to another approach the serious sin was not the eating from the tree of
knowledge--indeed, everyone transgresses from time to time--but, rather, the shirking of responsibility
and shifting the blame on another. The man blames the woman, who in turn blames the snake. Facing
our impulses and taking responsibility for our actions are the key to improving the world. In both
approaches The Fall is a result of free--even if erroneous--choice.
Descent for the Sake of Ascent—
The Knowledge of Good and Evil as a Necessary Choice
There is a point of view entirely different than those expressed thus far, one which was extensively
developed in Jewish mysticism as well as modern psychology (Erich Fromm, for example) which
claims that the so called Original Sin was absolutely necessary and even gave birth to the advancement
of humanity--and not its decline. According to this approach, human curiosity to know good and evil
is a necessary and positive step toward maturity. Consequently, despite the pain of growing-up,
humans earned greater knowledge, greater self-understanding and greater responsibility due to eating
the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. There is no sense in returning to the innocence and
childlikeness of the Garden of Eden. Far better is a world which cultivates an appreciation of the
dangers as well as the possibilities inherent in a world full of people who know good and evil.
28
Professor Atlas, in his introduction to his book on Moshe Idel, The Golem, writes: "Whether
something affects people to their benefit or detriment--knowledge of the structure of the universe
gives them dominance over it. The Tree of Knowledge is helpful as well as a hindrance. The Tree
of Knowledge, the source of freedom and happiness, makes humans equal to God, thus fulfilling the
purpose of our being created "in the image of God" as written in Genesis. Yet at the same time, the
Tree of Knowledge is also the source of alienation from God and death since by its very nature it is
distinct from the "Tree of Life".
The Evil Impulse as a Positive Force
One can also take the radical interpretive step and find the positive, not only in the knowledge of good
and evil, but in the positive aspects of "evil" itself. If evil is the "evil urge" about which the Rabbis
spoke so much, then it is the source of certain positive, creative forces, even while at the same time
being dangerous because of its great power. Our task is not merely to know the good and the bad and
to choose the good, but to tame the evil and harness its power to benefit humanity.
Rav Shmuel bar Nachman teaches: "'It was good' this is the good impulse, 'It was very
good' this is the evil impulse. You are astounded to learn that the evil impulse can be
very good!? This teaches us that were it not for the evil impulse, one would not build a
house, marry, bring children into this world, nor be sociable with others. As King
Solomon has said: 'All labor and skillful enterprise come from men's envy of each
other’" (Genesis Rabbah 9; Ecclesiastes Rabbah 3).
Focus--On the Relationship between Men & Women
Let us put aside the philosophical questions of knowing good and evil and of free choice which arise
from the Garden of Eden story, and leave them in the back of our minds. Let us instead focus our
attention on more practical and down to earth questions--how is the relationship between man and
woman portrayed in Genesis 3? What is the image of the woman and her relationship to the serpent?
How does the couple meet the challenge of being judged by God? We shall track the story according
to scenes and acts as defined by Phyllis Trible while inter-weaving commentaries.
29
B. How Did The Relationship Between "The Two Lovers of the Garden of Eden" Degenerate?
Since we already studied how Adam and Eve were created (Genesis 2), which Phyllis Trible calls "Act
I", we shall go directly to Act II.
Act II: The First Couple in Crisis (Genesis 2:25-3:7)
2:25...
3:1-7...
We shall divide the discussion into two continuous strips:
Scene I: A conversation about temptation between the serpent and the woman.
Scene II: Transgressing the law--the woman and man eat from the Tree which immediately results in
shame.
Scene I: A Conversation About Temptation--What is the Basic Temptation? (Genesis 3:1-5)
Intellectual Temptation
The first test of the first couple is to weigh God's command, on one hand, with the temptation of the
serpent on the other. The section opens with a word play which prepares the reader for a struggle
between the man and woman who are "naked" (arum)--innocent--and the serpent who is "exceedingly
clever" (arum mkol)--an instigator. As Phyllis Trible explains, the serpent initiates the conversation
and suggests a revolutionary interpretation about the divine prohibition. He opens, as it were, her eyes
by suggesting a different vantage point. In this way the humans lose their innocence and understand
that it is possible to interpret their environment as well as their relationship to God and the world in
antithetical ways. This being so, the temptation is not so much physical, sensual, or even erotic, but
primarily theological: What are the intentions of God? What is the legitimacy of divine decree? What
are the consequences of committing forbidden acts?
The serpent engages the woman in conversation via a sophisticated question-- which is half true and
half false--"Didn't God say you should not eat of any tree in the garden?" to which a simple answer of
"yes" or "no" would not suffice. The woman feels obligated to explain to the serpent her basic
assumptions that there is a tree that is forbidden as well as trees which are permitted. She even adds a
surprising detail: that it is forbidden to touch not only to eat from the tree. It is unclear why she adds
the prohibition of touching. Perhaps this is what God said; perhaps this is what Adam added as a type
of "fence around the Torah" in order to guard her from inadvertenly transgressing; perhaps she made
up this prohibition herself. The woman also explains the reason for this prohibition: "lest you die".
According to this, God is like a parent who worries about the safety of his children and so tries to
remove them from harms way.
In light of her response, the serpent moves from a wily question to unequivocal, bold claims. The
serpent refutes the fact that eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge will cause death. He questions
God's motives and the “protective parent” image of God as one who "worries" as it were, for the safety
of his creatures. The serpent stipulates in a decisive manner that God's will is selfish--God wants to
rule over humans and not to protect them from eating the fruit of the tree. The serpent promises that
the power of the Tree of Knowledge will transform humans into beings who know the difference
between good and evil just as the angels do.
30
The temptation here is not sexual or materialistic, rather, it is a temptation of power: the quest for
equality with God and freedom from his selfish control. The betrayal against God is presented as a
fitting response to a God who tries to suppress his creatures and prevent them from developing,
maturing, and obtaining the Good. Even before the woman eats from the tree, she is certain that the
serpent has given her the ability to discern between good and evil, to recognize the facade of God who
is disguised as good, and to see the forbidden tree--which is presented as the source of all evil--as a
good tree "the woman saw that it was a good tree". The woman begins to evaluate her surroundings
just as God assessed his own handiwork. In Genesis I God values his creation, "God saw that it was
good". The woman views the tree as the source of biological life ("it is good to eat"), of aesthetic
beauty ("it is a pleasure to the eyes") and of the source of knowing good and evil ("it is pleasing to the
intellect"). The temptation of intellect and of power--equality, freedom, independence--determined the
outcome. According to this reading of the story the woman's character is typified by capable verbal
skills and by her thirst for knowledge.
The Sexual Temptation and the Sensual Woman
Contrary to the picture we presented above, which sees in the words of the serpent a temptation for
knowledge, power, and independence, many commentators read this written text in entirely different
ways. They emphasize that what "enticed the eyes," was the tree of "knowledge" (in the sexual sense)
and the shape of the "serpent" (phallic) reveals a symbolic story of sexual urges and temptations.
Such a reading emphasizes that desire conquered intellect; powerful, anarchic urges caused the
humans to violate God's law; flesh ruled the spirit. The serpent who represents the animalistic
impulses, instructed the woman who then instructs the man. Thus, the "natural" hierarchy of Man >
Woman > Animal is disrupted. The woman's impulses and desires led her and her husband astray
even though he did not have to listen to her. Her intellect was easily defeated. The image of the
woman therefore is sensual, impulsive and therefore rebellious.
Scene II: Transgressing the Law; The Man and The Woman Eat from the Tree (Genesis 3:6-7)
There is no mention in the Bible of a conversation between the man and the woman before eating the
forbidden fruit. The woman's characteristics can only be discerned in a round-about way, from her
conversation with the serpent and from the description of her thoughts before eating the fruit. The
man's characteristics can only be inferred through his passive stance beside his active mate: "She also
gave to her man who was with her". The plain meaning of the text relates rather favorably towards the
woman's personality: she gives part of the fruit to the man who is with her. There is no seduction, no
pleas, no manipulation. There is just giving. Yet many commentators ascribe to her a very negative
role which springs from numerous prejudices against women. The intelligent reader must distinguish
between the plain written text and interpretations of it while asking him/herself: what is the reliability
of an interpretation of a text as well as of the reality of male-female relations in our world today.
Phyllis Trible and Nahum Sarna, modern biblical commentators who look at the plain meaning of the
Bible, are united in the opinion that the woman who is presented in the Bible has a formidable
personality and is of high intelligence. They conclude this due to the fact that the serpent chooses to
speak directly to her and employs intellectual, rational arguments when addressing her. The woman
responds to his wily question regarding the prohibition to eat from all trees in the Garden with a
detailed and exact answer. She knows that God permits them to eat from all trees of the Garden
except the Tree of Knowledge. She knows that the reason for the prohibition is to protect people from
death. She presents her position without hesitation while displaying the ability to interpret the law as
well as theological understanding. In the end, she is finally persuaded by the serpent's germaine and
31
comprehensive arguments. During the act of eating she ponders deeply about the tree's attraction and
comes up with three reasons for proceeding:
"the tree bears good, edible fruit"
"the tree is pleasing to the eye"
"the tree improves intelligence"
The first two reasons precisely reflect the reality of God's creation:
"YHWH, God, caused to spring up from the soil
every type of tree, desirable to look at and good to eat,
and the Tree of Life in the midst of the garden
and the Tree of the Knowing of Good and Evil" (Genesis 2:9).
The woman’s encounter with the tree sharpens her intelligence; she is blessed with the ability to judge
much like God:
"The woman saw
that the tree was good for eating
and that it was a delight to the eyes,
and the tree was desirable to contemplate" (Genesis 3:6). This expression reminds us of God's judgment
that "God saw it was good" (Genesis 1:4).
In addition to this, she acts, after careful consideration, in an independent manner without any
dependency on her husband or on God:
“She took from its fruit and ate
and gave also to her husband beside her" (Genesis 3:6).
The woman nonetheless transgressed God's command, yet her character is not entirely tarnished. It is
precisely her curiosity to know her world, her ability to understand alternative interpretations to God's
words, and her intellectual independence which cause her to err and sin. "The serpent seduced me
( )השיאניand I ate” (Genesis 3:13), the woman correctly states, yet the Bible does not even offer the
smallest hint as to what tempted the man. The Bible, which expanded upon the dialogue between the
woman and the serpent, does not describe any dialogue between her and the man; it only describes her
"giving" of the fruit to the man. The man who is interested in blaming her for the sin--"she gave me of
the fruit and I ate" (Genesis 3:12) does not accuse her of tempting him. From this we learn that he did
not object nor did he find her suggestion difficult. More than this, it is possible that the man stood by
her side throughout the conversation with the serpent--since the serpent always addresses both the
woman and the man in plural form--while the man passively lets the woman defend God's decree:
"The snake said to the woman:
‘Die, you will not die!
Rather, God knows
that on the day that you eat from it, your eyes will be opened
and you will become like gods, knowing good and evil’" (Genesis 3:4-5). Only at the time of eating is the
reader cognizant of what was clear to the serpent and to the woman: that the man was standing
"beside her" (Genesis 3:6) listening to the serpent all the time.
One learns of the man's agreement to eat the fruit not only from his silence, but also from the fact that
he ate it without any further attempts of persuasion. The man acted in accordance with his
independent wife. More than this, after eating the fruit, the man and woman act in unison to secure
clothing from leaves and to try hiding from God. We shall get to know the man better throughout the
"trial" when we examine his fanciful excuses and repeated attempts at shriking responsiblilty for his
actions.
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STUDY EXCERCISES: Looking at the Gendered Characters of the Man and the Woman in the
Garden of Eden
Exercise 1: Image of the Woman and her Affinity to the Serpent
Interview people regarding the following question: What are typical feminine attributes? One can look
at this question from the perspective of parents, television personalities, how women appear in films,
books, in the image of students, etc. Give your opinions as to how accurately society stereotypes
feminine attributes. Discuss whether such attributes are inherent or are a product of socialization.
Carry out similar interviews regarding typical male attributes, and compare the results between the
two.
Re-read verses 1-5 in Genesis 3 and identify the attributes of the woman on one hand, and of the snake
on the other. Check whether the image of women in society today fits the image found in Genesis 3.
Express your opinions as to whether the attributes of the snake in Genesis 3 more closely match those
of men in today’s society. In your opinion, is the snake more masculine or feminine?
Exercise 2: Image of the Woman According to Jewish and Christian Bible Commentators*
Read the various commentators quoted below who present the image of woman in different ways.
Rate the comments, on a scale from 1-5, according to their closeness to the plain meaning of the text in
Genesis 3. Try to identify on what the commentators who were closest to the plain meaning of the text
based their analysis, and try to explain why the other commentaries strayed from the plain meaning of
the text. Check which commentators express ideas close to those widely accepted today about the
image of women.
1) Ben Sira (Eretz Yisrael, 2nd Cent. BCE) - “From woman comes sin and because of her we all die.”
(Wisdom of Ben Sira, 25:24).
2) The Testament of Reuben (2nd Cent. BCE) - “Women are evil, my children…. They scheme
treacherously how they might entice men to themselves by means of their looks…. The angel of
the Lord told me, and taught me, that women are overcome by the spirit of fornication more than
men, and in their heart they plot against men; and by means of their adornment they deceive first
their minds, and by the glance of the eye they implant their poison, and finally they take them
captive…. They allured the watchers who were before the flood…. The women lusted after the
watchers who reached even unto heaven and then gave birth to giants.
3) Apocalypse of Moses (Jewish Sectarian, 1st or 2nd Cent. BCE) - “Adam said to Eve, ‘Why have
you brought destruction among us and brought upon us great wrath, which is death gaining rule
over all our race?’” (14:2). “Oh evil woman! Why have you wrought destruction among us?”
(21:6)
4) Philo (Jewish Philosopher, Egypt, 1st Cent. CE) - “Women are self-centered, extremely jealous,
adept at causing their husbands to violate ethical norms, seductive as actresses on a stage, and
responsible for enslaving men” (Hypothetics, XI:14-17). “Woman becomes for him [Adam] the
beginning of blameworthy life. For so long as he was by himself, as accorded with such solitude,
he went on growing like to the world and like God…But when woman too had been
made…love[eros] enters in…and this desire [pothos] likewise engendered bodily pleasure, that
pleasure which is the beginning of wrongs and violation of law, the pleasure for the sake of which
men bring on themselves the life of mortality and wretchedness in lieu of that of immortality and
bliss. (Creation, 151-152; 165-166).
*
A Word of Caution to the Teacher: Some of the following opinions are extremely one-sided against women and they
support prejudices which are very problematic. It is not our intention to encourage adopting such prejudices, but rather,
to raise them in discussion since they exist even today in society at large covertly if not overtly.
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5) Timothy (1st Cent. CE) - “I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; 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” (New Testament, 1 Timothy 2:13014).
6) Peter Comstore (English Christian, 12th Cent. CE) – “Women do not see beyond themselves
[check this translation] yet reley only on themselves, therefore it is easy to persuade them to
believe in anything.”
7) Professor Umberto Cassuto (Bible Scholar, Israel, 20th Cent. CE) – “The fertile imagination of a
woman is much stronger then a man and perhaps precisely because of this the serpent turned to her
first.”
8) Dominican Monk during the time of the Inquisition (Spain, 15th Cent. CE) – “All sorcery
comes from women because of her insatiable sexual desires. Because of this, she is willing to
copulate with Satan” (the serpent).
9) Phyllis Trible (Protestant Theologian, U.S.A., 20th Cent. CE) – The woman knows very well how
to argue with the serpent. She takes the initiative and contemplates it well, despite eventually
being persuaded. By contrast is her husband—who stood by her throughout this entire exchange
with the serpent—who is silent and totally accepts her decision without complaint.
10) Nickoas Kazantzakis (20th Cent. Greek Author) – Zorba warns “No matter where you touch a
woman, you touch the devil’s horns. Beware of her, my boy! She also stole the apples in the
garden of Eden; she shoved them down her bodice, and now she goes out and about, strutting all
over the place. A plague on her! Eat any of those apples and you’re lost; don’t eat any and you’ll
still be lost!”
11) Midrash: Eve gave Adam the fruit to eat so that she would not be the only one to die, leaving Adam
alive and able to marry someone else. -- Pirkei de Rabi Eliezer 13
12) Midrash: Rabbi Aibu said: Eve squeezed grapes for Adam. Rabi Simlai said: She came upon him
with her answers all ready, saying to him: 'What do you think: that I will die and another Eve will be
created for you? Or do you think that I will die while you remain alone? The Rabbis said: She began
weeping and crying over him. When it says that Eve gave Adam “also” to eat, it means she gave the
cattle, beasts, and birds to eat of it. All obeyed her and ate thereof, except a certain bird – the
phoenix. (which according to legend, never dies) - -- Genesis Rabbah 19:5
Creation of Eve by Ya’akov Steinhardt (Israel, 20th Cent. CE)
Exercise 3: Inventing Extemporaneous Dialogue for Genesis 3: Biblio-drama**
A Conversation between the Serpent and the Woman
Have a dialogue in two stages according to the script of Genesis 3:
**
See Peter Pitzele, Our Father’s Wells, in the Addendum.
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Ask all the males in the group to write three suggestions for the serpent on how to convince
the woman to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.
Ask all the females to write three ways to reject the serpents’ enticements.
Divide into couples and try to convince one another, as if you are standing before the Tree of
Knowledge. Allow this conversation to last about three minutes.
35
A Conversation between the Woman and the Man
After eating the fruit, the woman’s eyes have been opened. What will she now say to the man?
Ask the women in the group to play the role of an enticer, and the men to find reasons to reject their
advances. Remember, that in the end the Man gives in, though the Bible does not explain why.
Debriefing after the Biblio-drama
Each student played an enticer, and was enticed; ask the students to write which role was more
pleasant, and whether they identified with the serpent, the woman, or the man? Did they feel anger or
repulsion about any of the characters at the conclusion of the exercise? Finally, try to clarify why, in
their opinion, the Torah skips any discussion between the woman and the man before or after they eat
the fruit?
Exercise 4: A Fateful Decision—Genesis 3:6
“She took from its fruit and ate
and gave also to her husband beside her,
and he ate.”
Let us ask, why does the woman offer the fruit to her husband? After eating from the Tree of
Knowledge, the woman’s eyes were opened, she knew that she was naked and that she would die.
Why, then, did she give her husband the fruit in spite of her knowledge? Compare the commentaries,
below, and check which one is based more accurately on the Bible, and which one is more interesting
and surprising.
1. Sforno (Italy, 16th cent.)
His heart was swayed by her words because he was her man, her companion, and for this very reason
was he with her.
2. The Serpent and Sin
from The Book of Legends, Bialik & Ravnitzky, p. 20, section 85.
“Now the serpent was most subtle” (Gen. 3:1). The serpent reasoned to himself: If I go and
speak to Adam, I know that he will not listen to me, for it is difficult to lead a man away from his
own mind. So I shall go and speak to Eve, for I know that she will listen to me, since women are
light-headed and easily led by everybody.
“For God doth know” (Gen. 3:5). R. Judah of Sikhnin said in the name of R. Levi: The
serpent spoke slander against his Creator, saying to Eve: Our Creator ate of this tree and then
created the world. And because every craftsman hates to have a rival in his craft, He said to you,
“You shall not eat of it,” so that you might not create other worlds.
[The serpent also said to Eve]: Whatever was created after its companion dominates it. Now,
Adam was created after all creatures in order to rule over all of them. So make haste and eat [of the
tree] before God creates other worlds which will rule over both of you.
Then the serpent touched the tree with his hands and feet, shaking it until its fruit fell to the
ground. The tree then cried out: Villain, do not touch me—“Let not the foot of pride overtake me,
and let not the hand of the wicked shake me” (Ps. 36:12). The serpent said to the woman, “Look, I
touched the tree, yet I did not die. You, too, if you touch it, will not die.” Right away, he pushed
her and she touched the tree.
When she saw the angel of death coming toward her, she said, “Woe is me! I am as good as
dead, and the Holy One will make another woman and give her to Adam.” Immediately, “she took
of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate” (Gen. 3:6).
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R. Aibu said: She squeezed grapes and gave the juice to Adam.
R. Simlai said: She came at him with her answers all rehearsed, saying to him, “What do you
suppose—that I will die and another Eve will be created for you? [There will be no new Eve]—
‘there is nothing new under the sun’ [Eccles. 1:9]. Or that I will die and you will have no
obligations? ‘He created it not a waste, He formed it to be inhabited’” (Isa. 45:18). But our masters
maintained: She raised her voice in howling at him, as is said, “Because thou hast hearkened unto
the [loud] voice of thy wife” (Gen. 3:17).
[“And she also gave unto her husband” (Gen. 3:6).] The word “also” is a word that suggests
she also gave the fruit to others to eat, to cattle, beasts, and birds. All obeyed her, except for a
certain bird named hol (phoenix), of which it is said, “I shall die with my nest, yet I shall multiply
my days as the hol” (Job 29:18). The school of R. Yannai maintained: The hol lives a thousand
years. At the end of a thousand years, a fire issues from its nest and burns it up, yet of the bird a
piece the size of an egg is left; it grows new limbs and lives again. But R. Yudan son of R. Simeon
said: At the end of a thousand years, its body dries up and its wings drop off, yet of the bird a piece
the size of an egg is left; it grows new limbs and lives again.
3. Rava (Spain, 12th cent.)
“With her” implies that they ate the fruit together then she revealed to him the secret of the serpent.
The man would not have willfully gone astray had not this secret been revealed to him; because of this,
he was punished.
4. Rabbi Benjamin Aaron Skolnik, The Book of Commandments for Women, (1602).*
“…After Eve ate of the apple, and knew she must die, she wanted her husband to eat of it as well. She
said, If I have to die, you have to die with me. And she gave it to him so that he would also have to
eat of the apple. Adam, poor thing, at first didn’t want to eat of the apple. So she took a tree branch in
her hand and beat him until he also ate of the apple. As the verse says, “She gave me of the tree, and I
ate וָּאֹכֵל--( ”הִׁוא נָּתְּ נָּה לִׁי מִׁן ָּהעֵץGen. 3:12). She gave [it] to me with the tree, and I ate. And because that
foolish Adam let his wife beat him, God, blessed be his name, cursed him, for he should not have let a
woman beat him, but he should have beaten her…for God made the man to rule over the
woman…(Gen. 3:16)”.
5. Augustine
"When Eve told what the serpent had said, she was believed immediately. Credence is given to a
woman who tells a lie resulting in our death; women who tell truth calculated to make us live are
not believed…Because man's fall was occasioned by womankind, so man's restoration was
accomplished through womankind, since a virgin brought forth Christ and a woman announced that
He had risen from the dead. Through a woman came death; through a woman came life."
-- St. Augustine, Sermon 232, Fathers of the Church Vol. 38 p. 210-211
Exercise 5: “For This Sin”—Confessions of the Serpent, Man, Woman (and God?)
We could expect a “happy ending” even after eating from the Tree of Knowledge if only the parties
involved would express remorse, and not blame each other (“The woman whom you gave” (Gen.
3:12), “The snake enticed me” (Gen. 3:13)).
*
Weissler, Chava, Mizvot Built into the Body: Tkhines for Niddah, Pregnancy, and Childbirth, in Eilberg, Howard, ed.
People of the Body, p. 104.
37
Compose a personal confession for each character in the story in the form of the “Al Chet” (– על חטא
“For This Sin”) prayer which is recited on Yom Kippur. Prepare 5-10 confessional verses which fit
the events. For example:
1st. The Man Proclaims His Sins:
“For the sins that I have sinned by blaming my mate instead of defending her”
“For the sins that I have sinned by blindly following my wife without independently thinking things
through”
“For the sins that I have sinned by…
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3rd.The Woman Proclaims Her Sins:
“For the sins that I have sinned by being led astray by what my eyes desired”
“For the sins that I have sinned by not trusting in God and in my husband who warned me”
“For the sins that I have sinned by offering the fruit to my husband knowing that it would cause his
death”
“For the sins that I have sinned by…
4th.The Serpent Proclaims His Sins:
“For the sins that I have sinned by spreading false lies about God”
“For the sins that I have sinned by causing innocent people to doubt”
“For the sins that I have sinned by being jealous of humans and desiring their downfall”
“For the sins that I have sinned by…
5th.God Proclaims, as it were, God’s sins:
“For the sins that I have sinned by placing too much faith in humans, and for not guarding over them
and distancing them from the serpent”
“For the sins that I have sinned by forbidding eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge knowing
that this would arouse their curiosity”
“For the sins that I have sinned by trying to prevent essential knowledge about good and evil from
being know”
“For the sins that I have sinned by…
C. A Survey of the Consequences of Eating from the Tree of Knowledge
Act 3: Harmony Disintegrates—Genesis 3:7-19
Nehama Leibowitz, in her Studies on Genesis, (pp. 33-35) sensitively follows the process of
estrangement from the world of innocence beginning from the moment the fruit was eaten (even
before the formal Divine punishments were decreed):
“The consequences of the sin are not slow in coming. Indeed, they are apparent immediately in verse
7 even before the punishment is meted out to them, namely the curse, the enmity and pain called down
on them in verses 15-19. There is a punishment inherent in the very commission of the sin, a natural
consequence of the deed, even before the statutory Divine punishment becomes effective.
“To this our Sages referred, in their comment on the following verse:
‘And they heard the voice of God…
And Adam and his wife hid themselves
From the presence of God
Amongst the trees of the garden.’
‘Before a man sins, he is given (he inspires) fear and awe and creatures are afraid of him. Once he has
sinned, he is given up to fear and awe and is frightened of others. The proof is that Rabbi (Judah
Hanasi) said: “Before Adam sinned, he could listen to the Divine utterance standing upright and
whithout being afraid, but after he had sinned, when he heard the Divine voice he was frightened and
hid himself, as it says (Gen. 3:10): “I heard Thy voice…and I was aftaid”’
(Shir Ha-shirim Rabbah 3:14)
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“We can appreciate the workings of sin, its consequences and moral implications by studying carefully
not only the nature of the fear prompting man to hide himself and seek a refuge from responsibility or
the authority demanding his responsibility, but also by noting the place to which man flees and hides
himself.
“Cassuto refers to this when pointing out the significance of the recurrence of such motif words as
‘tree,’ ‘midst’ and ‘garden.’ He writes in his commentary: From Adam to Noah:
‘These words occur often in the chapter, recalling the sin of Adam and his wife. They are not
purposeless. Evidently the Torah wishes to allude to the fact that though the sinner strives to
forget or erase from human memory his offence, he cannot silence the voice of his conscience
and obliterate all vestiges of his deed. At every turn and step he is confronted by things that
remind him and others of his sin.
‘With the tree which is in the midst of the garden they sinned and in the midst of the trees of
the garden they were forced to hide.’”
Similar to Nehama Leibowitz, Phyllis Trible and Nahum Sarna note two important stages in the
disintegration of the Man and Woman’s situation, which began before the Divine decree against them.
The immediate, natural consequence of violating God’s decree is shame and estrangement.
1) Shame and Consciousness of Vulnerability
Eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge open the eyes of the Man and Woman as promised by the
serpent. Yet knowing good and evil did not grant them divine power, but rather, consciousness of
their human limitations. They were transformed from naked innocents, to people who knew that their
nakedness exposed them as vulnerable. They plotted behind God’s back, and against God’s will, since
they suspected God’s intentions. They transgressed, and they knew they had transgressed. They
understood the ability and the need to differentiate between public and private, between the revealed
and the hidden. From now on they new that the serpent could trick them and that they could trick one
another.
2) The Estrangement between Man, Woman, and God – Genesis 3:9-19
Estrangement from God is expressed, as we have seen, by shame which causes the first couple to
cover themselves with fig leaves and to hide amongst the trees of the Garden. This also gives rise to
verbal deception and shirking of responsibility. When God singles out the Man alone--though the
Man and the Woman hid together—and asks “Where are you?” the Man makes up excuses. In
contrast to a one word question, the Man grows defensive and responds with a lengthy and convoluted
excuse (“I heard your voice in the Garden and I was fearful since I am naked, therefore, I hid”. The
Man who didn’t so much as say a peep when the serpent spoke, nor when offered the fruit from the
tree of knowledge, has suddenly become loquacious and makes up all sorts of excuses and
explanations in an attempt to justify his fear as well as to cover himself (and thereby his guilt) with
words (Phyllis Trible).
In an ironic way, the Man emphasizes his respect and awe for the “Voice of God”. The double
meaning of the expression “I heard Your voice”—“heard” in the sense of hearing sounds, and in the
sense of “obeying” God’s command—immediately reveals that this Man does not “obey” God’s voice
(“That which I have commanded you not to eat—have you eaten?”--Genesis 3:11) (Nahum Sarna).
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No wonder God stationed Cherubim and swirling swords at the entrance of the Garden of Eden to
prevent people from stealing also from the tree of life. The expulsion is a natural consequence of
Man’s character, which has just been revealed; one who works secretively, behind the scenes. One
cannot trust Man nor rely on his personal discipline. The inclination of both Man and Woman to
blame each other and not to take responsibility for their actions, does not allow them to learn from
their mistakes and better themselves.
Estrangement between the Man and Woman who had been (at least prior to this) “one flesh” is also
revealed in the conversation between the Man and God. After all, the two of them hid together in the
Garden and felt a certain sense of shared destiny. Yet, when presented with the demand to take
responsibility for their actions, they go different ways. The Man responds to God in the singular and
emphasizes himself in his first answer: (“I heard…, I feared…, I hid…” Genesis 3:10) while blaming his
wife as well as God for his misdeed (“the Woman whom You, yourself, had given to me, she gave me
of the fruit, [and only then did I eat] Genesis 3:12). The Man who had celebrated his union with the
Woman after having been created alone, and after having searched along with God for a helpmate is
now revealed as one who is in God’s debt and would prefer to be left alone. He blames the Woman’s
initiative as well as God’s initiative which brought him to this partnership in marriage and to sin. The
joyfulness of “And they were of one flesh” crumbles under the pressure of God’s legal questioning.
Only after the Man is able to drive a wedge between himself and God, as well as between himself and
the Woman, is he able to confess his deed in the final word of his longwinded sentence: “I ate”.
However Martin Luther presents Adam's relationship to Eve in two opposed ways: On one hand he
says Adam blames God for the whole idea of giving him a wife:
The statement “The woman whom You have given me” [gave me the fruit] is full of
resentment and anger against God, as if Adam were saying, “You have burdened me with
this trouble. If You had given the woman some garden of her own and had not burdened me
by making me live with her, I would have remained without sin. Therefore the guilt for my
having sinned is yours...”
On the other hand, Adam prefers his wife's love to God's and therefore he ate the apple so as not to
cause her pain:
We must give consideration to Paul’s statement in ITim 2:13-14: Adam was first formed,
then Eve. And Adam was not seduced, but the woman, since she had been seduced, was in
the transgression.” Almost everyone understands this statement to mean that Adam was not
seduced but sinned knowingly. For he did not yield to the persuasion of the devil as Eve
did; but he was unwilling to cause sadness for his delight, that is, for his wife, and so he
preferred his wife’s love to God. (Martin Luther,Luther’s Works, Vol. 1, Lectures on
Genesis)
Martin Luther thinks Adam might have avoided the sin if the snake had tuned to him first, for the
woman is weaker than the man, so he needs to subordinate her to maintain order:
...this temptation appears to me to have taken place on the Sabbath...on the Sabbath
Adam preached to Eve concerning God’s will...that one tree--the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil...was forbidden...Perhaps he led Eve about in Paradise and showed her
the forbidden tree when he said this… Because Satan sees that Adam is the more
excellent, he does not dare assail him...I, too, believe that if he had tempted Adam
first, the victory would have been Adam’s ....Satan, therefor, directs his attack on
Eve as the weaker part.
Some carry on laughable discussions about whether the serpent had a human face. It
41
was a most beautiful little animal. otherwise Eve would not have conversed with it so
calmly. However, after sin...the beauty of the serpent was changed. ...this also reveals
Satan’s cunning. He does not immediately try to allure Eve by means of the loveliness of
the fruit. He first attacks man’s greatest strength, faith in the Word… When Eve had
permitted herself to be driven away from the Word by a lie, it was very easy to approach
the tree and pick fruit from it... it is stupid to think...that when Eve had looked at the tree,
she gradually became inflamed with a desire to pick the fruit...For the chief temptation
was to listen to another word and to depart from the one which God had previously
spoken: that they would die if they ate from it...Satan imitates God. Just as God had
preached to Adam, so he himself preaches to Eve…
-- Martin Luther
Maimonides nicely summarizes Man’s defensiveness:
The Man says: “the Woman whom You, yourself, had given to me, she gave me of the
fruit, [and only then did I eat Genesis 3:12). The Woman whom You in Your Holiness
gave to me as a helpmate, she gave me the fruit of the tree. I thought that everything she
said would be helpful and productive…. That’s why our Rabbis call him “indebted”.
The Woman, also, shirks her responsibility: “The serpent seduced me, then I ate” is not yet a
confession of her guilt. Yet she neither blames the Man—who did not object to eating—nor God.
She, at least, limits her excuses.
The punishment—“Toward your husband will be your lust, and he will rule over you” (Genesis 3:16).
God’s judgement is a natural extension of the estrangement which exists between the first couple. The
Man sinned “because you have hearkened to the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree about
which I commanded you, saying: You are not to eat from it!” (Genesis 3:17). The Man preferred to rely
on his Woman rather than on God, and ignored his own authority. Because of this transgression of
eating the forbidden fruit, the mutual trust and cooperation between them was damaged. One can
understand the new character of their relationship in different ways by looking at several comments to
the verse: “Toward your husband will be your lust, yet he will rule over you” (Genesis 3:16).
Rashi: “Your lust” –for sex. Despite this, you have no grounds to demand sexual
satisfaction. Rather, he shall rule over you (and initiate sexual relations). Everything
will come from him, and not from you.
Hezkoni: Even when she has no sexual desire, he can copulate with her; yet if he has no
desire, she can not with him.
Ramban: It seems correct to me that God punished the Woman by making her yearn for
her husband so much, that she will disregard the pain during pregnancy or birth (which
are the results of sexual intercourse). He will rule her like a servant, yet her desire will
keep her loyal to her master, even though it is not customary for a servant to yearn for
the master but rather to escape from him. Thus it is measure for measure, she is
subjected to her husband and she eats only by his command. Her punishment is that she
no longer commands him rather, he commands her to his heart’s content.
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Phyllis Trible: The union between them soured and they are no longer “one flesh”. The
woman still yearns for that primordial union, yet the man is unable to merge or to trust
so he uses her desires to rule over her. The equality between “man and woman”
transformed into the “husband” ruling over his wife due to his fear that she will lead him
astray a second time. The Man’s indebtedness to God, on an hierarchical scale, is
equivalent to the Woman’s indebtedness to Man. This indebtedness is a result of the
breakdown of equality, oneness, and trust which had prevailed at the creation of the Man
and Woman—and is not an expression of some primordial ideal.
3) Estrangement from the body
The estrangement of Adam and Eve from their bodies is a result of their transgression. The very fact
that they are embarrassed by their bodies (especially by their sexual organs which are perhaps related
to the sexual “tree of knowledge”) expresses a lack of harmony between people and their natural urges.
Women are ruled by their husbands when their desires are satisfied (“Toward your husband will be
your lust, yet he will rule over you”.) Instead of the body and its urges being a foundation for union,
(“and they will be one flesh”) they will become the source of exploitation and dominance. During the
natural process of pregnancy and birth, a woman’s body will be uncomfortable for her. Nahum Sarna
points out that only women, of all the mammals, suffer during childbirth, apparently due to the large
human head which has grown larger as the brain evolves. This unique fact gives rise to an ethical
explanation in the Bible. Men’s bodily needs also make them slaves to the earth from which they
came and force them to do harsh labor.
4) Estrangement from the Land
Agricultural work (growing grains and vegetables) is difficult especially when compared to tending the
Garden of Eden with its fruit orchards. More than this, the soil is not always cooperative as it will also
grow thistles and thorns. Additionally, man is now conscious of the fact that the eternal estrangement
from and struggle with the earth is ironic in that he will once again be reunited with the soil upon death
(“and to the dust you shall return”). Their names “Man” and “Woman” which had emphasized union
into one flesh, were changed for the names “Adam” and “Eve” which highlight their roles in the war
of survival: “Adam” who works the soil (adama) and “Eve” (chava) who gives birth, is the mother of
all life (chayim). Both of them toil in pain (“with pains ( )עצבונךshall you bear children”; “with
painstaking-labor ( )בעצבוןshall you eat from it, all the days of your life” Genesis 3:16-17).
Act 4: Partial Reconciliation and New Arrangements Following the Expulsion from the Garden
of Eden—Genesis 3:20-24
In this chilling picture of rebelliousness against God, one can illuminate two points of light stemming
from the relation of God and the reaction of the humans. Before God had expelled the couple from
Eden, “coats of skin” were fashioned by God and bestowed upon them in order to cover their shame.
