Twilight In The Garden

Are Women Responsible For The Fall of Man?

Or perhaps Adam was just a SAM.

A SAM is a weak man who simply goes with the flow. He has no backbone, no leadership potential, and is concerned only about his individual needs. SAMs are men that never initiate anything; they just go along with whatever someone else initiates. They never plan a trip, make reservations for dinner, or surprise their wives with a picnic in the park on a sunny day. And by the way, the acronym, SAM, stands for “Sorry_Man.” Oops, there goes the ghetto in me. I'm just keepin' it real y'all.

The average Sunday school student has read Genesis and knows that Adam was right there when Eve ate the fruit (Genesis 3:6). But when Eve handed the fruit to Adam, he did not respond, he did not correct her, he did not flee the situation, and he did not say no, he simply ate. So how could Paul imply that Adam was not deceived but stipulate Eve brought sin into the world while Adam remains somehow blameless? “For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression”. So there it is. It all goes back to Eve. She ate the forbidden fruit, and so everything is her fault. Not only that, but everyone born since then with the misfortune to have two X chromosomes has had to bear the brunt of Eve's mistake. What about Adam?

How could Paul say Adam was not deceived when he is the same guy who said where Adam brought sin and death into the world, Jesus brought righteousness and life (Romans 5:15). In Romans 5:14, Paul declares that Adam disobeyed an explicit commandment of God and brought sin into the world. Paul implies that Satan lured Eve into eating the fruit but Adam didn't fall for that, he simply was hard headed and ate because he wanted to be disobedient to God. But, remember when God asked Adam if he ate the fruit, Adam said yes, but it was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit. Adam blames Eve while Eve blames the serpent and admits that it deceived her. If Eve was deceived by Satan and ate the fruit, but Adam was not deceived, why did he eat? Adam could have been a hero and a savior for Eve if he had said no. He could have saved all of humankind and spared Jesus the agony of dying on the cross, but no, as Paul implicates, Adam was simply disobedient.

Let's get real folks: Adam was deceived and fell into transgression. Just like Clinton, he was deceived by his lust for a woman. Male preachers are constantly getting into trouble in the church because of lust. Even respected leaders and preachers like Jesse Jackson have shamefully fallen into sin chasing skirts.

Because Paul said that Eve was deceived by Satan but Adam was not, Adam appears somehow blameless in 1 Tim 2:11-14. Here's a quiz and a review: Where was Adam when Eve ate the fruit? According to Genesis, Adam was standing right there. Adam and Eve's eyes were opened together and they sewed fig leaves together. Therefore, Adam must have heard the same spiel that Satan told Eve, however he remained silent. Eve dialogued with Satan while Adam stood idly by saying nothing. That's a SAM for you. He ate the fruit after Eve handed it to him. Eve ate first and then Adam. Was Adam waiting to see if Eve would drop dead first to know whether the fruit was safe or unsafe to eat? If so, that would certainly confirm his membership in the SAM club: a coward and wimpy follower instead of spiritual leader. I believe that Paul said Adam was not deceived because, like many men, Paul wrote from an androcentric perspective. It's all about the man being the center of the universe.

Let's pause for a moment and bring in the choir because now I got to preach.

What many men don't understand is that they are NOT the center of the universe, GOD IS! Hallelujah for a GOD CENTERED universe, can I get an AMEN! Paul is looking at Adam and Eve's situation from an androcentric perspective. He puts Eve in a subordinate role and claims that she was trying to usurp Adam's authority. This was not the case. Adam was not the spiritual leader of Eve in the first place. Eve was a “help meet": an ally to fight the war against the forces of evil as in Chronicles 28:16. In the beginning, God made Adam and Eve equal. God meant for Adam and Eve to rule the earth together. Therefore, Eve cannot take authority away from Adam because he did not have any authority over her. However, God did.

Also, if Eve were trying to usurp the authority of Adam, it doesn't make sense that she would have offered him a bite of the fruit. Especially if she wanted to have power over Adam, she would have eaten the fruit and not offered Adam a bite because her motivation would have been to keep the wisdom and power exclusively. But now clutch your pearls and hold on to your hats: Eve was not trying to usurp the authority of Adam, Eve was trying to usurp the authority of God.

After all, God had and has all the power and authority. Now here's a revelation: Eve already had power over Adam. Adam was not her superior, he was her equal. Unfortunately, he also was a SAM who followed her example like a puppet on a string. If Paul would have looked at Adam and Eve from a Jehovah-centric perspective, he would have realized that Eve was trying to attain the power of the God-head while Adam was likely motivated by other imperatives.

