Daughters of Eve: Women of the Bible

By Martyn Whittock and Esther Whittock

Women play an immensely important role in the Bible: from Eve to the Virgin Mary, Sarah to Mary Magdalene, Naomi to the anonymous woman suffering severe menstrual bleeding who was healed by Jesus. They are a sisterhood of faith.

 As such, they challenge many of our assumptions about the role of women in the development of the biblical story; about the impact of faith on lives lived in the 'heat and dust' of the real world. Here we will meet the prostitute who ended up in the genealogy of Jesus, a national resistance fighter, a determined victim of male sexual behaviour who challenged patriarchal power, a far from meek and mild mother of Jesus, a woman whose life has been so misrepresented that she is now the subject of the most bizarre conspiracy theories, and more.

Renowned historians and Biblical scholars, Martyn and Esther Whittock, take the reader on a fascinating journey, one unafraid to ask difficult questions, such as, 'Was Eve set up to fall?'

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lion Books
• Release date: Mar 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9780745980874

Martyn Whittock

Martyn Whittock graduated in Politics from Bristol University and is the author or co-author of fifty-two books, including school history textbooks and adult history books. He taught history for thirty-five years and latterly, was curriculum leader for Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural education at a Wiltshire secondary school. He is a Licensed Lay Minister in the Church of England. He has acted as an historical consultant to the National Trust and English Heritage. He retired from teaching in July 2016 to devote more time to writing. His Lion books include: The Vikings: from Odin to Christ, Christ: The First 2000 Years, Daughters of Eve, Jesus: The Unauthorized Biography, and The Story of the Cross. 

Book preview

Preface

In each one of our explorations of these remarkable women of faith, we have examined the evidence in the same way for each of the women concerned. For each one we first examine them as A woman in context. This looks at how each is presented in the Bible, with some reference to later commentaries, where these help unpack issues.

We then look at what happened next, in a section that we have called His-story or her-story? This play on the word history reminds us that most historical writing in the past has been, in effect, his-story – being told very much from a male point of view. In the centuries following the writing of the biblical accounts, most of the commentary, interpretation, reflection, speculation, and (at times) disinformation regarding these women has been written by men. All of these women’s reputations and images have been hugely affected by this – whether positively or negatively. This section in each chapter looks at this process and how it has affected the way that these women have been presented over the years. In some cases, the impact of (predominantly) male attitudes has been very significant indeed in forming the dominant image of these women that we now have. Eve and Mary Magdalene stand out strikingly as women whose later image has been significantly altered, even at times distorted, by male attitudes. However, the later history of every one of these women is revealing and, at times, surprising – and sometimes shocking.

Each chapter then closes with Sister on sister. This whole book is a daughter-father collaboration, but in these sections the focus is Esther’s. As a young, professional woman (she is a Religious Studies teacher in a busy comprehensive secondary school), Esther gives her own personal and twenty-first-century take on each of the women in question and how they speak to her today. In doing this, she has considered their message to modern people, including those of faith and those who do not subscribe to religious belief. This is because while faith speaks to faith, its principles can also challenge, encourage, inform, and provoke even when those affected do not themselves have a religious belief. We hope that this will encourage other women and men to do the same: to reflect on the enduring impact and importance of each of these women, whose lives became extraordinary because of their faith in God and their actions.

Chapter 1

Eve: Fall-girl?

Everyone has an image of Eve: apple in hand, she invites Adam to take a bite of the forbidden fruit. Behind them, the serpent responsible for this chain of temptation watches the catastrophe unfold that it has set in motion. However Eve is understood – literal progenitor of humanity or symbolic woman in a poetic description of the origins of life – she is a seminal character. All the other women in this book are, consequently, Daughters of Eve, either literally or figuratively.

A woman in context

Woman first appears in the Old Testament book of Genesis in chapter 1, verses 26–27. It is noteworthy in this account of creation that both genders are necessary in order for the image of God (however this is understood) to be represented:

Then God said, Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.¹

In chapter 2:18–23, a second account of the creation of Woman is more personalized:

Then the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.… So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.