(It is worth noting that in the story of Cain, God, being compassionate and wishing to soften the
judgement of exile which Cain must suffer, also bestows something--in this case, a mark on Cain’s
forehead--in order to protect the him). The clothing of skin is more suitable than the clothing of leaves
Adam and Eve had sown for themselves, and indicates an advancement in technology. One can also
The expression “estrangement from the body” is taken from Phyllis Trible’s language which is influenced by the
Christian tradition of Original Sin which creates a significant distance between people and their bodies. In any event, in
the Bible such “estrangement” does not express a metaphysical opposition between one’s body and soul.
43
discern in them a symbolically ironic punishment for animals in general, and for the serpent, in
particular (who sheds its skin) in that such a covering allows people to hide beneath their skin.
The Man somewhat overcomes his alienation from his wife and discovers that she is still his “help
mate”. She can still redeem him to a certain extent from the punishment of death (“until you return to
the soil, for from it you were taken. For you are dust, and to dust shall you return” (Genesis 3:19)). The
Woman can be used as a substitute “tree of life” in place of the one found in the Garden to which they
are forbidden to approach due to their transgression. Therefore, he bestows upon her a new and
honorable name: “Chava/Life-Giver! For she became the mother of all the living” instead of the name
“woman” which indicated their spiritual union. Indeed, immediately following their expulsion for
Eden, their first son, Cain, was born who helped his father in the cursed work of agriculture (“Cain
worked the soil”) and thus lightened, a little, the punishment and guaranteed for the Man genetic
continuity.
In accord with this line of thinking, the modern commentator Arnold Ehrlich suggests an interesting
reading of Eve’s words: “I have gained a male child with the help of God” (Genesis 4:1). In his opinion,
Eve feels remorseful of her deeds and so structured her life and that of her son, Cain, in a
reconciliatory way towards her husband and God.
“I obtained a man and God” (Genesis 4:1). No place in the bible is a one day old child called “a man”.
Therefore I say, that the man here is “my man” (husband), that means Adam. For after all that befell
Adam on account of Eve, the events of the tree of knowledge incident stood between them like a Satan
and so Adam’s heart was not open to his wife as it once was… When a male first born was born to
Eve, she said: “I have obtained my (husband) man’s heart” for from now on he will relate to me as
before. The “new mother” is dear to her hsuband (as Leah said after the birth of Reuven: “Now my
man will love me”. Eve also said “I have obtained God” for the birth was a sign that her sin had been
forgiven” (Arnold Ehrlich, )מקרא כפשוטו
Yet the reconciliation, according to this interpretation, is one sided. The woman takes responsibility
for the man’s transgression. However, the man never develops a sense of moral responsibility for
what happened. Complete reconciliation requires mutual accountability, as well as the effort to learn
from the mistake of eating from the tree of good and evil.
Dr. Jo Milgrom explains that his dominion over his wife, which is emphasized in the words: “he shall rule over you,”
is undermined when Man learns that “he shall return to the dust”. The Man cannot be too prideful when he knows that
his true nature comes from dust and that he will die. It is precisely through his wife that the mortal man can overcome
death and merit eternality via Eve “the mother of all life”.
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D. Conclusion: Was Eating from the Tree of Good and Evil Beneficial or Detrimental?
According to Phyllis Trible the Garden of Eden story is one in which people take their first lonely
steps toward love, retreat back into separation and alienation, and finally arrive at partial
reconciliation. In the opinion of a different scholar, Joel Rosenberg, this story describes the path or
cycles of all people in every generation. One is born to biological parents (in the Torah this role is at
first filled by God and the earth) and one lives in a warm and comfortable home (the Garden of Eden)
if not somewhat confining (prohibition against eating from certain trees). This person leaves his/her
parents in order to find a suitable mate and to overcome loneliness. This process of alienation,
searching, and finding love takes place during puberty. Yet during this ideal period of “becoming one
flesh” one struggles with passions, testing of boundaries, only to end in feelings of alienation and
mutual guilt leading to a type of expulsion. Feelings of trust between the couple change into feelings
of suspicion; equality is subverted into a stuggle for dominance, and openness turns to defensiveness.
In the end, people become conscious of impending death. The cycle of life begins by bursting forth
from the earth with a thunderous creative blast, yet concludes in a muffled, humbled voice as one is
laid to rest again in the soil: “For you are dust, and to dust shall you return” (Genesis 3:19). According
to these two interpretations, the story of Eden is sad and even tragic.
One could see this story of Eden as a story of “Paradise Lost”. From this story springs our longing for
simplicity, and with great pain and alienation, we yearn for completion. In the Garden of Eden one
could live in mutual trust which has since been replaced by suspicion. It was a place of innocence and
purity, while we live in the real world of “For as wisdom grows, pain and vexation grow; To increase
knowledge is to increase heartache” (Ecclesiastes 1:18). In that world there was unity, in ours alienation.
On the other hand, one can read this story in a more optimistic light. One could interpret this story as
does the Jewish psychologist, Erich Fromm, as a model of the painful process of sobriety and
maturation which culminates in critical self awareness and consciousness of our mortality. Following
this, we can build our lives—not innocently, but more honestly. Our lives will have progressed and
developed precisely because of this necessary process of expulsion. Coming forth from the womb we
leave innocence behind and face good and evil. All expulsions and separations are painful, yet they
open up new horizons. Leaving the Garden of Eden means leaving eternity and living in the here and
now with the clock ticking. Consciousness of death changes each moment into a valuable one and
forces us to be active in our world. Maturation is strewn with pain, yet knowledge and self awareness
compensate for the pain. The Garden of Eden is a limited, suffocating, and confining place thus
leaving it is liberating. Eden is the place of childhood dependencies while the necessary and desirable
exit from Eden is the choice to be autonomous.
STUDY EXERCISE: Would you prefer to remain in the Garden of Eden?
Choose a symbol for the Garden of Eden and a symbol for its opposite. Which is better in your
eyes? For example, Eden might be life on some beautiful tropical island, while its opposite would
be life in the bustling, dangerous city. Or contrast living an eternally protected childhood amongst
family compared with discovering unknown worlds in far flung places. Which is preferable? Is
Eden’s opposite hell, or simply progress and maturity?
45
Chapter III - Modern Literary Midrashim
46
A. Nessa Rappaport, “Generation”-The Garden from his perspective and from hers.
Used with permission of the author. Originally published as “Generation” in Gates of the New City,
edited by Howard Schwartz, NY, Avon: 1983. © 1997, Nessa Rappaport. All rights reserved.
When Adam saw the world through the eyes of God he knew that it was good. The rivers flowed
according to their way, the earth was flowering, and the sky was suspended over it all, like a breath.
It was a time of great wonder, when Adam looked at the created things. He saw the birds of the air
flying, and the beasts of thc field asleep. He saw vines, roots, stems, petals, trunks, and leaves. And
seas, lakes, rivers, falls, oceans, pools, and streams. He saw each perfect in its state, and so would
always be.
Adam, sprung from the earth of the world, locked his feet to the land. And when Eve was taken
from him to be given, he thought she had always been. But she, born in separateness, saw how
becomings were hidden in their present skins, as she, in him. She knew that the fruit contained the
seed and that only the falling away of flesh brings its release. This was the way of things to Eve, and
the grass that stood in stillness for Adam flickered for her like a snake.
Adam, the world is good, she said. Tide and wind, moon swollen, then thin, the seas rise to rain to
ripen the fruit, and look, we are part of the changing.
Don't change, Adam cried, but Eve wove her arm as she'd seen the grass move, undulating,
beautiful, and Adam watched the leaves part and the fruit plucked in her hand.
Good, she said, her cheeks flushed with sweetness, the syrup staining her mouth. And Adam saw
the white fruit flesh broken around the red skin. He saw Eve's belly swelled by the fruit, and
everything opened. And he looked at Eve and felt in her the girl she had been, and watched her
stomach rise and fall with the children she would bear for him. Her face distended by fruit became
the old woman she would be, and the span of the world burst into space. All he could do was
choose to be part of it or be chosen to be. And so he stretched out a trembling hand, and said: I am
a man. Let me eat.
B. Peter Pitzele, A conversation in the Garden by way of bibliodrama
from his book Our Fathers’ Wells, Harper, S.F. 1995.
In the biblical myth, rupture begins with the entrance of God-the-Father. The words God speaks to
Adam change the relationship between them.
Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but as for the tree of knowledge of good and bad,
you must not eat; for on the day you eat of it you shall surely die. (2:15)
These words change the relationship between Creator and His human creature. In these few
words the Father divides what had only a moment before been whole. Now one of the trees, in the
very midst of the garden, unavoidably evident, is off limits. By a single utterance the Father has
created The Forbidden. This Forbidden is linked with something called knowledge, for we now
learn there are things we are not to learn, knowledge we are not to know. To accept the Father's
limits is to remain with some part of the world unexplored. And we have to constrain ourselves. No
fence, no demon, no insurmountable obstacle guards the tree; something in us must resist what
something else in us is inevitably drawn toward. This internal tension is amplified. If we want to
understand why we are to resist the tree, we can do so only by partaking of it. The knowledge we
would gain would then be its own undoing, for "as soon as [we] eat, [we] shall die."
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In the establishment of the two zones--the permitted and the forbidden--freedom is created
and, its twin brother, choice. How often in psychodramas have I heard Adam ask, "If this God
wished us never to taste the knowledge of good and bad, then why plant the tree in the garden? And
if it must be planted, then why put it right there in the middle? Is it a test? A temptation?" Adam's
uncertainty tells us that Eden is no longer an easy place. Paradise is, if not yet lost, already ending.
This moment of parental prohibition is also the birth of Adam's independent and secret
desires. Still impotent to defy, the thought of defiance as I saw in the psychodrama first flickers.
Though able to range free in his garden, Adam has his first sense of confinement. This myth of
prohibition calls to mind all the things in our childhood we were forbidden to play with, like
matches, which beckoned us with their hot magic the shotgun in the den, pictures we were not to
see, places where we could not, should not, go. Yet prohibition could not smother the desire; on the
contrary, it engendered it.
In the history and imagery of Western culture, men have defied the prohibited whatever the
consequences. This is the tale of Faust, who sells his soul to the devil for the fullest possible range
of human knowledge and experience. He would be the one to whom nothing was forbidden.
Knowledge in the Greek myth is fire stolen from the gods by Prometheus; it is a theft followed by a
dire and lonely punishment. Men and women, in literature and life, create a psychodrama of choice.
On the one hand, we would obey the Father, law, tradition; in that obedience, we are dutiful; we rein
in our appetites, our curiosities, our promiscuities; we restrain ourselves from experiencing
whatever we can propose to ourselves to experience. In this restraint we remain within proscribed
boundaries, secure, stable, successful in the paternal embrace. On the other hand, we are driven to
venture into excess, into knowledge and experience and power. That venturing may mean the loss of
our security and may bring--according to Genesis must bring--pain to others and ourselves. But this
counterenergy is also part of patriarchy, this movement to shatter the work of the father and to begin
anew. Feminism, paradoxically, has tapped into this very energy in our own time.
At this exact moment God provides Adam with a partner at last.
The Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and He took one of his ribs, and
closed up the flesh there. And from the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, He made a
woman, and He brought her to the man.
And Adam said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of man. Therefore a man shall leave his
father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be one flesh... And they were both
naked, the man and his wife, and they were not ashamed. (2: 21-25)
With this fanciful fable of the creation of woman it is obvious that we are in the realm of
myth rather than biology. And a male myth at that, for it is inconceivable that women would have
published so distorted a version of origins. Here the story reverses the "natural order": Woman is
"taken out" of man, rather than man taken out of woman.
So patent is the nonsense, so preposterous the story, that it cries out for interpretation. Is this
fable patriarchy's desperate gambit to establish its supremacy? Or is there some sense in which man
does create woman? Perhaps, says this ticklish tale, she is the first of our many fictions, the most
enduring and the most powerful. We cannot fully tolerate her separateness, her independence or her
power. She is always our projection. We leave father and mother to cleave to her; we become one
flesh with her.
So the myth proposes, but is this the case? If so, the cleaving is brief. It seems an anodyne to
soothe us in the face of a deeper reality: We are separate and alone. If there was a time when we
were one with her, it exists in that first dimension of fantasy and memory, the season when we were
in love, in utero, in early paradise. Then, for a brief season, we did not feel alone, and we felt no
shame.
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As if to underline the brevity of this idyll, the patriarchal imagination immediately
introduces a new element into the story. Behold, articulate and savvy, a serpent glides in. Whatever
it represents, it is the thing-in-life that breaks the spell of Eden, ends innocence, initiates change.
The serpent pulls us out of the first universe and initiates us into the second. Tempter and teacher,
his scales are tiny mirrors in which we can see the glint of our own desires. The scene of the serpent
and Eve before the tree of knowledge is an irresistible idea for a psychodrama.
***
We have no way of estimating the time that passes between the last verses of chapter 2-which tells of the marriage of man and woman, as they become "one flesh," naked and unashamed-and the appearance of the serpent on the scene at the beginning of chapter 3. It may be a very long
time, but textually it is the next moment. No sooner is there oneness--a moment of perfection--than
a principle of divorce and change, embodied in a serpent, breaks the harmony back into instability.
Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he
said to the woman, "Has God really said that you should not
eat of every tree in the garden?”
And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat the fruit of the trees in the garden; but the fruit of
the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said,
‘You shall not eat it or touch it, lest you die.’”
And the serpent said to the woman, "You shall not die. For God knows that on the day you eat of
this tree your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be like the gods, knowing good and evil.''
When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a
tree to be desired to make one wise, she took the fruit from it and ate,
and gave also to her husband, and he ate. And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew
they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. (3:l-7)
When I have elaborated the dialogue between Eve and the serpent into a psychodrama, I
have been amazed at the charge of energy the serpent releases in individuals and in the group. Most
often I follow the gender suggestion in Genesis and give the serpent's part to men. I provide some
guided images for warm-up and lead some simple movement exercises to slide men into the role. I
often play some snake charmer's music in the background. It doesn't take much. Men find the
serpent in themselves pretty quickly.
Playing the serpent seems to license an energy at once bawdy, clever, contentious, seductive,
verbal, and erotic. Men slink and sidle, oiling their suavity and bringing certain hooded insight into
their glances, captivating and dangerous. Something graceful, dancerlike, comes out in men,
androgynous and charismatic, full of style. I see a tricksterish masculinity, neither bold nor direct,
but pliant and guileful. As men we seem to know this serpent and to personify him, we tap into a
part of us that is quicksilver, fluid, adaptive, patient, and utterly intent on getting what it wants. All
and any means justify our ends. We find in ourselves the power to entrance, to fascinate, to play.
The serpent is the power of our cunning, ruthlessness assuming any disguise to achieve its end. In
one of his forms, the serpent is imagination itself, unbound from moral strictures and coiled around
its own satisfaction. It is the personification of desire.
For the playing of this pas de deux I pair the serpent and Eve. My assignment to them is simple:
create the relationship. In the end, I remind the serpent, you find just what it takes to turn the trick.
And in the end, I remind Eve, you give in. Then the pairs go off to make their midrash in action. I
49
watch, the only audience they have, as the serpent probes for weaknesses and Eve's resistance melts
under his suasion.
Here is a fragment of one duet.
"Must be pretty boring in this garden."
"No, not really. And besides I have Adam."
"Yes, right, Adam. . . . By the way, where is Adam?"
"Oh, I don't know . . . off somewhere."
"Talking to God?"
"Yes; quite possibly, talking to God. They talk often."
"God ever talk to you?"
"No. Adam tells me everything"
"Everything?"
"Of course. Adam and I are one. What he knows I know. What he feels I feel. His God is my
God."
"You are very trusting."
"This is the garden. What's not to trust?"
"You are quite right. Everything here is to be trusted. Me, for instance."
"I trust you."
"And you can talk to me."
"Yes, you are the only other creature I can actually speak with. How amazing."
"I am like Adam in that way. I am also like God, for God, too speaks.”
"Are you a God?"
"I know what God knows."
"Really?"
”I know about this tree, for example."
”We are not supposed to touch that tree; we'll die if we do."
"Do I look dead to you?"
“No. Not at all. You're quite alive."
"You like my scales, I see; you like the way they flash."
"Really quite amazing and beautiful."
"And this tree? Quite beautiful also, no?"
"Yes”
“This is the tree, Eve."
"I know."
"Ah, you know . . . but you do not really know. Someday, Eve, you will taste the fruit of this
tree."
"No, never.”
"Never…ah, Eve, what a long time is never. No, my only friend, you will come back here
many times, and each time you come you will linger a little longer. For when you have explored
every aspect of the garden and every pleasure with Adam, only this tree will remain a mystery. In
time it will seem to you the garden is a prison and Adam not a helpmate but an inmate with you.
The enclosure of its green hills will shrink in upon you. Then, sometime in that endless ‘never’ you
so blithely consign yourself to, you will come to this tree; and it will seem the only doorway for
escape.”
"Why me? Why not Adam?"
"Because, Eve, you have a hunger for power and wisdom. It's the hunger of the denied."
"I don't understand.”
"You have been told you were created from Adam's rib, right? Well, count his ribs. He has
the same number as you. Yet he and his God have made up this fib about the rib. Why? Adam talks
to God, but God doesn't talk to you. Why? I tell you, Eve, a time will come when all this fibbing and
ribbing will begin to rub you the wrong way."
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"Never."
"When that time comes, you will feel desire. Your own desire for wisdom and knowledge,
for truth. It will be different from your desire for Adam. It will become a desire for this fruit, and for
the fruit of this fruit which is understanding. You will want what I have."
"Never."
“You will want to act. You will want your freedom."
“Never."
“Never is a long time, Eve. Too long for a creature who can dream. Too long to dream
without acting. One day, in that endless never, you will act.”
“Never." But the word has no force or conviction.
The group reassembles from their various duets to share their experiences.
And of hers this Eve spoke: "With the serpent there was a touch of humor; Adam is always
so serious. There was flattery, too, but subtle. Talking with this serpent was like looking in a mirror
that made me feel alive in a different way. It was as if the serpent was the birth of my selfawareness, and that birth was going to lead inevitably to something else. I was an independent
being.
"God knows I tried to resist, but the more I resisted, the less I liked myself. I began to feel
that ‘never’ was a death sentence. And the truth is, I loved the serpent. I fell for him in a second, and
some part of me knew I was going to eat the apple before he said two words. I just wanted to draw
the whole thing out. The foreplay is always the most fun.
"And you know, the serpent was right. When he went away after our first meeting, I felt a
loss. He was clever, but he was also right, and I knew that life in the garden would inevitably bore
me, and that inevitably I would cry out for change. In fact, in the garden aspect of my life, I could
never be fulfilled. When I understood that there was something more, and that the only way toward
it was to eat the fruit, I took it. In fear and excitement I ate it."
"What spoke to me as a woman, as Eve," said another woman, "was the promise of
knowledge. Knowledge is power in the world of men. I wasn't seduced by the serpent; I hardly
needed her invitation. In my bones I knew the apple would make me fully man's equal, coresponsible for all of life. Once I wanted that, the serpent was irrelevant."
***
"Tell me about yourself," I say to the serpent-players. “Who are you?"
"I am another side of Adam. Jekyll and Hyde. I am what he has repressed and hidden from Eve."
"I am the part of Adam that Eve doesn't want to see. I scare her. But she loves me. I am all
that lust and fantasy that gets all mingled up with making babies. I am that knowledge. I am the
head of the penis."
"Another part of Adam! Hell, I'm the underside of God. I come from Him. Where is He
when I am seducing Eve? Gone fishing? No, I twist, I turn,
one face is God the Father, another face is me, forked-tongue and slippery. The Big Old Father's
going to get real mad. Going to repress me. Drive me down into the dust. Big Old Father hates me,
going to give me a bad name. Fuck him. I'm part of Him, part of you, and I' m going to be around
and around and around a long time."
"I am another part of Eve--her bravery, her defiance, her aspiration."
"I can sustain this energy for only a while, but as long as I have it, I can really get my way. I
seem to have immense powers to manipulate a woman. I don't think there's any way I could have
played this serpent to Adam. But across the genders, wow. I need more of this serpent energy in my
everyday life. It's dangerous, but it's powerful."
In this patriarchal fantasy of beginnings there must be a serpent. It brings into the innocence
of childhood the first stirrings of sexuality. It mixes into the milk of nature a potion of desire. It
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sounds the call of futurity, hinting at what has not yet happened but what may be imagined to
happen. And as futurity it is irresistible. Wild, smooth, deceptive, naked, unashamed, and brave:
There must be some symbol here at the very beginning to represent a power in the soul, of
indeterminable moral status, that rises in defiance of authority and has a mind of its own. The
serpent is utterly different from the principle of cosmic order and intelligence that fashioned
Creation. It is low, contrary, and disordering, yet given the monotheism of the myth, serpent-mind
must be a side of God-mind. It is the wildness in creation that does not itself obey the ostensible
rules. It is the chink of chance; the joker of change; the fly in the ointment. The serpent is
Deception, Conception's shadow side. It rises from--perhaps is a symbol for--the unconscious of
God.
The serpent is patriarchy's own skepticism questioning the justice and the omnipotence of
God. It generates moral complexity and ambivalence. The serpent is the mythic figure through
which patriarchy is forced to wrestle with the nature of its freedom, its relative values, divided
loyalties, difficult choices. The serpent is human imagination liberated, free of fear and moral
considerations; it is the force in us that can question and defy the Almighty. This heretical
imagination always threatens to disrupt the garden idyll. If the serpent ultimately serves a divine
providence, it seems in the moment like a betrayer of that providence. Its lure is toward
disobedience; it seems to promise freedom and individuality; and it would take supreme foresight
and wisdom to recognize that such ends are empty in themselves unless put to the service of some
further purpose.
The serpent is surely an image of an assertiveness that may be cast in
gender but is not bound by it. This serpent is gnosis; it proposes a radical version, or inversion, of
the truth. It seems in fact to have tasted of the very thing the human being is forbidden to taste. It
knows. It beguiles Eve not to trust the authority of God. It is the first to suggest that what man and
woman have been told is a lie. There is a motive hidden in the prohibition. Serpent-mind quickens a
questioning consciousness. Serpent-mind represents a force that would test authority and challenge
the order of things, push the human creature toward independence, loneliness, will, and the
experience of freedom. It will end the life of "one flesh."
As an agent of desire and curiosity, the serpent ends childhood; it initiates us into new
perceptions. "Their eyes were opened": Something has been learned in this initiation. "And they
were ashamed": They cover their loins. Here in this yoking of sex and seeing and shame, the myth
lays the foundation for a tragic version of sexuality and embodiment.
Countless commentators have seen Eve as weak, too easily preyed upon by the sly reptile,
and therefore responsible for humanity's loss of Eden. Male Puritanism, orthodoxy, and
fundamentalism in all their forms are pervaded by misogyny; they find in this ancient myth a proof
text for the inherent fallibility of women, their inferiority, their alliance to earth, to promiscuity, to
sexuality. Women are a danger to a man's resolve to maintain his edenic alliance with God.
Repudiate Eve, they say; repudiate the feminine in the world and in ourselves; repudiate sexuality;
repudiate the body. This ugly dogma has served various masculine priesthoods in the repression of
not only sexuality and the female, but of the serpent-mind with its challenging, antiauthoritarian,
gnostic imagination.
In the story itself, however, there is no blame. Blame is someone else's midrash. "Blame
me!" one Eve expostulates. "Ain't that a gas. I tell you, Adam
walked around that tree so many times he wore down a path. Looking at the tree. Thinking about the
tree. Obsessed with it. ‘Should I or shouldn't I?' he asks himself. All night long I lie beside him, and
he's thinking about that tree. But he hasn't got the guts to take it. I say to him, ‘Go on, Adam, take it.
I'll stick by you.' But no, he can't. He won't. He's afraid of God.
"And I tell you, I start to hate this God. I admit it. First of all, I'm a second-class citizen here
in Eden. God don't talk to me. Second, I got this itch deep in my body. It's not a sex itch, it's another
kind of itch--a knowledge itch. I want to know. And right after I ate that apple--before I took it to
Adam--I had my first period. That's right, blood, my blood, in Eden. Adam worshiping God like He
was the sun in the sky; but I tell you, the apple came from the moon. It did. Then I knew that the
52
itch deep inside me was about something that could grow from me, about becoming the source of
life. Serpent told me that. Serpent knew that about me. Yes, she did. You heard me right. That
serpent was female, like me, and like a sister, she knew what I needed: God kept me away from
motherhood . What does this God know about mothers? I ask you.
“So blame me . . . hell, you oughta thank me. You want to spend the rest of your days down
on the farm? Come on, get real. We got a mind, we got
freedom, so let's use it. What good is it unless we exercise it? Hell yes, I ate that apple. Do it again
in a minute. Wouldn't you?"
Now I flip the gender drama of serpent and woman. Eve, I explain, now you have the apple. Now,
Adam, she brings it to you and, in the end, you eat it. The shoe is on the other foot, so to speak; the
masculine pursuer is now the pursued; the seducer is seduced. Again participants break into pairs.
"Adam, would you ever leave me?" Eve holds the apple behind her.
"Never. Leave you for what, for whom? We're here in this garden forever.”
"But, I mean, let's suppose."
"’Let's suppose . . .' Eve, that's a strange way of talking. I'm not even sure I know what you mean."
"Let's suppose means . . . well, let's say you had to choose between . . . "
"But, Eve, there is no choice."
"But, honey, we were created with freedom. You told me that. So that means we can choose."
"Well, theoretically, but actually there's nothing to choose."
"Except the tree and the fruit."
"Eve!"
"I mean, all choice isn't just theoretical. We have some actual choices, and we can make up these
theoretical situations."
"I suppose so, but what's the point?"
“The point is to find out how much you love me."
"I love you, Eve. You are everything to me."
"What about God?"
"Well, God is my everything, our everything, but . . . "
"I'm everything else."
"Yes . . . everything else. Everything human; that is like me, that I can relate to, enjoy things with,
talk with, understand, and be understood by."
"And, you'd never leave me."
"Never."
“If you had to choose, who would you choose, me or God?"
"Eve, that's impossible. There could never be a choice like that."
"But just suppose . . ."
"I won't suppose. It's too painful to suppose. It's not possible."
"In other words, you'd choose God. You'd choose God; you'd go off with God, and you’d leave me."
“For God's sake, Eve, I'm . . . No, not for God's sake. You're making me very confused. Listen, I'm
not going to leave you. You're like me. God is . . . well . . . God is different. I don't understand God
the way I understand you. I can't, you know, enjoy God the way I can enjoy you. We're in this
together. We're one, Eve, you know that, inseparable."
"Really?"
"Really "
"Prove it to me."
"How can I prove it to you? But it's true; I mean it."
"Suppose I could think of a way of proving it. Would you do it? To show me how much you love
me and that you would never leave me? Would you?"
"Eve, I would do anything for you."
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"Well, Adam, this morning I was out by the tree, and, well . . . will you eat this with me. I already
have . . .”
This is only one scenario. Other Eves speak of their scenes with Adam when we debrief.
"I hated playing Eve. I hated feeling like I was manipulating Adam."
"I approached Adam absolutely straightforwardly. I told him what I had done and why. He
was furious with me, and I knew he would be and I didn't care. He stomped off. I waited. I knew he
would come back, and I knew in the end he would eat. And he did."
"When I came to Adam, I felt suddenly like he was a little boy. Just like the serpent had said.
God was the Father and Adam the dutiful son, and I just . . . I didn't feel any respect for him. He
asked me where I'd been. I told him what I had done. He was all shocked, and I didn't care. He was a
little boy, all worried about what Daddy would say or do. I told him the serpent was my companion
now. She and I were sisters. I didn't say it to make him jealous; I'd graduated. He went to the tree
and tore an apple down for himself. He came to me that night . . . and oh, what a night we had!"
"Adam actually thanked me for taking it. He did. He realized he hadn't had the courage, but
he had been dying to try it."
"I felt really frightened when I came to Adam. I didn't manipulate him. I just felt scared, and
it showed. I could see it affected him, and I could see how much he cared about me, and I wanted
him. And this is funny--I didn't want him to eat. I did and I didn't, and he could see that. He ate to be
with me, and I felt more 'one flesh' after we ate than before, because now he had chosen me, really
chosen me. And it mattered."
A wild and liberating collaboration clearly takes place in this tale between man, woman, and
serpent. It involves ideas of sexuality, knowledge, love, and freedom. Moreover, their loss of
innocence, however grievous, is also their initiation into that second universe we recognize as our
reality. Here come time, discord, death to limit life, but here also come freedom, choice, and desire,
which create a human history in which we exercise our powers to create our own world.
In fact, the first result of this change of state in Adam and Eve is their setting about together
in the first act of handicraft.
And they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. (3:7)
In sewing coverings for themselves, they set in motion all those crafts and arts by which men
and women make and furnish a world. Artifice and covering--and by extension the entire human
capacity to fabricate, in both the literal and figurative sense--is brought into being from this single
encounter with the serpent. This myth of loss is, from another point of view, the myth of the birth of
human creativity. That power, which until this moment resided in the Great Father alone, now
passes to the children; and they are children no longer.
With their act of disobedience, men and women enter history. They are "driven" from the
garden, judged and punished by their Creator. Perhaps the greatest curse is not their expulsion but
the fixing of gender roles by God in so enduring a form. He imposes on them not just a future but a
fate. Even to our day the shackles of this curse abide.
Unto woman God said, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow in thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt
bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” And to
Adam he said, “Because you listened to the voice of woman, and have eaten from the tree which I
commanded you, saying, 'Thou shalt not eat of it; cursed is the ground for your sake; in sorrow will
you eat of it all the days of your life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee. . . . In the
sweat of your brow shall you eat bread til thou return to the ground; for dust you are and to dust
you shall return." And Adam called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all life. (3:
l6-20)
I once played the simplest psychodramatic coda on this moment of their final loss and
change. I put men and women back into partners. After reading them the passage, I invited each
54
man to look into the eyes of his partner and simply say, in his own time: "Eve, you are the mother of
all life." I asked each woman receiving the name to hear the tone in which Adam spoke.
"Eve, you are the mother of all life."
"I hear your awe."
“Eve, you are the mother of all life."
"I hear your envy."
"Eve; you are the mother of all life."
"I hear your bitterness."
"Eve, you are the mother of all life."
"I hear your loneliness.'
In naming her, Adam makes her Other. He names but cannot claim her. All his tones of
address speak of a distance between them. In the world after Eden she is the mother of all life, but
who is he?
***
The myth of Eden and its loss has the status of a paradigm. In it the patriarchal imagination
organizes time into epochs. History mimics myth; we imagine golden ages and dark ages, ages of
enlightenment and ages of alienation. According to the patriarchal imagination of history, the past is
seen as a time closer to wholeness and revelation, and the present as a wilderness and an exile. But
this fable of the garden and its loss may also be understood in the light of more contemporary
theories about gender psychology. Eden and exile can be seen also as a paradigm for the
development of male infants into boys.
This perspective addresses the question: What does it mean for a boy-child to have been
born out of the womb of a woman and what is it like for him to realize at a certain age that he must
leave her? In this separation dawns the realization of male otherness; however dim and gradual this
knowledge, it becomes a cardinal fact of life. As small boys we awaken to the fact and the fate of
gender; it comes with our sense of identity. We see the serpent, and it speaks to us. It is our
sexuality and the sign of our exclusion from the person in all the world we are closest to, who is the
most powerful and precious to us, whose warmth and touch are life itself, whose rebuke is as
terrible as death. This one--in our small eyes she is the Great Mother--is also woman, and we can
never be like her.
The knowledge of otherness, like a kind of primary rejection, sends us into the company of
boys and men, among whom we seek to establish an identity, surrogate bonds, symbolic
connections, experiences of connectedness. We turn toward the father. In the loss of our identity
with the mother may lie the seeds of misogyny, for our loss feels like an unjust rejection, a
deprivation for which we--like Adam--were never fully responsible. This loss wasn't what we
wanted. It came about through some business between the woman and the serpent.
On the level of gender this is one of the many meanings of the Garden of Eden story. Eden is
a metaphor for the time we were enfolded by an abundant, sustaining, maternal nature--before time,
before words, before the knowledge of twoness, before we suspected any difference between male
and female, before the appearance of Eve, before the serpent. This was the time of our first universe,
when we lived in the long Sabbath morning of the seventh day. The Father had not yet appeared. He
had not yet spoken. He had not yet divided us from ourselves and sent us, divided, out to search for
Him, to forge our bonds, and to know ourselves as sons.
By comparison the daughters of Eve have available to them the unbroken continuity of an
identity as female. That identity--that sense of sameness--issues from the mother and survives all
their life in their womanhood. Daughters need never leave the feminine; they cannot. Within its vast
realm of roles and powers they find their place in a sisterhood with all women. This sense of
identity is given; it cannot be taken away. In a certain sense the daughter remains in the garden.
I remember a Sunday in May when my daughter, then thirteen, and I had just come back
from swimming at the local Y. She had gone into the house, and I had taken up the paper and was
55
sitting outside in the friendly sunshine of spring. I heard the front door open, but because I was
engrossed in what I was reading, it took me a moment to realize that she had come to stand in front
of me, quietly waiting for my attention. I looked up. I can still see her, with her arms at her sides,
her hands lightly clasped in front of her. "Dad," she said to me, "I'm having my first period." I began
to weep.
In that moment I had a kind of waking vision. It seemed I saw crowded on that empty lawn a
great host of spirit-women; they were holding their arms out to her; and they were calling her into
their company. They nodded to her. I seemed to see her gathered in to an immemorial sisterhood,
fertile, planetary, ancient. My heart was lifted up for her as if in this moment I had seen her
crowned. I wept because she trusted to tell me, because she was in that instant precious and in her
dawn, and I wept because she was already disappearing, leaving me; leaving childhood. I watched
her go, even as she stood still before me, poised, watching my tears, coming over to, yes, comfort
me. "Daddy," she said, "Daddy," and I felt my daughter was holding me as if I were her child.
Years later now, having fathered a son and watched him careen through his early
adolescence, noting the appearance under his bed of Playboy and other carnal pamphlets, seeing his
jaw lengthen and hearing his voice shift, I am struck by the difference, for him and for me, of this
coming of age. He, too, leaves me, but it seems to me that he enters into his adolescence as into a
great loneliness, a wilderness full of mind-and-world demons. He withdraws into a silence in which
I cannot reach him. No company of men, no universal brotherhood awaits him. Biology, already
private and focused in his privates, holds no special promises for him. For him there will be no
accords with the moon or the tides. Gender is the thinnest reed of identity for him to lean on. When
he looks inside for images of manhood, what does he see? A welter of contradictions.
And me, his father, what can he make of me? He knows I love him, but he
knows in his bones--we both do--how different we are and that the world I have made for myself
will not be his world . We are gender companions, but we are strangers. The distances that hang
between us seem fixed. The odd awkwardnesses and silences remind us that we are bound and
apart. And at the very moment he enters his biological manhood, the need to separate himself from
me begins to assert itself. There has been too little time and too few occasions to develop a
language, words, and activities within which to explore who we are together. I have hardly said
hello to him when I am saying my good-byes.
These conceptions of gender difference parallel certain masculine speculations. Somewhere
in the depths of man's old reptilian brain, far below the
threshold of memory, are lodged scenes from the time before we knew that
our seed was necessary to human birth. In that cave time there was as yet no Great Father to dignify
our creative life. We had not yet conceived of Him conceiving us: Then woman was the central
mystery. Magically she grew round and burst blood and life spilled from her as she thrashed and
cried, surrounded by her sisters. Her breasts were full of milk, and every child born to her, male and
female, depended on her for life. She was the holy of holies. The place in her we entered for our
brief ecstasy was the same place where new life came spilling into the world. We feared and revered
her, and somewhere in that cave of ourselves we still sit eying her in terror and awe. We still feel the
extent of our insignificance. Our powerlessness. She is forever Eve, the "mother of all life." What
can we be to her? Out of that primate cave we begin to hatch our ambivalent romanticism about her,
our desire to serve and subdue her, our wonder and our rage.
In my personal history with women--starting with my mother, stepmother, girls and
girlfriends, wives, colleagues, therapists, and women whom I have taken as “sisters"--I see the
strange patterns of my distance and pursuit, my longing and mistrust. Only relatively recently, as I
sat with my wife, Susan, in a state of unusual openness, did I realize with a rending astonishment
that I carried in my bones some deep sense that she was my enemy. Yet my heart knew, my
experience told me, that this was not true about her. How ancient and hidden had been that fear and
guardedness. It went back not only to my sense of abandonment when I was eleven and my mother
left me to go to California. It went back into the years of my small furies at my mother and my
fascination with and dread of my dad. And earlier still, it may go back to the dimmest memories I
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have of a darkened room, bad smells, crib bars, and the head-filling, body-wracking sound of my
own cries. I am screaming, "Maaameee!" and my mother does not come. Perhaps, in this Myth of
the Lost Garden, patriarchy reflects those early and inevitable experiences of a separation felt as
loss.
