Everyday Eves
What Biblical womanhood looked like
When it comes to Biblical interpretation and emulation, the figure of Eve has been controversial, misunderstood and used for various purposes. The life of the Everyday Eve was very different from those presented in the Biblical narrative. This late fifth–early sixth-century marble and stone mosaic is inscribed in Greek: “And he ate, and they were made naked” (Genesis 3:7). The mosaic fragment, which comes from a church floor in northern Syria, is now in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Photo: Courtesy Scazon/Flickr under CC by 2.0.
People of faith have long wanted to lead Biblically based lives. This naturally flows into an attempt to determine what it means to be an “Everyday Eve.” There are a plethora of interpretations and understandings regarding what Biblical womanhood is and what it looks like. Rachel Held Evans recently spent a whole year trying to live by the rules that governed Biblical womanhood and wrote a book about the experience. The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood maintains an active website and attempts to provide definitive definitions of these phrases. However, what one notices even between these two examples is a vastly difference understanding of the phrase Biblical womanhood. Those who wish to gain insight into Biblical womanhood often begin with the Bible and with the character Eve, as she is the first woman, wife and mother.
While most turn to Scripture to find Biblical womanhood, this is not an easy task. As Carol L. Meyers points out in “‘Eves’ of Everyday Ancient Israel” in the November/December 2014 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, women are significantly underrepresented in the Bible, and thus very little of their lives can be gleaned from the material.
Beyond the sheer lack of literary material, the other challenge that people face when trying to gain a Biblical understanding of womanhood is one of hermeneutics, or, simply put, the strategy one uses for interpreting a text. It has become clear that the readers’ presuppositions affect the meanings that they derive from the narratives. For example, through many periods of history, male superiority was an understood norm. Thus interpreters from this period argued that women should be seen as subordinate to men because the first woman was created out of the first man. However, Phyllis Trible famously demonstrated the fallacy inherent in this logic when she pointed out that the first man was made from dirt and thus would be subordinate to mud (see “If the Bible’s So Patriarchal, How Come I love It?” in Bible Review, October 1992).
FREE eBook: Life in the Ancient World.
Craft centers in Jerusalem, family structure across Israel and ancient practices—from dining to makeup—through the Mediterranean world.
Perhaps even more challenging for the average reader is the translation effect that occurs within the Biblical text. Most often in North America the Bible is being read in translation and the readers do not know Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek. This has also come into play when trying to understand how to be an Everyday Eve. In Genesis 2, God says that Eve is to be a “helper” to Adam. In English, “helper” tends to be subsidiary or even subordinate. Yet the Hebrew word—ozr—contains none of that connotation—and in fact, the word is used mostly of God. If one were to assign a subordinate role to Biblical womanhood because of this designation as a “helper,” that person would actually be adding something to the text that is not there and at the same time would be missing the important attribute that is present.
Does this mean that attempting to determine the Biblical approach to something is fruitless? No. It does mean that one needs to have a certain amount of self-awareness and an eye for the details within the text. In addition, there are other avenues of exploration available. We have texts from other ancient cultures that can help round out a reader’s view of the ancient world, and we also have the archaeological record, which is particularly important when trying to better understand daily life in ancient Israel. The women that do appear in the Biblical text are the extraordinary and the exceptional (not always for a good reason), and because of this, they might not provide the best insight into the Everyday Eve.
For more on what daily life would have been like for the average Israelite woman, read the full article “‘Eves’ of Everyday Ancient Israel” by Carol L. Meyers in the November/December 2014 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.
BAS Library Members: Read “‘Eves’ of Everyday Ancient Israel” by Carol L. Meyers as it appeared in the November/December 2014 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.
Not a BAS Library member yet? Join the BAS Library today.
This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on October 20, 2014.
Ellen White, Ph.D. (Hebrew Bible, University of St. Michael’s College), is senior editor at the Biblical Archaeology Society. She has taught at five universities across the U.S. and Canada and spent research leaves in Germany and Romania. She has also been actively involved in digs at various sites in Israel.
Related reading in Bible History Daily:
The Creation of Woman in the Bible
Gender in Archaeology at Abel Beth Maacah
Examining the Lives of Ancient Egyptian Women
Related reading in the BAS Library:
Ingrid D. Rowland, “Etruscan Women—Dignified, Charming, Literate and Free,” Archaeology Odyssey, May/June 2004.
Tal Ilan, “How Women Differed,” Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1998.
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Hmm … will somebody please present material evidence proving Paul’s letters were corrupted? Maybe Ellen (G?) White can do that for us??
When you go to court and offer your opinion, the opponent tramples you under foot. The only way to win your case is by properly presenting material facts and supporting evidence. If you bring “expert testimony”, it’s subject to examination for impeachment purposes.
