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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The Song of Deborah in Judges 5 is considered archaic like the songs of Moses and Miriam in Exodus 15. The reference to the “Taanach by the waters of Megiddo” (Judges 5:19) is interesting because we have the Asherah cult stand from Taanach that is dated to the 10th century B.C.E. On the top tier of this stand is the representation of what is thought to be a horse between two pillars with a winged sun-disk riding on its back
“The juxtaposition of horse, sun and pillars recalls an incident in the Bible involving Josiah, the reform-minded king of Judah who sought to purge the Temple of pagan practices. ‘He [Josiah] removed the horses that the kings of Judah dedicated to the sun, at the entrance to the house of the Lord [Jerusalem Temple] …; and he burned the chariots of the sun with fire’ (2 Kings 23:11)” (BAR, May/June 1994, p.58).:
Forrest Reinhold, in “Hurrian Hebrews; Ea As Yahweh,” mentions that the references to Hittites, Horites and Hivites in the Old Testament may refer to Hurrians and that this is corroborated by the appearance of Hurrian personal names in cuneiform, mostly from Taanach (p.5).
The Hurrians comprised the Mitanni Empire in the Habor River region where the Patriarchs originated from and they were dominated by a ruling class of Indo-Europeans with cultural ties to India. The Hindu sun god Surya rode a chariot and it is likely that this name is akin to the Hurrian word “Surriya” which means lord which they in turn, borrowed from the Sumerian “sarri” or king, from which the Matriarch Sarah’s name is derived.
If you look at Judges 5:12 in which Deborah awakens and Barak arises, it is flanked by pillars on either side, the verses before and after. In verse 11 it says; “It was then Yahweh’s made their way down to the gates.” The Hebrew word for gates contains the root word “sarri.” In verse 13 it says; “It was then that the survivors came down to the majestic ones.” The Hebrew for survivors also contains the root word “sarri.” Notice how the word “majestic” describes the bowl that Jael gives to Sisera in verse 25, full of milk, invoking the preferred drink of the Maryannu ruling class called Soma in the Veda texts.Don’t forget the fact that the Israelites “went down to the gates” and they “went down to the majestic ones; Yahweh’s people came down to me against the mighty ones,” as if they had been eight miles high.
“
Correction; “It was then that the survivors made their way down to the gates” (Judges 5:11).
Pitiful, isn’t it, that I incorrectly corrected myself?
The most accurate translation I’ve found regarding this portion is from the “New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures,” the preferred beverage of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
11 “It was then Yahweh’s people made their way down to the gates.”
12 “Awake, awake, O Deborah, awake, awake, utter a song! Rise up, Barak, and lead your captives away, you son of Abinoam!”
13 “It was then the survivors came down to the majestic ones.”
My Dear Sister Ellen White, Ph.D. in Yahushua,
Sabbath greetings to you on the highly exalted name
of our Yahweh.
I am Elohim that He has privileged me to approach
you for your kind interference in our Samajamandhir.
For your kind information, I introduce myself as I am
Obadiah a Resident of in India. Being an independent
Sunagogu, I have been doing His service to
ignite the sparks of Sabbath faith in every heart. I
committed to divert the mindset of people from
idolatry and prepared to save them from the clutches
of vain practices and superstitions and present
everyone perfect before our savior. Regarding our
Indian country; The total population of India is
1,028,610,328. The Christian population is
24,080,060. Out of total Indian population only 2.34%
are Christians; meanwhile, out of our Christian
population only 0.5 are Sabbath followers.
My cons fat is plan the Sabbath following Sunagogu
and to preach un-reached and to turn to Yahweh ,
restore back sliders and strengthen them to walk in
the foot prints of their savior of Elohim .Our Goal
is to reach entire all our state of Andhra Pradesh
and plant the Sabbath Sunagogu. We are in the need of
leadership and guidance. We are praying for any kind
of assistance. Kindly pray for our Samajamandhir and
extend your kind encouragements. If you are inspired
by our Yahweh, could you please pray to be a part of
this powerful
move of Elohim to come grow with us at our Sunagogu
.Please convey my personal regards to all your
ministerial workers. Let me hear your kind news soon.
Yours Brother in Yahweh
Brother Obadiah.
PS: if you want more information regarding my
Samanjamandir I can send you for your kind
observation and prayers.
A correction in my previous comment (#3) concerning the adamah/ground in Genesis 2:7 as being composed of previous cultures; in the excerpt that I have from “The Qabbala Trilogy” by Carlos Suarez it says (in Cipher Genesis):
“This so-called ‘dust’ (symbolic of crumbled rocklike rigidity) leads us by means of its letter-numbers to the realization that ‘Eretz’ is not only the Earth. This schema stands for all cosmic bodies and for every aspect of their components, from their simplest chemical elements up to their highest biological aggregates.” Elsewhere it says:
“Here an Adam is created who is in contact with the powerful movement of the Universe, and in whom every possibility is latent.” Concerning Eve and the Biblical Matriarchs it says:
“The theme of the necessary transformation of the feminine is very important in the Bible … All these [biblical matriarchs] are symbolical personifications of what women must learn to become. It is unfortunate that inadequate translations have prevented women from grasping the truth concerning themselves as is set forth in the Book of Genesis. Thus women allow themselves to be misled into allowing the male – in such fatuous roles as high priest of racism waving the Bible, or some head of state invoking divine vengeance in a ‘holy war’ – to exert every possible pressure to persuade all humankind that ‘God’ is a ‘He’, with ‘his’ code of morals, ‘his’ wars, etc., etc.”
Iam persuaded
subordinate to mud?what can mud tell you to do,is mud a creature.man/woman is subordinate to God because He made us which shows her view is illogical and is a
fallacy
What about Adam Eve and Lilith