Here again the ultimate myopia of gender knowledge presents itself. My daughter, reading
my account in these pages, protests that I romanticize women. "Dad," she says to me, "you are
choosing to imagine something we don't necessarily feel. I think women can feel as lonely, isolated,
and exiled--to use your words--as men. Maybe that's part of why women have accepted these
patriarchal myths; they mean something to us, too."
Perhaps she is right; I don't know. Is gender incidental or essential? Am I, in the end,
projecting my own anomie first, on all men in my culture and then back into these old myths? Or am
I letting these old myths tell me something about what they think it means to be a man? I don't
know, and I can never know in this blind alley of gender speculation. What I do know is that even in
its ending, the Myth of the Lost Garden hints that this is, uniquely, a man's story and a man's fate.
A sense of loss and loneliness fills the ending of the garden story as the human exiles go forth into a
world of pain and death, cursed to toil and to suffer childbirth. We are told that man, even in his
exile with woman, is still alone.
Therefore the Lord God (Adonai Elohim) sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground
whence he was taken. So He drove out the man; and He placed at the east of the garden of Eden
cherubim and flaming sword to guard the way to the tree of life. (3:23-24)
Only Adam is mentioned in the expulsion. From what follows we know that Eve has left
with him. Yet it seems for a moment, or at least from his point of view, that he has been driven out
without her. In his distracted state he feels alone again.
I submit the ending to my group. What truths are buried in these lines? They offer a kaleidoscope of
interpretive possibilities.
"There is something so self-centered about Adam," says one Eve. "He has to feel this whole thing is
about him. I am invisible to him. I go trailing after him. He goes to make a world, and in the world
he makes I will be, as I am now, invisible."
"But, Eve, this is the way it felt to me. I felt not only that I was alone but that you remained
back there. You were connected in my mind both with the garden and with its loss. Things were
never the same between us."
"But I don't remain behind. Why do you insist I am so different? Why do you think that your
feeling of loss and loneliness are so peculiar to you. Is feeling that you are the real and ultimate
victim the only way you can feel special?"
"But," says a different Eve, "I do bring the garden with me. I am the mother of all life. I have
the fullness of the earth and the power to bear children inside me. I can be complete with myself. I
remain eternally and casually connected to God. You and your sons will make all sorts of covenants
with God. But I don't need them, and I do not need you as you need me."
"I am Eve," speaks another. "I not only ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; I
ate also of the tree of eternal life. But that fruit I never brought to Adam. Some aspect of me, the
eternal mother, the eternal questing feminine, rides time while all the Adams die."
"I am the serpent. Eve, you stay with me. Forever. I have a part of you. Your fascination with
me is coeval with your self-awareness. No man will ever touch you there, for I was there before any
man. And no single man, no Adam, will ever be enough for you. And, Adam, you know this. I had
her, and I have her. She is connected to me as daughter to mother, as sister to sister, as lover-woman
to lover-woman. You will never possess her, know her, or empower her as I have. In your jealousy
and insecurity you will only try to dominate her and silence me."
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"I am God. Who speaks to me? I have nothing. I look back on the garden with a nostalgia
greater than yours. It was for me a time of union and communion. Now it is merely a plot of earth. I
guard it, but I cannot enjoy it. After all, I made it for them. Now it is empty."
"I am God," says another. I never realized human freedom would so baffle my dreams of a
sweet creation."
“I am God," says a third. My only companion now is the serpent; he is the only one who
remains in the garden. He is my shadow and my shame; he never lets me forget that he has defeated
me. The garden has become my lonely hell.”
In such ways we variously imagine the ending of the Myth of the Lost Garden. I am left
understanding how deep a loneliness is constructed into the myth and permeates it. I find its
resonance in myself. Perhaps it is because of this loneliness that I am driven to make these
postpatriarchal midrashim to make them seem important to myself, to stand upon them as on some
dedicated piece of earth, to draw others into a broken circle to play out fragments of an old story.
Perhaps this is my bulwark against the inanity of loneliness.
Is it possible to tolerate this loneliness face-to-face? Are all myths the necessary denials of
the void? For a moment a void behind the myth opens up as an endless space. This is the void that
existed before God began to form His creation; the void out of which God first recognized man's
loneliness; and the void into which Adam and Eve walk as into their exile. Now they are shrouded
in a loneliness all the more sharp because they can remember their union. That loneliness must be
laced with fear, given the unmapped and unhorizoned worldscape that extends before them. All they
know is loss.
In the end it is loss, and loss of the most profound and consequential sort, that provides the
deep theme for the Eden story in particular and for the Book of Genesis as a whole. The patriarchal
imagination that constructed these stories has formed them out of some tragic sense of estrangement
and loneliness. Beneath its variations, loss is the lesson for the generations of Adam whose myths
are told in the dim world we enter after the gates of Eden close.
Eve: A Midrash
Prologue
As I have said already, part of my postpatriarchal agenda is to recognize the gender
distortions of Genesis and to attempt, if not to rectify the canonized text, then at least to use midrash
as a way to comment on the canon and to elicit new possibilities from it. As a reader I want both to
respect the integrity of a tradition and to make it supple to new interpretive values.
T'he story of the garden is so focused on masculine experience that in the expulsion we
hardly see Eve. At its close, it looks for a moment as if Eve is not with Adam when he is “driven
out.” In some sense she has become invisible; or she is left behind. Women will not figure again
until the stories of Abraham, ten chapters later. Though a crucial element in the family dramas that
occupy the central section of Genesis, woman is largely confined to marital and maternal quarters.
Decisive in her influence on her sons, she still plays only a supporting role.
As much as anything this shutting out of the feminine accounts for the painful loneliness that
the biblical myth-theology proposes as man's fate. The structure of normative Judaism, and
Christianity to a lesser extent, followed the biblical lead. Only recently are women being allowed to
bring their spirituality to the pulpits, their ideas to the seminary, their books to the publishers, and
their revisionist energy to the patriarchal forms.
My response to the emergence of a feminist discourse into the old patriarchal arena is
complex. I feel some jealous sense of having my turf invaded. Yet I recognize the masculinecentered assumptions, legislations, and repressions fostered by the old-time religions. I deplore the
abuses of patriarchy. Women have sought full legitimacy and inclusion; women have opened up
dimensions of the traditian that can only make it fuller.
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Further, I feel that far thousands of years patriarchy has asked women to imagine God
through a masculine perspective, to admire and to be taught by men and by those mythic masculine
figures--patriarchs, prophets, saviors, and liberators--through whom men have constructed the myththeology of the West. At this juncture I am challenged to reverse roles. I want to find my way into
the female figures of the patriarchal narratives. To do so is to send my imagination toward the
female and, if not to imagine a matriarchal cosmology, then at least to imagine the patriarchal
universe through a woman's eyes. Men may find my midrash plausible; women may find it
ridiculous; and in the end such an attempt may only confirm how locked I am within my gender. But
as a man I can project my imagination toward Eve as both the female other and a lost part of my
own psychic world.
***
He has gone ahead of me. He will not look back. But . . . I do. There is so much to remember, and
some of it is faint, distant, already breaking up like clouds.
There was one before me. Her name was Lilith; she was the last queen of the Great Mother.
She was in the beginning before His beginning, when the rites of the moon and blood were the
central sacred mysteries, and when the female imagination celebrated the earth as Mother and our
wisdom was as deep as the oak roots and as subtle as the herbs we cultivated, which could give life,
death, sleep, and ecstasy. In Lilith's time even woman did not yet fully understand the source of the
life that grew inside her, and yet when she gave birth, in the squalling agony, men cowered in the
shadows by the firelight and trembled.
The poetry and magic of Lilith are gone, and gone are the secrets women knew before the
coming of the Great Father. On some days when I was alone in Eden--and there were many, for
Adam wandered in the cool of the day lost in his own immensities of thought, talking aloud to air--I
heard in the wind a sigh, and it was for me a sigh of the Great Mother herself languishing as if in
exile. At other times it seemed to me the wind was the warm assurance of her breath. I was alone
indeed and afraid, for I was the first woman conceived of by the Great Father; I was a new idea of
womanhood itself, an idea that lived in the mind of a man. I was the form of that idea, its first
embodiment. I wandered in a world so different from the world that Lilith knew that I could not
describe even to myself what I saw or felt.
My loneliness was inconceivable. And yet I had been chosen, for it seemed to me in the
sleep I slept before I was, and in the dream I dreamed before I woke, that Lilith came to me, herself.
She was clothed in the majesty of the Goddess, and the moon crowned her dark hair. She looked at
me with a mother's tenderness; there were tears in her eyes.
"My child,"she said to me in that dream, "a new age is coming. A new force is being born
into the world. It is the age of the Father. It is his time. In the Father a new world waits to be born.
His fertility is different from ours; his creations are different; his will upon the earth is different, but
it is his time to come. And you, my child, have been chosen to be born into his new world. You are
our emissary and our sacrifice, but you will be his child, too. You will recognize that there is a
Father, and you will live under the sway of his reign. You will carry our secrets with you and pass
them on as best you can, but you will also be learning his secrets.
"We weep for you; we praise you; we will be with you, but only inwardly. You will not see
us as you have seen us; you will see as the Father will teach you to see, with different eyes. You will
remember us as you remember a dream.”
And so I woke, and I saw Adam, and I was the first woman who ever saw the beauty of a
man, naked and clean. I was the first woman to know that man is a mystery, deep, and complex, and
separate, and alone. I was the first woman to feel in her heart that there is a kind of god in man. I
loved that man, Adam, and in him I loved his God, and I knew that something of his God was in
me, too, for even as I gazed on Adam while he slept, I was being filled with a new language. The
old language, Lilith's language, was passing away, dissolving now into the songs of birds, which
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were sweet but becoming unintelligible to me. I heard the wind in the trees, but it no longer spoke; it
seemed to be the sigh of Lilith bidding me farewell.
My energy was drawn upward into my eyes and ears and outward to my fingers. My head
was filling with light, and I felt myself now stirred by an infinite curiosity, as if I had awakened safe
on an enchanted island where everything was both strange and familiar, old and new. Curiosity is
too small a word for what I felt. I was in a new world, and it longed to be known, or I longed to
know it. At the same time, I was alone.
So it was devised, I suppose, that I should be alone with him, and that I should be moved by
him. He slept as my child, my lover, my husband, my friend, my enemy. I knew something he would
never know, for my body's secrets still spoke in the ancient language no man ever knows; but I
knew, too, that I did not know everything. As I was awakening into this new world, I realized there
were many things to know. I wished to know them, and I knew that Adam, when he woke, would
wake to me and to the world around me. He would wish to know me, and I would wish to know
him, and to know that I knew, and to speak of it, to sing of it. I knew that he could be awakened
from his sleep. Now. I knew that he could be roused into curiosity and appetite. So with my hand,
gently at first, for he still slept, I reached out softly to rouse him.
About that serpent? Ah, well. In the beginning was the deviousness of God the Great Father. You
must understand something. Truly nothing is as it seems nor can ever be known for what it is. This
is the first law of the Great Father, and all his stories tell the same thing. Men are at best half seeing,
half blind. They insist on attempting to explain the world and so often forget the world is beyond
their explanation. They have made up a God who works beyond them and through them, who has
designs and projects infinitely difficult to realize. They have, these men, invented history, and time,
and past and present and future. They have created a great cosmic artifice within which they labor,
while knowing all the while that they are locked inside their own vast misconception. I admire their
works, and they appall me. Men are most dangerous when they are most sure of themselves.
In that universe where nothing can be fully known or seen for what it really is--or if seen,
only momentarily, only so fleetingly that what is known remains merely a kind of image of the
knowable men build and batter and destroy in a kind of ceaseless frenzy. A deep fear lives in them,
the knowledge, in their bones, that they are strangers and that the world is strange. Their stories are
full of the strange; they seek to make the strange familiar, but it will never be familiar. And they are
afraid--of the deviousness of mystery; of death; of losing the little knowledge they have gained,
which they put on like armor. They are afraid of the very Mystery they have devised. They get lost
in the deviousness of the riddle they have made.
So the serpent. Another inexplicable reality. Another image of what teases man, comes from
him, and is yet split off from him. I was not afraid of the serpent. Adam was frightened. The serpent
was something else he could not understand. But the serpent spoke to me, and I understood. It
offered what I wanted: knowledge of the nature of. the Great Father, a glimpse of His doubleness.
And the serpent was the Father's own emissary, the duplicitous shall/shall-not through which He
riddles us. Oh, He is a Great Riddler; it seems only women ean really laugh at this God. Men curse
this God of theirs; they praise, supplicate, analyze Him; they turn away, they turn toward, they seek,
they lose Him; they build great houses and books and systems in which to capture Him . But they
never dare laugh at God. They dare not find Him funny in His infinite seriousness. Ah, well. There
was, thank God, the serpent.
And the curse. Well, that too. But, you know, to say a thing is not to make it so. Our
childbirth is not easy; it never was. But the exultant joy, the great sunrising glory of birth, the
mystery of that act which is ours alone and which no Great Father can, in all His fecundity, ever
replicate or replace well, it never could be, can be, or will be cursed. And you will see in the stories
the Great Father dictates to his sons, you will see how it is the mothers who decide the course of
things. The powers of the fathers and the sons are great, to be sure. But my sisters have their
powers, too. Sarah, Hagar, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, Bilhah, Zilpah, Deborah, Dinah, Tamar,
Asenath--these are the few names that remain, but see what they did, how the history of the Father
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turns on their acts. Listen deep into the stories for their voices. Like women in the world of the
Father, they live in the spaces between the words, men's words, but in those spaces you will hear
them tell a different story. If you have the heart to hear.
So now we leave this garden. It was our first home. If we find it again, I think we shall find
it between us or inside us. The cherubim who guard the way are terrible; the flaming sword is fierce.
I see only Adam's back as he strides forward. He seems now to be rushing away from the garden and
from me. I feel his anger. His blame covers me like a cloud. He will not look back, and he will not
look in. He does not look up, either to cry out or to challenge the God who devised our undoing. He
looks only ahead of him, toward the future. It's the future that he lives for. And for me already a
kind of forgetting is falling on my mind like dusk. Eden seems more and more a dream, only
fragments of which I can remember.
I must hurry now. Night is coming. There's no moon, and already my husband is
disappearing into the dark.
C. Howard Cooper, ‘And They Both Will Make It…’ Sexuality, Spirituality and Storytelling in
the Garden of Eden.
Jewish Explorations of Sexuality, edited by Jonathan Magonet, Berghahn Books: Oxford.
Adam's Story
It's true: I do feel guilty now, when I look back at what happened. Perhaps I shouldn't blame myself,
but I can't help it. I feel really bad about it. Oh, it's not what you think: it wasn't eating that fruit that
was the problem. Everyone always thinks that was our great sin, that snack we had. We knew we
shouldn’t eat between meals. No, that act of disobedience wasn't the source of our guilt. Our guilt
was about something else.
But I mustn't talk for her. Eve can tell her own story. She was always better with words than
me. I was a man of few words. Still am really. You see, that’s kind of what my guilt is about: I
never could find the words, never knew how to say what I was feeling--to either of them, her or
God. I was never any good at feelings. All I could do was name things, things I could see and touch.
I did have a sort of gift for that, I suppose. I came up with some good ones, though I say so myself
‘Hippopotamus’--that was my idea. I liked the sounds of language in my ears: ‘rhododendron’,
‘aponica’, ‘willow’.
But feelings! I couldn't talk about them. Not to save my life. And all the time I was bursting
with unspoken things: hopes and dreams and questions and desires and passions. Torn apart I was.
Feelings pulling here, leading me nowhere, round and round, round and round the garden...
That bloody garden! Well that's how it feels now, now we're no longer there. Such a relief to
be out of it, I can't tell you. At least now we know. We needed to know. It was our salvation, even
though life is harder now. There's no denying that. Consciousness is a burden. But now at least we
know how little we know. We were so innocent before. We knew - nothing.
We - but I must stop this ‘we’. That's something I have learnt. I can't assume I know what's
in Eve's mind. I can't speak for her. That was where the problem between us really began. I always
spoke for her - I never spoke to her. Not once. It's hard to believe now, but you can read the story for
yourself and you'll see. It's true. I never
knew how to speak to Eve.
I know now that if I had been able to talk to her, and not for her, she would never have been
so receptive to the other one. He was the one who spoke to her, not me. He could really talk. He had
all the right words. He was so smooth, so subtle, so insidious with his clever cunning words. They
slipped right inside her those words. I could never do it like that. The creep. The slimy creep - well
he is now, isn't he? But he was like that then, too.
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I hated him, with his coiled presence, and his twisted thinking. He was never lost for words.
I envied him that ease to speak his mind. I could see how she would turn to him for real
conversation, for the exchange of ideas, for discussion, for the shared intimacy of language. I was
envious as hell. And I felt guilty about it. I mean, he had a right to be there too, in the garden. In fact
he was there before me. I couldn't bear that guilt. It came out of my envy. It felt like something
inside me, persecuting me. So I suppose in the end I turned it against him, that smooth, treacherous
bastard, seducing her with his words. I'm still not free of it: the envy, or the guilt.
It's probably hard for you to imagine just how tongue-tied I was in those days. But just
consider what I said the first time I ever met Eve. I'd been in this deep sleep--I don't know what
came over me--and when I woke I could feel this pain, in my side. And I realised what must have
happened. God had been trying to find me a companion for ages. And he made all these creatures,
so many I lost count of them, myriads of animals and birds, an incessant awesome flow of natural
creatures, every one different: different shapes and sizes and smells. I don't know how he did it.
And it wasn't that I was so choosy, but none of them could help me with what I needed help
for--which was to be creative too. I realise it now: I was envious of that God. Such an ability to
create--it was mind boggling. He could create anything, everything. He did create everything. He
even created me. He took a lump of earth, adamah, breathed on it, breathed into it--I don't know
how he did it--and there I was: adam, a living soul. I could never have done that! Never in a million
years.
So I admit it, I was envious of Him. He was my father and my mother. I say ‘he’, but it didn't
feel quite like that. Perhaps I should say ‘she’. She was my mother and my father. That's not quite it
either. I haven't ever got the language right. That's always been my problem: finding the words to
express the things that matter. Amazing that envy. God spoke--and creation began. You can't
imagine how I envied God all that creative potential, that ability to create a world and feed it and
sustain it. God! What you could do! But I had to hide that envy, deny it. You see, I felt so guilty
about those feelings. I know it was crazy but I felt that my envy could somehow spoil your
goodness.
It still feels alI mixed up inside. After all, you're so good, aren't you? So creative, so
powerful. I hate your power sometimes. You make me feel so small, so insignificant, so inadequate.
And that's where my guilt comes back again. How can I express my hatred and my envy when I'm so
dependent on you? Will you stop loving me if I tell you what I really feel? Will you punish me-again?
Perhaps it's best not to think about these things. It hurts too much. I was talking about that
deep sleep, wasn't I, and waking up. And then I saw her. And she nearly took my breath away. I
didn't know what to say to her. You see she reminded me of God. I wasn't expecting that. I knew I'd
been made in the image and likeness of God: ‘male and female’ I’d been told. But I’d never
understood it. How could I be male and female?
Well when I saw her I began to understand. I caught a glimpse of something. She was the
same as me, the first creature I'd ever seen the same as me ‘bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh’,
but she was also different from me, opposite me. Meeting her felt like meeting a part of myself, a
part I did not know existed. I felt that knowing her would help me know myself in new ways. And I
felt that joining with her would heal the split within me. Because immediately I saw her otherness,
her difference, I understood that I too was divided. Male and female.
It was a terrifying moment this recognition--and a liberating one--but I was so overwhelmed
by what I was feeling that I had to avoid her presence. ‘This is now bone of my bones, flesh of my
flesh’ I stammered. Then I began again: ‘This shall be called ...’ It was an automatic reaction really,
I was so used to naming things. But this time? I didn't know what to call her. I was an ish, a man,
and she was so similar, and it just came out: ‘This shall be called ishah’--I just added a syllable, an
empty breath--then I felt I had to explain it: ‘... because out of ish/man has been taken ...’ And I
wanted to say ‘you’. But I couldn't. So I ended the way I'd begun: ‘... because out of man has been
taken this’.
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Pathetic really: making her into an object, right at the beginning ‘This ... this…this’ was all I
could say. How I wish I'd been able to say ‘you’ somewhere along the line. Things might have
turned out very different. We might have learnt to speak to each other. As it was I lived with a
fantasy. The fantasy was that we could live without words and that all we had to do was cleave to
one another and we would be one flesh. Now I know it's not so easy to overcome our separateness,
our differences. But in those days we were both innocent, naked, unknowing. We weren't ashamed.
There was nothing to hide, no gap between how we were and how we shouId be.
It was only after I'd eaten the fruit that I knew that I could never return to that innocence, that
naivete. I became reflective, self-conscious, conscious of having a self. It was quite a shock. Of
course I hadn't realised when she gave it to me that this was the fruit, the one which would help us
discriminate, help us understand the difference between good and evil. But the effect was
immediate. After I'd eaten I suddenly saw things I'd never seen before. It was a revelation, but so
painful, so shameful. And the guilt grew out of it.
First of all, I hadn't spent the time with her I should have. There was a lot to do in the
garden. People don't realise it, but we'd been told we had work to do in it right from the beginning
‘work it and watch it’ God had said. Somehow though we never did this together. After I ate the
fruit I realised for the first time how separate we had been. My eyes were opened. I felt bad about
what'd been happening. I had ignored her. I felt naked, exposed, ashamed. There were no excuses
really.
When we sewed those fig-leaves together it was really too late. We were just covering up the
fact that we had never done anything together. In that one symbolic act of mutuality, of joint
enterprise, I realised, paradoxically, how alone I had been, and how alone I had left her.
And it wasn't just this lack of reciprocity, because as I said before, there was also the
absence of communication. I hadn't ever listened to her. I didn't know her voice. It was the strangest
thing as I realised--to my shame--that we'd never spoken to each other I had this terrible feeling that
something awful was going to come out of this; something dreadful would happen out of this
absence of words. And it did. As I realised that we hadn't given voice to what was going on between
us I thought I heard this other voice--it wasn't hers and it wasn't mine--but it was in me and it was
around me and I didn't want to hear it; I was frightened of it; I was frightened of what I was
beginning to understand; I was frightened of what my life would become when I had to live with
this kind of knowledge.
So I did hide. But really I knew that I couldn't hide away like that from the new awareness
I'd tasted. I was like a child hiding under the bedclothes, but I felt in the grip of something I couldn't
control. That's what fear does I suppose. I don't think that first hiding would have been so bad, but it
was that question that made it all so much worse.
‘Where are you?’ It felt so sad. It reached into my heart. And I couldn't answer. I knew it
wasn't the kind of question that was designed to gain information.
God knew where I was, obviously. He knew everything: that's one of the reasons I envied
him so much. Oh he knew all right. But the question was for me, so that I could take responsibility
for myself and move beyond the guilt.
But I couldn't do it. I couldn't take responsibility for what I'd done. Instead I hid again. This
time I hid inside my answer. First of all I pretended I didn't understand: ‘I heard your voice and I
was frightened because I was naked and I hid myself’. Then I felt ashamed of my evasion. I was
turning my life into a system of hideouts and I felt guilty and then angry and I couldn't contain it any
longer. So I did what I've been doing ever since, blaming others. I blamed God and then I blamed
Eve: ‘The woman whom you gave to me, she gave me of the tree…’
I was hiding from myself by blaming others. Well, do you blame me for it? ‘Human kind
cannot bear very much reality’. I certainly couldn't. That ‘where are you?’ still haunts me. Every
time I hear it, I feel the guilt: all those evasions of responsibility, all those white lies and petty
grievances, all that shutting of my ears to the cries of the world, all that closing of my eyes to the
wonder of creation, all at hiding from the mystery of being, the hiding inside the security of
certainty, the hiding inside the hiding, the hiding, the hiding, the story of my life, Adam's story.
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Eve's Story
It's strange really, but I knew right from the beginning that it was the right thing to do. Actually, I've
never felt the need to apologise. I am rather proud of what I did, even though I've been so
misunderstood.
Poor Adam, it took him ages to admit that he'd eaten the fruit. Not me. When God asked me
what I'd done I said it straight, just a couple of words: ‘the snake persuaded me - and I ate’. That
was it. No excuses, no evasions, no unhealthy guilt. My conscience was clear. And it still is, in spite
of all those stories they told about me.
You see, I just knew we had to do it. Don't ask me how I knew, it was instinctive I suppose.
The fullness of our lives depended on us knowing what we were created to know. So my story is
about consciousness; and conscience--the inner voice. I've learnt that it rarely lets me down.
So, at the beginning, I knew—intuitively--that it was up to me to take the initiative. Adam
was so passive, so silent, so unable to make decisions. He found it hard to take responsibility and
things were left to me. I took things on willingly: I had the energy, and the inspiration. I had the
understanding.
No, please don't think I'm boasting The serpent recognised it all too. That's why he enjoyed
my company, I think. It's true he teased me, flattered me, even flirted with me but he had a natural
wisdom of his own and I respected that. And he recognised my wisdom and I appreciated that and
enjoyed it. Adam couldn't really give me the mutuality my nature needed; which was a shame
because I was created equal to him, his counterpart. The relationship was to be reciprocal, with each
supporting and sustaining the other.
What makes me feel guilty now--though I know it's irrational--is that I think I valued my
individuality more than he did his. I knew I was the culmination of God's creation, the climax of it
all. Adam had no part in it. He was used, and I've always felt he secretly resented that. He was
neither participant, nor consultant, not even a spectator to my coming-into-being. He had no control
over my existence. I was independent of him: each of us owed our existence solely to God. What a
mystery that was! The fragility of it all. What a divine moment that was--when I came into the
world and ended androgeny.
When Adam spoke that first time he recognised himself for the first time as a sexual being.
Until that moment he was Adam, a human being. When he saw me he knew he was something else
too, an ish, a male. He needed me for that.
He needed me for other things too, like helping him to see what was in front of his eyes.
Like the Tree. Which was just waiting for us. Those beautiful, sumptuous, sweet-smelling figs, ripe
and bursting on the boughs. That divine fruit. It was a delight just to look. Let alone the smell, the
aroma, drifting across the garden at evening in the cool of the day, inviting us to look, to touch, to
taste, to know: to know what that mysterious prohibition was all about. To know once and for all.
To know once--and for all.
It was obvious it was meant for us, for our growth, our understanding. Adam cut out this
knowledge. He denied what he could see and smell. He denied his wish to know. He said that we
had to love God and be good and do what we were told. I felt that denied a lot. It denied his hatred
of God, for instance. He certainly denied his anger at the one who had created this ever-present,
ever-tempting possibility.
I don't really know what went on in Adam's heart, but I know that I loved and hated that God
who planted this wonderful, desirable, forbidden tree right in the midst of the garden. That evening,
when we lay down and when we rose up. It was unavoidable. And the love and the hate were
unavoidable too. It felt healthy to recognise them both.
Inside myself I kept destroying that God on whom I was so dependent, and then full of remorse I
would open my eyes, and look around, and recall where I was--with guilt, and then gratitude. I felt
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my loving feelings and my aggressive feelings were contained and containable, my passion to
devour was not just destructive. Perhaps it was even desired.
So one day I decided to give God what God wanted, which was for us to eat and know and
die. In spite of what was said. It was only by going against God that we would achieve the wisdom
for which we were destined, for which we had been created. I knew about death already. I had seen
the other trees, how they blossomed, bore fruit, the fruit rotted and fell, the trees withered and died-only to be reborn again.
The cycle of life included death: this was nature. It was second nature to me. The eternal
succession of creation and destruction, the rise and the fall: it was out there and it was here in me. It
was in my body, the flux of life, keeping the rhythm, keeping time
The time of the seasons and the constellations
The time of milking and the time of harvest
The time of coupling of man and woman
And that of beasts. Feet rising and falling.
Eating and drinking. Dung and death.
I knew it all before I ate of the Tree. It's true: there was a wholeness then, an innocence. I forget how
simple it all was, how undivided.
But we needed the other wisdom, the ‘knowledge of good and evil’ they called it, which is
not about morality or sexuality--later projections onto our story they were. No, the knowledge of
good and evil that we needed was our greatest divine gift: our consciousness, our ability to
differentiate and discriminate. Just like God had done. Just like God wanted us to do. Had not
creation itself, those wonderful seven days, those majestic seven stages, been all about
discriminating? Darkness and light, heavens and earth, work and rest, male and female: God's
creation was one prolonged adventure in discrimination. We had to partake of that too.
Death was the completion of God's creation. God needed us to bring that into the world. It
was the one part of creation that waited upon us. I knew that. So I ate. And gave to my man. It was
my initiative, my decision. It would have happened without the snake. Our conversation may have
speeded things up a little, but it had to happen--sooner or later.
I didn't consult with Adam. I didn't ask for his advice, or his permission. I was a free woman,
more free in that act than I'd ever been before. And there was no guilt.
Adam took it very badly. I felt sorry for him. He was ashamed, like a little boy. I felt very protective
towards him then and went along with his attempts to cover up what had happened. I felt a bit guilty
about that I suppose. There was nothing to hide. I wasn't really much of a help to him for a while.
But if I'm honest--and this bit is hard--I think that I despised him a little for what he did. He was so
passive, so bland. He ate because he was hungry. He didn't savour the moment, hold that exquisite
joy and pain of the birth of the new. He hid inside his passivity and took on all the guilt.
He stole something from me when he did that. He made the guilt unhealthy, neurotic. He
wasn't strong enough to realise that there had been a deliberate decision here, to eat, an ethical
decision taken to transcend the given prohibition, a decision taken in accordance with the spirit
which is the centre of our being.
I shouldn't despise that lack of understanding in him, but I can't help it. He knew so much
and yet so little that really counts. And yet he named me well: Chava--Life. Although his naming
me signified a break in our mutuality, our equality, I love that name: Chava, the mother of all life.
For in it I recognise my power, and my potential, my creativity and my possibility of giving life.
But I am also the mother of all life. So I know too my potential to destroy. I know my
depravity. I devour my own. I know my hatred; and my hunger always for more. I know my greed: I
am insatiable. I am never satisfied. And the mother of all life knows too the pain of birth, the dying
of the day, the barrenness of night, the emptiness, the hole, the black hole at the still centre
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Between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception,
The future futureless ...
When time stops and time is never ending
The horror, the horror of it all. This too I know. This too I have
wrought. This too is my life: the story of Eve.
The Facts: The Authorised Version and Its Correct Interpretation by a Surviving Witness
Ladies and Gentlemen, may I be permitted to interject a few words at this moment? I humbly beg
your forgiveness for interrupting such a serious and important occasion, but what you havejust been
hearing--and it pains me to have to say this, yet I have no choice but to forgo my customary
reticence and sensitivity in these matters--what you have just heard is the most deplorably
subjective, emotive, ill-conceived collection of excuses that it has ever been my mistortune to listen
to.
That mendacious, slanderous, weak little man. And that unforgivable inflated and self
justifying woman! Do not be deceived, I beg you! Do not be beguiled by their cunningly constructed
defences! The simple truth is that there is not a single honest word in anything you have yet heard.
Believe me. I should know. I was there. I will tell you exactly how it was. The facts. This is my
story. This is--pray forgive the small conceit--this is the serpent's tale.
The facts are these. They are indisputable, incontrovertible. Firstly Adam and Eve ate the
fruit because of me. I was at the centre of the Garden and at the centre of the drama. I saw
everything. I made it all happen. I was subtle, shrewd, sophisticated (in my own way), with a natural
cunning all my own. In a word, I had style.
Without me nothing would ever have changed there. It was so boring, I can't tell you. But let
me try. Just imagine it: there they were, the two of them, beautiful young lovers, not a care in the
world, no desires, no needs, no shame. The poor dears, so innocent, so uncorrupted, so desirable.
Especially when they cleaved to one another and became one flesh. It made me feel so…excluded.
But that's irrelevant: I was left out at the best of times. They ignored me completely. Me! Oh, I don't
want you to think I minded, really, them not paying any attention to me. It didn't particularly
concern me. I knew my place. I had my tree for company. Nobody could call me jealous.
So that's the picture: the two of them, innocent as the day they were born, and me, waiting,
waiting to see, waiting to see what would happen, waiting to see when I could make something
happen, waiting to be seen, waiting.
Second point. And remember I'm telling you how it was. The facts. Everything that
happened was her fault. I've often taken the blame, but that is completely unfair, unjustified. All you
have to do is read the story. She was the one who did it, not me. She was the one who responded to
me: her first mistake. I just used my natural charm to beguile her with that naive little question
which was so implausible she was just forced to tell me I was wrong. Stupid woman, she couldn't
help herself, she just had to correct me.
I saw her eating something one day--I'm pretty sure it was a banana--so I said to her, in a
casual opening-a-conversation-sort-of way: ‘Excuse me darling, didn't God say that you shouldn't
eat any of the fruit around here?’ Innocent question, wasn't it? Well, I held my breath, didn't know if
she'd fall for it. She just looked at me at first, looked at me with that disdainful look I’d seen so
often--not the way I looked at her, believe me. Slowly, she finished her mouthful--yes, it was a
banana--swallowed, and then said, in that precise, pedantic way of hers:
Of the fruit of the trees in the garden we may eat
But of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden
God has said: You shall not eat of it, and you shall not touch it, lest you die.
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Well, I knew I had her then. First she'd made the mistake of replying. I had her the moment
she opened her mouth. And then that silly mistake: ‘You shall not touch it’. Perhaps she thought she
was being clever, interpreting the prohibition, adding to it to make it clearer for a poor sub-species
like me--she could be very condescending, you know--but when she said that I couldn't believe my
luck. Mistake number two: elaborating on the facts, free associating, amplification of the material.
I couldn't contain myself. I slid towards her: ‘You won't die!’ She backed away of course--I
don't know why I always have that effect on people--and as she recoiled from me she tripped and,
putting her hand out to steady herself, she touched the Tree. The Forbidden Tree. Such a delicate
movement, even then, as she stumbled. Such grace, even as she fell.
‘See’, I said--I was enjoying this—‘See, you haven't died just by touching the tree. You
won't die by eating from it either’. This was brilliant, though I say so mysetf. Then I had my greatest
inspiration. I suddenly knew what she wanted, so I went on: ‘God knows that on the day you eat
from the tree your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil’.
She had no answer to that, did she? I'd done my job. I'd slipped inside her, subtly, surely,
successfully. The rest you know. She ate. He ate. They felt guilty. Whatever pathetic stories they tell
you. They felt guilty all right. Otherwise why did they hide? Like children who've been naughty and
daddy was going to be very angry.
And this is my third and final point,. Even that depressed professor from Vienna got it right.
Human beings are dependent, as children, on the external parental world: it protects them but can
also punish them. In adult life they create a God in the same image and project onto Him all their
childhood hopes and fears.
Even before God spoke to them, Adam and Eve were terrified, guilt-ridden. And what did
God do? It was so predictable. He punished them and threw them out. I rejoiced at that moment,
exulting in my power. I felt exhilarated. I had the Garden to myself again. It was ... Paradise.
And I like eating dust. Honestly.
Completing the Circle. The Fourth Voice
So, now, it's my turn. At last. I'm glad--and relieved. I've been waiting a long time. I've had to learn
to wait, to hold my silence. I who spoke and the world came into being have had to learn to speak
only through my silence, my voice of soundless stillness.
In the beginning I thought it would all be more straightforward, the harmony of linear time
and cyclical time, the spiralling progression of creation and rest: it was so beautiful a conception. I
had such high hopes, for us all. I should have known better. I, especially, should have known better.
But I, like Adam, soon learnt to hide. I hid within my creation, waiting to be found. They
learnt about hiding from me. I didn’t blame them for that. I was disappointed in myself really, but I
took it out on them. When Adam heard the question ‘Where are you?’ it was the question I was
asking myself.
It was also his question to me, though he did not dare to voice it yet. Having eaten the fruit
he slowly began to know this question I had planted in his soul.
When they ate the fruit I rejoiced, but could not let them know. My children had defeated
me, and it was what I wanted, though I had not realised it. My omnipotent fantasy of total control
had been the illusion it always is. And beyond the pain and disappointment of the loss of control,
there was the relief. Because that amount of power was frightening, and sharing the work, the
responsibility for the world, was something I realised could help us both. Mutual dependence felt
better than omnipotent control.
So I waited to be involved. My waiting is my hiding, my hiding my waiting. I have been
very disappointed though, not just by the failure to search for me, but more by the failure to search
in the right way. But perhaps it was my fault. Perhaps those stories I told were too difficult. In the
beginning I created stories, images, myths, pictures in words, for my children, like any parent might
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do, making it up as I went along, enjoying the telling, enjoying their enjoyment of my telling, my
self-disclosure.
I spoke to their minds and souls spontaneously, through Torah, through stories, a great
outpouring of creative energy. It was my gift. It was the way I felt we could meet most freely, most
intimately most naturally, through language and symbol and the mystery of multiplicity, the One and
the many, the One within the many, layer upon layer of meaning, clues but not solutions, relishing
the indeterminacy and uncertainty which is at the heart of our being.
