Biblical Profile: The Gospel According to Eve by Amanda W. Benckhuysen at BAR
Extracts Below
- In Genesis 1, there is no distinction made between the sexes in terms of their nature and no limiting of women to certain roles in church, family, and society. Reflecting on this initial account of creation in light of prevailing notions about women’s roles, Lee Anna Starr, an early 20th-century interpreter, suggested that women would have to step off the earth to transgress her God-given role in this world.
- …when the woman is described as an ‘ezer (“helper”), this label was not taken to imply inferiority. Instead, as God comes alongside the people of Israel as their helper in times of need (Genesis 49:25
; Psalm 37:40), so too the woman was created to be a helper for the man because he was in need. In other words, it is the man’s incompleteness and not the woman’s inferiority that makes her a helper—like God himself. - …reading Genesis 3, women interpreters noticed different details than had been highlighted by traditional readings of this text. For instance, they noted that the man was with the woman while she was talking to the serpent. This detail gave them pause as they wondered why the man never spoke up to intervene—why he remained passive while the woman and the serpent were actively engaged in conversation. They concluded from this that the woman must have been the spiritual leader of the two.
- …they refuted the notion that the woman was responsible for the man’s eating of the fruit. Both the man and the woman were created with free will, they argued. Given that traditional interpretations regarded the man as the stronger (physically and morally) of the two of them, they rejected the notion that the weak, fickle woman should be responsible for turning his will.
- Like many modern interpreters, women in history read Genesis 3:15-19 as God delineating the consequences of—rather than exacting punishment for—Adam and Eve’s sin. Some even suggested that in Genesis 3:16, “Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you,” was a descriptive comment warning women about how men would treat them in a fallen world, and not a prescriptive directive establishing a patriarchal hierarchy. Furthermore, women interpreters noticed that God extended to the woman a special grace, perhaps recognizing that the road ahead would be particularly hard for her. She was invited to be a key player in bringing about the redemption of the world. Her seed would crush the serpent’s head.
