The Bible According to Eve: The Women of the Torah

By Hadassah Alderson

The Bible According to Eve: The Women of the Torah retells the stories of the women of the Hebrew Bible in the first five books. It begins with a poem about the Eve of the books, moves through the story of Eve's loss in Cain's murder of Abel and the tale of Noah's wife to the stories of the patriarchs' wives of Genesis. It follows with poems relating to the stories of Moses's family and laws of Leviticus, Numbers, and the other books of the Pentateuch. Boldly told from an all-female perspective, The Bible According to Eve is a more exhaustive treatment of the Bible's women than The Red Tent or After Abel and Other Stories, on top of being easy to understand and a joy to read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Feb 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781645368021

Hadassah Alderson

Austin Macauley published my first book of poems, The Bible According to Eve: The Women of the Torah, about the women of the Fives Books of Moses in the Hebrew Bible. It is now out on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com. On September 13, 2021 I did a recorded interview with the people who give the Eric Hoffer Award. Through Urlink Publishers, the company through whom she did the interview, I will be putting out three sequels, soon: The Bible According to Eve: Naviim: The Histories: Eve in Search of Adam; The Bible According to Eve: Naviim II: The Seers: Eve Supplants Lilith; and The Bible According to Eve: Kethuvim: The Writings: Eve Wrestles with God and Man and Prevails. The Bible According to Eve has also been in Publishers Weekly (twice); the Frankfurt Book Fair; the U.S. Book Fair and the American Library Association Annual Book Fair. It also has been advertised in the July/August and September/October issues in Hadassah.

Book preview

Levite

About the Author

Hadassah Alderson is a native of Kansas and an active member of the Wichita Jewish community. She got her Bachelor’s degree in History at Friends University. She has published in Poetica Magazine and this is her first volume of poetry. She hopes to publish more books of Biblical poetry in the future.

Dedication

To my mother and sister.

Copyright Information ©

Hadassah Alderson (2020)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Ordering Information:

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Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Alderson, Hadassah

The Bible According to Eve: The Women of the Torah

ISBN 9781643785110 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781643785127 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781645368021 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019917968

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published (2020)

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 28th Floor

New York, NY 10005

USA

[e-mail]

[phone]

Acknowledgment

To the editors at Poetica.com, who helped me with the editing of this book. Also, to the editors at Austin Macauley, who also did good work on the manuscript and made this book possible.

To Larry Davis and Lucy Heidt, my closest friends and associates at Breakthrough, who knew of and appreciated my work long before it could be published. It was working with these two that I got the idea to write this book.

To David Kapton and many others at Breakthrough, all of whom, in varying ways, added to my career at Breakthrough and without whom my best literary ideas might not exist.

To my mother, whose constant support supplied me with the time and encouragement to write anything I wanted to write.

To my Grandma Alderson, who loved to tell stories.

To my Grandma Williams, who loved to read both histories and mysteries, and encouraged me in my reading of all things.

Both women cherished their Bibles; no doubt I owe them both something.

Lastly, to Renae, my ex-stepmother, who encouraged me to write as a child.

When God made Man, he also made Woman.

And God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created them.

Genesis 1:26

Then Man said,

"This one at last

Is bone of my bones

And flesh of my flesh.

This one shall be called Woman,

For from man she was taken."

Genesis 2:23

And to woman [God] said,

"I will make most severe

Your pangs in childbearing;

In pain you shall bear children.

Yet your urge shall be with your husband,

And he shall rule over you."

Genesis 3:16

The Lord spoke thus:

Help me remember!

Let us join in argument,

Tell your version,

That you be vindicated.

Isaiah 43:26

The Genealogy of Eve

I

I found you myself in a dream—

we were linked arm in arm as one—

to She’ol, Judaism’s grave where

kings Saul and David join in rest

with Solomon there beside them

and also, souls less well known than they—

the forgotten mass of the dead.