The word Woman, in the last verse, is the Hebrew ishshah,² related to the word Man, ish. So far, though, she has no name. Neither has the man, although in 2:7 the words "formed man [Hebrew adam] from the dust of the ground [Hebrew adamah]" will give us the name that we know to be associated with him (that is: Adam).³ Strictly speaking, adam should be translated into English as human (gender inclusive) rather than man (that is: a male). This account of her creation makes it clear that Woman is companion to Man; there is no hint of subordination.⁴

It is not until Genesis 3:20 that we learn that The man named his wife Eve. In Hebrew, her name, Chava/Chavah, sounds like the Hebrew word for living being or to breathe (chaya/chayah) or the related word life (chai). And we are told that this is because she is the mother of all people. As found in Genesis, the word is in its causative form, meaning she caused all future life to occur.

By this point in the story, though, Eve’s claim to fame has been dramatically established, as earlier in chapter 3 we learn that the serpent had tempted her to eat from the forbidden tree of knowledge in the middle of the garden. She then gave some to her husband and, having eaten, their eyes… were opened (verse 7) and they realized they were naked. Suddenly embarrassed by this discovery, they cover their nakedness with a covering of sewn fig leaves. When God discovers this, the man blames the woman, and the woman blames the serpent. Interestingly, the account of the eating of the fruit rather suggests that Adam – who was with her (3:6) – was present when the serpent spoke to Eve. However, this event is almost always later depicted as a solitary experience on the part of Eve; just her and the serpent, and then she draws in Adam. The actual account is more nuanced.

As a result of their disobedience, God cursed the serpent so that conflict will exist between it and the woman, and between its children and hers. The woman is, in most English translations, punished with pain in childbirth; despite this she will desire her husband who will have authority over her. Although painful childbirth is the usual English translation (Genesis 3:16), the Hebrew phrase can more accurately be translated as, I will make great your toil and many your pregnancies.⁵ This is a significant difference. When one realizes that some nineteenth-century doctors opposed pain relief to women in labour by quoting this verse, one gains an insight into both the significance of translation accuracy and the willingness of many men to impose their own view of scripture on the experiences of women. Queen Victoria’s use of chloroform during the birth of Prince Leopold, in 1853, was fairly decisive in reversing this attitude; although earlier Professor Charles Meigs had opined that painful contractions were natural and physiological forces that the Divinity has ordained us to enjoy or to suffer,⁶ in a direct reference to Eve and the perceived message of Genesis 3:16.

The man is punished through the earth itself being cursed with thorns and thistles and hard labour being necessary to produce crops to eat. And death itself has entered into creation. It is significant that only then is she named (Eve) by her husband, as earlier he has named the animals. It is a sign of his authority over her that was not the case earlier. In short, the subordination of women to men is a direct result of human sin and was not the original intention of God in creation. It is significant that neither Adam nor Eve are themselves cursed, though their actions lead to suffering for both of them.

Then the man is expelled from Eden. Puzzlingly, Eve is not mentioned but it is clear from the next stage in the story that Adam’s expulsion includes hers too. Traditionally, this was later described as the fall by Christian writers, as it represented a catastrophic plummet from their previous innocence and the idyllic state in Eden. More on this in due course.

The Genesis narrative does not tell us much more about Eve, other than that Adam has sexual relations with her, which leads, in succession, to the births of Cain, Abel, Enoch, and Seth. The momentous birth of the first human child is declared, in contrast to the usual Hebrew expression for birth, with the dramatic words, I have produced [created] a man with the help of the Lord (Genesis 4:1). The Hebrew word for create in this verse, is the same one used to describe the creative power of God (Genesis 14:19 and 22). The creative power of women is, therefore, compared to the awesome power of God, who empowers women to give birth. Through the activities of these sons we learn about the origins of key features of ancient culture and technology, but that is another story. We hear nothing more of Eve. A much later Jewish tradition held that she was buried in the Cave of Machpelah, in the city of Hebron, south of Jerusalem.

In this well-known traditional account, we learn that the origins of humankind lie in these original ancestors. And we are given an explanation for certain human and cultural experiences: pain in childbirth; human sexual attraction; male authority over women; animosity between people and snakes (also having a deeper symbolism); the presence of weeds that trouble farmers, which are indicative of a fallen creation; the hard work necessary to produce crops; and the origins of death itself. It is interesting that sexual desire is only associated with Eve, despite the very apparent reality of male sex-drive in human society. And this is only as a reference to future experiences. The fall story itself is without reference to sex, but that has not stopped its appearance in later traditions.

