What If Eve Was Innocent?
What If Eve Was Innocent?
She was the mother of all humanity. Her name literally means “life.” But somewhere over the last several millennia, Eve has become infamous for allegedly causing the mortality of all people.
For the last 2,000 years in particular, Eve has become the icon for fallen humanity. She’s been demonized in art and theology for the fate of the world. Until recent generations, Eve was largely blamed for everything from the “sin” of lust to the corruption of Church doctrine to the seemingly eternal battle of the sexes.
But what if Eve was innocent?
How might that impact our understanding of The Fall, husbands and wives, women and Church, obedience to God, sexuality, and so much more? Probably immeasurably.
Despite her notoriety, Eve is only mentioned by name four times in the entire Bible. She’s named twice in the Genesis story, and twice by Paul in the New Testament. That’s it. By comparison, Jericho’s obscure prostitute Rahab is named at least eight times. So how then did Eve get her infamy? Most of it comes from a single verse, written by Paul no less than 4,000 years after the fact:
“For Adam was first formed, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman, having been deceived, into transgression came, and she shall be saved through the child-bearing, if they remain in faith, and love, and sanctification, with sobriety.”
1 Timothy 2:13-15 (YLT, for clarity)
Grammatically, it’s already a difficult sentence when read plainly. But it also follows a portion where Paul is advising how to deal with a problematic woman in a church (for more on that, see “But the Preacher Is a Lady”). Nevertheless, despite its ambiguity and context, that verse is the basis of the nearly 2,000 years of demonization of Eve (and often women in general). So I’d be remiss not to address it here.
In his letter to Timothy, Paul states a few thoughts:
Adam was made first, and then Eve was made;
Adam was not deceived;
Eve was deceived;
Transgression came; and
“She” (presumably Eve), will be saved/made well through the righteousness of her offspring.
Read plainly, Paul’s indictment here is strongest against Adam. Paul explicitly says that Adam was not deceived — meaning that Adam committed his offense without deception. Restated: Adam knew what he was doing, and he did it anyway. Paul, however, gives Eve a small pass by pointing out that she was tricked or seduced into her mistake. (A sentiment Paul echoes again in 2 Corinthians 11:3.) Paul then concludes this sentence by saying that Eve would be made well again by her offspring, a reference to the Messiah’s victory over sin and the legacy of salvation carried by the Body of believers worldwide, as foretold at the time of The Fall:
“Mary and Eve,” by Sister Grace Remington, OCSO, from Sisters of the Mississippi Abbey in Dubuque, Iowa. For prints, go here.
“And I will put enmity
Between you [the serpent] and the woman [Eve],
And between your seed and her seed;
He shall bruise you on the head,
And you shall bruise him on the heel.”Genesis 3:15
But Eve still did something. She was wrapped up in this mess. But what exactly Eve did is worth a much closer examination.
In Genesis and elsewhere in the Bible, the tragedy of Adam and Eve is presented as a historical fact. They’re included in literal genealogies and referenced as historic characters throughout the Bible. While their story may also be a parable, or a metaphoric story to reveal larger truths, it’s presumptuous to assume that was the opinion of those who wrote the Bible. So for the sake of this piece, I’m going to maintain a literalist’s perspective: Adam and Eve were the first man and the first woman, created as husband and wife directly by God Himself.
The story of The Fall, as outlined in Genesis 2 and 3, is familiar territory for nearly everyone in the Western world. So I won’t restate the entirety of it. But I think it’s important to recap some key details.
First, let’s look at the only commandment that existed in the Garden of Eden. Sin is, after all, the violation of any of God’s commandments:
“Then Yahweh God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, ‘From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.’ Then Yahweh God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.’ … Yahweh God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.”
Genesis 2:15-18, 22
Adam was explicitly forbidden from eating from a specific tree. It was a direct commandment. Consequently, it was also the first opportunity for overt sin. Then, Adam was lonely so God made Eve. Keep that sequence in order, as the entire plot hinges on it…
Three sentences later, we get to chapter three, which outlines The Fall:
“Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which Yahweh God had made. And he said to the woman, ‘Indeed, has God said, “You shall not eat from any tree of the garden”?’ The woman said to the serpent, ‘From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, “You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.”’ The serpent said to the woman, ‘You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.”
Genesis 3:1-6
Interestingly, the serpent didn’t overtly lie. He started by simply asking Eve a question:
Serpent: “Has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?”
In the Hebrew language, God’s original use of “you shall not eat” is both masculine and singular. But when Eve and the serpent are recounting the command, the serpent prompts and Eve responds to the instruction using the inclusive version of the verb (essentially what we would think of as “y’all”), making it plural and applicable to both — despite that not being how Yahweh had worded the command.
Eve’s answer to that question is where her vulnerability lies:
Eve: “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’”
Eve’s mistake happened on two levels: First, Eve embellished the prohibition by adding a rule against touching the fruit, which was something God never said. Presumably, it’s something she must have either imagined or learned from Adam. Second, and more importantly, Eve naively accepted the serpent’s grammatical misrepresentation of the “you” as being plural and inclusive of her. Neither Eve nor the serpent ever discussed to whom the pronoun “you” pertained — and by not defining the terms of the command, the trap was set.
The serpent pressed on:
Serpent: “You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Once again, the serpent didn’t entirely lie. He told Eve that the day she ate the fruit, she wouldn’t die and she would gain the understanding of the difference between good and evil. The deception hinged on the serpent’s true statement that “you surely will not die.” It was a half truth because in this context the “you” was was most immediately Eve.
In the most literal sense, God did not tell Eve that she “shall not eat from any tree of the Garden.” Remember: Eve didn’t even exist at the time God explicitly forbade Adam from eating the fruit of that tree. The Bible never records a single instance of God telling Eve, or even subsequent generations, not to eat from that tree. The only person who was forbidden to eat it was Adam.