But somehow it went wrong. When I thought I was reveling myself most openly, expressing
the essential paradox of my being, always present and here and now, always absent because always
more and different, you experienced this as my hiding from you. But I wasn’t hiding. I was there. I
am there. I will be there. That was my promise, and still is. On my life.
I think my biggest mistake was that I told the stories as if I was outside of them--the stories
and the people. So they kept looking beyond themselves rather than within themselves. Of course I
am beyond as well as within, transcendent as well as immanent. But that was the whole point. The
paradox was the point. I felt that paradox was the most valuable spiritual possession I could give. I
thought it would keep us close.
But they insisted on imposing a uniformity of meaning and possessing the one and only
truth: a sure sign of weakness. When they lost their sense of paradox then all the systems and
religions they constructed to remind themselves of who I was (and who they were) began to become
inwardly impoverished, for only paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of
life: their life, my life--our life. Non-ambiguity and non-contradiction are one-sided. They are
unsuitable for expressing the incomprehensible. They betray the essence.
I have been betrayed, but I blame myself. I am the guilty one. You see there is a place for
honest guilt, for the recognition of shortcomings, for the failures to live up to who we know we
could be. Guilt leads us towards consciousness and wholeness. It is part of our humanity, and part of
our divinity. We are not omnipotent. We are who we are: incomplete, waiting hiding. Accepting our
guilt we taste redemption.
But don't get me wrong. Again. I'm not talking about ‘original sin’. It hurts me to say it but
Augustine got it wrong. He seriously misread my story. I feel so sad to see how indelibly culture has
been shaped by his projections onto my story sexual desire as sinful; Adam's sin corrupting all of
nature and all humanity.
It's all wrong and we all know it. But I was powerless to prevent the perversion of my truth,
as I always am. I had to allow him to misunderstand. He had free will. That was the point of the
story--the essential freedom to choose. To choose between good and evil was to be a conscious
choice. Only unconciousness makes no differentiation between good and evil. Life needs the
opposites, for without opposition there is no energy. Good and evil are simply the moral aspects of
this natural polarity. The tension of opposites makes life possible: yin and yang. ‘I form light and
create darkness, I make peace/wholeness and create evil’--my prophet said it for me. (Isaiah 45:7).
I am what I am. I too started as undifferentiated being. Creating the world and Adam, male
and female, was part of the evolution of my consciousness too. I was telling my story when I told
the story of the garden. The differentiation between man and woman starts in the deep sleep, in an
unconscious state. Our development is towards greater consciousness, the source of our freedom.
The gift of freedom: how easily it is abused. The horror is endless, unbearable. I am
frightened by what I see: ‘they take bribes, they rejoice at the arrival of rockets, they worship death-none of that is new. What is new is that they're not aware of any guilt, let alone sin’.
I admit it: I am more frightened than I have ever been, for a world without an awareness of
sin is a world without a chance of redemption. So, if there is to be guilt, let it be the honest guilt, the
true guilt, the tragic guilt, the necessary guilt, which emerges in the struggle with yourself to
become yourself. Let it emerge out of your wrestling, a signpost on the journey to me. .
It is true that I hide from you. But you know, even better than I, the extent to which you hide
from yourself. ‘Where are you?’ I do not need you to become another Moses, another Mother
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Teresa. Something else is asked of you. And this revelation comes only if you really listen to what
stirs your inmost being. Guilt emerges in your hiding from this knowledge. In the story the shame
and the guilt and the harshness of my words to Adam and Eve is the burden and the blessing I
bestow upon humankind.
So, yes, blessed is the guilt for it may lead you deeper into yourself. It may even redeem you:
from the evasions, the lies, the grievances, from the shutting of your ears to the cries of the world,
from the closing of your eyes to the wonder of creation, from the hiding, from the mystery of being,
the hiding inside the security of certainty the hiding inside the hiding, the hiding--the story of our
lives, you and me. The circle is closed. The Garden is empty. And ‘the end is where we start from’.
D. Modern Poetry
Day after day was strung together
night after night—
they flooded me with pleasure and with joy.
From morning until evening the sun caressed me,
slipping its rays between the branches,
to kiss my curls.
The moist hyssop made me sleep gentle,
it pampered my dreams.
Until I’m satisfied,
Until I tire,
Until I become exhausted—
and can do no more.
The sun cooked my body,
the night aroused my bodily fluids,
but they have nowhere to go.
The whole span of my skin is heavy on me
as if it wants to burst forth
but it has no outlet.
Then I saw you, tree,
I recognized you by that apple,
you have stored it in the wisdom of all your juices.
And I knew the secret, for which you had grown,
for which you have grown tall, and even branched out,
I too have grown up,
I too have grown tall—
like you I carry my fruit.
So you have taught me, tree.
How is it that until now I have walked empty
between those who bear their fruit?
But I only hid my face
In a strange disgrace
in the presence of does whose bodies swelled,
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bowed down from their weight.
Every little bird
Sits on her eggs,
fruit of her blood and innards.
She disgraces me.
Before her I am insignificant,
I who was created only for joy;
I who skipped from spring to spring,
and washed my feet in their crystal transparence,
I jumped from choice fruit to choice fruit,
whichever was sweet to my palate, to make myself happy.
And now I know,
and I am very heavy, yet happy;
I am sister to you,
swelling does.
Heavy she-wolves.
In a little while—we will bend down from our weight.
Like them—so I.
And I will no longer be ashamed before you—
the best of my blood, like the best of your blood,
will be crystallized into fruit.
I will surely accept it,
I will surely carry it,
even if it bends me to the ground,
like you.
I will no longer walk empty between you,
like an impulsive stream, it does not know
where its light waters are going.
You will be a blessing to me, magic spell that is in the heart,
for bringing me to the fruit,
through it I will be redeemed,
Though I will no longer know flighty pleasure.
--Anda Amir
Awakening
Shekinah gazed upon the sleeping form of HeShe
“I shall divide this being
So HeShe can find loving companionship
Like the other creatures in the garden.”
HeShe lay asleep in the grass
Curled up like a snake in the warm sun
Dreaming of angels.
Shekinah thought,
“Which part of the body
Shall I take to form the woman?
Perhaps from the mouth
So she can tell stories like Serach,
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The woman who smells of time.
Perhaps the eyes
So she sees the inside truth of things
Like Soft Eyes Woman Leah.
Perhaps from the neck
So she walks with pride
Like the daughters of Zelophehad
Who are Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah.
Perhaps the ears
So she hears my laughter
Like See Far Woman Sarah.
Perhaps the heart
So she flows with tender mercies
Like Soft Hearted Woman Rachel.
Perhaps the arms
So she heals and restores with touch
Like the Hebrew midwife women.
Perhaps the legs
So she goes out seeking wisdom
Like Truth Seeking Woman Dinah.
Perhaps from the flower of her passion
So she enjoys the fruits of her body
Like Shulamit.”
Then Shekinah blessed every part of woman’s body, saying,
“Be pure of heart
and always know you are created in My image.”
Then she awoke, first woman.
--Lynn Gottlieb
E. Eleanora Lev, The First Morning After: Eve in the Garden
(From a novel)
Look how she sat there, by herself, nude and unrushed. It was morning in the Garden of
Eden—a great tranquility, little multi-colored birds chirping. She already knew she had done
something irreversible—but she did not regret it. The taste still lingered on her tongue; she will never
forget it to her last day. What astounded her more than anything was that for the hour or the day or
however long it took before she reached the decision to offer fruit of the Tree of Knowledge to Adam,
she had the feeling that she was the first and only intelligent human being in the whole universe.
The snake lay rolled up in a pile at her feet. He was completely absorbed in his smile, the
smile of a snake that wishes to appear friendly. Adam, that hairy creature, the only one somewhat
similar to her, was not present. Until now she had spent her days rubbing up to him in the grass like
a puppy, but now he had gone—perhaps to eat yellow bananas which still had no name (neither did
their color have a name) or to throw stones at birds that were also nameless. She thought of Adam
with a certain fondness, like an older sister. In her new found wisdom she regarded him an
ambiguous potentiality, a chunk of matter, and she knew she had the power to give him a fruit that
would turn potentiality into actuality, making him human and empowered. He had no idea, yet, but
she already knew the price he would pay in the future for this knowledge—hunger, war, loneliness,
fear of death and death itself. She felt maternal compassion for him—perhaps she should spare him
all this. She would remain alone in her sin and enjoy the somewhat romantic chivalrous, accursed
loneliness as she alone bore the expected punishment, while he never would know the greatness of
her soul. Of course she didn’t yet think in terms like “romantic” but that is exactly what she meant.
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In any case, she knew she would now die. So he would then be left alone, confused, not
knowing what happened. Yet that would not be so terrible, Adam would forget her quickly and she
would die as the only intelligent being ever in the world. But then she thought about her loneliness, all
the misunderstanding that would affect her relationship with the big hairy puppy—Adam. She knew,
too, that if she gave him the fruit, he would understand—that, above all, he is bigger and stronger than
she is and he would immediately rule over her for that is his nature. That last thought almost made her
decide to stay alone in her knowledge, to die without sex (which he did not yet understand), to die
without the illusion of love…. However, then she thought: “I will never give birth.” Her hunger to
bear children ended her inner debate—she would share the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.
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Chapter IV - Medieval & Modern Commentators’ Debate
A. Genesis 2: Loving Friends
1. Naomi Rosenblatt, When Love Enters The World
My beloved is mine, and I am his. –Song of Songs 2:16
Woman’s absence from Eden clearly signals its incompleteness to God. The writers of
Genesis go out of their way to emphasize the improvement in man’s existence after woman’s
appearance. Woman brings conversation, laughter, and sexuality into Adam’s life. With the
creation of woman, love enters the world.
So does companionship. It’s important to note that the male-female relationship is
introduced in Genesis under the banner of companionship—before either sexuality or procreation
enters the picture. Sexual attraction comes and goes in cycles. But as this episode teaches us, the
companionship we offer our mates is the single most enduring gift we bring to an intimate
relationship. The more intimate the relationship, the more subtle and profound the companionship
[p. 32].
“The Gift of Speech”
While searching for a fitting companion for Adam, God bestows on him another gift that unites all
humans and widens the gap between us and the animal world-speech. After naming each of the
animals in creation and confirming that none of them can respond in kind, Adam concludes ' that
there is no fit and equal companion for him among animals. Only woman can converse with him,
exchange confidences and endearments. She alone can deliver him from his solitude. '
Many animals communicate with each other through gestures and sounds, but only humans
have the capacity to speak and comprehend complex languages. Only humans can sing, tell stories,
write love letters, compose sonnets, and write novels. As Thomas Mann writes in The Magic
Mountain, "Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most fractious word, preserves contactit is silence which isolates."
Throughout Genesis, speech is the key to communication. It is when we stop talking that
communication breaks down and characters quarrel. Speech is bestowed on humans to draw them
closer together, to connect them to each other and to God. Speech is what allows us to exchange
ideas and to initiate intimacy by articulating our feelings. Speech gives us the language of prayer [p.
31]
2. Joel Rosenberg, The Paradigmatic Betrothal
The first human being, seeing his first human companion, had exclaimed a name for the woman
('ishah! woman!) which in effect required his own renaming from 'adam (human being, earthling,
soilborn/soilbound) to 'ish (man as a social being, and as companion to woman) [Back to the Sources, p.
56].
Thus, in choosing the newfound feminine companion as his mate, the man must pick a twinlike
name that expresses his affinity for and kinship with the woman, and renounce the name that
signified his kinship with, and possibly his affinity for, his place of origin the earth. This procedure
of "betrothal" is, as we noted earlier, summarized by the etiological statement of 2:24. As with the
etiology, the renaming makes the most sense when placed into the context of the human life-cycle:
the age of courtship and marriage is the time when the human being seems most alive, most mobile,
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most independent from parental bonds, most inclined to seek out partners and associates (not just
spouses) from among his own generation, and perhaps also…the most equivalent in stature to a
sexual counterpart. It is, in other words, the time of a human being's greatest independence from the
earth, which otherwise (3:17- l 9) collects the remains of all completed lives and imposes economic
hardships that necessitate the division of labor and the establishment (3:16) of social caste lines and
sexual inequalities. Free of such pressures, the time of betrothal is, in short, a time of “paradise.”
[King and Kin, p. 62?]
3. Maurice Lamm, The Jewish Way in Love & Marriage
from The Jewish Way in Love & Marriage
COMPANIONSHIP
The years of romance and intense sexual activity are shorter and less enduring than the years
of sustained, lifelong friendship. Companionship must precede true yichud love in marriage, it is a
necessary component during the peak years of sexual involvement, and it is the sweet, mellowed,
and blessed gift of married life in old age.
The Sages of the Talmud were referring to companionship when they said, "It is better to
remain coupled than to be widowed." This parallels the wisdom of Ecclesiastics (4:9), which says,
"Two are better than one." It is signified by the description of the relationship as the wedding
blessing refers to them: reim ahuvim, (beloved friends). The idea of friendship between husband and
wife was not a component of non-Jewish religions until the Protestant Reformers maintained that
companionship should actuate a marriage.
As an illustration of this emphasis in Jewish tradition, two of the seven blessings under the
wedding canopy are joyous celebrations of companionship: "Cause beloved friends to rejoice
greatly, as of old You rejoiced Your creatures in Paradise. . ." and "Who has created joy and
gladness, bridegroom and bride, mirth and exaltation, pleasure and delight, love, fellowship, peace
and companionship…." That companionship is stressed in these blessings is evident from the
response of Rabbi David Abudarham to the question of why these nuptial blessings did not include
the benediction over the mitzvah of procreation. His answer was that these blessings, because they
were recited at every wedding, had to relate to the sterile as well as to the f ertile. Thus the subject
of companionship was an appropriate blessing, but procreation was not.
God provides the motivation for the creation of woman: "It is not good for man to be lonely."
“…It is not good to be lonely" implies that loneliness could not endure, and God had to relieve it by
the creation of a companion.
Rabbi Isaac Breuer notes that with respect to His other and earlier works of creation, God
speaks the word of approval, "good." Only at the creation of man does He utter the negative
judgment, "not good." Loneliness is not felt by animals; only man can experience existential
loneliness, the fragmentary and incomplete nature of this world. It is the genuine companionship of
Adam and Eve that humanity requires, and which is the stated purpose for marriage in the scheme of
creation.
Independence in the very midst of intimacy. Ramban notes that the Bible goes out of its way
to say not only that a helpmeet (ezer) was provided Adam, but that the positioning of that helpmeet
opposite (ke’negdo) him was important. "Perhaps man was created bisexual . . . but God saw it
would be good for the helpmeet to be opposite him. He would then be able at will to separate from
her or join her…“
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Mature intimacy requires a deep, interpersonal relationship in which both people retain their
individuality. Mature love enables one to merge with the other, but not to become submerged. Erich
Fromm points up both the beauty and the paradox of love: "Two beings become one and yet remain
two."
To further our understanding of the intimacy of Adam and Eve, it is necessary
to note that the merging of the two beings was a merging not only of two independent partners, but
also of two equal personalities. Sforno interprets ke’negdo as the opposite balance of a scale: equal
in value and in dignity. Adam and Eve, ish and ishah, have equal worth
Kahlil Gibran said, “Let there be spaces in your togetherness.”
Poet Rainer Maria Rilke once said of marriage that it is not a matter "of
creating a quick community of spirit by tearing down and destroying all boundaries… once the
realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to
exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between
them."
4. John Milton, The Doctrine & Discipline of Divorce
(17th century author of Paradise Lost)
from Re-Creating the World, p. 323
Though staggered by the desertion of his idealized bride of a month,
Mtlton never wrote about these personal feelings. Instead he published his first pamphlet The
Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce: restored to the good of both sexes, from the bondage of Canon
Law, and other mistakes, to Christian freedom, guided by the rule of Charity. English law at the
time admitted adultery as the only ground for divorce. Milton might have covered his own case by
urging the addition of desertion as a legal cause. Instead he took off from the grand proposition
"That Man is the occasion of his own miseries, in most of those evils which he imputes to God's
inflicting.” Without a spiritual compatibility, “instead of being one flesh, they will be rather two
carcasses unnaturally chained together.” Milton addressed Parliament to make incompatibility a
cause for divorce. Of course, he admitted, liberty of divorce couuld be abused in England as it had
been by the ancient Jews. But always “honest liberty” is “the greatest foe to dishonest license.”
Indissoluble marriage had become “the Papists' Sacrament and unfit marriage the Protestants' Idol.”
A marriage contrary to the desire of the partners was only bondage. Milton's crusade would continue
into the twentieth century, when the witty English lawyer A. P. Herbert attacked this "Holy
Deadlock" (1934), which another wit defined as "Monagony--the state of being married to one
person."
5. Montaigne, Of Friendship Among Men
(c. 17th century France)
Can Men & Women Be Friends? Could Adam & Eve Be Loving Friends? (part I)
To compare this brotherly affection with affection for women, even though it is the result of
our choice—it cannot be done; nor can we put the love of women in the same category. Its ardor, I
confess—is more active, more scorching, and more intense. But it is an impetuous and fickle flame,
undulating and variable, a fever flame, subject to fits and lulls, that holds us only by one corner. In
friendship it is a general and universal warmth, moderate and even, besides, a constant and settled
warmth, all gentleness and smoothness, with nothing bitter and stinging about it. What is more, in
love there is nothing but a frantic desire for what flees from us:
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Just as a huntsman will pursue a hare
O’er hill and dale, in weather cold or fair;
The captured hare is worthless in his sight;
He only hastens after things in flight.
Ariosto
As for marriage, for one thing it is a bargain to which only the entrance is free—its
continuance being constrained and forced, depending otherwise than on our will—and a bargain
ordinarily made for other ends. For another, there supervene a thousand foreign tangles to unravel,
enough to break the thread and trouble the course of a lively affection; whereas in friendship there
are no dealings or business except with itself. Besides, to tell the turth, the ordinary capacity of
women is inadequate for the communion and fellowship which is the nurse of this sacred bond; nor
does their soul seem firm enough to endure the strain of so tight and durable a knot. And indeed,
but for that, if such a relationship, free and voluntary, could be built up, in which not only would the
souls have this complete enjoyment, but the bodies would also share in the alliance, so that the
entire man would be engaged, it is certain that the resulting friendship would be fuller and more
complete. But this sex in no instance has yet succeeded in attaining it, and by the common
agreement of the ancient schools is excluded from it.
6. Aelred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship
(English Monk, d. 1167)
Can Men & Women Be Friends? Could Adam & Eve Be Loving Friends? (part II)
Finally, when God created man,in order to commend more highly the good of society, he
said: “It is not good for man to be alone: let us make him a helper like unto himself.” It was from no
similar, nor even from the same, material that divine Might formed this help mate, but as a clearer
inspiration to charity and friendship he produced the woman from the very substance of the man.
How beautiful it is that the second human being wa taken from the side of the first, so that nature
might teach tha human beings are equal and, as it were, collateral, and that there is in human affairs
neither a superior nor an inferior, a characteristic of ture friendship. Hence, nature from the very
beginning implanted the desire for frinedship and charity in the heart of man, a desire which an
inner sense of affection soon increased with a taste of sweetness. But after the fall of the first man,
when with the cooling of charity, concupiscence made secret inroads and caused private good to
take precedence over thecommon weal, it corrupted the splendor of friendship and charity through
avarice and envy, introducing contentions, emulations, hates and suspicions bedcause the morals of
men had been corrupted.
“Greater love than this,” he says, “no man has, that a man lay down his life for his friends”
(John 15:13).
Ivo. What does this all add up to? Shall I say of friendship what John, the friend of Jesus,
says of charity: “God is friendship”? (John 4:16).
Aelred. That would be unusual, to be sure, nor does it have the sanction of the Scriptures.
But still what is true of charity, I surely do not hesitate to grant to friendship, since “he that abides in
friendship, abides in God, and God in him.”
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7. David Gunn & Dana Fewell, Equity Dissolves Into Hierarchy
(20th century, USA Bible scholars)
from Gender, Power and Promise, (p. 27 ff.)
After he has formed and placed the human in the garden, YHWH God then decides that
It is not good that the human should be alone; I will make it [him] a helper, counterpart [keneged;
“like-opposite”] for it [him]. (2:18)
Despite God’s own presence, despite the fact that the human, made in God’s image, is arguably the
deity’s counterpart (like-opposite him), the deity deems the human to be alone. The implication, of
course, is that God is deeming himself to be still alone….
God therefore forms the animals and parades them before the human, like gifts before a
monarch, “to see what it [he] would call them.” Confident that the human will replicate God’s own
desire to name, God is not disappointed. Yet the experiment fails in its main perpose, for a
counterpart is not found. Perhaps the human is unwilling (or unable) to recognize the animals as
counterparts because, like God, the human desires its own image. God reverts, therefore, to division.
Man and woman are created. Likeness is conjured by separation. Male and female. Opposite and
alike. Difference and sameness. Other and self.
The man is not slow to give human expression to the divine desire to name and control (if
not subjugate). He moves a step beyond YHWH God and objectifies the woman. He does not
address her as “you” or even refer to her as “she.” Rather she is “this” (Landy, 1983:228). She is
“this” in fact three times within a handful of words…there is the crowning perversity of his claim to
be her progenitor. The woman (strictly the “side” from which she was formed) was taken out of the
human, not the man. The man, however, claims the past (and Humanity) as his own dominion. And
flying in the face of what every reader knows to be reality, he claims that woman comes out of man-claims for himself, that is, woman’s biological function of childbearing. A breathtaking claim,
indeed! In all this he asserts authority over the woman as a parent over a child. For this moment, at
least, God and man form.
But what may we say of the woman? Had she, rather than the residual man, been allowed the
role of discoverer in her introductory scene, might we have heard a somewhat different perspective?
Would she have recognized the man to be flesh of her flesh and bone of her bone? Would she have
decided to call him “man” because he had once been part of “woman”? Upon meeting her new
companion, would she have been impressed? Disappointed? Ambivalent? Her opinions are
suppressed. We are being led to conclude that they do not matter—not to God, the man, or the
narrator. Men can have opinions about women (women, after all, are the objects of male desire:
Gen. 2:24), but women’s perceptions of men are not important.
In an explanatory aside, the narrator then maintains that, of all human relationships, the
union of man and woman is the primary bond, stronger than the relationship between parents and
children: “Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave to his woman and they
shall become one flesh” (2:24). Implicit is a claim that the man’s desire is the defining norm. He is
the one leaving and cleaving. The woman is the point of gravity, the object to be acquired. She, by
contrast, is allowed (at this point in the plot) no desire and no attachments to parents or children. As
we shall see later of Sarai, the woman comes to us without past or future. She is simply there,
waiting to be subsumed. Union with a man is her consummate purpose.
Implicit, too, is another claim. Just as relations with parents and children are diminished, so,
too, are excluded relations between people of the same sex. The “helper corresponding to [likeopposite]” the human/man is a sexual “opposite.” According to this claim, human sexuality is
clearly monogamous exogamous heterosexuality: one partner, outside the family, of the opposite
sex. Partnership, according to this agenda, demands sexual and familial difference….
In Genesis 2-3 it is gender that is under construction: here the social roles of man and
woman are being defined. And what we shall discover is that, as usual, binaries are less equal than
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they at first appear. The apparent (biological) equity of Gen. 1:27 (“in the image of God he created
them; male and female he created them”) dissolves under closer scrutiny. Simple binaries in fact
lend themselves to hierarchies. One term becomes Subject and Norm, the other becomes Object and
Other. And hierarchy has a cunning way of ordering, of putting and keeping things—and people—in
their “proper” place.
8. Christine de Pizan, A Woman’s Bible Commentary
(14th century Italy author)“
There Adam slept, and God formed the body of woman from one of his ribs, signifying that she
should stand at his side as a companion and never lie at his feet like a slave, and also that he should
love her as his own flesh. . . . I don't know if you have already noted this: she was created in the
image of God. How can any mouth dare to slander the vessel which bears such a noble imprint? . . .
God created the soul and placed wholly similar souls, equally good and noble, in the feminine and
masculine bodies. . . . [W]oman was made by the Supreme Craftsman. In what place was she
created ? In the Terrestrial Paradise. From what substance? Was it vile matter? No, it was the
noblest substance which had ever been created: it was from the body of man from which God made
woman.
And if anyone would say that man was banished because of Lady Eve, I tell you that he gained more
through Mary than he lost through Eve when humanity was conjoined to the Godhead, which would
never have taken place if Eve's misdeed had not occurred. Thus man and woman should be glad for
this sin, through which such an honor has come about. For as low as human nature fell through this
creature woman, was human nature lifted higher by this same creature.
Bible commentary by a woman comes from the pen of the 14th century author, Christine de Pizan
(1365-c.1430), and derives from a quite different context than that of the visionary Saint Hildegard.
Christine was born in Venice and a few years later was taken to Paris, when her father was called to assume
the post of court astrologer for King Charles V. She obtained an excellent education despite her mother's
opposition and at age fifteen married Estienne de Castel, a notary. Her husband encouraged her literary
activity and the marriage was very happy. Her husband died in 1389…. Soon she was recognized as a poet
and received a commission to do the biography of Charles V. She made her reputation as a defender of
women when she attacked Jean de Meung's popular Roman de la rose for its mockery of women. This led to
an exchange of letters with some of the leading male humanists of her day, in which her reputation was
attacked and which started a three-century-long debate on the status of women, known as the Querelle des
femmes.
[Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness]
9. William Phipps, Prime Rib Debate
from Genesis and Gender
a) The Anatomy of a Rib
The clash between biology and literalism began with Andreas Vesalius who boldly stated in
1543 that the rib cages of both sexes contain the same number of bones. The founder of modern
anatomy wrote: “The ribs are twelve in number on each side in man and woman….The popular
belief that man is lacking a rib on one side and that woman has one more rib than man is clearly
ridiculous, even though Moses, in the second chapter of Genesis, said that Eve was created by God
from one of Adam’s ribs.” Vesalius was heavily criticized for stating an easily verifiable empirical
fact. Along with other Gentiles, he wrongly assumed that a rib bone was explicitly referred to in the
original Hebrew.
Ribald males may pun that woman is unfortunately not abreast of man, but only a side issue.
Another offensive “joke” suggests that woman was taken from man’s lower ribs, midway between
his heart and his wallet, to symbolize that she was destined to control both (p.19).
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Two)
The Taming of the Shrew
An anonymous drama named The Taming of the Shrew interested Shakespeare so he adapted
it and retained the title. The heroine works over a perverse etymological pun:
A rib was taken, of which the Lord did make
The woe of man, so termed by Adam then
“Wo-man,” for that by her came sin to us;
And for her sin was Adam doomed to die.
As Sarah to her husband, so should we
Obey them, love them, keep, and nourish them.
If they by any means do want our help,
Lay our hands under their feet to tread (p. 24).
Three)
The Latin Definition of Sex
Another idea contained in the Greek and Hebrew myths under consideration is that sex is a
sectioning. The term sex comes from the Latin verb secare, to cut (p. 12).
Four)
The Bent Rib and the Witch
Two 15th century Dominicans combined the views of Aristotle (who believed that “the
female is a mutilated male”) and Muhammad. In a manual devoted to describing the nature of
witches, Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger wrote: “There was a defect in the formation of the
first woman, since she was formed from a bent rib, that is, a rib of the breast, which is bent as it
were in a contrary direction to a man. And since through this defect she is an imperfect animal, she
always deceives.”
Five)
The Crooked Rib
Joseph Swetnam (England, 16th century) wrote: “A woman was made to be a helper, and so
they are indeed: for she helpeth to spend and consume that which man painefully getteth….They
were made of the ribbe of a man, and that their froward nature sheweth; for a ribbe is a crooked
thing, good for nothing else, and women are crooked by nature, for small occasion will cause them
to be angry.”
(Swetnam’s treatment of woman was popular, for his book entitled The Araignment of Lewde,
Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Women went through 14 editions over several centuries (p. 22).
Six)
The Stolen Rib
A Gentile ruler said to Rabbi Gamaliel, “Your God is a thief, because he stole one of
Adam’s ribs.” Thereupon the rabbi’s daughter said to her father, “Leave him to me; I will answer
him.” Turning to the ruler she exclaimed, “Thieves broke into our house and stole a silver vessel,
leaving a gold one in its place!” The ruler laughed and said, “I wish I could have burglars like that
every day.” “Well,” she retorted, “that is what our God did: he took a mere rib from the first man
but in exchange he gave him a wife” (p. 26).
A Woman’s Prerogative
Humbert de Romans, a 13th century Dominican friar, asserted: “God gave women many
prerogatives, not only over other living things but even over man himself….In the world of nature
she excelled man by her origin, for…man he formed of the slime, but woman of man’s rib” (p. 27).
Seven)
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h) Ever More Perfect
John Dryden, a 17th century British Poet, interpreted the rib story to mean that the male was
what was left after the best was extracted. A lady boasts:
Our sex, you know, was after yours designed:
The last perfection of the Maker’s mind.
Heaven drew out all the gold for us
And left our dross behind (p. 27).
Nine)
Later Development Implies Higher Quality
Lillie Blake, a 19th century social Darwinist, argued: “It cannot be maintained that woman
was inferior to man even if…she was created after him, without at once admitting that man is
inferior to the creeping things because he was created after them.” According to Blake, the rib
episode treats woman as “the last and crowning glory of the whole” (p. 28).
Ten)
She Is The Culmination
To call woman “Adam’s rib” is to misread the text which states carefully and clearly that the
extracted bone required divine labor to become female, a datum scarcely designed to bolster the
male ego….By contrast he is formed from dirt; his life hangs by a breath which he does not control;
and he himself remains silent and passive while the Diety plans and interprets his
existence….Throughout the myth she is the more intelligent one, the more aggressive one, and the
one with greater sensibilities (p. 28).
Eleven)
From Imperfect to Perfect
Samuel Terrien states: “The order of creation goes from the imperfect to the perfect. Woman
constitutes the crowning of creatino….While the woman exercises critical judgment in her dialogue
with the serpent, the man does not even argue with her….She is a real person. Man is a brute” (p.
28).
Twelve)
One Continuous Process: Male Then Female
George Tavard anchors his view on woman’s status in the Septuagint, which tells of
Yahweh “building” the rib into woman (ishah). He writes:
There is only one creation, that of Adam. The next step does not come as a second process of
creation, but as a step within the total process or as a further development….Ishah proceeds from
inside of Adam, where she was already present as that to which mankind was destined, as the
development that would bring it to perfection, as the identity with a difference which makes societybuilding possible. “This is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” Mankind recognizes itself in
Ishah….In this revelation Adam perceives clearly what his confrontation with the animals had only
weakly hinted at, his personality. Adam becoms a person, aware of himself, reaching consciousness
as mankind at the unveiling of woman. For woman also is mankind. She is no other than Adam; but
she is Adam as bringing to perfection what had first been imperfect. She is mankind as fully aware
of its status, as the goal and perfection of man (p. 29).
Thirteen) The First Unmarried Pregnant Male
Elizabeth Davis claims that some Hebrew male so resented the humiliation of being born of
woman that he recast a matriarchal myth about “the Great Goddess, Eve.” She claims: “The whole
intention of the distortion manifested in the Hebrew tale of Adam and Eve is twofold; first, to deny
the tradition of a female creator; and second, to deny the original supremacy of the female sex.”
Theologian Mary Daly agrees with Davis’s contention that the Genesis story of woman’s creation is
a ludicrous falsification, affirming as it does “that Eve was born from Adam, the first among
history’s unmarried pregnant males who courageously chose childbirth under sedation rather than
abortion, consequently obtaining a child-bride” (p. 29).
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9. Ellen Frankel, Women “Discuss” the Garden of Eden Story
from: The Five Books of Miriam
Adam's Rib
Our daughters ask: Why does woman emerge from man's body?
Leah the Namer answers: Tzela does not precisely mean "rib" but rather "side." Eve comes
forth only as "FLESH OF [Adam's] FLESH," not as "bone of [his] bone"--by C-section rather than
by bone graft. 'I'hus God serves as Adam's midwife, not his surgeon.
Our mothers chime in: So you see, the two creation stories are not so different after all. In
chapter l, Adam is presented as both male and female; and in chapter 2, although woman emerges
from the man's body, the man ultimately merges back with her. As it is written: "HENCE A MAN
LEAVES HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND CLINGS TO HIS WIFE SO THAT THEY
BECOME ONE FLESH" (2:24). In both cases, human wholeness depends upon an Other to
complete the divine image.
Putting A Fence Around The Torah
Our daughters ask: Why does Adam add to God's ban of eating from the tree a ban against
touching it also? As it is written: "YOU SHALL NOT EAT OF IT OR TOUCH IT, LEST YOU
DIE" (3:3).
'I`he Rabbis answer: To demonstrate that one must put a fence around the Torah, siyag leTorah. That is, we need to place an extra protective barrier around the performance of a
commandment so as to assure its proper observance. So, for example, we have ruled that one should
light Sabbath and holiday candles before it gets dark, not precisely at sunset, so as not to take any
chances of missing the appointed time and thereby violating the Sabbath.
Our daughters ask: 'Then why doesn't Adam tell Eve that's what his extra warning is meant
to do, to place a "fence around the Torah,' for her own good? If he had, she might not have fallen for
the serpent's deceitful promise: You shall not die, but “YOU SHALL BE LIKE GOD!" (3:5). When
she does touch the tree and discovers that no harm comes to her, she accepts all the rest of the
serpent's words as true.
Lilith the Rebel answers: That's what comes of leaving women in the dark.
Temptation
Our daughters ask: Why does the serpent tempt Eve first?
Our mothers answer: If we look closely at the text, we notice that God never forbids Eve to
eat from the tree but only forbids "the man." When Adam repeats God's message to her he
embellishes it by forbidding touch as well as taste.
Wily Rebecca breaks in: A fatal error! Being crafty, the serpent takes advantage of Adam's game of
telephone: to the divine curse and Adam’s extra taboo, he adds his own two cents in the form of an
irresistible reward: If you eat of it, "YOU SHALL BE LIKE GOD!" And Eve, seeing that "THE
TREE WAS GOOD FOR EATING AND A DELIGHT TO THE EYES, AND ... DESIRABLE AS
A SOURCE OF WISDOM" (3:6), falls for the serpent's bait. If only God had spoken to Eve directly!
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The Curse of Sexual Desire
Our daughters ask: Why is sexual desire presented as a curse only for women? As it is written:
“YET YOUR URGE SHALL BE FOR YOUR HUSBAND” (3:16).
The Sages in our own time answer: In the ancient world, female sexuality and childbearing
were experienced as burdens, snares, sources of physical vulnerability. While pregnant, nursing, and
caring for their young children, women were utterly dependent upon their men for protection and
sustenance. It was, of course, different for the men. When they responded to their own desire, they
risked neither pregnancy nor death. Neither were they compelled to lend their bodies to their babies’
insatiable appetites.
Mother Rachel points out: Yet despite the high cost exacted of us because of our sex, most
of us—then and now—nonetheless joyfully accept our lot, choosing to bear children if we are able
to. In doing so, we share in Shekhinah’s travails.
Eve’s Curse
Dinah the Wounded One laments: As a consequence of Eve’s disobedience, women are doubly
cursed: to desire their husbands, who will “rule over” them; and to give birth in pain, as it is written:
“IN PAIN SHALL YOU BEAR CHILDREN, YET YOUR URGE SHALL BE FOR YOUR
HUSBAND, AND HE SHALL RULE OVER YOU” (3:16). How astutely the text understands what
life was like for us back then? Instead of maligning woman’s nature (as the Rabbis later do),
characterizing us as empty-headed, weak-willed, untrustworthy, and frivolous, the biblical author
here accurately describes our social reality: controlled in marriage and endangered in childbirth. A
woman must have written these lines.
Eve Receives Her name
Our daughters ask: The Torah states that Eve’s Hebrew name, Hava, derives from Hai, meaning
“life,” because she is “THE MOTHER OF ALL THE LIVING” (3:20). If Eve is the mother of all
life, does that make Adam the father?
Adam and Eve have birthed each other in complementary ways: from Adam’s sleep,
emerges Eve; from Eve’s awakening, Adam’s future.
The First Child, The First Loss
Our daughters ask: What happens when Adam and Eve are banished from Eden?
Our mothers answer: They do what most families do after they lose everything: they begin
again.
Mother Rachel continues: And so Eve gains a male child—and later gains a second boy,
whose Hebrew name, Hevel, means “breath,” so fleeting is Abel’s life. With Abel’s death, Hava, the
mother of life, becomes also the mother of death, and Adam, taken from the earth, returns a son to it.
Leah the Namer adds: Names in the Bible often contain their parent’s dreams and their
children’s burdens.
Eve the Mother of Life adds: Indeed, when the gods wish to punish us, they merely answer
our prayers.
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B. Genesis 3: Shifting The Blame
1. Pierre Bourdieu, Baking Bread
The myth of Eve’s temptation to Adam and the baking of bread from a nomadic Muslem tribe
reported and analyzed by a French Post Modern anthropologist.
