Back to the Garden

Genesis narrates how God created the heavens and the earth followed by the stars, the plants, and the animals. Then God picked up some dirt, gave it a form, blew air into it and, voilà, created the first man, Adam.

God placed Adam in a garden now known as Eden where there were many trees. God gave Adam permission to eat the fruit from all the trees save one, the Tree of Knowledge. But not all the fruit in the world could keep Adam from feeling lonely. God knew well how difficult it was to be alone. So God took one of Adam’s ribs and created Eve.

Now the instructions not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge were given to Adam before Eve’s creation. But once briefed on the fruit, Eve stayed away from it. That is, until the snake showed up. The snake criticized Eve for fearing the fruit but Eve replied that to eat the fruit meant risking one’s life. The snake told Eve she’d been duped because eating the fruit would not kill her but, instead, give her the power to distinguish between good and bad on her own. Finally convinced, Eve ate the fruit. It was so good that she offered some to Adam who, without hesitation, ate it, too.

After just one bite, the couple’s eyes were opened to reality and they realized, for the first time, that they were naked. Ashamed, they hid. But God found them and asked why they’d eaten the fruit. Adam cowardly dumped the blame on Eve. Eve, on the other hand, was more courageous than her husband and admitted that she’d eaten the fruit because the snake had been so convincing. God told Eve that he would eternally punish her and all other women as well by inflicting much pain on them when giving birth to their babies. As for Adam, his punishment was that of having to work and sweat if he wanted to eat. With that said, the couple was then eternally banished from the garden.

The story of Eve has had a profoundly negative effect on women and the way they are perceived. For over 2,000 years, the Bible has been interpreted from a patriarchal and misogynist point of view. For example, the patriarchs claimed that women were inferior because man was created first. However, in Genesis, animals were created before man. So, if we were to use the same logic as the patriarchs, it would mean that a donkey is superior to man.

The epistle of I Timothy prohibits women from speaking as they must “learn in silence with all submissiveness.” This epistle was written by Paul who, before his conversion, vehemently opposed Jesus and his followers. Paul never met Jesus and it was at least 40 years after Jesus’ death that the writings of the first gospels appeared.

Christian theologian and moralist, Tertullian, taught that women were the Devil’s gateway. But Jesus never said such a thing. To the contrary, he had the upmost respect for women and saw them as equals to men.

Eve has been blamed for the burden of Original Sin but it is a concept invented by theologian Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430 AD) and not the Bible.

The Milanese bishop, Ambrose, said women’s only importance was that of procreating whereas Thomas Aquinas claimed that women were “misbegotten males.”

In 1895, Elizabeth Cady Stanton decided that it was time to liberate the Bible from patriarchal bias. With the help of other women, Elizabeth wrote The Woman’s Bible, a collection of critical commentaries on Bible texts with the precise intent to question male translations and interpretations of the Bible that constantly presented women as inferior to men. Pity that many women did not want the book to be published fearing it would negatively affect the suffrage movement. Although the book became a bestseller, Elizabeth lost her influence on the women’s movement. Unfortunately, despite being Suffragettes, many women had not yet learned the importance of Synergy & Solidarity.

This misrepresentation of the role of women has done more than damage women’s feelings of self-esteem. Thinking that they are superior, there are those men who feel they have a right to command women and punish them for their “disobedience”. How many women have been murdered by a man who once told them “I love you”?

There is an obvious war on women going on today promoted by false and misogynist prophets. The patriarchal bias that prevails is destroying the world. Just look at the decadence and destruction that surrounds us—ecological catastrophes, wars and the slaughtering of little babies, poverty and homelessness. And hatred towards anyone who’s diverse from ourselves.

We do not need any more men with busted egos telling us what to do. What we women do need, however, is to reclaim our role as Cosmic Mothers who sustain and honor life.