This makes a big difference: When Eve ate the fruit, she wasn’t sinning.
Eve’s critical mistake, however, was that she then gave the fruit to Adam:
“… she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.”
Genesis 3:6b
Adam had been told not to eat the fruit. But he did it anyway. Adam was with Eve when she ate it. He knew exactly where the fruit was from and what the consequences might be, but he knowingly chose to eat the fruit.
While Eve could possibly be blamed for giving Adam the fruit, Adam’s sin was of his own choosing. But don’t forget, God never told Eve that she couldn’t pick, eat, or even hand the fruit to Adam. God only told Adam that Adam couldn’t eat it. While Eve may have been innocently naive, she wasn’t sinning. Adam was.
Don’t believe me? Look at how God addresses Eve and Adam…
First, God seeks out Adam, who was hiding naked and afraid in the garden.
“Then Yahweh God called to the man, and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ [Adam] said, ‘I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.’ And He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?’”
Genesis 3:9:11
God directly asked only Adam if Adam had disobeyed Him. God didn’t ask Eve if she had disobeyed. Nor did God ask Adam if they had disobeyed. Even when God restates His original rule, God again uses the original masculine and singular form of “you” — not the plural, inclusive “y’all” used by the serpent. Meaning that God doesn’t ask Adam if “they” ate, nor does God state that it was something He had told “them (or y’all) not to eat.” God only seems troubled by the sin of Adam.
As the conversation unfolds, Eve voluntarily confesses to having been deceived by the serpent. While surely unwise, that wasn’t really the primary issue at play. For her part, she has consequences, but even in the statement of those consequences, God does not accuse her. God only says:
“To the woman He said,
‘I will greatly multiply,
Your pain in childbirth,
In pain you will bring forth children;
Yet your desire will be for your husband,
And he will rule over you.’”Genesis 3:16
The next verse is the kicker:
“Then to Adam He said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, “You shall not eat from it;”
‘Cursed is the ground because of you;
In toil you will eat of it
All the days of your life.
Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you;
And you will eat the plants of the field;
By the sweat of your face
You will eat bread,
Till you return to the ground,
Because from it you were taken;
For you are dust,
And to dust you shall return.’”Genesis 3:17-19
Adam’s punishment follows a direct accusation of Adam’s guilt.
Throughout the remainder of the Bible, it is always Adam who is blamed for The Fall — not Eve. Even Paul himself reinforces this point in his letters to the Corinthians and the Romans:
“For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.”
1 Corinthians 15:21-22
“Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned — for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.”
Romans 5:12-14
Taking both Genesis at face value and the rest of Scripture for broader context, it’s pretty clear that Eve wasn’t to blame for the downfall of the Garden of Eden. With this understanding, we can then begin to properly reassess the endless theological, doctrinal, social, and interpersonal issues at play. Because, after all, if you start with a faulty premise, the likelihood of a correct conclusion is scant. I’ll quickly address a few examples.
At the beginning of this piece, I mentioned Paul’s instruction to Timothy and Paul’s reference to Adam and Eve. This verse has been tragically misapplied throughout history to accuse Eve, and consequently all women, of being more prone to deception than men. It’s fed into millennia of baseless, sexist disregard for the intelligence, judgment, and wisdom of women. But that’s not how Paul meant for it to be understood. As stated above, Paul explicitly stated his belief that Adam was responsible for The Fall. That was a belief central to Paul’s theology and Christian faith. So what then could Paul have meant by mentioning Adam and Eve in his letter to Timothy?
In the chapter and verses immediately prior to that statement about Eve, Paul was addressing church issues, including an ongoing issue of someone teaching false doctrine. Paul specifically states that there was a woman who should not be permitted to speak or undermine the authority of some man in that situation. It is after covering those bases that Paul uses the analogy of Adam and Eve. Eve was misinformed and tricked by the words of a snake, but Adam knowingly sinned. Eve perhaps should have done more to disable Adam’s sin, but she instead enabled it — or at least observed it. The “bad guy” in the story was the snake who preys upon misinformation. The sinner was Adam, the man who knew better but chose to do the wrong thing regardless.
With this understanding, it becomes likely that Paul was likening the woman who was causing problems in Timothy’s community to the snake. Paul was warning Timothy of the plight of Adam and Eve. Paul cautioned Timothy’s community to not to be deceived like Eve, and — even more importantly — not to be like Adam by knowingly consuming the fruit this “snake” was offering.
In other circles, the story of Eve is used as a cautionary tale, supposedly about women corrupting their husbands’ leadership. But that wasn’t the case according to the Genesis history. Adam is stated to have been “with” Eve during her consumption of the fruit. The scandal shouldn’t be focused on Eve’s harmless consumption of the fruit, which is often presented as though it was her rebelling against her patriarchal leader. Rather, we should be saddened by Adam’s failure to obey God and his subsequent attempt to blame his wife for his own sin.
The story of Eve isn’t a cautionary tale against female empowerment. It’s a warning of the dangers of men, husbands, and fathers (and by extension, all people) who knowingly chose to rebel against God’s commands. It’s a tragic lesson of a sin made worse by a person who tried to fault his wife, his family, his community, his circumstances, and even God, instead of taking full responsibility for his own mistake.
In our own fallen world, I’m much more concerned about sins like those of Adam than mistakes like those of Eve. Ignorance and naiveté can cause trouble, but brazen acts of evil have much more eternal consequences.
— John
Note: For a full review of the role of women as it pertains to their functions in the Church, please read “But the Preacher Is a Lady.” For insight into how God actually intended husbands and wives to interplay, get The Marriage Commandments.