Tale of a Moslem Nomadic Tribe:
The myth of the origin of wheat and barley. Adam was sowing wheat; Eve brought him
some wheatcake. She saw him sowing grain by grain, “covering each seed with earth", and
invoking God each time. She accused him of wasting his time. While her husband was busy eating,
she started to broadcast the grain, without invoking the name of God. When the crop came up,
Adam found his field full of strange ears, delicate and brittle, like woman. He called this plant
(barley) ech’ir "weak".
Pierre Bourdieu’s comments:
The sacred tasks, such as ploughing and sowing, fall to those who art capable of treating the
land with the respect it deserves, of approaching it (qabel) with the measured pace of a man meeting
a partner whom he wants to welcome and honour. This is underlined by….Respect for collective
rhythms [which] implies repect for the rhythm that is appropriate to each action--neither excessive
haste nor sluggishness. It is simply a question of being in the proper place at the proper time. A
man must walk with a "measured pace" (ikthal uqudmis) neither lagging behind nor running like a
"dancer", a shallow, frivolous way to behave, unworthy of a man of honour. So there is mockery
too for the man who hurries without thinking, who runs to catch up with someone else, who works
so hastily that he is likely to "maltreat the earth", forgetting the teachings of wisdom:
"It is useless to pursue the world,
No one will ever overtake it."
"You who rush along,
Stay and be rebuked;
Daily bread comes from God,
It is not for you to concern yourself ."
The over-eager peasant moves ahead of the collective rhythms which assign each act its particular
moment in the space of the day, the year, or human life; his race with time threatens to drag the
whole group into the escalation of diabolic ambition, thahraymith, and thus to turn circular time into
linear time, simple reproduction into indefinite accumulation.
2. Alice Bach, A Woman’s Weapon: Food
(20th century Bible scholar)
From the very first biblical narrative set in the Garden of Eden, women have offered men
dangerous food. Within male-created narratives, it stands to reason that women's weapons would be
chosen from the female arsenal. Since feeding is one of women's primary cultural roles, it becomes
the key to their seizing of power. Thus, when God forbids the eating of the fruit of a particular tree,
the man trusts that the woman will feed him only the safe food. Instead the woman feeds him the
forbidden fruit, thus linking, from the beginning of the biblical narratives, a connection between
food and death. A dual connection between food and sex is madc simultaneously. As a result of
eating the magical fruit, the couple discovers desire and gratification in each other's bodies.
Of the gendered experiences, the woman will have pain in childbirth; the man will get bread
only through sweated labor. Production is separated from reproduction. Instead of delighting in
food, humans shall eat in sorrow. A shadow falls over food; it is no longer the delicious, desirous
commodity so plentiful in the Garden, food that did not even need processing or cooking. Only
through work will grain become bread.
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3. Linda Nochlin, The Fallen Woman
“It’s a queer thing,” muses a young woman in one of Rose Macaulay’s novels, written
shortly after the first World War, “how ‘fallen’ in the masculine means killed in the war, and in the
feminine given over to a particular kind of vice.” The sexual asymmetry peculiar to the notion of
falling is worth considering, especially in the nineteenth century, when both aspects were taken
more seriously than they are today. In art, fallen in the masculine tended to inspire, for the most
part, rather boring sculptural monuments and sarcophagi. Fallen in the feminine, however—
understood as any sort of sexual activity on the part of women out of wedlock, whether or not for
gain—exerted a peculiar fascination on the imagination of nineteenth-century artists, not to speak of
writers, social critics and uplifters, an interest that reached its peak in England in the middle years of
the nineteenth century….
4. Dana Fewell & David Gunn, The Woman is an Explorer
from Gender, Power, and Promise, pp. 27-38.
The woman reaches for sustenance, beauty, and wisdom. And for doing so she is blamed,
both within the text and by countless generations of biblical interpreters in the text’s afterlife.
Particularly through the influence of Augustine, she has become known as the authoress of what
Christian theology has come to know as “The Fall.” Human sin is laid at her door. Why? Because
she reaches for sustenance, beauty, and wisdom—and disobeys the divine command to eschew the
knowledge of good and evil.
Yet like God, the woman is an explorer. She seeks the good, fruit that is good for food. She
delights in beauty (God took care to create trees that were beautiful) and the fruit is a delight to the
eyes. Furthermore, she seeks to learn, to discern. The commentators cry for her blind obedience,
her trust. But mature trust grows out of experience. How can the woman discriminate between
God’s words and the serpent’s words until she has the experience of failure or the discrimination
she seeks? Why should she believe that one peremptory command is in her best interests and not
another? She seeks, reasonably, to be in a position to make a choice. Or, alternatively, she merely
responds to her programming: to eat the good food, and to be like God!
Indeed, she desires to be like God! We should not be surprised. God’s own breath has
transformed the human into a living nephesh, “a bundle of appetites/passions/desires”….That is to
say, desire is part of the divinely inspired programming of the human. The woman can no more
ignore he nephesh than she can refuse to breathe.
God had told the human not to eat the fruit for then the human would surely die. Does this
woman even know what death is? (She has not even bothered to eat of the tree of life.)….By
definition—God’s definition—Eve is unable to know the difference between good and evil. How
then can she be blamed for her actions?
On the contrary, the woman’s adventurous spirit, analogous to God’s need for discovery,
exhibits courage. She is willing to take risks. She is comfortable with lack of closure. She does not
know what is going to happen. Obviously, neither does God….
According to Mieke Bal, Eve’s decision to eat the fruit is the first act of human
independence. This independence forces the human and the divine into a real relationship of give
and take rather than an artificial relationship of puppet and puppeteer. Eve does not “sin”; she
chooses reality over her naive, paradisiacal existence. Her choice marks the emergence of human
character….Though Eve’s behavior is condemned by God and berated by centuries of readers, she
emerges as a character with initiative and courage. Too innocent to be evil, too guileless to be
seductive, she is a child testing her boundaries, weighing her options, making her choices. She
makes her decision independent of those who claim authority over her.
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5. William Phipps, Her Husband Beside Her
The Woman’s Advantage: More Direct, More Assertive. Christian Commentators from
Genesis and Gender, pp. 39-40.
The Revised Standard Version, the New English Bible, and Today’s English Version are
among those following the Latin Vulgate’s error of not stating that Adam was with Eve in
the encounter with the serpent. In his Vulgate, Jerome omitted translating from either the
Hebrew bible or the Greek Septuagint the prepositional phrase which establishes Adam’s
presence. Jerome seems unwilling to accept that the representative male was unprotesting to
the serpent.
According to Gerhard von Rad, (20th century German biblical scholar):
The woman is now alone….The one who has been led astray now becomes a temptress.
That is meant to indicate that the woman confronts the obscure allurements and mysteries
that beset our limited life more directly than the man does. In the history of Yahwehreligion it has always been the women who have shown an inclination for obscure
astrological cults.
In an early Christian manuscript, we read the following:
Why did the serpent not attack the man, rather than the woman? You say he went after her
because she was the weaker of the two. On the contrary. In the transgression of the
commandment, she showed herself to be the stronger…for she alone stood up to the serpent.
She ate from the tree, but with resistance and dissent, and after being dealt with perfidiously.
But Adam partook of the fruit given by the woman, without even beginning to make a fight.
Jean Higgins comments:
There is something comical in the image of the man standing there and never entering into
the conversation at all, never intervening to stop the temptation, leaving the woman to do the
talking, thinking, deciding, acting, and only at the end reaching out his hand to accept and
eat what his wife put into his hands.
Phyllis Bird adds:
The woman is this portrait responds to the object of temptation intellectually and
reflectively, employing both practical and esthetic judgment. The man, on the other hand,
passively and unquestioningly accepts what the woman offers him.
Tikva Frymer-Kensky’s perspective on Eve is based on the Genesis text:
Eve is portrayed as the spokesperson for the couple, and during her talk with the serpent she
presents theological arguments. She is never portrayed as wanton, or as tempting or tempted
sexually, nor does the biblical author single her out for greater blame than her partner.
6. Lisa Aiken, To Be A Jewish Woman
(20th century Orthodox Feminist)
from Women as Redeemers of the Jewish People, pp. 44-45.
Fulfilling the Purpose of Creation of the World
What was God’s purpose in creating the world, and what is needed in order for it to be
fulfilled? As we saw, it has been suggested that God created the world in order to give Adam a
place to obey His commands, and thereby allow God to bestow treasures of goodness on humanity.
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When the first woman helped Adam sin, man and woman lost their opportunity to bring the world to
its state of spiritual perfection.
It became the task of all of their descendants to metaphysically rectify this first error. Adam
and Eve were created in order to recognize and ratify that there was a singular Creator. It became
the task of each successive generation to fulfill their original mission. When people put aside their
personal needs and animalistic drives in order to follow God’s wishes, they prepare the world for
the messianic era.
How does this concept apply to men versus women? How does the Torah’s view of their
different natures fit in with the plan of Creation?
Adam lived in the utopia of the Garden of Eden, surrounded by its splendor and lushness.
He was created directly by the Almighty, brought to life by the Master of the Universe, and was
charged with a singular mission. That mission was to enjoy all of the creations that God had placed
in the world—the sights, scents, sounds, sensations, and tastes. The First Man had only to restrict
himself from taking from one tree, and the rest of the Garden of Eden was his to enjoy forever, as a
reward for restraining himself in this one area.
Within hours of her creation, Chavah (Eve) ate from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of
good and evil, and gave some to Adam. The rest is history. The subsequent years have been spent
trying to make up for the imperfection brought into the world by the First Man’s sin. In order for us
to rectify this sin, we have to understand not only what the sin was, but what Adam’s and Eve’s
roles with respect to each other were intended to be.
Eve’s Dual Roles
Adam was to have been the creature who was to reign over the entire earth as God’s
appointed surrogate. But he was supposed to have remembered that God was the ultimate decisionmaker and ruler. By acquiescing to the rule of his Creator, Adam would have sanctified all earthly
existence. Adam was charged with one mitzvah, and his task was to serve God directly by keeping
it.
Chavah, on the other hand, was created in a different manner than was Adam. She was
specifically created as an ezer kenegdo—literally, a “help against him.” God did not directly
command her to keep the mitzvah that was given to Adam. (Adam transmitted the command to
her.) Rather, she was designated to have two specific roles.
Her first role was to be a helper to Adam, an ezer kenegdo. She was created to be an equal
partner to her husband. In this role, one of her responsibilities was to help Adam recognize his
limitations. The designation of Chavah as a “helper against him” is interpreted to mean that Chavah
was to be Adam’s helper when he deserved her help, but was to oppose him when he didn’t deserve
her help. This implied that Chavah, in part due to her objectivity, could have more awareness of
God’s will than did Adam.
Chavah’s name also comes from the word chai, meaning life. Chavah’s second role was, as
her name implies, to be the mother of all people. In encouraging Adam to sin in the Garden of
Eden, Chavah was more of a kenegdo—an opponent to Adam—than an ezer, or help to him. Since
Chavah embodied within her the souls of all women who would ever be born, it became the primary
task of all of Chavah’s female descendants to rectify her error by enabling themselves and their
husbands attain their spiritual goals.
The sages usually translate the term ezer kenegdo to mean that a woman supports her
husband by helping him, and thereby becomes his ezer. A wife who opposes her husband is
considered to be kenegdo—“his opponent.”
The expression ezer kenegdo can also be appropriately translated in a different way. Even
when a woman opposes her husband, she can be his ezer. That is, women can help men by
opposing them. Throughout Jewish history, women have stood in opposition to their husbands’
misguided actions, thereby enabling their husbands, and the entire Jewish people, to reach spiritual
heights that they could not have attained otherwise.
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7. Augustine, Christian Interpretations
from The Christian Interpretations, pp. 96-97.
Augustine's analysis of the reasons why the tempter chose to approach Eve rather than Adam
was equally conventional: ‘[Satan] first tried his deceit upon the woman, making his assault upon
the weaker part of that human alliance, that he might gradually gain the whole, and not supposing
that the man would readily give ear to him, or be deceived, but that he might yield to the error of the
woman.’ His point of departure was Chrysostom's assertion that the tree of knowledge was no more
than a token of Man's obedience. Adam and Eve were prohibited from a tree which had no inherent
evil. For God forbid that the Creator of all good, who made all things…should plant anything evil
amidst the fertility of even that material Paradise. Still, however, it was well to show man, whose
submission to such a Master was so very useful to him, how much good belonged simply to the
obedience….They were in fact forbidden the use of a tree, which, if it had not been for the
prohibition, they might have used without suffering any evil result whatever;…the tree did not
produce it to their detriment from any noxious or pernicious quality in its fruit, but entirely from the
fact of their violated obedience.
Yet if this were so why should the tree of the knowledge of good and evil have been so
called? Augustine explained that its name was derived from the effect it produced: ‘He called [it]
the tree of knowledge of good and evil, to signify by this name the consequence of their discovering
both what good they would experience if they kept the prohibition, and what evil if they
transgressed it.’ The Fall, therefore, consisted primarily in disobedience, but Augustine did not let
the matter rest there. Tertullian had claimed that the law prohibiting the tree contained in embryo
the precepts of the entire Decalogue, and Augustine's interpretation of its violation was no less
comprehensive. Among the sins subsumed in Adam's disobedience he listed pride, blasphemy,
murder, spiritual fornication, theft, and avarice. Indeed, he seems to have regarded the physical
trespass as the symptom of sin rather than the sin itself: ‘The wicked deed then--that is to say, the
transgression of eating the forbidden fruit--was committed by persons who were already
wicked….The devil, then, would not have ensnared man in the open and manifest sin of doing what
God had forbidden, had man not already begun to live for himself. This nascent ‘evil will’ he
defined elsewhere as pride: ‘Under what circumstances would the woman believe these words,
namely that they had been prohibited from a good and useful thing by Divine influence, unless there
were already in her mind a certain love of her own power and a certain proud self-presumption
which should have been defeated and humiliated through the temptation?’ The passage is a crucial
one, for it indicates that Eve was at least potentially sinful before she ever touched the forbidden
fruit. Although it solves the problem of accounting for her defection, it does so by casting the
gravest doubts on her original integrity, and, by implication, on the benevolence and justice of her
Creator.
…Like Chrysostom, he adduced a passage from St. Paul's second Epistle to Timothy to
show that Adam ate the forbidden fruit not because he believed the serpent's promises but because
his wife urged him to do so:
so we cannot believe that Adam was deceived, and supposed the devil's word to be truth, and
therefore transgressed God's law, but that he by the drawings of kindred yielded to the
woman, the husband to the wife, the one human being to the only other human being. For
not without significance did the apostle say, ‘And Adam was not deceived, but the woman
being deceived was in the transgression’; but he speaks thus, because the woman accepted as
true what the serpent told her, but the man could not bear to be severed from his only
companion, even though this involved a partnership in sin. He was not on this account less
culpable, but sinned with his eyes open.1
1
"Augustine … derived many …attitudes from the story of Adam and Eve: that sexual desire is sinful; that infants are
infected from the moment of conception with the disease of original sin and that Adam’s sin corrupted the whole of
nature itself. (p. xix)
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C: Genesis 3: The Punishments
1. Mary Gordon, Happy Virgin, Cursed Mother: Church Fathers on Eve’s Curse
Tertullian wrote: “Do you not realize, Eve, that it is you? The curse God pronounced on your
sex weight still on the world. Guiltily, you must bear its hardships. You are the devil’s gateway,
you desecrated the fatal tree, you first betrayed the law of God, you softened up with your cajoling
words the man against whom the devil could not prevail by force.”
The tradition suggests that Eve is cursed to bear children, rather than being blessed with
motherhood. Augustine refers to the “feces and urine” of childbirth. In the sixth century, Venantius
Fortunatus writes, “Happy virgin…she does not weigh down sluggish limbs with an imprisoned
embryo; she is not depressed and worn out by its awkward weight.” In the seventeenth century, St.
Jean Eudes writes, touching on the unbaptized fetus as the victim of original sin, “It is a subject of
humiliation of all the mothers of the children of Adam to know that while they are with child, they
carry with them an infant…who is the enemy of God, the object of his hatred and malediction, and
the shrine of the demon.”
The identification of women with the flesh, men with the spirit, was a commonplace of ancient
thought, and thinkers about women have used this idea to depict woman as inevitably lower—by
virtue of her physical existence—than men. St. Jerome informs us: “As long as a woman is for birth
and children, she is different from man as body is from soul. But when she wishes to serve Christ
more than the world, then she will cease to be a woman, and will be called man.” St. John
Chrysostom, speaking of women’s physical nature, opines; “The whole of her bodily beauty is
nothing less than phlegm, blood, bile, rheum, and the fluid of digested food….If you consider what
is stored up behind those lovely eyes, the angle of the nose, the mouth and cheeks you will agree
that the well-proportioned body is merely a whitened sepulcher.”
In the 5th century, St. Augustine of Hippo argued that woman was not created in God’s image
but only in his “likeness,” which supported the idea of her “weakness” and greater propensity for
sin. He argued that “even before her sin, woman had been made to be ruled by her husband and to
be submissive and subject to him,” but that condition was without resentment, while after the Fall
“there is a condition similar to slavery.” In another, often quoted statement, Augustine said:
I have said, when I was treating of the nature of the human mind, that the woman together
with her husband is in the image of God…but when she is referred to separately to her
quality of “help-meet,” which regards the woman herself alone, then she is not the image of
God, but as regards the man alone, he is the image of God as fully and completely as when
the woman too is joined with him in one.
In a world in which Christians not only were free to follow their faith but were officially encouraged to do so. Augustine
came to read the story of Adam and Eve very differently than had the majority of his Jewish and Christian predecessors.
What they had read for centuries as a story of human freedom became, in his hands, a story of human bondage. Most
Jews and Christians had agreed that God gave humankind in creation the gift of moral freedom, and that Adam’s misuse
of it brought death upon his progeny. But Augustine went further; Adam’s sin not only caused our mortality but cost us
our moral freedom, irreversibly corrupted our experience of sexuality (which Augustine tended to identify with original
sin) and made us incapable of genuine political freedom… Augustine’s theory of original sin… offered an analysis of
human nature that became… the heritage of all subsequent generations of western Christians and the major influence on
their psychological and political thinking. Even today, many people, Catholics and Protestants alike, regard the story of
Adam and Eve as virtually synonymous with original sin... [Yet] many traditional Christians believed that this theory of
“original sin”—the ideas that Adam’s sin is directly transmitted to his progeny—repudiated the twin foundations of the
Christian faith: the goodness of God’s creation; and the freedom of the human will".
( Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve and the Serpent, xix, xxvi, 131)
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A popular version of these woman-blaming beliefs is expressed by a medieval Irish poet, when he
had Eve speak as follows:
I am Eve, the wife of noble Adam; it was I who violated Jesus in the past; it was I who
robbed my children of heaven; it is I by right who should have been crucified….It was I who
plucked the apple;…there would be no hell, there would be no grief, there would be no
terror but for me.
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2. Chava Weissler, Mizvot Built into the Body: Tkhines for Niddah, Pregnancy, and Childbirth
from People of the Body, Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, ed., pp. 102-109.
This chapter draws upon an important work from the Yiddish musar, or ethical literature, a
guide to the observance of the women's commandments, Ayn shoen froen bukhlein [A Pretty Little
Book for Women], also known as Sefer mitsvas ha-noshim [The Book of Women's
Commandments], by R. Benjamin Aaron Solnik, first published in 1577.
Material in these works will be compared to tkhines, prayers for private devotion recited by
women in Yiddish, published in Western and Central Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. While many tkhines were written by women, most of the texts to be discussed are
anonymous.
Women's Bodies and the Women's Mizvot
There is a well-known rabbinic trope that makes a correspondence between human anatomy
and God's commandments. According to this traditional physiology, human beings have 248 limbs
and 365 organs, corresponding to the numbers of positive and negative commandments,
respectively, and adding up to 613, the traditional number of commandments in the Torah.
However, this only describes male human beings; women, with a different anatomy, have a different
number of limbs. A long tkhine to be recited "every day" found at the beginning of Tkhines
(Amsterdam: 1648), discusses the implication of this difference:
…Strengthen my bones so that I can stand before you and serve your awesome Name with
my whole heart, with all my limbs that you have created within me, two hundred and fifty
two. You have given and commanded your children Israel to perform two hundred and fortyeight mizvot (commandments), the same number as men have limbs. And you have promised
them that if they keep and do these commandments, you will give them the light that is
hidden for the righteous men and women in the next world. And you have given us women
four extra limbs, and you have also given us four mizvot: kindling lights to honor the holy
Sabbath, and to purify ourselves of our impurity, and to separate hallah from the dough of
our baking, and that we are obligated to serve our husbands. You have also placed in my
body three hundred and sixty five organs--the same number as the negative commandments
that you have given to your children Israel . . . (Tkhines 1648, no. 1).
Thus, the three women's commandments, which are here bound up with subservience to the
husband, are built into women's bodies. Truly, in this case, anatomy is destiny.
The Significance of the Women's Mizvot
There is an obvious connection between the three women's commandments and aspects of
women's traditional activities: separating hallah and kindling Sabbath lights can stand for
domesticity, while the observance of menstrual avoidances structures sexuality and reproduction.
However, texts going back to the rabbinic period add another level of meaning. They make both the
three women's mizvot and women's post-Edenic physiology emblematic of and punishment for Eve's
sin. In Midrash Tanhuma, beginning of parashat Noah, we read:
…And why were women commanded these three commandments? The Holy One, be
blessed, said, Adam was the beginning of my creation, and was commanded concerning the
Tree of Knowledge. And it is written with regard to Eve, “When the woman saw,” etc. [that
the tree was good for eating and a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable as a
source of wisdom, she took of its fruit and ate.] She also gave some to her husband, and he
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ate [Gen. 3:6]. Thus she caused his death and shed his blood. And it is written in the Torah,
"Whoever sheds the blood of man [Adam], by man shall his blood be shed [Gen. 9:6]." So
she sheds her blood, and keeps her period of separation [niddatah], in order to atone for the
blood of Adam that she shed.
Whence comes the mizvah of hallah? She polluted the hallah of the world, as Rabbi Yose b.
Dusmeka said: Just as the woman slaps her dough with water and afterwards takes hallah
[magbahat hallatah ], so did the Holy One, be blessed, with regard to Adam, as it was
written, "And a mist came forth from the ground and watered [the whole surface of the
earth]" [Gen. 2:6], and then afterwards, "The Lord God formed Adam from the dust of the
earth" [Gen. 2:7].
Whence comes the kindling of the lights? She extinguished Adam's light, as it is written,
"The light of the Lord is the soul of man [Adam]" [Proverbs 20:27], therefore she must observe
the kindling of the light.
Thus, the women's commandments are seen as punishment and atonement for Eve's sin, which is
understood, here, as the causing of Adam's death. Menstruation, in this text and others, is seen as
part of God's punishment of Eve.
In Sefer mitsvas ha-noshim, R. Benjamin Aaron Solnik picks up this midrashic motif and
lovingly develops it. He begins by retelling the tale of Eve's sin in the Garden of Eden.
…After Eve ate of the apple, and knew she must die, she wanted her husband to eat of it as well.
She said, “If I have to die, you have to die with me.” And she gave it to him so that he would also
have to eat of the apple. Adam, poor thing, at first didn't want to eat of the apple. So she took a tree
branch in her hand and beat him until he also ate of the apple. As the verse says, “She gave me of
the tree, and I ate [Gen. 3:12: Hi natnah li min ha-ez va-okhel]. She gave [it] to me with the tree, and
I ate. And because that foolish Adam let his wife beat him, God, blessed be his name, cursed him,
for he should not have let a woman beat him, but he should have beaten her . . . for God made the
man to rule over the woman . . . (Solnik 1602:3b-4a).
Thus Eve's sin includes insubordination to Adam even though the biblical text declares that Adam
will rule over Eve only after they have eaten the fruit, as part of Eve's punishment (Gen. 3:16). But
according to the Sefer mitzvas ha-noshim, Eve's sin is even worse than that:
…Therefore the woman must also…suffer torment and misfortune. And therefore she must have
her period every month, and must fast once or twice [a month], so that she will always remember
her sin and remain in a constant state of repentance. Just as a murderer continuously does, who
must all his days fast once or twice a month, so that he will think about repentance, and regret his
sin, so must the woman do as well. Every month she immerses herself in the ritual bath, so that she
will remember her sins, and be pious….Therefore, it is fitting for her to recite the prayers for a
repentant sinner…. (Solnik 1602:4a).
Thus, women's very bodies give evidence against them as murderers once a month; the implication
also seems to be that because of Eve's sin, all women are "naturally" more sinful than men, and
need, therefore, the monthly reminder of their sins that the observance of niddah provides. This
periodic penitence will ensure the woman's piety, says the author, even after she reaches the age of
forty, and, presumably, menopause. "Therefore, dear daughter" this chapter concludes, "God has
commanded you these three commandments. If you keep them and do them properly, he will forgive
you your sins in this world and the next" (Solnik 1602:4a).
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What should give us pause here is the picture of woman as murderer. Solnik seems to like
this comparison, and, again, following the midrashic sources, develops it further with reference to
the other two commandments as well:
Women were commanded to kindle the lights, and they are obligated to observe this
commandment, because they extinguished the light of the world [no longer just Adam's
light], and darkened it….And because of her sin, because she ate from the apple, all of us
must die. Since she has extinguished the light of our life, she must kindle the lights. (Solnik
1602:4a-4b).
After giving a variety of interpretations for the requirement that the two candles be lit, the author
returns to this theme:
…Therefore women must kindle the lights, for they have extinguished our light. And for
that reason they must also suffer the pain of menstruation, because they shed our blood.
Therefore they have the suffering of menstruation and must immerse themselves. For the
immersion is like the repentance of a penitent sinner who was a murderer. And so it is with
hallah, too. For she has spoiled things for us, we who are called "Israel was holy to the Lord,
the first frults of his harvest" [Jer. 2:3] this means in Yiddish: “Hallow, Israel, to God, the
firstling of his fruit.” Therefore she must "take hallah." For she is commanded, “As the first
yield of your baking, you shall set aside a loaf [Hallah] as a gift" [Num. 15:20]; this means in
Yiddish, “the first part of your dough shall you separate as hallah.” Therefore the woman
must keep the three commandments. (Solnik 1602:4b).
What is fascinating here, even beyond the punitive theory the author develops of the
women's commandments, is his complete collapse of all women into Eve. For him they are all the
same, and the sixteenth-century women he addresses must repent continuously for Eve's "murder"
of Adam. Of course, the text of Genesis does indicate that the punishments of both Adam and Eve
will apply to future generations, and the midrashic sources also conflate Eve and later women.
Solnik goes beyond his sources in two ways, however. First, he repeatedly uses the term
“murderer,” which does not appear in the rabbinic sources. Second, he implicitly describes all
women as the murderers of all men, not just of Adam: “They have extinguished our light….They
have shed our blood” (emphasis added). Near the end of the final chapter of the section on niddah,
which makes up the lion’s share of the book, Solnik remarks, “Women, with their apple eating,
brought death to the world, and with their piety, which means behaving as set out above, they can
bring about the end of death….Thus has the Lord God spoken; may it come to pass speedily and in
our days,…amen.”…
A tkhine to be said when the woman inspects herself to make certain the flow of blood has
ceased, which she must do for seven days before purifying herself by ritual immersion, again
articulates and then swallows a question:
God and my King, you are merciful. Who can tell or know your justice or your judgment?
They are as deep as brooks of water and the depths of springs. You punished Eve, our
ancient Mother, because she persuaded her husband to trespass against your commandment,
and he ate from the tree that was forbidden them. You spoke with anger that in sadness she
would give birth. So we women must suffer each time, and have our regular periods, with
heavy hearts. Thus, I have had my period with a heavy heart, and with sadness, and I thank
your holy Name and your judgment, and I have received it with great love…as a
punishment…(Seder tkhines u-vakoshes 1762, no. 91 ).
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This prayer seems chiefly designed to reconcile the women who recited it with both the discomfort
of their menstrual cycles and an interpretation of this discomfort as a just punishment. By portraying
God's justice as inscrutable, the tkhine does recognize, indirectly, that perhaps women's situation
might seem unjust, but goes on to squelch this thought by having the reciter thank God for her
periodic punishment.
Only one text--significantly, the one that seems to be the oldest, and which gives some
indication that it emerged from women's oral tradition--actually dissociates the woman from Eve's
sin. This is the prayer for biting of the end of the etrog on Hoshana Rabba, a practice thought to
ensure an easy childbirth. Although it was later incorporated into Seder tkhines u-vakoshes and
several other tkhine collections, it appears first in the Tsenerene, known as the "women's Bible," an
enormously popular homiletical work. Since the Tsenerene was first published around 1600, this
tkhine is contemporaneous with the musar literature quoted earlier.
The way the Tsenerene introduces this prayer makes it sound like a record of women's
practice. The context is a discussion of what kind of tree the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of
Eden was:
Some sages say that it was a citron tree. Therefore, the custom is that women take
the etrog and bite off the end on Hoshana Rabba [the seventh day of Sukkot], and give
money to charity, since charity saves from death (Prov. 6:2), and they pray to God to be
protected from the sufferings of bearing the children they are carrying, that they may give
birth easily. Had Eve not eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, each woman would give birth
as easily as a hen lays an egg, without pain. The woman should pray and should say:
Lord of the world, because Eve ate of the apple, all of us women must suffer such
great pangs as to die. Had I been there, I would not have had any enjoyment from [the fruit].
Just so, now I have not wanted to render the etrog unfit during the whole seven days when it
was used for a mizvah. But now, on Hoshana Rabba, the mizvah is no longer applicable, but
I am [still] not in a hurry to eat it. And just as little enjoyment as I get from the stem of the
etrog would I have gotten from the apple that you forbade (Jacob ben Isaac of Yanov
1702/3:4b).
The implication, not quite explicitly spelled out, is that since the woman would not have committed
Eve's sin, she should not suffer Eve's punishment.
3. Sarah Grimke, Thou shalt be subject unto thy husband
from Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness, p. 162.
Sarah Grimke2972-2791( )יwas the daughter of a leading planter and slaveholder in South
Carolina. She had early rebelled against slavery and the subordinate position of women. She left
the South permanently after the death of her father and influenced her younger sister Angelina
(1805-79) to join her in Philadelphia. Strongly religious, Sarah Grimke moved from one
denomination to another in search of a religion which allowed her feminism and anti-racism
adequate expression. Reared as an Episcopalian, she became a Methodist, then a Quaker.
Sarah Grimke, like prior commentators, stressed the early version of Genesis as decisive. She
argued that Creation was filled with animals who could have been companions to Adam but that
God wanted “to give him a companion, in all respects his equal; one who was like himself a free
agent, gifted with intellect and endowed with immortality.” She interpreted the Fall as showing
Adam and Eve equally guilty, an interpretation we have previously encountered on the part of a
number of writers. Sarah Grimke understands God’s curse on Eve—“Thou wilt be subject unto thy
husband, and he will rule over thee”—as simple prophesy:
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The Hebrew, like the French language, uses the same word to express shall and will. Our
translators having been accustomed to exercise lordship over their wives and seeing only
through the medium of a perverted judgment…translated it shall instead of will, and thus
converted a prediction to Eve into a command to Adam; for observe it, it is addressed to the
woman and not to the man.
I ask no favors for my sex. All I ask our brethren is, that they will take their feet from off
our necks and permit us to stand upright on that ground which God designed us to
occupy….All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means
to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in
promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to
fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks
triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and says, the being thus deeply injured is his
inferior.
4. Mieke Bal, Lyn Bechtel & Carol Meyers, Punishments? No, Wisdom and Maturity and
Reality!
from Helpmates, Harlots, & Heroes, pp. 50-59.
Mieke Bal
Bal agrees with Trible that the results of the disobedience are not punishment but a
description of life in the real world. Unlike Trible, though, she does not see the action of eating the
fruit as sin. Rather, Bal views the woman’s choice to eat as a way to gain the wisdom that will
make her like God. Ironically, her choice also fulfills God’s intention of humanity made in the
divine image (Genesis 1:27).
By choosing to eat and gain knowledge, including sexual knowledge, the woman makes the
continuance of the species possible, even though the individual will not be immortal. Her choice is
a choice for reality. Her choice puts an end to the fantasy of individual immortality. It opens up
reality as we know it.
Lyn Bechtel
Bechtel interprets the Adam and Eve story as the story of human maturation. In this respect
Bechtel’s interpretation is similar to Bal’s, but Bechtel’s reading goes farther. In the first state of
human development, Adam names the animals. Adam is not aware of sexual differentiation at this
point. He is learning to differentiate himself from the outside world. The naming process does not
indicate control over the animals, only his awareness of difference. He is a very young child. In the
next stage of development when the female is created, Adam becomes aware that there are boys and
girls, but no sense of shame is present. In Genesis 2:25, Adam and the female human are naked and
not ashamed. They are children, with a dawning awareness of sexuality. Later, they become aware
of their nakedness (Genesis 3:7). Now they are adolescents. They have not fallen; rather, they have
moved toward full human consciousness, freedom, maturity, socialization, and individual identity in
relation to the group.
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Carol Meyers
Meyers then explains that the primary reason for rejecting sin as the central theme of Genesis 3 is
that there is no explicit reference to it:
None of the words that are part of the Hebrew vocabulary for sin and transgression are
present in the story. Even when God utters the fateful words leading to the banishment of
the primeval couple from their idyllic life in the well-watered garden, only the specific act—
the eating of the fruit of a tree that was forbidden—is cited.
Interpreters may label this act as disobedient; exegetes may consider it sinful. But God does
not provide such a judgment within either the narration or the discourse of Genesis 3.
Nor…does the Hebrew Bible ever associate any of the many sins later perpetrated
individually or collectively by the children of Israel with the behavior of the woman and the
man in Eden.
5. Naomi Rosenblatt, Dedication To Life, Not Immortality
from Wrestling With Angels, pp. 42-43.
“For dust you are and to dust you shall return.” How does Adam react to the death sentence
that awaits him after a lifetime of sweat and toil? Does he beg for mercy? Does he curse God or
rebuke the woman? No. Adam turns out to be a man of character. Instead of reviling his wife, he
pays homage to her unique talent for bringing forth new life from her body. Adam, whose name
means, “earth,” confers on his wife the name Eve, which in Hebrew—Havah—connotes “life.”
Mortality is not God’s punishment for eating of the tree of Knowledge. As human beings,
Adam and Eve are destined to be mortal, they simply have to find it out for themselves. Each of us,
as children, bumps up against the immovable reality of our mortality, and we spend the better part
of our adult lives grappling with its implications. Death is what endows life with meaning and a
measure of urgency. With the awareness of death comes an understanding of just how finite and
precious each day of our life is.
…As Erik Erikson noted: “Healthy children will not fear life so long as their parents have
integrity enough not to fear death.” As we’ll see later in Genesis, the patriarchs and matriarchs are
remarkably matter-of-fact in the face of their mortality. “Dust to dust” is accepted as an inescapable
reality rather than as a tragic consequence of life.
God seems to conclude that Adam and Eve have outgrown the cradle of Eden He built for them,
that adult sexuality may prove too uncontrollable a force in His carefully ordered garden. Like a
parent with grown children, He sees that it’s time for them to face life in the real world. God posts
a sword-wielding sentry at the gate to the Garden to keep Adam and Eve from regressing to a
childish life devoid of adult challenges and rewards. Once we lose our youthful innocence, there’s
no going back to the garden of childhood, much as we might yearn to.
Our hearts go out to Adam and Eve for their primal loss of innocence. But they also earn our
admiration. As they leave the Garden arm in arm, we see a couple bound closer together by
adversity. As Eli Wiesel writes in Messengers of the Gods:
Rejected by God, [Adam] drew closer to Eve. Never were the two so united….Expelled
from paradise, Adam and Eve did not give in to resignation. In the face of death, they decide
to fight by giving life, by conferring a meaning on life….[Like Adam,] every on of us yearns
to recapture some lost paradise, every one of us bears the mark of some violated stolen
innocence.
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Adam and Eve’s stoic exit from the Garden is a far cry from the tearful scene depicted in
Renaissance paintings. They don’t apologize or despair. Their perseverance defies the pessimistic
“fall of man” interpretation of their expulsion from the Garden. With their departure, we witness
instead the “rise of man” as the first man and woman forge a covenant of love and interdependence
dedicated to their mutual survival and growth.
6. Joel Rosenberg, Man’s Reconciliation with Woman After the Fall into Mortality
(20th Century USA)
from “Bible Narrative,” Back to the Sources, ed. Barry Holtz, p. 57; King and Kin, “The
Garden Story Forward and Backward, pp. 60-61.
…The man, when he learns he is eventually to die, and in the meantime to live under hard labor,
chooses a new name for his companion that expresses the positive and life-affirming aspect of the
new reality:
The human being called his wife’s name “Eve!” [havvah! Life-bearer!],
for she was “Mother-of-all-Living” (Genesis 3:20).
In this manner, the story’s wordplay comes full circle. The contrasting words for man
(‘adam/’ish), and the contrasting words for woman (‘ishah/havvah)…express as totality a kind of
symbolic anthropology of the human species, locating it midway between divinity and beast and
showing its life to be comprised of distinct life cycles: a period of abject dependence, followed by a
brief interlude of “independence,” followed by a period of wise interdependence.