Features that are not present in the story are: an apple; explicit reference to sin (although disobedience to God’s explicit command clearly is meant to represent it); the identity of the serpent; Eve tempting Adam; any reference to sex before the expulsion from Eden (apart from the future desire felt by Eve/women for Adam/men). Given the later her-story of Eve, these absences are noteworthy. Their absence would be more than made up for by the active interventions of later writers, artists, and other opinion-formers.

Eve appears nowhere else in the Jewish scriptures, the Tanakh, that Christians call the Old Testament in the Christian Bible. But absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence, because she was certainly in the minds of later Jewish thinkers. The evidence for this can be seen in the way that both Jesus and Paul refer to the Genesis story without explanation because they knew that Eve was well known to their audiences. Jesus refers to the Genesis account in Matthew 19:4–5:

Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?

However, the only explicit New Testament references to Eve occur in two of the letters written by Paul. The first adds little to our view of her, except that it suggests that the blame lay on the serpent rather than on Eve; and that this kind of deception could lead anyone astray (male or female). In 2 Corinthians 11:3 Paul writes,

I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by its cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.

His second mention, though, is of a different order. In 1 Timothy 2:13–14 he concludes,

Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.

The meaning of this passage is clear: Eve is subservient to Adam due to her secondary creation but, as importantly, more of the blame for eating the fruit lies with Eve, who originally succumbed to the enticement of the serpent, than with Adam, who was given the forbidden fruit by Eve herself. This is an interesting interpretation, since it might be assumed that, while Adam broke God’s command on the advice of another human being, she had been tempted by the arch-deceiver, the serpent. This, one might think, made her error more understandable than Adam’s. In addition, as we have seen, there is some evidence in the Hebrew account in Genesis to suggest that Adam was present throughout the episode. But that was not how Paul saw it. And in this he was clearly reflecting a first-century Jewish view of the original woman.

This is an important stage in the development of the Eve-perspective as Paul, in this letter, used his interpretation of Genesis to justify female submission to male authority in church. And, during male preaching in Christian assemblies, to learn in silence and to have no teaching/preaching role in these meetings (1 Timothy 2:11–12). He possibly also had a wider application of this submissiveness in mind, since the Greek words woman and man in these instructions can also be read as wife and husband. That the situation was rather more complicated in the actual churches – and also elsewhere in Paul’s own writings – will be explored in the final chapter of this book.

Paul developed the Eve = life-giver theme of Genesis by concluding, Yet she [woman] will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty (1 Timothy 2:15). This is a verse that has sparked a lot of debate, to put it mildly. It can be read in a number of ways. The most obvious is that female salvation depends on childbearing. This is impossible to square with other Pauline teaching about spiritual equality with regard to salvation.⁷ And also with his general teaching on salvation by faith, through God’s grace.⁸ This has prompted some commentators to a more general interpretation that the character of Christian women (saved by faith, as taught elsewhere in the New Testament) should be reflected in homemaking and gentleness. But, it must be admitted, it is not easy to fit this verse into the mainstream of New Testament teaching that salvation occurs regardless of gender. As such, this verse rather stands out as a theological conundrum. But some men have made much of it, despite its theological isolation, as one might expect.

His-story or her-story?

Eve is a woman who has been subject to an enormous amount of interpretation over the centuries. She has had a dramatic her-story. This clearly started in Pauline teaching, as we have seen, but what occurred elsewhere is even more dramatic. And, one might add, was a radical departure from what was actually written in Genesis.

Some later Jewish traditions emphasized the submission (rather than partnership role) embodied in Eve (and women generally) by postulating that Adam had a first wife, named Lilith, who rebelled against Adam’s authority. This is found in a number of Midrash texts.

Midrash (plural midrashim) is a Jewish commentary on the Hebrew Bible. This involves critical explanation and interpretation (exegesis). It is a type of biblical interpretation found both in the Talmud and in separate bodies of literature too. It is often used to describe commentaries which were compiled during the first millennium AD. The method includes examination and explanation of texts verse by verse in a passage, and also explores suggested meanings behind these verses, or even single words. Midrash aggadah (literally: storytelling) explores ethics, narrative features, characters, and values in biblical texts. Midrash halakhah, in contrast, focuses on Jewish laws and practice.

