Essay Blog #1, Kami Velasquez

Kari Velasquez The first creation story in Genesis is kinder to women and treats gender with more equality, giving both dominion over all of creation. The story itself, told by an unknown narrator, echoes femininity in its telling, with its poetic prose, “repeating frame language neatly” (Niditch 30). In this story, man and woman are created simultaneously in God’s own image, “male and female created he them" Gen. 1:27. In this version, neither “rank nor worth of the genders” (Niditch 30), are mentioned. By combining this tale with that of Leviticus, the idea that the “genders were meant to be equal at the beginning” (Niditch 30) is hinted at. In this version, gender is not attributed to the sun and moon, sky and water, or night and day. Of course, later on, gender does become attributed to these elements of creation, where light is male, darkness is female, day is male, night is female, the sun is male, the moon is female, and so on. Niditch mentions an interesting difference in this version from the Mesopotamian creation story, called Enuma Elish. In this myth, the goddess Tiamalt represents the “salt waters of chaos, is killed and split like a mussel by the young god Marduk, who builds the world out of her carcass” (Niditch 30). In the second version, Adam is created first and is given sole dominion over all the animals, birds and beasts and also given the job of naming them. God also forbids him to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Because of Adam's loneliness, God takes one of his ribs, "and closed up the flesh thereof; And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, made He a woman, and brought her unto a man" (Gen. 2:21). The second story is clearly patriarchal in nature, and leads into the story of the eating of the forbidden fruit. When Eve has her dialogue with the cunning serpent, she is told that eating of the forbidden fruit will not kill her, as she had been told, and would give her the gift of wisdom. It looked pretty tasty, too. Eve was still innocent, even of her own nakedness, so the arguments presented to her by the serpent seemed reasonable. She had no knowledge of what anything like punishment would be like. She did willingly disobey and convince Adam to do the same, but it didn't take much to convince Adam to join her in her disobedience. When God came to confront the two, after they hid from Him with the knowledge of their nakedness and of good and evil, Adam took a passive stance, blaming Eve, "The woman Thou gavest to be with me, she bade me to eat of the tree, and I did eat" Gen. 3:12. God ends up punishing all three for their sin, beginning with the serpent, who was the one who started all the trouble in the first place. God told the snake, "Thou shalt be cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust thou eat all the days of thy life" Gen. 3:14. He proclaimed that the serpent and the woman would always be enemies, and for the woman he said, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee" Gen. 3:16. Adam was reprimanded harshly, as the keeper of the original instruction and only commandment. To Adam he ordered, "Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field in the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread, til then return unto the ground. For out of it was thou taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return” Gen. 3:17-19. All three were banished from the Garden of Eden, where the Tree of Life grows and provides immortality. Their punishments were indeed severe. The evidence of the patriarchal society and the authors being male is clearly more evident in the second story, which is an excellent example of the “androcentric and patriarchal character of Israelite religion” (Bird 4). The missing portion of the first version is intriguing to me. It is from more than one source that I have heard references to this first woman being named Lilith, which I mentioned in the discussion board post. It makes sense that this matriarchal archetypal figure would have been left out of a patriarchal narrative, for her story could disturb the status quo, which was already very much about keeping women in their place; that is, property of their husbands, blamed for original sin, and looked upon as inferior in every way. This omission helped “to restrict the sphere of women’s activities-spatially, temporally and functionally” (Bird 7). I see now that I have read Niditch’s commentary that even though there is no matriarchal goddess mentioned in the first version, at least “creation isn’t dependent on her death” (Niditch 30). Nowhere in this story is it mentioned that woman should be the only one blamed for the fall. In fact, according to Niditch, it is Eve who plays the hero, and not Adam. If she hadn’t eaten the fruit, civilization as we know it wouldn’t exist. She becomes, as a result, “the Mother of Creation.” Adam’s role is a passive one, behaving childishly and eating without question, then blaming his actions on Eve. Even though he is given dominion over Eve, he has to work in the dust for a living while Eve is given the punishment of pain in childbirth and an eternal enmity between her and the snake, who is condemned to slither on its belly and eat dust and be smashed by her heels. Even though the story is told from a patriarchal perspective, woman plays an important role in this creation story. It is interesting how many different interpretations have been given to it, and how many shared where Eve is the cause of all of mankind’s suffering. Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Paradise together. Its time to let Eve off the hook, and remember it was a mutual experience. This keener understanding can help lead us towards a more egalitarian civilization.