The story’s beings, in a sense, are made to discover the meanings of their names. To change a
name is to change reality. The giving o a name, here, as throughout the Bible, always signals a
major transition in being and consciousness. So the story is not simply a historical event, it is a
paradigmatic event, typically repeated every lifetime: the normal change in our awareness of our
personal and social reality, as we progress through life.
(3:20): "And the human being called his wife's name 'Eve' [Hawwah], for she was mother of all
living.” The name “Hawwah,” which resembles the pa’’al noun-pattern denoting the practitioner of
a craft, skill, or habit, may be translated as “Life-bearer.” It is significant that this naming occurs
precisely at the moment that the man has been made aware (3:19) of his own mortality. Recorded
here with considerable irony is the male spouse’s sense, perhaps universal to the whole animal
kingdom, that the production of offspring is the beginning of the end of his own flourishing vitality.
The woman is “life-bearer” to the future generations, but she is “life-taker” to her mate. Indeed,
insofar as his exertions of physical strength become redirected to welfare of his wife and children
(as well as livestock), the man is literally sacrificing his own vitalities (quite apart from whatever
mystical significance was invested by ancient society in the transmission of seed). It is for these
reasons, and not because of any innate “perversity” of woman, that Eve is blamed for the “fall.”
…Henceforth, man and woman are to occupy separate domains of daily life and separate frames
of discourse. Henceforth, the relation of the sexes will be a matter of contact across barriers. It is the
dawning reality of death that makes it so. The change in man's relation to woman coincides with the
change in his understanding of his own existence: woman must cease to be close cohort and
companion and must now become primarily a bearer of children, because the human being's earthly
lot is now seen to be limited in time. The mutual personal fulfillment afforded by an indefinite
extension of man's and woman’s “twinlike” association must now be subordinated to considerations
affecting survival of the human species, and the man's and woman's equivalence of social function
must now yield to a division of labor appropriate to their newly stressed biological differences and
fostering their mutual isolation. Neither partner has cause to rejoice.
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It is a moot point whether, prior to mankind’s fall, the biological differences between man and
woman existed, as commentators have debated; the story traces not the origin of the differences per
se, but that of the awareness of differences.
7. Dana Fewell & David Gunn, Shifting the Blame
from Gender, Power, and Promise, pp. 35-36.
Are They Punishments for Women?
The first question to ask is, Are they punishments? Some, (e.g., Phyllis Trible and Carol
Meyers) have argued that they are rather consequences of knowing good and evil. Let us pursue
that suggestion. Would not knowing good and evil inevitably have to include the good and bad of
what sustains human beings? Procreation involves children to love but also physical and emotional
pain, not to mention infant and female mortality (a major risk in the ancient world as in many parts
of today’s world). Passion allows for love and intimacy, but also the possibility of domination
(even violence); it can be the excuse for estrangement and the cause of unwanted pregnancy. In
work one may find the satisfaction of accomplishment as well as the weariness of labor and the
frustration of failure.
Is this the kind of knowledge of good and evil that God knows? Does God somehow benefit
from humans knowing these things too? Yes, we could reply. Just as God claims that it is not good
for the human to be alone, neither is it good for God to be alone; and God will always be alone if
there is no one to share some part of his experience. Good and evil is part of divine experience, and
relationship with humans who know nothing of life’s labor, pain and dissonance could only be a
facile and impoverished relationship.
Whether viewed as punishments or predictions, God’s words further define the gender roles of
the man and the woman who now know good and evil. The woman is defined in relation to the
man, as a toiling mother (indeed, the man goes on to reinforce this identity as mother, by naming
her Eve, the mother of all living; 2:20), desiring (sexually) her husband but facing the danger of
numerous pregnancies….The man is defined in relation to the ground, with which he must struggle
in order to eat. The basic drives of sex and eating are paralleled in these definitions (cf. eating as a
common metaphor for sex; e.g., Proverbs 1-9 and Song of Songs), the one ascribed to the woman
and the other to the man. But control of her sexuality is denied the woman: the man shall rule over
her. Thus both sex and eating end up in the domain of the man. The woman becomes subordinate,
the man subjugator.
An air of unreality has descended on the text. It is women’s sexual desire for men that is
named, not men’s for women, and it is this desire that will subordinate women. Because she
sexually desires her man so greatly, she will put aside her concern for the risks of childbearing and
will be unable to resist her man’s (unnamed) sexual advances….His (unnamed) desire will
predominate because her (named) desire is so predominant! (So when she says “no” she really
means “yes”?) Hence, because she really wants him to do so, the man will rightly rule over her.
But how curious, in a story where the man is passive and complaint and the woman active and
assertive, for such a man to rule over such a woman’s sexuality!
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Chapter V – Supplement
A. Biblical
1. Meir Shalev, Man, King of the Animals [To be translated]
from Tanach Achshav
2. Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith
from Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Thought (1965).
We all know that the Bible offers two accounts of the creation of man….It is,
of course, true that the two accounts of the creation of man differ considerably. This incongruity
was not discovered by the Bible critics. Our sages of old were aware of it2. However, the answer lies
not in an alleged dual tradition but in dual man, not in an imaginary contradiction between two
versions but in a real contradiction in the nature of man. The two accounts deal with two Adams,
two men, two fathers of mankind, two types, two representatives of humanity, and it is no wonder
that they are not identical. Let us just read these two accounts.
In Genesis I we read: "So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created
He him, male and female created He them. And God blessed them and God said unto them, be
fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea,
over the fowl of the heaven, and over the beasts, and all over the earth.”
In Genesis II, the account differs substantially from the one we just read: "And the eternal
God formed the man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and
man became a living soul. And the eternal God planted a garden eastward in Eden . . . And the
eternal God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to serve it and to keep it."
I want to point out four major discrepancies between these two accounts.
1) In the story of the creation of Adam the first, it is told that the latter was created in the
image of God, ,לקים- בצלם אwhile nothing is said about how his body was formed. In the account of
the creation of Adam the second, it is stated that he was fashioned from the dust of the ground and
God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.
2) Adam the first received the mandate from the Almighty to fill the earth and subdue it, מלאו
את הארץ וכבשה. Adam the second was charged with the duty to cultivate the garden and to keep it, לעבדה
ולשמרה.
3) In the story of Adam the first, both male and female were created concurrently, while
Adam the second emerged alone, with Eve appearing subsequently as his helpmate and
complement.
4) Finally, and this is a discrepancy of which Biblical criticism has made so much, while in
the first account only the name of E-lohim appears, in the second, E-lohim is used in conjunction
with the 'I'etragrammaton.
Adam the First
Let us portray these two men, Adam the first and Adam the second, in typological
categories.
There is no doubt that the term "image of God" in the first account refers to man's inner
charismatic endowment as a creative being. Man's likeness to God expresses itself in man's striving
and ability to become a creator. Adam the first who was fashioned in the image of God was blessed
with great drive for creative activity and immeasurable resources for the realization this goal, the
most outstanding of which is the intelligence, the human mind, capable of confronting the outside
2
Vide Berakhot, 61a; Ketuvot, 8a; Nachmanides, Genesis 2:7; Cuzari, IV.
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world and inquiring into its complex workings.3 In spite of the boundless divine generosity
providing man with many intellectual capacities and interpretive perspectives in his approach to
reality, God, in imparting the blessing to Adam the first and giving him the mandate to subdue
nature, directed Adam’s attention to the functional and practical aspects of his intellect through
which man is able to gain control of nature….
Therefore, Adam the first is interested in just a single aspect of reality and asks one question
only—“How does the cosmos function?” He is not fascinated by the question, “Why does the
cosmos function at all?” nor is he interested in the question, “What is its essence?” He is only
curious to know how it works….
What is Adam the first out to achieve? What is the objective toward which he incessantly
drives himself with enormous speed? The objective, it is self-evident, can be only one, namely, that
which God put up before him: to be “man”, to be himself. Adam the first wants to be human, to
discover his identity which is bound up with his humanity. How does Adam find himself? He
works with a simple equation introduced by the Psalmist who proclaimed the singularity and unique
station of man in nature:
“For you made him a little lower than the angels and have crowned him with glory and
honor (dignity). Man is an honorable being. In other words, man is a dignified being and to be
human means to live with dignity….
“You have made him to have dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all
things under his feet.”
In other words, dignity was equated by the Psalmist with man’s capability of dominating his
environment and exercising control over it. Man acquires dignity through glory, through his
majestic posture vis-a- vis his environment….
The brute’s existence is an undignified one because it is a helpless existence. Human
existence is a dignified one because it is a glorious, majestic, powerful existence. Hence, dignity is
unobtainable as long as man has not reclaimed himself from co-existence with nature and has not
risen from a non-reflective, degradingly helpless instinctive life to an intelligent, planned, and
majestic one. For this sake of clarification of the double equation humanity = dignity and dignity =
glory-majesty, it is necessary to add another thought. There is not dignity without responsibility, an
one cannot assume responsibility as long as he is not capable of living up to his commitments. Only
when man rises to the heights of freedom of action and creativity of mind does he begin to
implement the mandate of dignified responsibility entrusted to him by his Maker….
Hence, Adam the first is aggressive, bold, and victory-minded. His motto is success,
triumph over the cosmic forces. He engages in creative work, trying to imitate his Maker (imitatio
Dei)….
Adam the Second
Adam the second is, like Adam the first, also intrigued by the cosmos. Intellectual curiosity
drives them both to confront courageously the mysterium magnum of Being. However, while the
cosmos provokes Adam the first to quest for power and control, thus making him ask the function
“how”-question, Adam the second responds to the call of the cosmos by engaging in a different kind
of cognitive gesture. He does not ask a single functional question. Instead his inquiry is of a
metaphysical nature and a threefold one. He wants to know: “Why is it?” “What is it?” “Who is
it?” (1) He wonders: “Why did the world in its totality come into existence? Why is man
confronted by this stupendous and indifferent order of things and events?” (2) He asks: “What is
the purpose of al this? What is the message that is embedded in organic and inorganic matter, and
what does the great challenge reaching me from beyond the fringes of the universe as well as from
the depths of my tormented soul mean?” (3) Adam the second keeps on wondering: “Who is He
3
Vide Yesode Ha-Torah, IV, 8-9; Moreh Nevukhim, I, 1.
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who trails me steadily, uninvited and unwanted, like an everlasting shadow, and vanishes into the
recesses of transcendence the very instant I turn around to confront this numinous, awesome and
mysterious ‘He’? Who is He who fills Adam with awe and bliss, humility and a sense of greatness,
concurrently? Who is He to whom Adam clings in passionate, all-consuming love and from whom
he flees in mortal fear and dread? Who is He who fascinates Adam irresistibly and at the same time
rejects him irrevocably? Who is He whom Adam experiences both as the mysterium tremendum
and as the most elementary, most obvious, and most understandable truth? Who is He who is deus
revelatus and deus absconditus simultaneously? Who is He whose life-giving and life-warming
breath Adam feels constantly and who at the same time remains distant and remote from all…?”
Adam the First and the Female
…Adam the first was created not alone, but together with Eve—male and female emerged
simultaneously. Adam the first exists in society, in community with others. He is a social being,
gregarious, communicative, emphasizing the artistic aspect in life and giving priority to form over
content, to literary expression over the eidos, to practical accomplishments over inner motivation.
He is blessed with the gift of rhetoric, with the faculty of communication, be it the beautiful word,
the efficacious machine, the socially acceptable ethic-etiquette, or the hush of the solemn memorial
assembly. The visible, perceptible public image of the personality is fraught with majesty and
dignity. Adam the first is never alone. Man in solitude has no opportunity to display his dignity and
majesty, since both are behavioral social traits. Adam the first was not left alone even on the day of
creation. He emerged into this world together with Eve and God addressed himself to both of them
as inseparable members of one community….
In doing all this, Adam the first is trying to carry out the mandate entrusted to him by his
Maker who, at dawn of the sixth mysterious day of creation, addressed Himself to man and
summoned him fo “fill the earth and subdue it.” It is God who decreed that the story of Adam the
fist be the great saga of freedom of man-slave who gradually transforms himself into man-master….
Adam the first is challenged by a hostile environment and hence summoned to perform
many tasks which he alone cannot master. Consequently, he is impelled to take joint action.
Helpless individuals, cognizant of the difficulties they encounter when they act separately,
congregate, make arrangements, enter into treaties of mutual assistance, sign contracts, form
partnerships, etc. The natural community is born of a feeling of individual helplessness. Whenever
Adam the first wants to work, to produce and to succeed in his undertakings, he must unite with
others. The whole theory of the social contract brought to perfection by the philosophers of the Age
of Reason, reflects the thinking of Adam the first, identifying man with his intellectual nature and
creative technological will and finding in human existence coherence, legitimacy, and
reasonableness exclusively. To the thinkers of the Age of Reason man posed no problem. He was
for them an understandable, simple affair. Their admiration, alas adoration, of the human mind
hindered them from realizing the metaphysical dilemma and existential paradoxicality, indeed
absurdity, embedded in the human "I" awareness. They saw man in his glory but failed to see him in
his tragic plight. They considered the individual ontologically perfect and existentially adequate.
They admitted only that he was functionally handicapped even though he could, like Robinson
Crusoe, surmount this difficulty, too. If the individual is ontologically complete, even perfect, then
the experience of loneliness must be alien to him, since loneliness is nothing but the act of
questioning one's own ontological legitimacy, worth and reasonableness. In fact, according to the
Biblical story, God was not concerned with the loneliness of Adam the first. Neither was Adam
aware of the pronouncement " לא טוב היות האדם לבדוIt is not good for man to be lonely." Moreover, the
connotation of these words in the context of thc world-view of Adam the first, even if they had been
addressed to him, would have been related not to loneliness, an existential in-depth-experience, but
to aloneness, a practical surface-experience. Adam the first, representing the natural community
would translate this pronouncement into pragmatic categories, referring not to existence as such, but
to productive work. If pressed for an interpretation of the pronouncement, he would paraphrase it:
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"It is not good for man to work (not to be) alone." לא טוב עשות האדם מלאכה לבדו. The words "I shall make
him a helpmate" would refer, in accordance with his social philosophy, to a functional partner to
whom it would be assigned to collaborate with and assist Adam the first in his undertakings,
schemes, and projects. Eve vis-a-vis Adam the first would be a work partner, not an existential
participant. Man alone cannot succeed , says Adam the first, because a successful life is possible
only within a communal framework…. The cooperative spirit of countless individuals, raise man
above the primitive level of a natural existence and grant him limited dominion over his
environment. What we call civilization is the sum total of a community effort through the millennia.
Thus, the natural community fashioned by Adam the first is a work community, committed to the
successful production, distribution, and consumption of goods, material as well as cultural.
Ecclesiastes (Kohelet) has portrayed the act of grouping and coalescing as envisioned by
Adam the first in unmistakable categories: "The two are better than the one because they have a
good reward for their labor. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow; but woe to him that is
alone when he falls, and has not another to help him out.” The natural community of Adam the first
enhances man’s chances for successful survival, yet does not elevate or enhance his existential
experience, since the latter is in no need of redemption or catharsis. Adam the first feels safer and
more comfortable in the company of Eve in practical, not ontological, way. He will never admit
that he cannot, ontologically, see himself without Eve. They, Adam and Eve, act together, work
together, pursue common objectives together; yet they do not exist together. Ontologically, they do
not belong to each other; each is provided with an “I” awareness and knows nothing of a “We”
awareness. Of course, they communicate with each other. But the communication lines are open
between two surface-personalities engaged in work, dedicated to success, and speaking in cliches
and stereotypes, and not between two souls bound together in an indissoluble relation, each one
speaking in unique logoi. The in-depth-personalities do not communicate, let alone commune, with
each other. “And God blessed them and God said unto them be fruitful and multiply and replenish
the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and
over everything that creeps over the earth.”
Male and female were summoned by their creator to act in unison in order to act
successfully. Yet, they were not charged with the task of existing in unison, in order to cleanse,
redeem and hallow their existence.
Adam the Second and the Woman
Having described majestic Adam both as an individual and as a member of a work
community, let us return to Adam the second in his dual role as a lonely individual and as one
committed to a peculiar community idea.
There are two basic distinctions between dignity and cathartic redemptiveness:
1) Being redeemed is, unlike being dignified, an ontological awareness. It is not just an
extraneous, accidental attribute--among other attributes--of being, but a definitive mode of being
itself. A redeemed existence is intrinsically different from an unredeemed. Redemptiveness does not
have to be acted out vis-a-vis the outside world. Even a hermit, while not having the opportunity to
manifest dignity, can live a redeemed life. Cathartic redemptiveness is experienced in the privacy of
one's in-depth-personality and it cuts below the relationship between the "I" and the "thou" (to use
an existentialist term) and reaches into the very hidden strata of the isolated "I" who knows himself
as a singular being. When objectified in personal affective-emotional categories, cathartic
redemptiveness expresses itself in the feeling of axiological security. The individual intuits his
existence as worthwhile, legitimate and adequate, anchored in something stable and unchangeable.
2) Cathartic redemptiveness, in contrast with dignity, cannot be attained through man's
acquisition of control of his environment, but through man's exercise of control over himself. A
redeemed life is ipso facto a disciplined life. While a dignified existence is attained by majestic man
who courageously surges forward and confronts mute nature--a lower form of being--in a mood of
defiance, redemption is achieved when humble man makes a movement of recoil, and lets himself
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be confronted and defeated by a Higher and Truer Being. God summoned Adam the first to advance
steadily, Adam the second to retreat. Adam the first He told to exercise mastery and to "fill the earth
and subdue it," Adam the second, to serve. He was placed in the Garden of Eden "to cultivate it and
to keep it."
Dignity is acquired by man whenever he triumphs over nature. Man finds redemption
whenever he is overpowered by the Creator of nature. Dignity is discovered at the summit of
success; redemption in the depth of crisis and failure. ," 'ממעמקים קראתיך הOut of the depths have I
called thee, Oh God." The Bible has stated explicitly that Adam the second was formed from the
dust of the ground because the knowledge of the humble origin of man is an integral part of Adam's
"I"-experience. Adam the second has never forgotten that he is just a handful of dust.
The Loneliness of Adam the Second
And defeated must Adam the second feel the very instant he scores his greatest success: the
discovery of his humanity, his "I" identity. The "I" awareness which he attains as the result of his
untiring search for a redeemed, secure existence brings its own antithesis to the fore: the awareness
of his exclusiveness and ontological incompatibility with any other being. Adam the second
suddenly finds out that he is alone, that he has alienated himself from the world of the brute and the
instinctual mechanical state of an outward existence, while he has failed to ally himself with the
intelligent, purposive inward beings who inhabit the new world into which he has entered. Each
great redemptive step forward in man's quest for humanity entails the ever-growing tragic awareness
of his aloneness and only-ness and consequently of his loneliness and insecurity. He struggles for
the discovery of his identity
because he suffers from the insecurity implied in seeing the icy darkness of uniformity and
irresponsiveness, in gazing into that senseless something without being awarded a reciprocal gaze,
in being always a silent watcher without in turn being watched. With the redeeming daybreak of a
new "I" identity, Adam the second is ushered into a world of diversity and change where the feeling
of insecurity expresses itself in the fact that thc term “man” clothes a wondrous, unique and
incommunicable reality in the gazing into somebody who returns one's gaze suspiciously, in
watching and being watched in bewilderment. Who knows what kind of loneliness is more
agonizing: the one which befalls man when he casts his glance at the mute cosmos, at its dark
spaces and monotonous drama, or the one that besets man exchanging glances with his fellow man
in silence? Who knows whether the first astronaut who will land on the moon, confronted with a
strange, weird, and grisly panorama, will feel a greater loneliness than Mr. X, moving along
jubilantly with the crowd and exchanging greetings on New Year's Eve at a public square?
Adam the second is still lonely. He separated himself from his environment which became
the object of his intellectual gaze. “And the man gave names to all the beasts and to the fowl of the
heaven and to every animal of the field." He is a citizen of a new world, the world of man, but he
has no companion with whom to communicate and therefore he is existentially insecure. Neither
would the availability of the female, who was created with Adam the first, have changed this human
situation if not for the emergence of a new kind of companionship. At this crucial point, if Adam is
to bring his quest for redemption to full realization, he must initiate action leading to the discovery
of a companion who, even though as unique and singular as he, will master the art of
communicating and, with him, form a community. However, this action, since it is part of the
redemptive gesture, must also be sacrificial. The medium of attaining full redemption is, again,
defeat. This new companionship is not attained through conquest, but through surrender and retreat.
"And the eternal God caused an overpowering sleep to fall upon the man." Adam was overpowered
and defeated--and in defeat he found his companion.
Again, the contrast between the two Adams comes into focus. Adam the first was not called
to sacrifice in order that his female companion come into being, while it was indispensable for
Adam the second to give away part of himself in order to find a companion. The communityfashioning gesture of Adam the first is, as I indicated before, purely utilitarian and intrinsically
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egotistic and, as such, rules out sacrificial action. For Adam the second, communicating and
communing are redemptive sacrificial gestures. Thus, in crisis and distress there was planted the
seed of a new type of community--the faith community which reached full fruition in the covenant
between God and Abraham.
The Natural Community of Adam the First
Versus
The Covenantal Community of Adam the Second
The covenantal faith community, in contradistinction to the natural world community,
interprets the divine pronouncement “It is not good for man to be alone" לבדו האדם היות טוב לאnot in
utilitarian but in ontological terms: it is not good for man to be lonely (not alone) with emphasis
placed upon "to be". Being at the level of the faith community does not lend itself to any
equation….
"To be" is a unique in-depth-experience of which only Adam the second is aware and it is
unrelated to any function or performance. "To be” means to be the only one, singular and different,
and consequently lonely. For what causes man to be lonely and feel insecure if not the awareness of
his uniqueness and exclusiveness. The "I" is lonely, experiencing ontological incompleteness and
casualness, because there is no one who exists like the "I" and because the modus existentiae of the
"I" cannot be repeated, imitated, or experienced by others.
Since loneliness reflects the very core of the "I” experience and is not an accidental modus,
no accidental activity or external achievement--such as belonging to a natural work community and
achieving cooperative success--can reclaim Adam the second from this state. Therefore, I repeat,
Adam the second must quest for a different kind of community. The companionship which Adam
the second is searching is…for a new kind of fellowship which one finds in the existential
community. There, not only hands are joined, but experiences as well; there, one hears not only the
rhythmic sound of the production line, but also the rhythmic heat of hearts starved for existential
companionship and all-embracing sympathy and experiencing the grandeur of the faith
commitment; there, one lonely soul finds another soul tormented by loneliness and solitude yet
unqualifiedly committed.
At this point, the main distinction between the natural community of Adam the first and the
covenantal faith community of Adam the second becomes clear. The first is a community of
interests, forged by the indomitable desire for success and triumph and consisting at all times of two
grammatical personae, the "I" and the "thou" who collaborate in order to further their interests. A
newcomer, upon joining the community, ceases to be the anonymous "he" and turns into a
knowable, communicative "thou." The second is a community of commitments born in distress and
defeat and comprises three participants: "I, thou, and He", the He in whom all being is rooted and in
whom everything finds its rehabilitation and, consequently, redemption. Adam the first met the
female all by himself, while Adam the second was introduced to Eve by God, who summoned
Adam to join Eve in an existential community molded by sacrificial action and suffering, and who
Himself became a partner in this community. God is never outside of the covenantal community.
He joins man and shares in his covenantal existence. Finitude and infinity, temporality and eternity,
creature and creator become involved in the same community. They bind themselves together and
participate in a unitive existence.
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3. Phyllis Trible, A Love Story Gone Awry
from God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, 1978, pp. 72-105
A love story gone awry—that is Genesis 2-3.
It is a simple story as stories go….And yet so simple a story has been made to bear the sins
of the world, not excluding the complexities of scholarship.
If the story is simple, it is not, at the same time, neat and tidy. Abrupt, terse, elliptic,
tentative, its language carries a plurality of meanings. From beginning to end the narrative is
riddled with ambiguity. Embodying tension, connotations, hints and guesses, it compels multiple
interpretations, as centuries of exegesis amply demonstrate. Accordingly, the task of the interpreter
is not to eliminate this ambiguity but to illuminate it within the total unit. The task is not to
circumscribe meaning but to enlarge it as the particularity of this tale engages the particularities of
life.
This engagement is both intimate and explosive, since everybody knows the story and
everybody has fixed ideas about it. Familiarity breeds stereotypes, mistakes, and, yes, contempt.
According to traditional interpretations, the narrative in Genesis 2:7-3:24 (most interpretations
bypass the preface in 2:4b-6) is about “Adam and Eve.” It proclaims male superiority and female
inferiority as the will of God. It portrays woman as “temptress” and troublemaker who is dependent
upon and dominated by her husband. Over the centuries this misogynous reading has acquired a
status of canonicity so that those who deplore and those who applaud the story both agree upon its
meaning. Impressive is even a partial list of specifics documenting this consensus:
A male God creates first man (2:7) and last woman (2:22); first means superior and last
means inferior or subordinate.
Woman is created for the sake of man: a helpmate to cure his loneliness (2:18-23).
Contrary to nature, woman comes out of man; she is denied even her natural function of
birthing and that function is given to man (2:21-22).
Woman is the rib of man, dependent upon him for life (2:21-22).
Taken out of man (2:23), woman has a derivative, not an autonomous, existence.
Man names woman (2:23) and thus has power over her.
Man leaves his father's family in order to set up through his wife another patriarchal unit
(2:24).
Woman tempted man to disobey and thus she is responsible for sin in the world (3:6); she
is untrustworthy, gullible, and simple minded.
Woman is cursed by pain in childbirth (3:16); pain in childbirth is a more severe
punishment than man's struggles with the soil; it signifies that woman's sin is greater than
man's.
Woman's desire for man (3:16) is God's way of keeping her faithful and submissive to her
husband.
God gives man the right to rule over woman (3:16).
Although such specifics continue to be cited as support for traditional interpretations of male
superiority and female inferiority, not one of them is altogether accurate and most of them are
simply not present in the story itself. As ideas supposedly drawn out of the narrative, they fail to
respect the integrity of this work as an interlocking structure of words and motifs with its own
intrinsic value and meaning. In short, these ideas violate the rhetoric of the story. Keenly aware of
the tenacity and power of such views, I propose not to defend the narrative against them—though I
am tempted and may sometimes yield—but rather to contemplate it afresh as a work of art. A
literary study of Genesis 2-3 may offer insights that traditional perspectives dream not of. At any
rate, such a study fits the text.
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Life and Death is the subject of the narrative in Genesis 2:4b-3:24. Life (Eros) means unity,
fulfillment, harmony, and delight. It is not, however, a paradise of perfection or purity untouched
by loneliness, responsibility, or finitude. To the contrary, it is fulfillment within limits, a fulfillment
that includes imperfections, makes distinctions, sets up hierarchies, and tempers joy with frailty.
Death (Thanatos) is the loss of life. It means discord, strife, hostility, and danger. It is
disintegration, the breaking of harmonious limits. As a result, imperfections become problems,
distinctions become oppositions, hierarchies become oppressions, and joy dissipates into unrelieved
tragedy. Life loses to Death.
This subject of Life and Death belongs to a particular structure of design and plot. Beginning
with a lengthy introduction that moves from cosmos to earth (2:4b-7), the narrative proper falls into
three scenes. Scene one is the development of Eros (2:7-24); scene two is the act of disobedience
(2:25-3:7); and scene three is the disintegration of Eros (3:8-24). The overall design of the story is
cyclic. By repetition of key words and phrases, the end (3:22-24) returns to the beginning (2:4b-9,
15). But in this return, meaning is reversed so that structural symmetry is semantic dissonance.
Correspondingly, the plot unfolds by two opposite movements with an intermediate turning point.
Entrance into a garden (scene one) opposes expulsion from a garden (scene three). Life opposes
Death. Between these two opposite movements occurs disobedience, the turning point of the story
(scene two).
Eros Created
Introduction: Genesis 2:4b-7
Scene One: The Development of Eros (Genesis 2:7-24)
Scene one develops Eros in four episodes that are clearly delineated by stylistic devices and subject
matter....
Episode One: The Earth Creature (2:7-8)
A
And Yahweh God formed ha-adam [of] dust from ha-adama
B
and breathed into its nostrils the breath of life
C
and ha-adam became a living nephesh.
A'
And Yahweh God planted a garden in Eden in the east
B'
and put there ha-adam whom he had formed.
Life begins with the creation of ha-adam. Creation is a process, not a fait accompli. Thirdperson narration depicts Yahweh God as potter, shaping the human creature of dust from the earth;
as breather, animating the dust; as gardener, preparing a special plot of land; and as executive,
determining the location of the creature. This divine work is pleasure, not toil. Forming ha-adam
of dust from ha-adama (A), Yahweh creates a pun. Similarly planting a garden in Eden (A'),
Yahweh makes a place of delight, for the Hebrew word eden recalls the sound of another
Hebrew word meaning enjoyment. Since these actions play with words, the deity is also portrayed
as artist finding pleasure in the production of life. The creative process itself is erotic.
Ha-adam is the focus of God's pleasure. From beginning (A) to middle (C) to end (B'), it is
the center of attention, both structurally and thematically. As presented in this first episode, with the
definite article ha- preceding the common noun adam, this work of art is neither a particular person
nor the typical person but rather the creature from the earth (ha-adama)—the earth creature. The
very words that differentiate creature from soil indicate similarity. Thus, through the pleasure of
language Yahweh God makes distinctions that result not in oppositions but in harmony. A punned
separation articulates unity. Other than this material image of dust, the description of the earth
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creature is sparse. Nostrils are mentioned. They indicate a sense of smell, though the text itself
does not make this point. The suggestion becomes important as other senses emerge throughout the
narrative. But apart from this reference to nostrils, no physical features are specified for the earth
creature in this first episode. More important, this creature is not identified sexually. Grammatical
gender (adam as a masculine word) is not sexual identification. Nor is sexuality assumed here,
since it is created later in the fourth episode. In other words, the earth creature is not the male; it is
not “the first man.” Although the word ha-adam acquires ambiguous usages and meanings—
including an exclusively male referenc—in the development of the story, those ambiguities are not
present in the first episode. Instead, the earth creature here is precisely and only the human being,
so far sexually undifferentiated. The complete story of creaturehood is a process, the tale that is
being told. At the beginning some clues are given; further understanding awaits the end.
This sexually undifferentiated earth creature owes its existence to Yahweh God. It is not a
“self-made man,” a patriarchal figure, a superman, or ?bermensch. Only two ingredients constitute
its life, and both are tenuous: dusty earth and divine breath. One comes from below; the other from
above. One is visible; the other invisible. Combined by Yahweh, these fragile ingredients unite to
form the creature who is totally dependent upon God. Its life hangs on a breath that it does not
control, indeed, that it does not breathe for Yahweh is the breather. Moreover, God puts this
creature in a garden of delight that the deity has already planted. Thus the earth creature does not
create space; it is given a place. It does not make pleasure; it is assigned pleasure. The product and
recipient of creation, it does not participate in creating. Human life, then, is God's gift; it is not
possession. Playful creation is precarious existence.
Episode Two: Plants (2:9-17)
Episode Three: Animals (2:18-20)
Like the preceding sections, the third episode is set off from its surroundings by an inclusive
vocabulary. The phrase “a companion corresponding to it” occurs at its beginning and end and
nowhere else. In addition, a negative statement at the beginning (“it is not good”) and at the end (“it
did not find”) distinguishes this unit from the other episodes.
And Yahweh God said,
“It is not good for ha-adam to be alone
I will make for it a companion corresponding to it.”
And Yahweh God formed from ha-adama
every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens
and brought [each] to ha-adam to see what it would call each one.
And whatever ha-adam called each living nephesh,
that was the name.
And ha-adam called the names of all domestic animals
and the birds of the heavens and all the beasts of the field.
But as for adam, it did not find a companion corresponding to itself.
...At the conclusion of episode two, Yahweh God became a legislator, speaking directly to the earth
creature with a command to preserve life. That command had first a positive and then a negative
side: “You may freely eat of every tree; do not eat of one tree.” At the beginning of episode three,
Yahweh becomes an evaluator, speaking in a soliloquy about the life of the earth creature. This
speech has first a negative and then a positive side—the reversal of order reflecting the overall
chiastic relationship of the two units. Without consulting the earth creature, Yahweh determines
that its life is not yet fulfilled: “It is not good for the earth creature to be alone.” Although the
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divine negative of episode two (“do not eat of one tree”) functions to preserve life, the divine
negative of episode three discloses a lack in life and, hence, leads to a declaration of positive intent:
“I will make a companion corresponding to it.” God the evaluator is God the rectifier.
The divine evaluation “it is not good for the earth creature to be alone” contrasts wholeness
with isolation. This contrast highlights distinctions that have appeared in the story from the first
moment that Yahweh God formed the earth creature out of the earth. Although this original
distinction indicated rapport between the creature and the soil, it also set the creature apart from the
earth. Moreover, in the second episode it set the creature over the earth with the assignment to till
and keep the garden. Further, although the earth creature shares common ground with the plants
that grow from the earth, the creature is set over the trees with the freedom to eat them and the
restriction not to eat one of them. In episodes one and two, then, the creature's relationship to the
rest of creation is ambiguous: a part of and yet apart from; of common ground but with power over;
joined yet separated. Since the creature is not only of the earth but also other than the earth, it needs
fulfillment from that which is other than in the earth. This need Yahweh God recognizes: “I will
make a companion corresponding to it.” The Hebrew word ezer, rendered here as “companion,” has
been traditionally translated “helper”—a translation that is totally misleading because the English
word helper suggests an assistant, a subordinate, indeed, an inferior, while the Hebrew word ezer
carries no such connotation. To the contrary, in the Hebrew scriptures this word often describes
God as the superior who creates and saves Israel. In our story the accompanying phrase,
“corresponding to it” (kenegdo), tempers this connotation of superiority to specify identity,
mutuality, and equality. According to Yahweh God, what the earth creature needs is a companion,
one who is neither subordinate nor superior; one who alleviates isolation through identity.
“I will make a companion corresponding to it.” The word make (asa) recalls the prelude of
the story, where the same verb described God's creation of the earth and the heavens (2:4b). Since
making is a familiar activity for God, this first-person pledge would seem to assure a happy ending
to episode three. Furthermore, since life has unfolded thus far without delay, hesitation, or
experimentation, we expect Yahweh to accomplish this goal immediately. After all, the endings of
episodes one and two fulfilled the promise of their beginnings. Nevertheless, endfulfillment does
not come in episode three. The negative that flawed life at the beginning of this unit is still present
at its end. Although God pledged to make a companion for the earth creature, the narrator reports,
“but as for adam, it did not find a companion corresponding to itself.” This report is oblique, for it
does not attribute the negative result directly to God. Indeed, for the first time, Yahweh does not
appear in the conclusion of a pericope. The evaluation by God at the beginning of the episode and
the observation by the narrator at the end surround the unit with negatives. And the animal world is
the center of this nonfulfillment.
Episode Four: Human Sexuality (2:21-24)
If no companion for the earth creature is found among the animals, there is another
possibility: the creation of human sexuality. This divine act will alter radically the nature of haadam and bring about new creatures so that female and male together become the one flesh that is
wholeness rather than isolation. With the creation of sexuality, episode four completes the
development of Eros and concludes the first scene of the story. This unit has a circular design,
similar to the three preceding episodes. The word flesh (basar) delineates the boundaries.
And Yahweh God caused a deep sleep to fall upon ha-adam
and, while it slept, took one of its ribs
and closed up flesh at that spot.
And Yahweh God built the rib
which he took from ha-adam into woman [isha]
and brought her to ha-adam .
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And ha-adam said:
This, finally, bone of my bone
and flesh of my flesh.
This shall be called woman [isha]
because from man [ish] was taken this.
Therefore, a man [ish] leaves his father and his mother
and cleaves to his woman [isha]
and they become one flesh. (2:21-24)
Like episode one but unlike episodes two and three, the deity does not speak in this
concluding unit. Similarly, the portrayal of the earth creature as totally passive at the beginning of
episode four recalls its depiction in episode one. Yahweh God, who first animated dust to form haadam and then put it in a garden and delegated to it work, responsibility, power, and speech, now
returns this creature to a state of inactivity, indeed, of unconsciousness: “and Yahweh God caused a
deep sleep to fall upon the earth creature” (2:21a). This return to the beginning, however, is not
regression but progress. Out of it comes the material for a new creation: “and while [the earth
creature] slept, Yahweh God took one of its ribs and closed up flesh at that spot” (2: 21 b).
New images of deity emerge. God is anesthesiologist and surgeon. By administering an
anesthetic sufficient for the operation to come, Yahweh God causes a deep sleep in the creature.
Immediately the deity removes a section of its body and then, concluding successfully this surgery,
“closed up flesh at that spot.” The entire procedure is quickly and efficiently executed. In the very
next sentence the images of deity shift to architect, designer, and builder: “and Yahweh God built
the rib which he took from the, earth creature into woman” (2:22a). This work is also accomplished
swiftly so that in the next line Yahweh acquires still another image: the divine
matchmaker brings the woman to the earth creature (2:22b)….