II

At first, I and my lover cried,

In words of confused wonder,

Where are we now? Who cast us here?

Then we heard the voice of God,

"You two must escape Aher as

the ‘other’ unspoken by Jews.

III

"The wicked Aher denied the truth

our Lord existed as a good God.

This Aher, king like the Satan of

his private fiefdom, having chosen

apartness from the heaven’s gates

and we stand together the halls

where YHWH watches creation,

the unfolding of history.

as neither condemned nor blessed by God."

IV

We together in emptiness

tied at the wrists so if one proved

the stronger and pulled faster than

the other, his will would win out;

he ran like a great zebra

with a male lion after him

in pagan Africa’s dry heat.

V

As I heard our Lord’s voice, though, and

the voice of damned Aher call

while relentlessly chasing us.

I sat on the hall’s chilly floors

and strained my lover’s twisted arm

as unwillingly, he joined me—

and shocked at my strong-willed choice, too:

I demanded to know our crime

and refused repentance till then.

VI

In the far distance I heard God

yet God laughed at us—or did we

hear tears at our great lack of trust?

Did it break God’s heart to think we

his people refused belief which

was innocent and guileless?

Did the Lord want us to speak out,

"O YHWH, wholeheartedly we

love You and only You as One."

Or did God coldly laugh at us?

VII

Yet whatever it was, it boomed

through She’ol inarticulately

with a strange pride in that we two

were ruffians, as wayward as

our predecessors before us

in Torah scrolls which we read on

each Shabbat in the synagogue.

VIII

I demanded to know what we

had done to deserve Aher’s curse

and fate as our God’s enemy.

I continued my proud self-made

sheer arrogance in Lord YHWH’s sight.

Then Aher overtook us there

and I saw my man exploring

the evil land we’d entered as

the traitors fleeing from their God.

IX

From the place where I was, I saw

poor Isaac, sacrificed and dead,

like a ram broken for the Lord,

on a small altar made of wood;

I saw the handsome Joseph with

the wife of Potipherah, in bed,

just before selling Jacob and

his brothers into servitude.

X

I saw the Israelites drown in

the Sea of Reeds where Moses led

to struggle in the crashing waves

towards the shore, without succeeding.

Their drowning reminded me of

the enveloping Holocaust

which swallowed Jewish people whole.

It was a great fish gulping up

its victims like a sinking hole.

XI

I couldn’t fully rebel towards

Lord YHWH buried in these sights

I saw in Aher’s evil mind

which represented the doubt of

the ages whispering at night;

I saw this deicide, and ran

and drug my lover along with

me to where heaven’s gateway was.

XII

Wait! he cried, I crave Aher’s knowledge now!

but I would not hear my lover as

I ran on listening to them

the comingling of Aher’s laughs

and God’s feared indifference which

now echoed throughout She’ol’s halls.

XIII

We discovered a dark land of

red blood and evergreen hues

all year in deathless flowering.

There was a pomegranate tree there

that we were told not to pick from

and eat fruit from its branches that

grew within our weird paradise.

XIV

There we basked in chastely as if

mere children, yet bound by the wrists

as inside Aher’s dwelling place.

We were told by a snake this was

the tree of life; and forbidden.

XV

Yet, my man could not resist it:

he pulled from unwholesome leaves fruit.

It was an eggplant purple and

shaped smoother than an orange was.

My man ate from it but spit

it out; it was my own heart

he ate, and blood came from it.

XVI

We melted together in there

with bizarre plant life inside me—

our cocoon, far from heaven there

in despairing tears like poor Eve

chased from her Edenic bliss with

the man whom she lured astray, duped

the original story says

with a snake leading the way out

to pain and suffering in life.

XVII

Our pagan garden was so like

our final graveyards end in life,

yet joyful if God’s people are

apart from Lord YHWH’s tender love.

I was the tree of knowledge with

my blossoms growing like hands and

my lover and I nurtured by

my body as a kind of God.

