Adam and Eve-Reception History

This paper will explore how the story of Adam and Eve was written by 19th century British women in children’s Bible story collections. Making use of approximately 20 children’s Bible story collections published during this time, this paper will first contextualize children’s Bible stories and women as authors in 19th century Britain before discussing typical changes and interpretive decisions made to different parts of the story. A series of four case studies will discuss how specific publications both fit and differ from the norm discussed in the previous section. This project finds that women publishing the story of Adam and Eve interpreted and simplified it for a juvenile audience in ways that allowed them to teach children about the consequences of sin, encourage obedience, explain how evil came into the world, or as a preparatory devise to explain the need for Jesus’ salvation.

Conference Paper Abstract for North American Patristics Society, May 2018: Irenaeus’ account of Mary’s recapitulation of Eve (AH 3.22.4, AH 5.19.1, Epid 33) plays a crucial role in his Christology and anthropology, and represents the first significant Christian Mariology.  Yet scholars have struggled to articulate the relation between the Mary-Eve dynamic and the recapitulatory work of Christ.  In this paper, I examine the theological significance of the Mary-Eve recapitulation for Irenaeus’ anthropology.  Demonstrating how Mary’s recapitulation is embedded in a network of recapitulatory axes, all grounded in Christ’s summing up of all things, I argue that the Adam whom Christ recapitulates represents the human race (genus humanum), while the Eve whom Mary recapitulates represents the human person exercising divinely-given free will.  Thus, Mary’s action is necessary, as per Irenaeus’ views on the joint importance of divine sovereignty and human freedom, and, while contingent on Christ’s prior work, is a separate act not collapsible into Christ’s agency.  Moreover, I distinguish between Mary’s role in Christ’s recapitulation of Adam, which includes both active and passive dimensions, and her role in the recapitulation of Eve, in which she is a wholly active creaturely agent in cooperation with God.  A key implication of Irenaeus’ descriptions of Mary and Eve’s cosmic roles is that he considers gender both significant and insignificant: Gender is significant in linking Mary to Eve and Christ to Adam as prerequisites for recapitulation, and while gender is a locus for ultimate transfiguration, the eschatological persistence of the substance of things means that God’s intention for human beings is for them to bear divine glory in gendered bodies.  Yet gender, per se, neither privileges nor prevents anyone’s progress toward the restoration of the image and likeness of God.  Differently gendered bodies are not differently empowered or glorified, and gender itself is not a site in need of redemption.

Starting from an episode of gender violence suffered by the community of Franciscan tertiaries of Santa Maria de la Cruz de Cubas and caused by its prelates, we analyze here the denounce discourse formulated by these women in the biography of the visionary Juana de la Cruz and in her sermons. Possible change proposals in these texts are also evaluated. In order to do this, we review their concept of what the Church is and the relationship model between the sexes. The prophetic nature of this feminine discourse confers to its views an undoubted political weight.
Partiendo de un episodio de violencia de género sufrido por la comunidad de terciarias franciscanas de Santa María de la Cruz de Cubas a manos de sus prelados, se analiza aquí el discurso de denuncia que estas mujeres formularon en la biografía de la visionaria Juana de la Cruz y en sus sermones. También se valoran posibles propuestas de cambio en estos textos. Para ello, se pasa revista al concepto de Iglesia y al modelo de relación entre los sexos. El carácter profético de este discurso femenino confiere a sus planteamientos una indudable carga política.

Au début, il y a les racines. Aux noms et dates effacés : en Europe de l'Est, un cimetière des oubliés - baptisé "l'Eternité" - attend ses promeneurs. Un jour, une idylle prend corps au chevet des morts. Pour Eva et Dan, le cimetière devient un jardin, sinon un Eden. La suite? Tout le monde la connaît : un profond sommeil doit descendre sur l’homme, une nuée de voix sur la femme. Et la chair est refermée à sa place.

Si la Genèse peut être régénérée, c’est en lui prêtant un Dieu plus ludique que tragique, prêt à enseigner la vie, geste par geste, en trouvant un langage commun avec son premier écolier. Et la mort ? Né enfant, prêt à apprendre la marche sur les eaux, le jeu du buisson ardent et le jardinage à la sauvage, Adam prend son temps. Lorsque le Père décide de lui confier Ève, selon le scénario onirique du mythe, elle est un nourrisson assoiffé de sèves, incapable de remplir ses attentes d’une « aide semblable à lui ».
L’aventure conduisant du script édénique à l’Histoire est une histoire d’inter-éducation, de découverte et d’évasion. Ève n'aime pas rester emprisonnée, Adam ne peut pas rester sans Ève, alors ils quittent de bon gré le paradis.
Dieu et le serpent n’ont qu’à suivre…

The time is ripe for a fresh examination of Gen 1-3.  In the classical theology of the churches, Eve has been named as the companion of Adam who coaxes him to sin against God and to bring about the fall from grace that affects the human race until the end of time.  This explanation, however, is seriously deficient when the text of Gen 1-3 is actually examined and allowed to speak for itself:

1.      When the text of Gen 2-3 is examined, this fall from grace is never mentioned.  Rather, the eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is associated with a wondrous transformation: “their eyes were opened” (Gen 3:5, 7).  This is all the more wondrous in so far as this transformation enables Eve and Adam to see things as God sees things.  Far from being a “fall,” Gen 2-3 narrates an elevation of the powers of Eve such that she becomes “like God” (Gen 3:6, 22).

2.      In Gen 2-3, Eve has been associated as deceived by the devil who was bent upon the destruction of Adam.  The “serpent” in the narrative, however, is never associated with the devil at any point.  Rather, the “serpent” is the Middle Eastern image of wisdom incarnate.  Far from deceiving Eve, moreover, this “serpent” is a remarkable truth-teller: "You will not die [when you eat this fruit]; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Gen 3:5-6).  And, according to the text, this is exactly what happens.

3.      Adam, however, has been telling Eve that God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die” (Gen 3:3).  When Eve touches the fruit, nothing happens.  Adam clearly is mistaken.  So, she eats it.  And the eating has wondrous effects.  Thus, Eve exposes the errors of Adam on both counts.  We can even suppose that Eve saw God as a gentle and wise parent who would never cultivate a poisonous fruit tree in the best place in his garden if he knew that he was endangering the life of his only children.  Adam, on the other hand, never examined the contradiction in his understanding of God.

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Once we realize that the forbidden tree of paradise was a mandrake whose fruit promotes fertility, the original, pre-canonical version of the biblical story can be reconstructed: In the beginning, the fruit of the tree of life (i.e., the mandrake) was prohibited to humans so that only the gods would know the secret of fertility and sexuality. But after one of the gods had betrayed the divine secret, the first human couple partook of the fruit and gained insight into the mechanisms of fertility and reproduction. As a consequence, the gods punished the humans (by sending them out of paradise), the betrayer (by reducing him to a poisonous snake), and the tree (by transforming the mandrake tree into a small shrub). This pre-canonical myth, which can be reconstructed with the help of a passage included in an early-Christian work called the Physiologus, was transformed into an Israelite myth that suppressed the theme of marital fertility by highlighting the theme of obedience. The paper also offers guidelines for the interpretation of biblical mythology (developed in conversation with C. Lévi-Strauss). – Bernhard Lang, “The Forbidden Fruit: An Ancient Myth and Its Transformation in Genesis 2–3.” Originally published in: Bernhard Lang, Hebrew Life and Literature (Society of Old Testament Study Monographs; Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2008), 111–126.