Thus far, nobody has impeached the text of Paul’s letters, nor his statements. Nobody has even attempted to address Paul statements occurring in the 2 texts above. The only ‘arguments’ in here are naked opinion based on speculation about ancient HUMAN CULTURE. Don’t you realize that’s the logical fallacy “consensus gentium” (= appeal to the masses)? Moreover, nobody has discredited any of the facts in my comments. In fact, nobody has even addressed them on-point. Moving on …
Have any of you compared the LAWS in the books of Moses for men and for women, in order to see how BIASED GOD is about women? Where did Moses obtain “the Mosaic law”?:
“Now the LORD said to Moses, “Come up to Me on the mountain and remain there, and I will give you the stone tablets with the law and the commandment which I have written for their instruction.” (Exo 24:12 NAS)
How many times from Exodus through Deuteronomy do we read: “And the word of YHWH came to me saying …”?
Either those statements are HISTORICALLY FACTUAL, or Moses was a CONMAN. You can’t have it both ways.
“And it came about, when Moses finished writing the words of this law in a book until they were complete, 25 that Moses commanded the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD, saying, 26 “Take this book of the law and place it beside the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, that it may remain there as a witness against you. 27 “For I know your rebellion and your stubbornness; behold, while I am still alive with you today, you have been rebellious against the LORD; how much more, then, after my death?” (Deu 31:24-27 NAS)
Maybe it’s time you people return to God’s law and dispense with your frivolous emotional-cultural fantasies called “religion”? I believe the correct term for this is “REPENT” and “RETURN”. Historically and legally, it’s foundational to being “God’s people”.
Incidentally … did I ever claim in any of my comments that the Apostles, Y’shuah and the OT “saints” debased the personhood and social role of women?
Dang those pesky assumptions!
Thank you for the lively discussion. Just to clarify I am not Ellen G. White, the founder of the Seventh-Day Adventists, as she died in 1915.
Chris, the author of this magazine article has suggested that Eve has been misrepresented since Greco-Roman times and that the information gleaned from archaeology pertaining to Iron Age Israel reveal a society consisting of mostly farming communities where people shared and that this selfless partnership society better reflected the utopian model presented in the Garden of Eden. It is therefore not a fallacy when the facts of archaeological evidence are staring us in the face and reminding us of how far we have fallen. Women’s contribution to society in ancient Israel was held in high regard, hence the first man’s naming of his wife as “the mother of the living” (Genesis 3:20). Jesus came to restore this partnership as it is written in the lost Gospel of Thomas:
“Simon Peter said to them, ‘Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.’ Jesus said, ‘I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make her self male will enter the kingdom of heaven.'”
Regarding Paul’s comment:
I think you, and Trible, have missed the point of the prefix “ha”, probably because you have only considered one instance of its appearance in the Hebrew texts. Once it appears it becomes increasingly used, and with many words other than “adam”, and in my opinion, signifies much – none of which actually supports your point at all. What it does signify is almost enough to write a book on, so to stay brief, I’, going to quote from a study in my own hermeneutic (modern science and creation theory) I did almost 15 years ago.
“The word adam is translated variously as “man”, “mankind”, or “men”. Its not really a very particular or discriminating word in Hebrew. It could be that it originally meant, as implied in the “kind” (miyn of mankind, the human species…. Whatever … the more important points for us here [Gen 1:26] are: 1) that adam can mean just “human species” or human beings” and, 2) that the Hebrew Scripture uses exactly adam, here, with no additional modification…. In just one more verse that will no longer be true, adam will be replaced by ha-adam — a very significant change.
(I point out, later, that “a very important point often overlooked by translators [is that] “ha” will attach to waters, heavens, beasts, soil, everything and anything (even men!) that God has touched, or is otherwise brought into sanctified standing by His use or concern.”)
In Gen1:26 the creation verb, translated “let us make man”, is asah which is more of a “fashion” or “design” verb. He is declaring His plan. In Gen 1:27, the verb translated “create” (3 times repeated!) is bara, the most absolute, de novo, “from scratch” creating God does. And he adds something special to this created “adam”, which He told us in Gen1:26 was His plan, His image AND His likeness. And this is when the “ha” is attached, and will remain so, henceforth.
One important exception, however: even after the 3 “baras”, no “ha” attaches to either the “male” or “female”. And in my own hermeneutic, I split Gen 1:27 into two verses, and interpret the last as “In His own image He created the males and the females” and see it as parenthetical, a sort of footnote.