XVIII

In our own separate sphere, we lived.

I, a new goddess because of

my challenging God’s justice and

then repenting too late to save

our communion with God, the One loved

and loving humanity in

the heaven’s bliss long after death.

Eve

I

Eve was the mother of the living,

including the man Adam, feeding

at her breasts like a Moses nursed on

his mother’s religion when Pharaoh

left his young prince in enemy arms.

As the first mother, like later daughters,

who followed her in bearing children.

She gave life to her children nurtured

from within her womb while their father

brought bread and milk for her from the fields.

When babies were born, she suckled them both.

II

I envy that first Eve in her bed,

or multitudes of Eves, in the plains

of Africa, in the hot summer

the primal center of the tribes that

used to go wandering with dogs as

wild scavengers, the dogs colored

an ugly, dirty yellow with spots.

III

A mother’s milk will nourish throughout

each generation to the next one,

with Eve as the first primal center,

which began after mothering, with

more tenderness than cells that split in

half, as two lonely individuals.

IV

What men know as lust; women know is

the beginning of motherlove, despite

how ruthless sons turn out as infants

they were born helpless within the arms

of motherly care hovering near

this despite the cruel hubris of kings.

The violence men commit is due

to forgetfulness of childhood’s center:

the tender mother who cared for them.

V

Eve is more than a mother, though, she

is a friend to her husband Adam.

Nay, she is more: Eve is a person.

Eve has her own wants, needs, and talents.

Eve possesses a creative gift.

Eve possesses all born the things which

it takes to make a wonderful poet—

with the earth’s flavor in her bloodstream.

VI

Yet Eve is always seen in how she

is related to other because

her bearing young makes physical work

a task impossible while pregnant.

Eve becomes other to her menfolk

in bed with babies born of great pain.

Yet without Eve no future could be.

There is no mankind without Woman.

VII

Down her face tears flow profusely as

her husband acquires more wives to prove

his manhood to men both friends and foes

for it is men whose esteem matters

to Adam unleashed from the garden

so that Eve becomes one of bevies

and instead of man’s beloved wife

Eve becomes Adam’s possession, too.

VIII

No longer Adam he is instead

a Sultan or a Cesar, saying

a woman loves one man but a man

needs more, that men of significance

will require more than even men who

are average, who themselves aren’t true—

true to a mother’s love when mother

is only a spouse, Opened-hearted.

IX

She’s not quite sufficient—that’s unless

they’re supplanted with more lovers—

which vary from one-night-stands to other

long-term commitments, while the first wife may

or may not acknowledge or admit

that her spouse’s eye roves in search of

fresh conquests, treating mistresses as

less than the wives they supplant, throwing

the mud of broken promises on them.

X

Yet the worst of men stop to

think of that idyll when they relied

on women and were tender objects

in maternal laps, even whether

they were bruised or fussed over, they were

still dependent and petted by hands

more careful than life would be to them.

XI

Their mother encompassed their whole world,

as Eve did Cain and Abel after

a honeymoon with Adam at first

in the self-contained Garden of Youth,

the lost Gan Edan, where the forgotten birth

of humanity took place by day.

Those four—Eve, Adam and their two young

lived in a symbiotic state in

Eve, the first, primal mother of men.

XII

Eve’s generative powers consist

Of motherhood’s gifts to sooth infants;

teach toddlers to speak; and tell tall tales

to children for whom she’s cooked suppers.

They therefore extend beyond the fact

That women are the ones who give birth.

XIII

Once upon a time, Eve tells children,

"Glad beginning spelled out in rhyming

a Jewish king whose wife’s clear singing

lulled him to fall in love with her call

his love could be with none but this she.

Yet although mild she bore not one child.

When the king died, she sat down and cried.

XIV

"’I’ve nothing to remember him through

O Lord you’ve left your servant bereft

of anything save my grief to sing.

A tradition can’t live with no one

to receive it or elicit

the questions of the children they love.’