Okay, I'm done preaching. Choir: have a seat.

Dangerous: In full manic swing, Jackson dangles Blanket.

In case I'm not clear,

Adam had sex on the brain. It is reasonable to conclude Adam was not thinking about what God would do to or for him, he was thinking about what Eve could withhold from him. It was all about sex. Whoever has the power to withhold sex, has the power and can control the relationship. Eve had the power over Adam and worked him like silly putty.

Like many men today, Adam's lust for a woman got him in trouble. Adam's biological imperatives deceived him and made him take a bite of the forbidden fruit. Like Paul, we often skim over the sins of men and focus on the women. Remember the woman caught in the act of adultery and the people were ready to stone her? Where was the man? Like Adam, he was right there. He may have been a Pharisee who felt he was above the scrutiny of the law or was trying to set-up Jesus. But he was right there.

Even our society focuses on the sin of women. For example, prostitutes are harassed by police and sent to jail while the “Johns” go free. The “John” will even turn around and have the audacity to blame the prostitute if he gets an STD (sexually transmitted disease). Remember that Adam had the gall to blame God for giving him Eve when God asked him if he ate the fruit. “Lord, it was that woman you gave me”. His words confirms that he was not worried about what God would do to him, the one who had the power to give him life or death, Adam was worried about getting some. Granted, a prostitute is wrong as two left feet for indulging in and soliciting sex acts, but society is quick to throw the hooker into jail rather than the John.

Today, many Christian men blame Eve for the spiritual fall of mankind. I say that Eve messed up big time, but all Adam had to do was “Just Say No.” Men cast stones at Eve for being deceived by Satan and say that Eve was the weaker vessel. If Eve was the weaker vessel for being deceived by the shrewdest of all the creatures the Lord God had made, then that makes Adam the weakest vessel for being deceived by his own biological urges.

Joy O. Banks
15 December 2002
joy@praisenet.org
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All About Eve

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For the last two thousand years or so, Eve has represented the fundamental character and identity of all women. Through Eve's words and actions, the true nature of women was revealed; her story tells men what women are really like.

Eve represents everything about a woman a man should guard against. In both form and symbol, Eve is woman, and because of her, the prevalent belief in the West has been that all women are by nature disobedient, guileless, weak-willed, prone to temptation and evil, disloyal, untrustworthy, deceitful, seductive, and motivated in their thoughts and behaviour purely by self-interest.

No matter what women might achieve in the world, the message of Genesis warns men not to trust them, and women not to trust themselves or each other. Whoever she might be and whatever her accomplishments, no woman can escape being identified with Eve, or being identified as her.

In the West, the story of Eve has served over the centuries as the principal document in support of measures and laws to curtail and limit the actions, rights, and status of women. The early Christian theologian Tertullian (c. 155/160-220 CE) reminded women that they all share Eve's "ignominy...of original sin and the odium of being the cause of the fall of the human race":

Do you not believe that you are (each) an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives on even in our times and so it is necessary that the guilt should live on, also. You are the one who opened the door to the Devil, you are the one who first plucked the fruit of the forbidden tree, you are the first who deserted the divine law; you are the one who persuaded him whom the Devil was not strong enough to attack. All too easily you destroyed the image of God, man. Because of your desert, that is, death, even the Son of God had to die. (The Apparel of Women, Book I, Chapt. 1)

During the Middle Ages, St. Bernard of Clairvaux could claim in his sermons, without contradiction, that Eve was "the original cause of all evil, whose disgrace has come down to all other women."

This perception of Eve has endured with remarkable tenacity, and persists today as a major stumbling-block in attempts by women to correct gender-based inequalities between the sexes. Consciously or unconsciously, it continues to serve as the ultimate weapon against women who wish to challenge male hegemony.

It is so deeply rooted in the socio-religious psyche of Western civilization that attempts to discredit it, or dismiss it, or simply ignore it as self-serving patriarchal fiction and myth-making have met with little success. One strategy has been to adopt a revisionist approach to the story itself and to re-read it, and re-interpret it, in feminist terms. It has been argued that Genesis 2-3 is not inherently patriarchal and efforts have been made to recover it from centuries of misogynist reading.

Phyllis Trible, Professor of Sacred Literature at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, for example, holds that far from being a secondary or dependent being, Eve is in fact the "culmination" of creation
Eve And The Identity of Women
Copyright © 2000 Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe. All rights reserved.

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