These commentaries, while surviving in manuscripts dating from the second century AD onwards, contain much earlier material. In these, Lilith was contrasted with Eve, who was often presented as more docile, dependent, and a nurturer of children.⁹

In contrast to this submissive but still positive treatment, Eve was subjected to much more negative interpretations in other, later, Jewish and Christian traditions which developed after the writing of the Old and New Testaments. Tertullian (died 220) told female Christians, You are the devil’s gateway: you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree. He added that the serpent was not brave enough to attack Adam, so worked through Eve. Furthermore, On account of your [Woman’s] desert – that is, death – even the Son of God had to die.¹⁰ John Chrysostom (died 407) – promoting virginity – held that it was only after the disobedience and expulsion from Eden that sex occurred. And sex he believed was inherently sinful regardless of how it was practised. As we shall see, this too was then blamed ultimately on Eve. In effect: Eve invented sex. Augustine (died 430) identified the sin of Eve (however defined) as the trigger mechanism leading to the fall, which permanently disfigured humans, giving rise to the Catholic doctrine of original sin. For Christians, Eve’s actions were foundational and the two accounts of creation in Genesis were viewed as being of the same voice and directly leading to the (very brief but significant) New Testament (Pauline) view of her; and it was assumed that all these texts had the same understanding of her.¹¹ Eve was to blame for sin being in the world. In addition, Jesus was regarded as a second Adam and the Virgin Mary as a second Eve, righting the wrong started in the garden.

All of this was in contrast to Jewish traditions in the Midrash and Talmud traditions, which are more of an ongoing conversation,¹² in which conflicting views were allowed and held in tension.¹³ As a result, few central Jewish doctrines arise from Eve, and her story is more of a source of dos and don’ts for Jewish women.¹⁴

The term Talmud describes both the written version of the Jewish oral law (oral Torah) and commentaries on this law. It is comprised of the Mishnah and the Gemara. The Mishnah is the written version of the oral law, and the Gemara records later discussions, by rabbis, concerning this and also includes commentaries on the Hebrew Bible. These discussions about the Mishnah were recorded in Jerusalem and later in Babylon between the second and fifth centuries AD; hence the names Jerusalem Talmud and Babylonian Talmud to differentiate versions of these traditions. It is renowned for its laconic style.

Christian interpretations posited Eve as the ultimate fallguy for all the problems in humanity and the wider fallen creation; or, more accurately, she was the fall-girl. In the sixth century, the Council of Macon even considered defining women as having a deficient soul and, consequently, not being fully human. Fortunately this misogynistic view was not adopted.

Within Judaism, some rabbis suggested that Eve’s name was derived from the Aramaic word for serpent,¹⁵ which rather identified her with the tempter, instead of presenting her as a victim of the serpent’s deceit. This is found in the Midrash material, although modern Jewish teaching includes a much more sympathetic view of two people, equally subjected to the serpent’s cunning¹⁶ (a view that is also reflected in many modern Christian perspectives on Eve).

The idea of Eve/serpent was taken up by some (male) medieval Christians who were evidently keen to closely associate Eve with the serpent. At the entrance to the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, a carving of Eve, Adam, and the serpent depicts the serpent with a female head. As if this was not striking enough, the stonemason carved the face on this female serpent to look just like that of Eve. It is as if the tempter is presented as a mirror image of Eve herself. The same motif of a serpent with a face resembling that of Eve can be found in a number of late medieval artistic representations.¹⁷

The idea was then continued in Renaissance art, such as a brightly coloured, glazed terracotta panel, made in Florence in 1514 in the workshop of Giovanni della Robbia, to celebrate the entrance of Pope Leo X into the city in 1515. Similarly, when Michelangelo painted the fresco, The Fall, as a detail on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, 1508–12, the serpent was depicted as a female-beast hybrid, with a pronounced breast clearly visible, despite the angle being such that the chest of this serpent should not actually be seen by the viewer. The aim was to present the serpent as unmistakably female.

However, Michelangelo went much further in his representation of Eve. For she is provocatively posed, lying down before Adam, her face in line with his genitals. As if this was not suggestive enough, the middle finger of Eve’s right hand – used in Renaissance art as a symbol for a phallus – points towards her own genitals.¹⁸ The message is unmistakable. Eve is being portrayed as a sexual temptress; indeed as a human embodiment of temptation and