XV

So, stories end; this never mentioned

if the good queen found wisdom to glean

which like the sun brought consolation.

Hush little dove, I’ve lost my true love…"

XVI

And so, the nursery songs go on.

A tradition of stories produced

pass from Eve to her many children—

the educated men write them down

while stealing women’s authorship

from the true author of the story.

Eve’s stories are like offspring to her.

Cain and Abel

I

Was the first murder infanticide?

Like the jars of the ancient world in

which extra children were left, like

Prince Oedipus in hopes of a death,

like the girl unwanted by parents

most particularly if it was

a girl born to a family who

could not afford a dowry for her.

II

The Torah forbids this cruel practice

for Jews prize children high above all—

it defies precepts which say humans

are made in YHWH’s own image to

leave infants to the elements of

the wilderness where YHWH is found.

It is a cruel sin to kill a child.

III

Yet Abel’s killing preceded this

In signifying envy and pride.

The human race’s first crimes

were not some Neanderthal who left

their children behind to save herself—

this although scientists assure us of

these primitives did when there was not

enough food to feed the entire lost tribe.

IV

No, the crime—subtle as a serpent—

an earlier crime, a crime conceived

in poor Eve, humanity’s mother,

in preferring her eldest son Cain

so he would afterwards expect that

in all things he’d come before Abel—

a lazy attitude at its best.

And YHWH picked his brother Abel

in the form of the gift God received

and in the rejected gift as well.

V

Cain in grief and pride killed his brother.

But perhaps it was Adam and Eve

who determined that greater falls than theirs

would fall in picking the fruit of blood.

For death was discovered by Adam

but it was Cain who murdered Abel.

VI

So therefore, we are led to ask this:

was favoring one brother over

another the first true sin after

poor Adam and Eve were cast from Eden?

Was YHWH complicit in this sin?

Did YHWH favor of poor Abel

cause Cain to murder his own brother?

Did anguish make Cain cruel to Abel?

VII

As two young brothers made their gifts to

God, whose help Eve claimed gave her a child,

a man child, Cain, who spoke to his God

for the first time as he came of age

no longer a child of Eve only,

but now a son of humankind as

a whole, the generations after

Eve’s children, the ones Pandora would

have avoided giving birth to,

if men would only listen to her.

VIII

Young Abel fought to achieve and then

he prevailed, but Cain murdered Abel,

his rival for Lord YHWH’s favor.

Their nursery had become a nest

for hate, for hurt pride of a brother

whose anger would not be soothed by love

of little Abel in the fields of

Nod, East of Eden, far from home in

the garden where Eve conceived her sons.

IX

Cain found his brother was still Eve’s child,

his dear dead brother, vulnerable

in Cain’s hands, under Cain’s knife, sharpened

to make a sacrifice of the child,

the younger, belatedly dear to

Eve, who had preferred Cain as eldest.

X

Cain created the first stone idol,

for he knew that he could not offer

this sacrifice to the god of Eve,

the angry YHWH demanding blood

in exchange for the blood of Abel.

XI

Eve cried tears of shock; perhaps she cried

as guiltily the cause of her the death

of her young, neglected youth who was

cut out of history by the one

who was meant to be Abel’s keeper.

She tried to retrieve Abel through Seth

a new son born of tears for Abel.

XII

Like the Jews later Abel was marked

by chosenness as victims of hate,

of jealous rage by men whose secret

lies in their envy, not just for more

than material things, instead they wish

for chosenness, too, to be firstborn

of God, the way the Jews claim to be.

XIII

Cain afterwards was known by his curse,

as the Jew’s enemies were known by

the showers through which Jews were gassed in,

but like the mark of Cain, no murder

is ever erased, although fading

with time like dinosaur bones that sink

so deep in the earth it makes crude oil—

that poison Americans live off now,

the liquid death like the lead pipes

from which the Romans drank their water.

