Handout, September 12, 2003

RS-2B03: Women in the Biblical Tradition

A. Y. Reed

Eve, humankind, womankind, and sin

Post-biblical perspectives from some influential biblical interpreters

“From a woman was sin’s beginning, and because of her, we all die.”

– Wisdom of Ben Sira 25:24 (Early Jewish text from the second century BCE; also called “Ecclesiasticus”; numbered among the deuterocanonical books in the Catholic biblical canon and popular also – albeit not canonical – among early Rabbinic Jews)

“God imposed punishment on Adam for having yielded to a woman’s council… Eve, He punished by childbirth and its attendant pains, because she had deluded Adam, just as the serpent had beguiled her.”

– Flavius Josephus (Jewish historian from the first century CE), Jewish Antiquities, 1.49

“I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.”

- 2 Timothy 2:12–15 (epistle written in the name of the apostle Paul around the late first century CE and now found in the New Testament)

“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 too. 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 (i.e. Adam) whom the Devil was not strong enough to attack. All too easily you destroyed the image of God, man. Because of your dessert, that is, death, even the Son of God had to die.”

– Tertullian (influential early Christian author, who is often termed the “father of Latin Christianity”; second/third century CE), On the apparel of women, 1.1

There was Adam, happy as a man could be
Till Eve got him messin' with that old apple tree

Ain't that just like a woman?
Ain't that just like a woman?
Ain't that just like a woman?
They'll do it every time

– Lyrics of “Ain’t that Just Like a Woman” (Blues classic, popularized by B. B. King among others)