Strikingly, the creation in episode four does not come from ha-adama; the word earth never
appears. Instead, at the beginning of this unit the creative act comes out of the earth creature itself.
Thus, the creature functions here precisely as the earth functioned in episode one. And the two
episodes contain yet another parallel: the use of dust from the earth and rib from the earth creature.
As specific parts of whole entities, these substances are fragile and require processing before
creatures come into being. As Yahweh shaped dust and then breathed into it to produce the earth
creature, so now Yahweh takes out the rib and then fashions it into woman.
Built of raw material from the earth creature, rather than from the earth, the woman is
unique in creation. Her uniqueness is further indicated by the matchmaking activity of Yahweh
God, who “brought her to ha-adam” (2:22b). Although the words “Yahweh brought…to the earth
creature” are repeated from episode three (2:19), they carry a radically different meaning here. In
the preceding episode, after God formed the animals from the earth, the deity brought them to haadam “to see what it would call each one and whatever it called each one, that was the name.”
(2:19bc). In other words, the earth creature was specifically given dominion over the animals
through naming. Similar power was granted over the plant world by the infinitive phrase “to till and
to keep” the garden (2:15). By contrast, in episode four no purpose at all is stated in Yahweh's
bringing of the woman to the earth creature, whose very body has now been changed because of her.
Specifically, God does not give ha-adam power over the woman. Hence, the omission of any
infinitive clause of purpose in this episode further contrasts the relationship of the earth creature to
the woman with that of the earth creature to the earth, to the animals, and to the plants. She does
not fit the pattern of dominion that the preceding episodes have established. She belongs to a new
order that will by itself transform the earth creature. Having made the proper introduction by
bringing her to ha-adam, the divine matchmaker withdraws from the pericope and the earth creature
takes over, a pattern that first appeared in episode three.
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In becoming material for creation, the earth creature changes character. Whereas the making
of the plants and the animals were divine acts extrinsic to the earth creature itself, the making of the
sexes is intrinsic. Indeed, this act has altered the very flesh of the creature: from one come two.
After this intrinsic division, ha-adam is no longer identical with its past, so that when next it speaks
a different creature is speaking. To be sure, continuity exists in the oneness of humanity, but here
stress falls upon the discontinuity that results from sexual differentiation. For the first time haadam employs direct discourse. Its language is the poetry of Eros; its subject, female and male:
And ha-adam said,
This, finally, bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh.
This shall be called woman [isha]
because from man [ish] was taken this.
Surrounding the poem and also occurring at its center, the feminine pronoun this (zot)
unmistakably emphasizes the woman whose creation has made the earth creature different. Only
after surgery does this creature, for the very first time, identify itself as male. Utilizing a pun on the
Hebrew word for woman, isha, the earth creature refers to itself by the specific term for man as
male, ish. Sexuality originates in play, just as humanity did at the beginning of the story. The unit
ish and isha functionally parallels ha-adam and ha-adama. Occurring at the beginning and the end
of scene one, puns encircle Eros to give fulfillment and harmony through the delight of words.
With the advent of sexuality, the word ha-adam acquires a second usage in the story. In
episodes one, two, and three it designated one creature who was sexually undifferentiated (neither
male nor female nor a combination of both). After God operates on this earth creature, to produce a
companion, its identity becomes sexual. The surgery is radical, for it results in two creatures where
before there was only one. The new creature, built from the material of ha-adam, is female,
receiving her identity in a word that is altogether new to the story, the word, isha. The old creature
transformed is male, similarly receiving identity in a word that is new to the story ish. At the same
time, the basic word for humanity before sexual differentiation, ha-adam, now becomes a sexual
reference so that it is used frequently, though not exclusively, for the male. With this altered
meaning, the retention of the word ha-adam allows for both continuity and discontinuity between
the first creature and the male creature, just as the rib allows for both continuity and discontinuity
between the first creature and the female creature. The story itself builds ambiguity into the word
ha-adam, an ambiguity that should prevent interpreters from limiting it to one specific and
unequivocal meaning throughout. Furthermore, the ambiguity in the word matches the ambiguity in
the creature itself the ambiguity of one flesh becoming two creatures.
But no ambiguity clouds the words isha and ish. One is female, the other male. Their
creation is simultaneous, not sequential. One does not precede the other, even though the time line
of this story introduces the woman first (2:22). Moreover, one is not the opposite of the other. In
the very act of distinguishing female from male, the earth creature describes her as “bone of my
bones and flesh of my flesh” (2:23). These words speak unity, solidarity, mutuality, and equality.
Accordingly, in this poem the man does not depict himself as either prior to or superior to the
woman. His sexual identity depends upon her even as hers depends upon him. For both of them
sexuality originates in the one flesh of humanity….
In these traditions, the act of naming, which can mean either power over an object or
recognition of the object, requires the noun name joined to the verb call. Alone, the verb call does
not signify naming. Although this naming formula appears in episode three of our story to signify
the power of the earth creature over the animals, it does not occur in episode four. The earth
creature exclaims, “This shall be called isha.” The noun name is strikingly absent from the poetry.
Hence, in calling the woman, the man is not establishing power over her but rejoicing in their
mutuality.
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The word woman (isha) demonstrates further that the issue is not the naming of the female
but rather the recognition of sexuality. Isha itself is not a name; it is a common noun, not a proper
noun. It designates gender; it does not specify person. Moreover, this word appears in the story
before the earth creature “calls” it: the narrator reports that “Yahweh God built the rib which he
took from the earth creature into a woman [isha]” (2:22). Thus, the creature's poem does not
determine who the woman is, but rather delights in what God has already done in creating sexuality:
Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh;
This shall be called isha
because from ish was taken this.
The phrase “taken from “ requires investigation also. Does it indicate a derivative existence
for woman? Some have claimed that it does, maintaining also that derivation means subordination:
in being taken from man, woman is subordinate to man….
Investigation of this phrase outside of episode four confirms the contention that it does not
indicate subordination. Twice in Genesis 3 the passive voice of the verb is used for the earth
creature in relation to the earth. The first usage occurs in poetry: “till you return to the earth, for
from it you were taken” (3:19). The second usage occurs in prose: “therefore, Yahweh God sent
him forth from the garden of Eden to till the earth from which he was taken” (3:23, RSV). As isha
is taken from ish, so ha-adam is taken from ha-adama (cf. 2:7). Yet ha-adam is never portrayed as
subordinate to the earth. On the contrary, the creature is given power over the earth so that what is
taken from becomes superior to. By strict analogy, then, the line “this shall be called isha because
from ish was taken this" would mean not the subordination of the woman to the man but rather her
superiority to him….
Since the context for this statement concerning isha and ish is the preceding line, “bone of
my bones and flesh of my flesh,” the connotation of woman's superiority is inappropriate. The
relationship of this couple is one of mutuality and equality, not one of female superiority and
certainly not one of female subordination. Nowhere in this entire story is subordination a
connotation of the phrase “taken from.” Finally, woman is not derived from man, even as the earth
creature is not derived from the earth. For both of them life originates with God. Dust of the earth
and rib of the earth creature are but raw materials for God's creative activity. Truly, neither woman
nor man is an autonomous creature; both owe their origin to divine mystery. Differentiation from
the earth, on the one hand, and from the man, on the other, implies neither derivation from them nor
subordination to them:
This, finally, bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh.
This shall be called isha
because from ish was differentiated this. (2:23)
Although episode four expands images of God and develops further the life of the earth
creature, it focuses upon woman. In her Eros finds fulfillment. Making her entrance in the last
episode of scene one, she is the culmination of the entire movement, in no way an afterthought. The
process that creates her is shrouded in mystery; Yahweh God makes certain that no one shall
witness it. Put into a deep sleep, the earth creature is neither participant, spectator, nor consultant
for this climactic event. Indeed, the earth creature does not even know in advance that she is
coming. Her arrival is suspenseful, since God's promise of a companion did not materialize once
before. This mystery and suspense yield surprise and delight. Thus it is that the transformed earth
creature utters a poem upon meeting woman. She is unique. Unlike all the rest of creation, she
does not come from the earth; rather, Yahweh God builds the rib into woman. The Hebrew verb
build (bnh) indicates considerable labor to produce solid results. Hence, woman is no weak, dainty,
ephemeral creature. No opposite sex, no second sex, no derived sex—in short, no “Adam's rib.”
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Instead, woman is the culmination of creation, fulfilling humanity in sexuality. Equal in creation
with the man, she is, at this point, elevated in emphasis by the design of the story. With her creation
Eros reigns. “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his woman and they
become one flesh” (2:24, RSV)….
What the creation of the animals cannot do for the earth creature, the creation of sexuality
can. Loneliness, then, is overcome not by something other than humanity but by distinction within
one flesh. Sexuality is the recognition not of division but of the oneness that is wholeness, bone of
bone and flesh of flesh. No fit companion among the animals gives way to the one flesh of female
and male.
With the conclusion of episode four, the poetry of the earth creature yields to the silent
communion of man and woman. This communion is protected from intruders through the
distancing of third-person narration, which describes for us but does not allow us to witness.
“Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his woman and they become one
flesh” (2:24, RSV). The description employs the explicitly sexual terms ish and isha that have just
been introduced into the story. To this vocabulary the narrator adds the terms for parental roles,
achieving a juxtaposition of relationships: man and woman contrast with father and mother. Each
couple is a unit of equality—one, the equality of creation; the other, the equality of roles.
Interestingly, however, parents are not part of God's creative activity: They appear in the story as
adjuncts to the creation of woman and man. In other words, sexuality makes father and mother
possible; parental images are subordinate to and dependent upon sexual images. Roles, then, are
secondary at best; they do not belong to creation.
In this description only the man is identified with father and mother; the woman continues to
stand alone. Her uniqueness and independence as a human creature remain intact, and her
prominence in the design of the story persists. To her the man comes. Though called “his woman,”
she is not his possession but rather the one in whom he finds fulfillment. She is gift—God’s gift of
life. The man does not control her; he moves toward her for union. Her advent has transformed the
earth creature into a sexual being. Thus, in the design and content of the story she is elevated as the
one to whom he must cleave.
The man's movement toward union with the woman involves its opposite: separation from
the parents. Leaving and cleaving are interrelated: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his
mother and cleaves to his woman” (RSV). The result of this convergence of opposites is a
consummation of union: “and they become one flesh.” No procreative purpose characterizes this
sexual union; children are not mentioned. Hence, the man does not leave one family to start
another; rather, he abandons (azv) familial identity for the one flesh of sexuality. Beginning with
the one flesh of the earth creature, episode four has described the creation of two sexual beings from
it: woman and man. From one comes two; from wholeness comes differentiation. Now, at the
conclusion of the episode, this differentiation returns to wholeness; from two come the one flesh of
communion between female and male. Thus is Eros consummated.
Not only does one flesh complete the cyclic composition of episode four, but it also
completes the cyclic composition of the entire first scene. The creation of humanity, sexually
undifferentiated in episode one, finds its fulfillment in the creation of sexuality in episode four.
With it the development of Eros is completed, and the first movement of the narrative concludes.
Yet rest does not come; over against Eros stands Thanatos. And the movement from Life to Death
is by way of disobedience. At the very center of the story, scene two reverses the direction to lead
to Death. But this turning point is not totally surprising. A forbidden tree; animals that do not fit;
the withdrawal of God; the increasing power and freedom of human creatures--all these aspects of
Eros now become the occasion for disobedience.
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4. Nehama Aschkenasy, Eve’s Journey: Feminine Images in Hebraic Literary
Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 1986, pp. 40-49.
Eve’s Journey: From the Bible to the Midrash
In our attempt to trace a development from ancient tales that have gained through the ages the
power of archetypal myths, to modern stories that have incorporated in them early feminine
prototypes, we have to start with the biblical text itself. Our reading should be free of the
preconceived notions implanted in our collective consciousness with regard to the Genesis story of
Eve. Is Eve in the Genesis story (chapters 1, 2, and 3) an evil, sexual or demonic being? How has she
come to be perceived in this way, and how did this literary figure evolve through the various phases
of Hebraic literary history?
The biblical narrator is reticent with regard to the serpent's motives in approaching the
female rather than the male in the Garden of Eden. Is it because he saw that Eve was less intelligent
and more susceptible to temptation? Our storyteller prefers not to make any comment here, yet he
does explain very clearly what brings Eve to eat from the forbidden fruit. Scriptural style is known
for its terseness and economy of language; it also rarely delves into the protagonists' inner
deliberations. Therefore, the brief but condensed sentence that divulges Eve's reasons for picking
the fruit and eating it is extremely meaningful. Eve saw that the tree "was good for food, and that it
was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise" (Gen. 3:6). To Eve's mind, the
fruit is endowed with all the gifts that life has to offer: it pleases the palate and satisfies hunger
("good for food"), it provides aesthetic pleasure ("pleasant to the eyes"), and it increases one's
intellectual abilities (“to make one wise"). In one brief second, Eve has a vision of the total range of
the human experience, and by eating from the Tree she expresses a lust for life in all its
manifestations. The act of violating God's order is not described by the biblical author as the
surrender to temptation of a silly, empty-headed person, but as the daring attempt of a curious
person with an appetite for life to encompass the whole spectrum of life's possibilities. To the extent
that Eve enters into a pact with the devil (though we should remember that the serpent in this story
is no more than an animal) she takes on a Faustian dimension. Eve can be seen as epitomizing the
human condition in her tragic eagerness to make the most of the limitations of existence and taste as
much of life as she can. In her thirst to exhaust the whole gamut of the human existence, and in the
price that she pays for it, Eve is the precursor of the tragic Dr. Faustus who made a pact with the
devil and paid dearly for it.
The Genesis narrator is surprisingly silent about Adam's motives for eating the fruit.
However, this narrative vacuum is consistent with the characterization of Adam throughout the
story as a passive, acted-upon character. He has no part in choosing his mate, and Eve comes to life
when he is asleep. The polarity created in this story between Adam and Eve is not between good and
evil, morality and sinfulness, but rather between a passive, lackluster personality on the one hand,
and an intellectually curious, aggressive individual, on the other. Interestingly, when Adam tries to
shake off his responsibility for the violation of God's law, he excuses himself by claiming that Eve
"gave" him the fruit, using the verb from the stem ntn, which implies the mechanical way in which
he acted. Eve, on the other hand, uses the unusual, richly connotative verb from the stem ns’, when
she explains that she was deceived, or seduced, by the serpent. The difference in vocabulary implies
the difference in verbal abilities as well as intellectual maturity between the man and the woman. To
the narrator of this story, Eve, in her prelapsarian state, is not the "other" to man; rather, she
occupies center stage as the character around which the dramatic story revolves. The change in
Eve's position comes only after the couple's expulsion from the Garden of Eden, when Adam
becomes the active partner and Eve recedes into the background and turns into the passive
helpmate: "And Adam knew Eve his wife" (Gen. 4:1).
Is Eve seen in this story as a sexual being, connected with things of the flesh? There is no
hint here that Eve is a sexual threat to the man, or that she uses her erotic appeal to persuade man to
eat from the fruit. Furthermore, while Milton sees in Eve's sudden burst of hunger a decisive factor
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in her impulse to eat from the fruit, the biblical narrator makes it clear that Eve was motivated by a
complex set of inner drives, anchored not only in her physical, but also in her intellectual nature.
The connotations of sexuality with which the Genesis story has been burdened throughout
generations of exegetical endeavors are due most probably to the prominence of the stem yd’, to
know, that serves as a leitmotif in this tale. The forbidden tree is associated with morality in general,
but not specifically with sex; it is described as "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." In fact,
many commentators regard the phrase "knowledge of good and evil" as not restricted to moral
awareness only, but as denoting a "full possession of mental and physical powers." The verb ‘to
know’ becomes linked with the sexual element and with the physical differences between male and
female only after Adam and Eve have sinned, when they suddenly "knew that they were naked." The
culmination of the sexual meaning of the stem yd’, ‘to know’, comes only when the narrator uses it
to indicate the first sexual intercourse between Adam and Eve after their expulsion from the Garden
of Eden.
Furthermore, since the Genesis text gives no hint that it conceives of the serpent as more
than an animal, albeit an unusual one, Eve's relationship with the serpent is not seen as an affiliation
with a Satanic power. Unlike the serpent in the Miltonic epic, who is Satan in disguise, and the
serpent in the midrashic version, who stands for Satan and the "evil inclination," the Genesis serpent
never transcends his concrete existence as one of the animals in the primeval garden. Therefore,
within the boundaries of the biblical text, Eve's dealings with the serpent carry no demonic
connotations.
Eve's special link with death and her supposedly deadly powers are also not an integral part
of the original tale. While both Adam and Eve become mortal as a consequence of their
transgression, it is the nature of Eve as life-giver that is emphasized in the aftermath of her sinful
act. Immediately after God's harsh words to Adam that end with "for dust thou art and unto dust
shalt thou return," there comes a surprisingly conciliatory tone: "And Adam called his wife's name
Eve, because she was the mother of all living" (Gen. 3:20). This is an affirmation of life and of Eve's
role as a life force and mother.
A selection from the Aggadic Midrash will clearly exemplify how the rabbinic exegetes and
storytellers picked up some of the strains of the biblical story, while at the same time they tried to
suppress other elements of the ancient story that did not conform to their patriarchal norms.
The rabbinic sages offer a different etymology to Eve's Hebrew name, Hawwa, from the one
given by the biblical text itself. By relating Eve's name to the Aramaic word hiwya which means
serpent, the rabbis tighten the link between the woman and the serpent. Hawwa thus means "Female
Serpent," and in naming her so Adam implied, according to the Midrash, that Eve functioned as his
serpent, or seducer. But the harshest judgment of Eve as a figure closely linked with the devil is
pronounced in the statement: "As soon as Eve was created, Satan was created with her." If the
serpent represents Satan, then this rabbinic saying seems to suggest that the serpent started as a
simple animal and took on demonic powers only when Eve came into being. Yet in spite of this
devastating commentary that not only puts woman in one league with the devil but actually sees in
her the origin of cosmic evil, most of the midrashic stories revolving around Eve are of a very
different kind. Generally, the image of Eve in the rabbinic tales is not that of a dangerously evil
creature, but rather that of a silly and childish female. The rabbis filled the narrative lacuna in the
Genesis text regarding the serpent's motivation for approaching Eve rather than Adam, by
reconstructing the serpent's inner deliberations that conclude with his observation that women are
light-minded and therefore he would fare better if he used his cunning on Eve. In spite of this
derogatory remark against women in general, it is significant to note that the serpent's reasons for
allying himself with the woman are not based on the fact that he has found in Eve an evil soul mate,
but on his assumption that Eve, as a woman, is silly and can be easily manipulated.
Another tale, found in three different versions, again illuminates the rabbis' attempts to
reduce the stature of Eve to that of an empty-minded, jealous housewife. What follows is a summary
of this parable:
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This is a parable of Adam and Eve. Adam is like a husband who filled a cask with figs and
nuts. Before fastening the top, he put a scorpion in it. He said to his wife: "My daughter, you
have free access to everything in the house, except for this cask, since it has a scorpion in it."
After he left, an old neighbor came in to borrow some vinegar. She asked the wife: "How
does your husband treat you?" The wife answered: "He treats me with every kindness, save
that he does not permit me to approach this cask which contains a scorpion." "It contains all
his finery," the old woman said, "he wishes to marry another woman and give it to her."
What did the wife do? She inserted her hand into the cask, and the scorpion bit her. When
her husband came home he heard her crying out with pain. She told him that the scorpion bit
her and he said: "Did I not tell you that you can have anything in the house except this
cask?"
The main impetus behind this story is clearly the wish to convert the biblical conflict
between Adam and Eve to a domestic squabble, and to diminish Eve's figure to that of a silly
woman. The near-heroic dimension that the Genesis Eve gains when her motives are elaborated
upon is nonexistent here. Instead, we have a wife who is patronized by her husband ("my
daughter"), distrusted by him, and who finally pays for her excessive curiosity. A faint misogynist
echo is heard in the punishment that the woman gets; being bitten by a scorpion is a penalty too
harsh for the crime. Yet if the hapless woman in this tale is excessively curious, she is far from
being evil
incarnate. Unlike the biblical narrator who uses a somber tone to describe Eve's downfall, the
Aggadic voice is frequently comic. Eve is described as the stereotypically comic nag who gets her
husband to surrender to her will not through her cunning manipulations but by pestering and
badgering him. Eve prevailed upon Adam to take the fateful step by crying and weeping over him.
A derogatorily comic assessment of the nature of women in general is presented by the following
homily:
Said He (God): "I will not create her from Adam's head, lest she be swell-headed; nor from
the eye, lest she be a coquette; nor from the ear, lest she be an eavesdropper; nor from the
mouth, lest she be a gossip; nor from the heart, lest she be prone to jealousy; nor from the
hand, lest she be light-fingered; nor from the foot, lest she be a gadabout; but from the
modest part of man, for even when he stands naked, that part is covered." And as he created
each limb He ordered her, "Be a modest woman." Yet in spite of all this…"I did not create
her from the head, yet she is swell-headed…; nor from the eye, yet she is a coquette…; nor
from the ear, yet she is an eavesdropper…; nor from the heart, yet she is prone to jealousy…;
nor from the hand, yet she is light-fingered…; nor from the foot, yet she is a gadabout."
Chaucer's Jankin the Clerk, the misogynist husband of the Wife of Bath in the Canterbury Tales,
who knew more proverbs about women "than there are blades of grass or herbs in the world," was
undoubtedly reading a similar text when he recited to his wife the comic foibles of women.
While the rabbis' overall attitude to Eve and women in general is more condescending that
condemning, their greatest disgust is reserved for the serpent. The serpent is described as the basest
of animals, whose physical repulsiveness is matched by his moral corruption. In the midrashic
homilies the serpent becomes the prototypical slanderer and informer, as well as money lender and
ususrer. The Midrash introduces the erotic dimension to the biblical story by attributing to the
serpent sexual lust. One midrash tells us that the serpent wanted to kill Adam and marry Eve. The
Zohar picks up the theme of the serpent's lust by going one step further and suggesting that the
serpent not only desired Eve but actually had sexual relations with her that produced Cain.
The biblical Eve, then, may be seen as epitomizing the human predicament in her wish to
transcend her limitations and expand her horizons. The midrashic Eve, on the other hand, is a
mundane housewife, frivolous and jealous, who needs man's wise guidance and often tries his
immense patience. A different version of feminine evil, closely linked with death and damnation, is
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incorporated in the image of the "strange woman" (or "stranger woman" as suggested by the Anchor
Bible edition), who is a frequent subject of discussion in Proverbs. In fact, it is the "strange
woman," rather than Eve, who plays the role of the sexual, moral, and cosmic "other." She is a
wanton seductress who introduces the innocent young man to "stolen waters" (8:17) and to a moral
and spiritual nether land that can only lead to death and damnation. But the "strange woman" is not
meant by the teacher in Proverbs to epitomize the entire feminine realm; she is only one aspect of
womanhood. Nevertheless, in the figure of the dangerous temptress and adulteress, Proverbs
embodies all the elements of potential feminine evil that are muted in the Eve story in Genesis.
Proverbs not only sermonizes about the dangers of the "strange woman" but actually creates
dramatic scenes in which the stereotypical image comes to life as an individual and is seen as trying
to entrap the gullible young man:
For at the window of my house / I looked out through my lattice,
And beheld among the simple ones / I discerned . . . a young man void of understanding.
Passing through the street near her corner / and he went the way to her house.
In the twilight, in the evening / in the blackness of the dark night.
And, beheld, there met him a woman / with the attire of a harlot, and wily of heart.
She is noisy and ungovernable / her feet do not remain in the house.
Now she is outside, now in the streets / and she lies in wait at every corner.
So she caught hold of him, and kissed him / and with an impudent face said to him:
I have had to sacrifice peace offerings / this day I paid my vows.
So I came out to meet thee / diligently to seek thy face, and I found thee.
I have decked my bed with coverings / with tapestry of the yarn of Egypt.
I have perfumed my bed / with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.
Come, let us take our fill of love till morning / let us delight ourselves with love.
For my husband is not at home / he is gone on a long journey.
He has taken a bag of money with him / and will come home at the full moon.
With her much fair speech she causes him to yield / with the smoothness of her lips she seduces him.
He goes after her at once / as an ox goes to the slaughter / and as a man in chains to the
chastisement of a fool.
Till a dart strike through his liver / as a bird hastens to the snare / and knows not that it is for his
life.
........................
Her house is the way to She'ol / going down to the chambers of death.
(Proverbs 7:6-27)
This is a powerful dramatic scene that portrays the “strange woman" luring the young man into her
house and seducing him as an archetypal human situation. The woman and the young man are not
named, nor are they anchored in a specific period or place. The instructor of Proverbs means to
create a recurrent human drama, in which man and woman enact a typical experience. The woman
appears as the sexual seductress, the evil influence, and the agent of death and hell; the man, as her
foolish victim. Yet in spite of the archetypal power of this scene in Proverbs, the "strange woman"
is not meant to represent womanhood in general. The balanced and fairminded conception of
women in Proverbs is exemplified in the admirable feminine figure that stands for Wisdom. The
woman Wisdom is the antithesis of the woman Folly, and the "strange woman" is one of the
variations of the woman Folly. Moreover, the "strange woman" is not described as a threat to all
men, but to the foolish, inexperienced young man. If he succumbs to her, he might be harmed
socially and financially, and eventually find himself at death's door. The tone of this poem is rather
practical, cautioning the young man against getting involved with the promiscuous woman, not so
much for moral reasons alone as for pragmatic reasons. The poet of Proverbs seems to vacillate
between giving this seduction scene universal symbolism, on the one hand, and keeping it within the
boundaries of a particular human threat that can be avoided, on the other. At the imaginative-poetic
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level, the scene seems to reenact an archetypal human drama; at the didactic level, the teacher gives
the scene a hypothetical quality, regarding it merely as a pedagogical device that dramatizes to the
young man the evils of a particular kind of woman. To mitigate the somberness of the picture and its
ability to release in man a primordial fear of women, the narrator employs a comic tone in his
description of the restless, corrupt woman: "She is noisy and ungovernable / her feet do not remain
in the house. Now is she outside, now in the streets / and she lies in wait at every corner."
But if the biblical poet ultimately refrains from depicting the wanton seductress as the
eternal woman, this feminine image reemerges as a universal female symbol in the literature
produced by the Essenes, the Jewish sect that lived around Christ's time. This group, which
advocated self-denial, extreme physical purity, and--in some cases--even celibacy, left its legacy (so
some scholars believe) in the famous Qumran scrolls. One scroll fragment from the Qumran cave
exhorts men to beware the wiles of the immoral temptress, who "lies in wait" for a gullible young
man, and seeks out "a righteous man" in order to lead them astray. The men who act sinfully are
exonerated, and the blame falls on the wanton woman whose eyes "glance hither and thither," and
who "displays herself" in such a seductive way that even a "perfect man" stumbles when he comes
under her influence.
Unlike the teacher of Proverbs, who balances the scenes of the "strange woman" with the
idealized image of the "woman of valor" (31:10-31), the delectable "wife of your youth" (5:18), and the
exalted Wisdom as a female figure, the Essenes focused only on the evil of women. The dead sea
scrolls reveal the Essenes' abhorrence of sexuality and their misogynic contempt for the female
flesh. In fact, there is a close similarity between St. Paul's disparagement of the married state and his
disgust of sexual relations and the Qumran fragments that deal with women and sexuality. While St.
Paul anchors his theological distrust of women and condemnation of sex in the story of the Fall, it is
obvious that he reads more into the story of
Genesis than it really contains. It is very possible that his misogyny was fueled not so much by the
Genesis story as by the ideas and modes of thinking represented in the Qumran writings, of which
the poem on the wanton woman is an example.
The image of the woman as the deadly seductress who leads man to death and hell is
twofold. In Proverbs and the Qumran poem the female figure is an actual flesh-and-blood human
being who plays the role of the agent of sin and damnation. But the converse aspect of the same
image is that of the diabolic female as a phantasmic figure, existing only in the man's heightened
imagination, or that of a chimerical figure who looks like a woman but is actually the devil in
disguise. The image of the female seductress as the human embodiment of the devil appears in
various midrashic tales. The following story is told in two versions:
Rabbi Meir used to mock at sinners. One day Satan appeared in the likeness of a woman on
the other side of the river. As there was no ferry boat, he seized the rope bridge, and went
across. When he was halfway, Satan vanished, saying, "If they had not called out from
heaven ‘beware of Rabbi Meir and his Torah’, I would not have assessed your blood at two
farthings."
A similar story is told of Rabbi Akiba. Satan appeared to him in the form of a beautiful woman on
top of a palm tree. The rabbi began to climb the tree, but when he was halfway, Satan vanished,
making the same remark as he did after the attempted seduction of Rabbi Meir. In both cases, the
rabbis learned to be more understanding towards sinners.
Aside from the obvious moral message of this type of story, which teaches tolerance and
recognizes the power of temptation, these two tales are not without their comic side, especially
when they describe the two dignified rabbis overcome by uncontrollable lust and acting impulsively
and irrationally, rushing to seize the spectral figures and returning empty-handed. However, the
implications of these two stories regarding the Talmudic conception of the nature of women are farreaching. The interchangeability of Satan and woman is disturbing. In the cases of Rabbi Meir and
Rabbi Akiba the devil impersonated a woman; when can a man be sure that the beautiful woman
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that he desires is not really the devil masquerading as a woman? On the other hand, if the feminine
body is used by the devil as a tool of temptation, the real-life woman is exonerated, and the blame
for succumbing to sin is put either on the tempter, Satan, or on the male's strong sexual drives and
stimulated imagination.
Indeed, while the Midrash establishes the affinity between woman and the serpent--devil on
a number of occasions, it also offers a tale that reverses the Genesis account of the corruption of the
woman by the serpent. The following is a summary of the story about Rabbi Akiba's daughter and a
snake:
From Rabbi Akiba we learn that Israel is free from planetary influence. For Rabbi Akiba had
a daughter. Now astrologers told him that on the day she enters the bridal chamber a snake
will bite her and she will die. He was very worried about this. On the day of her wedding she
took a brooch and stuck it into the wall and by chance it penetrated into the eye of a serpent.
The following morning, when she took it out, the snake came trailing after it. "What did you
do?" her father asked her. "A poor man came to our door in the evening," she replied, "and
everybody was busy at the banquet, and there was none to attend to him. So I took the
portion which was given to me and gave it to him." "You have done a good deed," said
Rabbi Akiba to his daughter. Thereupon Rabbi Akiba went out and lectured: "But charity
delivereth from death" and not merely from unnatural death but from death itself.
The tale about a young woman who is in mortal danger of a snake reenacts the biblical
drama of Eve and at the same time introduces a twist to the ancient narrative by suggesting the other
route that it could have taken. Rabbi Akiba's daughter defeats both the snake and the deadly
prediction by performing a good deed, while Eve is overpowered by the snake and by death itself
when she violates God's law. While the main thrust of this Talmudic legend is moral and didactic, in
its fictional dimension it refashions the earlier text by giving a domestic setting and a historical
reality to its characters. It also redeems the Genesis tale by presenting the woman as a positive force,
capable of thwarting cosmic evil. In a way, the essence of this tale stands in opposition to the
general tendency of the Midrash to enlarge Eve's culpability and her frivolous surrender to evil. It
also seems that this tale seeks to sever the mythic ties that connect the female with the serpent.
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B. Greek--Pandora
1. A Greek legend according to Hesiod
from Theogony and Works and Days, translated by M. L. West, 1988, pp. 38-40.
But Zeus concealed it, angry because Prometheus' crooked cunning had tricked him.
On that account he devised grim cares for mankind; he concealed fire. The noble son of Iapetos
stole it back for men from Zeus the resourceful in the tube of a fennel, eluding the eye of
Zeus, whose sport is thunder. In anger Zeus the cloud-gatherer spoke to him:
Son of Iapetos, clever above all others, you are pleased at having stolen fire and outwitted
me—a great calamity both for yourself and for men to come. To set against the fire I shall
give them an affliction in which they will all delight as they embrace their own misfortune.
So saying, the father of gods and men laughed aloud; and he told renowned Hephaestus at
once to mix earth with water, to add in a human voice and strength, and to model upon the immortal
goddesses' aspect the fair lovely form of a maiden. Athene he told to teach her crafts, to weave the
embroidered web, and golden Aphrodite to shower charm about her head, and painful yearning and
consuming obsession; to put in a bitch's mind and a knavish nature, that was his instruction to
Hermes the go-between, the dog-killer.
So he ordered, and they all obeyed the lord Zeus son of Kronos. At once the renowned
Ambidexter moulded from earth the likeness of a modest maiden by Kronos' son's design, and the
pale-eyed goddess Athene dressed and adorned her. The Graces and the lady Temptation put
necklaces of gold about her body and the lovely-haired spirits of ripeness garlanded her about with
spring flowers. Pallas Athene arranged all the adornment on her body. In her breast the Gobetween, the dog-killer, fashioned lies and wily pretences and a knavish nature by deep-thundering
Zeus' design; and he put in a voice, did the herald of the gods, and he named this woman Pandora,
Allgift, because all the dwellers on Olympus made her their gift—a calamity for men who live by
bread.
When he had completed the precipitous, unmanageable trap, the father sent the renowned
dog-killer to Epimetheus taking the gift, swift messenger of the gods. Epimetheus gave no thought
to what Prometheus had told him, never to accept a gift from Olympian Zeus but to send it back lest
some affliction befall mortals: he accepted, and had the bane before he realized it.
For formerly the tribes of men on earth lived remote from ills, without harsh toil and the
grievous sicknesses that are deadly to men. But the woman unstopped the jar and let it all out, and
brought grim cares upon mankind. Only Hope remained there inside in her secure dwelling, under
the lip of the jar, and did not fly out, because the woman put the lid back in time by the providence
of Zeus the cloud-gatherer who bears the aegis. But for the rest, countless troubles roam among
men: full of ills is the earth, and full the sea. Sicknesses visit men by day, and others by night,
uninvited, bringing ill to mortals, silently, because Zeus the resourceful deprived them of voice.
Thus there is no way to evade the purpose of Zeus.
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2. Edith Hamilton’s Pandora
from Mythology, p. 70.
These two stories of the creation—the story of the five ages, and the story of Prometheus
and Epimetheus--different as they are, agree in one point. For a long time, certainly throughout the
happy Golden Age, only men were upon the earth; there were no women. Zeus created these later,
in his anger at Prometheus for caring so much for men. Prometheus had not only stolen fire for
men; he has also arranged that they should get the best part of any animal sacrificed and the gods the
worst. He cut up a great ox and wrapped the good eatable parts in the hide, disguising them further
by piling entrails on top. Beside this heap he put another of all the bones, dressed up with cunning
and covered with shining fat, and bade Zeus choose between them. Zeus took up the white fat and
was angry when he saw the bones craftily tricked out. But he had made his choice and he had to
abide by it. Thereafter only fat and bones were burned to the gods upon their altars. Men kept the
good meat for themselves.
But the Father of Men and of Gods was not one to put up with this sort of treatment. He
swore to be revenged, on mankind first and then on mankind's friend. He made a great evil for men,
a sweet and lovely thing to look upon, in the likeness of a shy maiden, and all the gods gave her
gifts, silvery raiment and a broidered veil, a wonder to behold, and bright garlands of blooming
flowers and a crown of gold great beauty shone out from it. Because of what they gave her they
called her Pandora, which means "the gift of all." When this beautiful disaster had been made, Zeus
brought her out and wonder took hold of gods and men when they beheld her. From her, the first
woman, comes the race of women, who are an evil to men, with a nature to do evil.
Another story about Pandora is that the source of all misfortune was not her wicked nature,
but only her curiosity. The gods presented her with a box into which each had put something
harmful, and forbade her ever to open it. Then they sent her to Epimetheus, who took her gladly
although Prometheus had warned him never to accept anything from Zeus. He took her, and
afterward when that dangerous thing, a woman, was his, he understood how good his brother's
advice had been. For Pandora, like all women, was possessed of a lively curiosity. She had to know
what was in the box. One day she lifted the lid--and out flew plagues innumerable, sorrow and
mischief for mankind. In terror Pandora clapped the lid down, but too late. One good thing,
however, was there--Hope. It was the only good the casket had held among the many evils, and it
remains to this day mankind's sole comfort in misfortune. So mortals learned that it is not possible
to get the better of Zeus or ever deceive him. The wise and compassionate Prometheus, too, found
that out.
3. William Phipps’ Pandora
from Genesis and Gender, p. 40 ff.
The Greek Pandora
The myths of Pandora and Eve are similar in that both attempt to explain why woman was
created. Hesiod’s poetry, entitled Theogony and Works and Days, provides the only Greek source
pertaining to woman’s creation. He wrote about 700 B.C.E…
Classic scholars suggest that Hesiod reversed the meaning of the name of an earth goddess
called Pandora (all-giving) or Anesidora (one who sends up gifts)…. Hesiod shows no awareness of
the mythology of a divine Pandora-Anesidora giver of fertility. Hence he made up a story of
Pandora passively receiving gifts from the gods….Jane Harrison sees in Hesiod’s story evidence of
a shift from matriarchy to patriarchy in Greek culture. As the life-bringing goddess Pandora is
eclipsed, the death-bringing human Pandora arises.