XIV

Cain was a pioneer of killing;

for how do we know that to kill one

young brother is a crime much better

than murder on a larger scale like

a Holocaust writ small, as one act that

takes from him Abel’s right to live free?

XV

Yet did Cain’s crime towards Abel become

a sin made possibly by others

with parent’s disobedience towards

Lord YHWH of the garden in which

they basked as nakedly as children

who were raised without grown up clothing.

Crude Lamech

I

Cain, the first murderer was murdered

by Lamech, often forgotten since.

Cain’s murderer was descended from

the Cain who murdered Abel himself,

a braggart declaring his freedom

to disobey Lord YHWH’s commands

and invoke the Lord’s good name as well.

II

But Lamech is known for more than this:

he possessed two wives becoming first

in the new practice: polygamy—

and his life suggests that lack of faith

leads to gross indulgence of the flesh.

III

Just as Eve had first disobeyed God

and Cain, in jealousy killed Abel,

and Lamech brazenly took two wives

with whom to brag to regarding sins

including those forbidden by

the Lord in regards violent acts.

These subjugated women would let

him to crush their rights because they were

the two most perverse women living.

IV

And Lamech boasted to his two wives

in regards the mark of Cain given

by God to guarantee Cain’s own life

while Cain would suffer for his murder

yet received indulgence in this much:

he would be protected by a mark

which indicated punishment for

the one who murdered wandering Cain.

V

So Lamech, killing wandering Cain,

said outright regarding Cain’s clear mark,

"If Cain is avenged sevenfold than

I, Lamech shall be protected more:

my safety’s secured seventy plus

yet more times from mere mankind,"

in indication how well he could

as Lamech protect himself from men.

VI

Yet Lamech injured women more than

he did men themselves because he was

the first man to have multiple wives.

His wives were made his abject subjects—

this although unlike later women

their subservience was their own choice;

lust motivated them as much as

it spurred their arrogant spouse to take

on two wives, in sex he was ‘a bull,’

and because unnatural they loved

male domination in sex itself.

Yes, brutal Lamech appealed to some—

he would cause such as these their downfall.

This murderer incited lust in

the women who joined him as spouses.

VII

These two wives enjoyed domination—

and so were nearly unnatural,

as Lamech’s conquered pleasure kingdom

like Coleridge’s Kubla Khan with

its woman wailing in Khan’s dome for

her ‘demon lover’—serving passion

while Lamech longed for opium as

if in this respect ahead of those

in his time—for while debauched most lacked

this man’s imagination in sin

or his wives’ willingness to join him.

VIII

He pioneered in violent sex.

And he lived enough to see the flood.

Zillah

I

When Zillah’s shrill laugh pierced the heart of

the killer of Cain, at that moment

he decided he would have two wives.

Then unheard of—to have more wives than

the one whom the Lord ordained for him—

seemed suddenly imaginable

as Adah became toothless and frail

with age and Lamech’s beatings each day.

II

Now Zillah proved an aloof beauty

and the more he would bully Zillah

the more he—Lamech—drove her from him.

She was a prickly woman despite

her love of wine and song, hard living

and fast men like the Lamech she loathed—

for Zillah suspected this man of

of a great treachery in intent

like that he had shown Adah although

their fathers arranged the match between

cruel Lamech and his first wife Adah.

III

For everyone knew he beat Adah—

but in a wicked world a woman

would become victimized as a serf

in Russia under Peter the Great.

Yet women survived their lots as wives.

So how could Lamech convince Zillah

to marry Lamech who was married

to a first wife, another woman—

an unlucky, abused wife, at that?

IV

He waited until she was resting

in the cool shade on a day as hot

as the great Sahara which stretches

far across the Africa’s great desert

and between where two nascent Empires

those of both Mesopotamia

and Egypt, which would famously mold

the history of Jewish people.

V

In those times before the Jews wrote down

their stories and lore regarding faith,

this man had yet