Whew, a lot of comments have posted since I began writing my own, intermittently with other demands. I was in position for number 5, and directed to Paul’s #3. I’ll have to catch up and see if what I had to say is even still relevant.
Thank you Russell, for I am clueless as to the significance of the prefix “ha” and now that you brought it up I noticed that “ha” is not affixed to the name “adam” in Genesis 2:5 as in “there was no man to till the ground” since humanity is still in the conceptualized state like the “design” of humanity in Genesis 1:26. This satisfies my own curiosity concerning the origin of primates who were our predecessors beginning 30 million years ago with a marsupial-like creature with large eyes (adapted to hunting insects) which to me signifies the “design” for humanity to envision God.
I’m sorry but it wasn’t marsupials from Australia but Lemurs from Madagascar that are similar to the ancestors of primates and ultimately humans and are referred to as Prosimians.
So basically you have this extinct species called “Adapiformes” that gave rise to these lemur-like prosimians; “Many prosimian species which had developed rodentlike adaptaions became extinct with the rise of rodents. However, other early prosimian forms probably gave rise to the more successful monkeys and apes. The monkeys and apes were better able to exploit the prosimian niches, causing the demise of the prosimians from which they developed” (“Physical Anthropology” by Stein and Rowe, p.330).
We know the lemurs survived by being cut off from the African continent where the primates were evolving and adapting to changing climates and conditions brought about as a result of the movement of tectonic plates which brings to mind Russell’s comment about humanity being a work involving all of creation (Genesis 1:27).
The earlier Genesis account of Adam form Genesis 2:5 also includes a ha-adam prototype; adam. “And every shrub of the field was not yet on the earth, and every herb of the field had not yet sprung up, for had not sent rain, Yahweh Elohim, on the earth, and a man (adam) was not to till the ground…” In this narrative it is in the cultural context that humanity is formed like a potter molding clay, and it is possible this this prototype of Adam is the civilization that existed in the Negev and Sinai deserts that disappeared in the middle of the 3rd millenium B.C.E. It wasn’t until the Israelite period of the first monarchy around 1000 B.C.E. that these sites were resettled and the Sinai included a network of fortresses with a distinct tradition of crude disposable pottery used by the soldiers, giving this ha-adam a sense of purpose as they guard the way along the routes to the copper mines, hence the image of the bellows that blow air into the copper smelter is used as He “blew into his nostrils the breath of life”
Paul:
Very interesting, isn’t it. I surmise that you are exercising your own hermeneutic approach from a sort of “primate evolutionist” perspective/lens. I, from my background ( degrees, and teaching in several colleges and U.C. Santa Cruz) use a human and cultural evolution (and associated paleontology and archeology) hermeneutic to interpret the original Hebrew Scriptures of the creation account of Gen 1 &2. We are, therefore, a very good exemplary of the essay thesis we are commenting on.
I, by the way, actually believe the Scriptures describe an already fully evolved H. sapiens, and God, in a pattern and style he uses several times in the Bible, of choosing a man from the population before him to initiate and develop his next purpose. That is, from among the H. sapiens ( adam ) populations that have evolved (as He expected, having created both the creatures and laws of physics and biology by which life does develop) and imbuing him with His own image ( tselem )and ( demuwth ) likeness turns him into that ha-adam. In time, God then selects a female from that existing population as a mate and establishes the first family (model) he wishes the “ha-adamic” population to develop. THAT works for me, modern science, and the original Hebraic Scriptural language, as I understand all three.
@Chris #19: The book that I quoted from, the Gospel of Thomas, was banned along with any writings deemed heretical by the Byzantine Empire and we only have this version today because a monk hid this and other books in a cave near Nag Hammadi in southern Egypt, probably around the middle of the 4th century. The reason that you and other like-minded males narrowly focus on this portion of scripture from 1 Timothy 2:11-15 which is erroneously based on Genesis 3:16, is because you have plugged your ears like a snake that can’t be charmed (Psalm 58:5).
“As we know from medical writers, philosophers, poets, and others, women in the Greek and Roman worlds were widely understood to be imperfect men … Women were quite literally the weaker sex. And in a world permeated with an ideology of power and dominance, that made women subservient and, necessarily, subordinate to men … All the world, it was believed, operates along a continuum of perfection. Lifeless things are less perfect than living; plants less perfect than animals; animals less perfect than humans; women less perfect then men men less perfect then gods. To have salvation, to be united with God, required men to be perfected. For some thinkers in the ancient world, the implications were clear: For a woman to be perfected, she must first pass through the next stage along the continuum and become a man” (“Lost Christianities” by Bart Ehrman, p.64).
Chris, did you notice the other BAS article edited by the women you attempted to discredit with boyish humor? You would think a man wrote it.
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