Woman, according to Hesiod, was created under the direction of father Zeus as retaliation
against Prometheus. That trickster demigod had stolen heavenly fire for earthlings. The outwitted
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Zeus commissioned members of his pantheon to make “an evil thing in which men will all delight
while they embrace their own destruction.” Like a potter, crafts expert Hephaistos shaped a lump of
clay into the shape of a luscious maiden; like a goldsmith, he made her a crown. Athena decked out
his creation with clothes, jewelry, and flowers. Aphrodite bestowed charm and seductive powers,
while Hermes implanted “a bitch’s mind and a thief’s temper.” The “beautiful evil” (kalon kakon)
was named Pandora because a variety of Olympian gods and goddesses had given her traits. This
“booby trap” equipped with “lying and tricky talk” was delivered to Epimetheus (“afterthinker”), the
uncautious brother of Prometheus (“forethinker”). Before Epimetheus accepted the gift, men lived
like gods in a paradisiacal Golden Age “free from evils, harsh labor and consuming diseases.” But
when Pandora maliciously opened the lid of a huge jar, all kinds of miseries flew out and infected
mortals throughout the earth. Hesiod ends his story thus: “This was the origin of damnable
womankind, a plague with which men must live.” Further on in Works and Days, the poet warns of
sweet-talking and hop-wiggling women who steal from those that find them fascinating. Hesiod’s
final judgment is this: “Any man who trusts a woman, trusts a deceiver.” He believed that the
multitude of Pandora’s daughters inherit their mother’s loveliness and cunningness. Their charm
and breeding potentially compel men to associate with them, but their bad character makes domestic
life miserable.
…Homer’s portrayal of women influenced Hesiod. In the Odyssey, the soul of Agamemnon
comments on Clytemnestra who stabbed him to death: “A bad name she gave to womankind, even
to the best.” The infidelity of his wife stimulates a reflection that has become proverbial: “Never
trust a woman.” Hesiod’s story of Pandora became a part of Greek education and youth thereby
formed prejudices against women….
Semonides, a younger contemporary of Hesiod, owed much to generalizations about women
by Homer and Hesiod. Semonides concludes: “Zeus designed woman as the greatest of all evils.
She is a source of evil, especially to her husband, even if she seems to be a help in some ways. No
one manages to spend a whole day in contentment if he has a wife….Yes, this is the greatest plague
Zeus has made, and he has bound us to them with a fetter that cannot be broken. Because of this
some have gone to Hades fighting for a woman.”
…The comic playwright, Eubulus, a fourth-century Athenian, judging evil women to
outnumber good ones overwhelmingly, alludes to Pandora. “The second man to marry should be
punished, but not the first [Epimetheus], who had no experience of how awful a wife can be.…”
Pherecrates, in the fifth-century, comments that: “He who bemoans the death of his wife is a fool
who doesn’t appreciate his good fortune.”
The Jewish/Christian Eve
Hellenization impacted Western Asia after the conquests of Alexander in the fourth century.
The Greek theme of women being universally alluring but inherently disastrous infiltrated Jewish
thought after Palestine came under Hellenistic control. In the Hebrew Bible the best example of
what the French would call la femme fatale is found in Ecclesiastes 7:26. In that verse a
philosopher sounds a warning about the wiles of all women: “I found something more bitter than
death—woman. The love she offers you will catch you like a trap or like a net; and her arms around
you will hold you like a chain. A man who pleases God can get away, but she will catch the
sinner.”
The Pandora motif was transferred to the Eve myth in Jewish writing after the era of the
Hebrew Bible and before Christianity arose. Philo, who absorbed the Hellenistic culture of
Alexandria, projects onto the Hebrew Bible alien Greek ideas. His references to the poems of
Hesiod show that he must have been acquainted with the Pandora myth. Hence, in his commentary
on Genesis, woman is singled out as “the beginning of evil.” Eve and her daughters are described in
this disparaging way: “The woman, being imperfect and depraved by nature, made the beginning of
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sinning and prevaricating; but the man, being the more excellent and perfect creature, was the first
to set the example of blushing and of being ashamed, and indeed of every good feeling and action.”
Tertullian, the first leader of Latin Christianity, compared the biblical and Greek stories of
the first woman. Eve only differs from Pandora, he notes, in that she is “encircled with leaves about
the middle than with flowers about the temple.” His infamous denunciation of women displays his
mixture of the two myths:
Do you not know that each of you is an Eve? God’s sentence on your gender lives even in
our times and so it is necessary that the guilt must also continue. You are the one who
opened the devil’s door; you unsealed the forbidden tree; you first betrayed the divine law;
you are the one who enticed him whom the devil was too weak to attack. How easily you
destroyed man, the image of God! Because of the death which you brought upon us, even
the Son of God had to die.
Opening the devil’s door and unsealing the forbidden tree are images similar to Pandora’s
raising the lid of a jar containing the earth’s evils. After quoting this passage from Tertullian, Paul
Jewett writes, “As in ancient Greek mythology Pandora opened the fateful box, so in Christian
thought it was Eve, the first woman, who ruined mankind.” John Phillips shows the way in which
Eve’s alleged fatal curiosity becomes a prominent motif in European folk tales. He attributes this
“relatively late diagnosis of woman’s special weakness” to confusing Eve with Pandora.
Tertullian thought of Eve and Pandora as the archetype of temptresses who ruin men by their
good looks. He implores Christian women to deface their beauty in order to avoid stimulating male
sexual desire. Not only must cosmetics and attractive clothing be abhorred but “even natural grace
must be obliterated by concealment and negligence.” Wearing a veil when going into public places
helps to mortify the flesh. Tertullian asks: “Who will have the audacity to intrude with his eyes
upon a shrouded face? a face without feeling? a face, so to say, morose?” Men’s virtue is least
threatened if women stay secluded. “Busy your hands with spinning,” Tertullian writes; “keep your
feet at home.”
John Chrysostom (literally, “golden mouth”) and Gregory Nazianzen, outstanding fourthcentury leaders of Greek Christianity, thought of Eve as an ensnarer. Hesiod would have liked
Chrysostom’s description of the daughters of Eve: “How often do we, from beholding a woman,
suffer a thousand evils….The beauty of women is the greatest snare….Let us then discern the
snares, and walk far off from them! Let us discern the precipices, and not even approach
them!…What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a
natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, and evil of
nature, painter with fair colors!” Chrysostom had followed the Hesiodic tradition in alleging a gap
between a woman’s attractive appearance and her horrible nature. Gregory Nazianzen, Archbishop
of Constantinople, interpreted Eve as the devil’s advocate: “Instead of an assistant, she became an
enemy…beguiling the man by means of pleasure.”
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4. Tikvah Frymer Kensky, In The Wake of Goddesses
from Sex and Gender, pp. 203-205
Israel's ideas about sex and gender changed after the conquest of Judea by Alexander the
Great in 333 B.C.E. Jewish thinking about these matters was inherently unstable and was already
undergoing modification, but the direction was firmly established by the confrontation
with Greek civilization, which considered itself greatly superior to the East and actively promoted
the spread of Greek culture. Jewish tradition has long held that there were two factions of Jews, the
"Hellenizers," who adopted Greek modes of dress and behavior, and the pious, who did not.
However, even the most loyal and pious were influenced by Greek ideas, and Hellenistic Judaism
develops in dialogue with Greco-Roman civilization.
The Greeks had a distinctive complex of ideas and institutions relating
to women and sex, paralleled by a social system which, at least in Athens, was very gendersegregated. Greek philosophy portrayed females as inherently and essentially different from men,
and fundamentally less valued. The male-female distinction was one of the great polarities of the
Greek dualistic system. The earliest Greek literature, the works of Hesiod, portrays the genesis of
the gods as a battte and alternation between males and females, which is finally brought to an end
only when Zeus usurps the female power of procreation and creates nonsexual females who serve
rather than threaten male dominance. The Pythagorean philosophical system divided the world into
dualistic category pairs, with male and female an essential division of the universe.
The Greeks considered females to be inherently so different from males that they spoke of a genes
gynaikon, a "race of women," as if women were an entirely different species from men. In all such
divisions in Greece, women were considered "natural" and untamed.
Greek myths portray the relationship between men and women in terms of a battle of the
sexes. The Athenians glorify and portray their victory over the Amazons, who are confronted and
defeated by Heracles and Theseus. Stories such as those of Clytemnestra, Medea, the Danaids, and
the Lemnian women show women murdering their husbands and children out of anger and revenge.
Rituals and myths such as those in the worship of Dionysus portray and channel female anger. Even
a less toxic story like Lysistrata shows a “we against them” mentality in which women unite against
men. Does this battleground correspond to reality? It may be that women living under such a
system would have felt great rage and would have taken this out on their children, particularly their
male children. On the other hand, these myths of female revenge may have less to do with actual
female behavior than with the projection of male feelings about woman (mother) who loomed so
powerful in their early days and had to be abandoned.
The battle in these myths is deadly serious, for the Greeks considered this victory of males
over females, whether in Hesiod's Theogony or in the Amazonomachy, the foundation for civilized
existence. To the Greek mind, the “Female” was wild and beastly, and needed to be controlled and
dominated by the civilized male. This philosophy of female subordination also underlies the great
tragic cycle of Aeschylus, the Oresteia. Here, Clytemnestra is enraged at Agamemnon's sacrifice of
their daughter and kills Agamemnon. In turn, Orestes, their son, kills her, whom he perceives as
hostile to him as well as to his father. Nor does the story end there, for Orestes is now attacked by
thc avenging furies. At this point, civilization intervenes, as Orestes is brought to trial for matricide.
His defense completely denies that attention has to be paid to women, even to mothers, claiming
that mothers are not real parents:
The mother is no parent of that which is called her child, but only nurse of the new-planted
seed that grows. The parent is he who mounts. A stranger, she preserves a stranger's seed, if
no god interfere.
In this total denial of mother-right, Orestes is granted victory by Athena, the goddess of Athens,
sexlessly virginal and detoxified. She is the very symbol of male dominance, created entirely by
Zeus after he had swallowed Metis. Athena declares “I am always for the male with heart, and
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strongly on my father's side.” Mother-right and the power of the Furies who protect it have been
conquered; the Furies are domesticated and placed at the service of the judice system of the
nonfamily civilized state.
Greek literature has a strong streak of misogyny that begins with Hesiod and continues
unabated in Roman times. This misogyny is embedded in Hesiod's story of Pandora, the first
woman, who was given to men in anger as the price they had to pay for getting fire. She was the
Kallon Kakon, the beautiful evil, the lovely curse, and “from her has sprung the race of womankind,
the deadly race and tribes of womankind, great pain to mortal men with whom they live…so women
are a curse to mortal men.” This sense of woman as totally other is also found in Semonides of
Amorgos (seventh century B.C.E.), who wrote a diatribe on women in which he calls them “the
worst plague Zeus has made.” Misogyny remained an important Greek literary motif, and
antiwoman themes and comments are prevalent in Greek literature. The Greek philosophical
tradition proceeds from a presupposition of both the otherness and inferiority of women. Plato
codifies this clear hierarchical ranking. Aristotle “proves” women inferior and defective, bringing
scientific language to popular conceptions. Even Greek tragedy, which is not always misogynist, is
preoccupied with the relationships between the sexes.
In such a system, erotic desire is clearly a problem. As is well known, there is a strong
glorification of pederastic homophilia in Greek writing, a result and a reinforcement of the
separation of the sexes and the limitation of public life to males. But the possibility of erotic
attraction to women was not denied. Greek speculation focused on the lover more than the beloved,
on the effects of eros upon him, and on his proper response to it. The Greeks clearly felt that eros
was an overwhelming force, that even the wisest of men could be made fools and swept away by
sexual desire. Prodicus (fifth century) defined eros as “desire doubled”--and eros doubled is
madness. The great fear was that erotic desire was an absolutely uncontrollable force, and that the
mere sight of a beautiful male or female could arouse great erotic desire. Much Greek discussion of
sexuality centers on the need to control it, to master one's passions, to impose discipline, refinement,
and civilization on this unruly emotion.
The coming of this tradition to Israel had an enormous impact on Israelite (and later
religious) thinking. In the book of Ecclesiastes, clearly written in the early Hellenistic period, the
first openly misogynistic statement in the Bible appears:
Now I find woman more bitter than death; she is all traps, her hands are fetters and
her heart is snares.
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C. Christian
1. William Phipps, Early Church Fathers on Eve
from Genesis and Gender
Greek Bishop Chrysostom declared: “Woman taught once and ruined all….What happened
to the first woman occasioned the subjection of the whole sex.” Chrysostom claimed that Eve’s
wily nature was well displayed in Bathsheba. When his friend Theodore became betrothed,
Chrysostom wrote: “If you consider what is contained in beautiful eyes, a straight nose, a mouth,
and cheeks, you will agree that a well-shaped body is merely a whitewashed tomb; the parts within
are full of filth….The blessed David also had a fall like that which has now happened to you.”
Chrysostom’s inversion of the biblical story of David’s seduction of Bathsheba became a staple of
medieval sermons.
“Let no one say that Eve conceived nothing in her womb at the devil’s word. The devil’s
word was the seed for her so that afterward she should give birth as an outcast and bring forth in
sorrow. In fact, she gave birth to a devil who murdered his brother.”
According to Jerome, one of the most famous of all biblical translators and interpreters,
“Ava” was Gabriel’s greeting to Mary because the Nazareth virgin reversed the bad name of “Eva,”
the sexual siren of Eden. He counseled, “Always bear in mind that is was a woman who expelled
the tiller of Paradise from his heritage.
Augustine came to assume that the sexual urge was evil in itself. He is largely responsible
for concupiscentia—a neutral term in classical Latin meaning strong desire—coming to mean evil
lust in subsequent Catholic doctrine. Also he was among the first to equate concupiscence with
“original sin.”
Augustine postulated that sexual desire could not have been a part of God’s perfect creation.
How then could reproduction have occurred? Had there been no original sin, Augustine fantasized,
Adam would have impregnated Eve while relaxing passionlessly on her bosom. While operating
under complete rational control Adam would coolly have summoned his semen forth and, without
hymenal impairment, it would have dripped down into her vagina. “Away with the thought that
there should have been…any unregulated excitement,” Augustine insisted.
To show that it is plausible to think of humans having complete physical control in an
uncorrupted condition, Augustine tells of the power some individuals have over particular bodily
parts. Just as some people now can deliberately “make their ears move, either one at a time or both
together,” and others “can make musical notes issue from their bowels so as to produce a musical
effect,” so “our organs without the excitement of concupiscence could have obeyed human will for
all the purposes of parenthood.”
Only after indulging in sin was Adam unable to keep his penis from acting up. Like an ass
rebelling against training, it would not respond to its owner’s commands. Augustine thought Adam
received an appropriate penalty for willful disobedience to the fruit tree prohibition in having his
penis become likewise disobedient to his will. Adam, who had previously been naked and
unashamed, now is highly embarrassed at the “bestial motion” of his penis. Indeed, blushing is
alleged to have originated from Adam’s chagrin over penile perversity. He quickly covers his loins
in order to conceal from others his lack of self-mastery. Power over the penis is lost forever to
Adam’s offspring and henceforth its arousal and its orgasm will often be triggered by someone else.
Eve as well as Adam was conscience-stricken by her involuntary sexual impulses. “The motion of
their bodily members,” Augustine writes, “released the shocking news of their indecent nakedness,
made them notice it, and gave them shame.”
Augustine maintained that all humans who have been conceived by sexual intercourse
inherit from Adam unruly genitals. “Behold the place!” he exclaimed. “That’s the place form
which the first sin was passed on.” He informed men in his congregation that each could witness
the effect of the Fall in his penis’s disobedience to authoritative command. The corrupted semen
ejaculated from the faulty member would contaminate the next generation by what we call genes.
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Augustine thought the evil sexual impulse is transmitted in the same physiological way as children
inherit the skin pigmentation of their parents.
Augustine found evidence of the perpetual shameful consequence of Adam’s sin in the fact
that couples, even when bound in legal wedlock, dread engaging in intercourse except in a dark
place. “Even shameless men call this shameful,” Augustine claimed; “and though they love the
pleasure, they dare not display it.” Consequently, married partners “seek out secret retreats for
cohabitation, and dare not have even the children whom they have themselves begotten to be
witnesses of what they do.”
While admitting that sexual consummation produces “the greatest of all bodily pleasures,”
Augustine believes it is dishonorable for Christians to seek sexual pleasure even within marriage.
Marital coitus can be performed without committing “venial” sin only if spouses are exclusively
motivated by a grim determination to propagate. “Since you cannot reproduce in any other way,” he
laments, “you must descend against your will to this punishment of Adam.” The celibate bishop
advises a man to love his wife as he loves his enemy—he should accept both as creatures of God but
hate what makes them corrupt. With respect to his spouse, a husband should hate her desire for
sexual pleasure. In his several treatises on marriage, the sexual act as a symbolic expression of
devoted love is nowhere regarded as even a secondary purpose of marriage. Augustine argues that it
is wrong for married couples who do not hope for conception to have sexual union even as it is
wrong for a person to consume food in excess of what is necessary for survival.
To renounce sexual intercourse entirely is to hasten the coming of the perfected City of God.
Consequently Augustine praises those already bound in matrimony who have vowed “to observe a
perpetual abstinence form the use of carnal concupiscence.” Likewise he commends the
supererogation of virginal men and women who impose upon themselves the command, “Thou shalt
not wed.”
Augustine regarded Jesus as the second Adam because, like the first Adam before his Fall,
he had no sexual drive. The bishop believed that God effected this unique exception to the rest of
humanity by miraculously enabling a woman to become fertilized without receiving the
contaminated semen of Adam’s descendants. Whereas the first Adam was “able no to sin,” Jesus,
because of his virginal conception, was “not able to sin.”
In Augustine’s scheme of sin and salvation, man’s rambunctious private parts become proof
of his being conceived in iniquity and normally destined for the torment of hell. Jesus, the lustless
Savior, rescues some whom otherwise would receive their just damnation. Those few whom God
elects show their appreciation by attempting to imitate Jesus’ alleged lifestyle. Augustine’s doctrine
did much to attract guild-stricken individuals to medieval monasteries, for sexual discipline was
prominently featured there.
Augustine explained how the New Testament could state that both Adam and Eve sinned
even though only Eve was deceived. “The woman accepted as true what the serpent told her, but
the man could not bear to be severed from his only companion, even though this involved a
partnership in sin.” Although Adam would have preferred not to eat the forbidden fruit, he gallantly
ate “with his eyes open” to avoid vexing his wife. From this biblical story Augustine extracts this
moral for men: “Whether it is in a wife or a mother, it is still Eve the temptress that we must beware
of in any woman. Satan did not remove Job’s wife when tormenting Job, Augustine believed,
because the devil learned from his success with Eve that a woman was an able assistant.
According to Augustine, the Genesis flood was well as the Fall of the first human parents
was occasioned by woman. Viewing women as incarnations of sensuality, he claimed that they
seduced the angelic sons of God. It was their “depraved morals” and bodily beauty” that brought on
that second calamity.
In the Middle Ages, in Ireland, this testimony circulated: “I am Eve, the wife of noble Adam;…it
was I who robbed my children of heaven; it is I by right who should have been crucified….There
would be no hell, there would be no grief, there would be no terror but for me.” Mystere d’Adam,
one of the earliest morality plays, depicts Eve as lacking a conscience. Adam is unable to convince
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her that the Devil is treacherous. Although vexed at his wife’s eating the forbidden fruit, her
persistent nagging causes him to capitulate to her offer.
A witch-angel polarity emerged in attitudes toward women during the medieval period. The
sexually active were often associated with the underworld devil while those with unruptured
hymens were adored on a par with heavenly angels. Virgins had virtue because, as the roots of these
words indicate, they had male (Latin, vir) restraint. In the Marian cult, the exalted “Queen of
Heaven” set in bolder relief “witches” who, by means of satanic voluptuousness, enchained mortals
for consignment to hell.
In the fourteenth century, the faculty of the University of Bologna decreed that the academic
community should avoid female contacts because “woman is the fountain of sin, the weapon of the
devil, the cause of man’s banishment from Paradise.” At that same time the priest in The
Canterbury Tales taught:
Woman’s counsel brought us first to woe,
And made Adam from Paradise to go.
Chaucer’s Wife of Bath recalls clerical libel on her sex and speculates on what would have
happened if scribes were not male:
If women had but written stories;
As have these clerks within their oratories,
They would have written of men more wickedness
Than all the race of Adam could redress.
2. Rosemary Radford Reuther, Women in Christian Theology: Subordination or Equivalence?
from Women in World Religions: Christianity [Forthcoming]
3. David Feldman, Marriage in the Christian Tradition
Marriage--to begin with the first of the relevant factors--is, in Judaism, a mitzvah, a religious
duty. Moreover, the particular constellation of values in the Jewish concept of marriage-procreation, companionship, etc.--is a unique one and can more clearly be understood against the
background of the classic Christian view. Attitudes toward marriage, considered independently of
procreation or marital sex, represent an area of sharp contrast between the two traditions, and the
extent of early Christianity's reaction to or divergence from the Jewish example helps define the
latter.
It would, of course, hardly be fair to describe the attitude even of early Christianity as that
recorded in Paul's reply to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 7:9): “If they cannot contain, let them marry; for it
is better to marry, than to burn.” The circumstances of this utterance, namely the anticipation of the
imminent Endtime, were rather special. Paul, furthermore, was replying to specific inquiries from
the recent converts at Corinth, not presenting a discourse on the subject as a whole. In other texts
(such as Ephesians 5:22 ff.) something of the affirmative biblical Old Testament view does find
expression, notably Genesis 2:18: "It is not good for man to be alone; I shall make him a helpmeet";
Genesis 2:24 "Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife and they
shall become as one flesh"; as well as the biblical. passages wherein the husband-wife relation
becomes a sublime symbol of the mystic bond between God and Israel. Regardless, however, of
the
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weight given to one text over the other or to differences in interpretation, one fact is objectively true
of the developing Christian tradition: celibacy became the ideal, and marriage was treated as an
unworthy concession to the weakness of the human will.
Several factors may have accounted for this turn of events, not the least of which was the intrusion
of dualistic philosophies proclaiming the inherent evil of the body and of sexuality. Perhaps the
finest treatment of the entire subject comes from the pen of Dr. Derrick S. Bailey, an Anglican
scholar, who analyzes the elements making up the normative Christian position. On the one hand,
he writes, the Greek populace had no notion of moral purity in sexual matters, and their hedonism
and sensuality would
often degenerate into licentiousness. Gradually infiltrating into Roman society, the baser elements
of Greek sexual life there became "the coarse, brutal and calculated vice for which the imperial city
has ever since remained notorious." Against this laxity of moral standards and depravity in sexual
behavior, the philosophers of the age proclaimed an ideal of asceticism which expressed itself
primarily in renunciation of sex, wedlock, and the family. Stoicism, for example, tended to reject
matrimonial and domestic ties, while Neo-Pythagoreanism inclined towards a dualism which
regarded coitus as a defilement and which inculcated the ideal of abstinence.
Upon the sexual thought and life of the primitive Church, each of these attitudes left its
mark, writes Dr. Bailey, who then pays tribute to the contribution of Judaism:
The Jewish respect for marriage and the family was continued in the ideal of the Christian
home as, in some sense, a "religious institution" in which natural relationships were elevated
and strengthened by the sharing of a common faith….In the spirit of the old Israel, the new
upheld the divine ordinance of the moral value of wedlock but…the virgin state was
accorded a supremacy which the Orthodox Jew would have repudiated as an impious
frustration of the purposes of God.
“It is the teaching on virginity which was a radical break from the Old Testament," Professor John
Noonan of Notre Dame writes, "and which put marriage in a place where, as it were, it had to justify
its own existence.
In the period following--in the age, that is, of the Church Fathers—the notion of the
superiority of celibacy over marriage persisted as the dominant motif while the denigration of
marriage increased in intensity. Jerome, for example, outdid Tertullian in his antipathy to marriage,
while Augustine, who formulated the "goods of matrimony," maintained nevertheless the clear
spiritual priority of celibacy and virginity. Marriage is a "remedy for concupiscence," wherein the
venereal desire is channeled and rendered relatively harmless. Thc original sin of sex (see on) is
somewhat redeemed by the procreative ends of marriage; then marriage, by virtue of its unique
mutual pledges, can be called a sacrament.
Nothing illustrates this accommodating orientation to matrimony better
than the Church's view on the question of digamy--remarriage after widowhood. (I Cor. 7:15).
Tertullian wrote three treatises on marriage, all of which, in substance, are "vigorous dissuasives
against resuming the carnal ties from which the fortunate decease of a husband or wife has given
release; and with each successive treatise the argument grows…until in the last…rejection of
digamy is almost asserted as the distinguishing mark of the true Church.” As the spirit of
asceticism grew within Christianity, second marriage fell increasingly into disfavor, so that much of
patristic literature on sexual topics is devoted to a vindication of celibacy against marriage and of
widowhood against digamy. The patristic age is summed up by Dr. Bailey as follows:
They [the Church Fathers] were compelled by the Church's tenacious and reverential belief
in the beneficent Creator-God of the Old Testament to confirm the essential goodness of all
His works, yet cultural and temperamental factors [italics supplied] inhibited them from
treating matrimony and sexuality in the positive spirit of Jewish naturalism.
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The medieval period--the age of the monks and the scholastics--saw little change, progress,
or deepening of the concept of marriage. Legal questions preoccupied the minds of the thinkers of
this period: What constitutes the "efficient cause" of the matrimonial bond? What act seals a
marriage, and by what act can it be dissolved? The towering figure of the age was, of course,
Thomas Aquinas, who wrote extensively on the subject. Thoroughly permeated with
Augustinianism, he carried forward that inherited body of doctrine in this matter without altering its
essence. In his synthesis, "marriage has the purpose of and is essential to propagating the race. But
the individual--and the married couple--arc still free to choose continence that they may the better
contemplate God." The spirit of the age, moreover, was congenial to a neglect of deeper marriage
philosophy; the courtly style of life had in any case separated marriage from whatever romance or
human relatedness may have been associated with it.
The Protestant Reformation did effect its changes with respect to marriage attitudes.
Clerical celibacy was repudiated, but the underlying antipathetic orientation remained. Luther
endorsed marriage in the Augustinian mood; it is a "medicine" and a “hospital for the sick"; the only
effective antidote against, or cure for, the incontinence which troubles every man. Appreciative of
the moral honesty and social advantages offered by matrimony, Luther yet retains the sexual
negativism of the Fathers and Schoolmen: "No matter what praise is given to marriage," he protests,
"I will not concede to nature that it is no sin."
Calvin's conception of marriage was much more affirmative. In his commentary to the verse "It is
not good for man to be alone," he allowed that the social purpose is a primary one alongside the
generative. Where Luther saw woman as a child-bearing means of sexual relief, Calvin saw her as a
companion and associate of man's whole life. With the spread of the Reformation, biblical (Old
Testament) patriarchs and their ideal of domesticity provided the model for the home life of the
devout Protestant. This brought in its train a higher conception of the purposes of wedlock. Three
"causes for which matrimony was ordained" are listed in the Anglican Prayer Book of 1549 as
“procreation, remedy, and mutual society." Jeremy Taylor, John Cosin, and Thomas Comber,
Anglican divines of the seventeenth century, assure us in their respective writings that the order is
not one of priority; mutual society is, after all, listed first in Genesis.
The appearance in 1923 of Martin Buber's small book, I and Thou, is regarded by Dr. Bailey
as having had a far-reaching influence on modern thinking with respect to our subject. This
"Copernican turning point" in the history of human thought "offered an interpretation of human
confrontation which has, among other things, profoundly illuminated our understanding of the
metaphysical aspects of sexual love and marriage.
Successive Lambeth Conferences in the Anglican Church seem to describe the course of
change in the Protestant position. The most progressive statement emanates from the Conference of
1958, wherein the relational aspect of marriage is exalted alongside the procreational. Thereafter,
"the dual purpose of marriage, the view of children as a blessing rather than as a duty, and the
responsibility of parenthood in the full social setting and present-day context," as proclaimed at
Lambeth, "was adopted by the conferences of other Churches, in Great Britain, on the Continent,
and U.S.A.”
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D. Contemporary - Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving, from The Art of Loving, pp. 1-5
IS LOVE an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort. Or is love a pleasant sensation, which to
experience is a matter of chance, something one “falls into” if one is lucky? This little book is based
on the former premise, while undoubtedly the majority of people today believe in the latter.
Not that people think that love is not important. They are starved for it; they watch endless
numbers of films about happy and unhappy love stories, they listen to hundreds of trashy songs
about love—yet hardly anyone thinks that there is anything that needs to be learned about love.
This peculiar attitude is based on several premises which either singly or combined tend to
uphold it. Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of
loving, of one’s capacity to love. Hence the problem to them is how to be loved, how to be lovable.
In pursuit of this aim they follow several paths. One, which is especially used by men, is to be
successful, to be as powerful and rich as the social margin of one’s position permits. Another, used
especially by women, is to make oneself attractive, by cultivating one’s body, dress, etc….As a
matter of fact, what most people in our culture mean by being lovable is essentially a mixture
between being popular and having sex appeal.
A second premise behind the attitude that there is nothing to be learned about love is the
assumption that the problem of love is the problem of an object, not the problem of a faculty.
People think that to love is simple, but that to find the right object to love—or to be loved by—is
difficult….
Our whole culture is based on the appetite for buying, on the idea of a mutually favorable
exchange. Modern man’s happiness consists in the thrill of looking at the shop windows, and in
buying all that he can afford to buy, either for cash or on installments. He (or she) looks at people
in a similar way. For the man an attractive girl—and for the woman and attractive man—are the
prizes they are after. “Attractive” usually means a nice package of qualities which are popular and
sought after on the personality market….Two persons thus fall in love when they feel they have
found the best object available on the market, considering the limitations of their own exchange
values. Often, as in buying real estate, the hidden potentialities which can be developed play a
considerable role in this bargain. In a culture in which the marketing orientation prevails, and in
which material success is the outstanding value, there is little reason to be surprised that human love
relations follow the same pattern of exchange which governs the commodity and the labor market.
The third error leading to the assumption that there is nothing to be learned about live lies in
the confusion between the initial experience of “falling” in love, and the permanent state of being in
love, or as we might better say, of “standing” in love. If two people who have been strangers, as all
of us are, suddenly set the wall between them break down, and feel close, feel one, this moment of
oneness is one of the most exhilarating, most exciting experiences in life. It is all the more
wonderful and miraculous for persons who have been shut off, isolated, without love. This miracle
of sudden intimacy is often facilitated if it is combined with, or initiated by, sexual attraction and
consummation. However, this type of love is by its very nature not lasting. The two persons
become well acquainted, their intimacy loses more and more its miraculous character, until their
antagonism, their disappointments, their mutual boredom kill whatever is left of the initial
excitement. Yet, in the beginning they do not know all this: in fact, they take the intensity of the
infatuation, this being “crazy” about each other, for proof of the intensity of their love, while it may
only prove the degree of their preceding loneliness.
This attitude—that nothing is easier than to love—has continued to be the prevalent idea
about love in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. There is hardly any activity, any
enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectation, and yet, which fails so
regularly, as love. If this were the case with any other activity, people would be eager to know the
reasons for the failure, and to learn how one could do better—or they would give up the activity.
Since the latter is impossible in the case of love, there seems to be only one adequate way to
overcome the failure of love—to examine the reasons for this failure, and to proceed to study the
meaning of love.
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E. Plato's Symposium (from Eli Sagan, The Honey and Hemlock, on Greek Love)
In Plato's Symposium, group of friends and acquaintances meet for dinner and an evening's
entertainment. Three prominent Athenians are there, Aristophanes, the comic playwright; Socrates;
and Agathon, considered one of the most important writers of tragedy after Aeschylus, Sophocles,
and Euripides, though none of his works survives. The year is 416 BC a year before the disastrous
Athenian expedition to Syracuse. Agathon has just won his initial first prize in the dramatic
competition and the evening is partly a celebration of the event. Plato deliberately sets a restrained,
civilized, almost sublime, tone to the party. It is decided that there shall be no heavy drinking: "It
was unanimously agreed that this was not to be a drunken party, and that wine was to be served
merely by way of refreshment." [176E]` It is further determined to send the flute girl away and
spend the evening in discussion. Each participant in turn will give his companions a speech on the
nature of Love. A potentially explosive topic, but a more humane, poetic, cultivated set of speeches
cannot be imagined.
Serious talk of Love, in the Greek world, quickly turns to ruminations on beauty and what we in our
new-found wisdom call narcissism, the love of self. An extraordinary speech that Plato assigns to
Aristophanes expostulates what can almost be considered an Ur-myth of the narcissistic necessity.
Human beings were, at one time, very different than they are today: double and complete. Four
arms, four legs, two faces, two sets of genitals. They were globular, circular in shape, and
psychologically, symbiotically content within themselves. There were three sexes: all male, all
female, and a mixed male and female, possessing a set of genitals of each sex. Because they
revolted against the gods, these creatures were rendered powerless by Zeus, who cut them in half,
leaving two where one had been. The condition of symbiotic unity was never forgotten, however,
and persists like a universal dream in each of us. With almost greater force than any other feeling,
we long to be reunited with the other half from which we have been sundered. Those who were once
double-male seek out a love of the same sex as do those who were double-female. Those originally
hermaphrodite seek a love of the opposite sex who is, in effect, another self.
"So you see, gentlemen, how far back we trace our innate love for one another, and how this love is
always trying to reintegrate our former nature, to make; two into one, and to bridge the gulf between
one human being and another. And so, gentlemen, we are all like pieces of the coins that children
break in half for keepsakes - making two out of one . . . -and each of us is forever seeking the half
that will tally with himself."[ 191D]
When one of these halves is lucky enough to meet his other, Aristophanes continues, they fall madly
in love, never wanting to lose sight of the other. It is not sexual pleasure that binds them so dose,
however. "The fact is that both their souls are longing for something else- a something to which
they can neither of them put a name, and which they can only give an inkling in cryptic sayings and
prophetic riddles."[ 192C] If Hephaestus should offer to weld together these inseparable lovers, so
they need never be separated again, continually enjoying a permanent reunion, then "no lover on
earth would dream of refusing such an offer, for not one of them could imagine a happier fate.
Indeed, they would be convinced that this was just what they'd been waiting for- to be merged, that
is, into an utter oneness with the beloved." {192E, italics added]
This is as powerful and accurate a description as has ever been given of the love of self and the love
of the other-as-self-narcissism and narcissistic love. All the great young lovers of the world- Tristan
and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet, Paolo and Francesca -embody and relive Aristophanes' myth.
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All these lovers are beautiful. Beauty is the essence - and sexual beauty the problematic -in the
narcissistic view of the world. Following Aristophanes, Socrates delivers a long discourse on the
preservation of the beautiful ("And ugliness is at odds with the divine, while beauty is perfect
harmony." {206C)), going beyond the superficiality of physical beauty and the shallowness of
glamorous sex. It is a paean to sublimation, a moral ascent by means of repression and
transformation of the _sexual. A beautiful soul is a greater attraction than a beautiful body. One's
heart can be quickened by the beauty of laws and institutions and, progressing further, by science
and philosophy. At each step upward, beauty becomes more and more abstract, less and less '
particular. "Starting from individual beauties, the quest for the universal beauty must find
him ever mounting the heavenly ladder, stepping from rung to rung - that is, from one to two, and
from two to every lovely body, from bodily beauty to beauty of institutions, from institutions to
learning, and from learning in general to the special lore that pertains to nothing but the beautiful
itself- until at last he comes to know what beauty is." [211C]
This is one of the most dramatic of all Plato's dialogues. Just as Socrates finishes his speech to the
applause of everyone but Aristophanes, there comes a knocking at the door and the sound of the
flute and rough merriment in the street. Who enters? He who embodies the passionate narcissism
of Aristophanes or the heavenly sublimation of beauty extolled by Socrates? Neither of these.
He who crashes in on these cultivated philosophers extolling the virtues of Love brings an element
we all share but that so far none has touched on: the Dionysian. Enter to the Narcissus-Dionysus,
Alcibiades himself. First he is more than minimally drunk. Second, he wears a crown of ivy and
violets, ivy for Dionysus, violets for Aphrodite .Third, he brings raw, physical sexuality and,most
important, "sacred frenzy."[215D] In the years after the setting of this dialogue, as Plato and all
his readers knew, Alcibiades would come close to being the ruin of Athens. The dramatic
progression of the dialogue indicates that Narcissus and the holy sublimation of beauty cannot exist
by themselves alone. Though we begin - and end - with the self and with beauty, we will be forced
to deal with Dionysian frenzy and rage.
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