Before Eve
Rev. Paul Sprecher
Second Parish in Hingham
January 28, 2007
Before Eve? Adam was before Eve, of course, according to the story in the second chapter of Genesis, but before Eve we get the intriguing account in the first chapter of Genesis of how God created humans: “[Gen 1:]27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” The language gets awkward here, because both male and female are created in the image of God, but we use masculine pronouns to describe God. This story intrigued the early rabbis who were wrestling with the scriptures because it seemed to suggest that there was another woman before Eve – created as an equal to Adam rather than being created from his rib, as the story in the second chapter of Genesis has it.
The story of Lilith emerged from the need to explain the apparent discrepancy between these two stories about creation. As the Sefer ha-Zohar ("The Book of Splendour") written by the Spaniard Moses de Leon in the 13th century has it:
At the same time Jehovah created Adam, he created a woman, Lilith, who like Adam was taken from the earth. She was given to Adam as his wife. But there was a dispute between them about a matter that when it came before the judges had to be discussed behind closed doors. She spoke the unspeakable name of Jehovah and vanished.[1]
The dispute apparently involved a claim of superiority by Adam countered by Lilith’s insistence that they were completely equal, having been created at the same time from the same earth. Three angels were sent to demand that she return to Adam, but she refused. She is demonized in the Hebrew tradition and is mentioned by name only once in the scriptures by the prophet Isaiah as part of a vision of complete destruction in which all of the nations shall be laid waste: “[Isaiah 34:]14 Wildcats shall meet with hyenas, goat-demons shall call to each other; there too Lilith shall repose, and find a place to rest.” So the woman who was the equal of the first man was made into a demon.
We all know the story of Adam and Eve, of how the (now) subordinate woman yields to temptation, convinces her husband (and master) to go along, and thereby precipitates the Fall of all humankind into sin. This story is then used within scripture and within the church to perpetuate a subordinate role for women, as when the Apostle Paul says “[I Cor 11:]8-9 Indeed, man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for the sake of woman, but woman for the sake of man.”
Within other traditions, the role given to Eve as Mother of All Living was a more honored role, the role of a goddess. As Raine Eisler, author of our reading says,
It of course makes eminent sense that the earliest depiction of divine power in human form should have been female rather than male. When our ancestors began to ask the eternal questions (Where do we come from before we are born? Where do we go after we die?), they must have noted that life emerges from the body of a woman. It would have been natural for them to image the universe as an all-giving Mother from whose womb all life emerges and to which, like the cycles of vegetation, it returns after death to be again reborn.[2]
We all know goddess stories, of course, mostly from our study of Greek and Roman history in school, since those civilizations are understood to be critical to the development of our own. We remember that in Greek mythology, the forebear of all was the Great Mother Goddess Gaea from whom all the living and all the other gods and goddesses came. There’s the lovely story of Demeter and her daughter Persephone, who rule over the plants and vegetation of the earth. It seems that at the beginning of human history, there were no seasons, just unending good crops. Then Hades, the god of the underworld, fell in love with Persephone, abducted her, and made her his queen. Demeter was distraught and went everywhere looking for her beloved daughter, abandoning her duties to the earth in her sorrow. She learned at last where her daughter had gone and Zeus sent his messenger to demand her return; but because Persephone had taken nourishment in the underworld, a compromise was arranged according to which she could spend eight months of the year with her mother and the other four with Hades. When Persephone returns to her mother each spring, the vegetation bursts back to life with joy; when she must return again to the underworld each winter, not only her mother but all of the earth mourns for her.
Of course, this is only a story, a myth. Indeed, we readily dismiss these lovely stories as nothing more than harmless tales to tell our children. Consider, though, how effectively Freud used the story of Oedipus – surely a myth as well – to engage our thinking about the tensions which can develop within families between fathers and mothers and sons. I would like to suggest that the stories we tell our children and ourselves can have a profound effect on how we envision our lives and the world around us. Joseph Campbell said that “Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.” The fact that our culture has been deeply influenced by the story of Eve – Mother of all Living but also condemned to subservience – rather than by the story of a Great Mother Goddess Gaea, has had a profound effect on our estimation of women and women’s virtues within our civilization. As Joseph Campbell puts it,
This curious mythological idea, and the still more curious
fact that for two thousand years it was accepted throughout the Western World
as the absolutely dependable account of an event that was supposed to have
taken place about a fortnight after the creation of the universe, poses
forcefully the highly interesting question of the influence of conspicuously
contrived, counterfeit mythologies and the inflections of mythology upon the
structure of human belief and the consequent course of civilization.[3]
It does seem odd to think of the story of the Garden of Eden as a “conspicuously contrived, counterfeit mythology,” doesn’t it? Those Greek myths that we learned in school, those are the ones that are false, unreal; our sacred story is different, we like to think. Now, in fact, we here are not in danger of believing the story of Eve in any literal sense, but I would suggest that this story predisposes us to developing images of God which are not female, images often associated with masculine royal prerogatives, including, for example, leading armies into battle. The images suggested in that old hymn, “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” come to mind.
Of course, the story doesn’t end with Eve. The Hebrew Bible is full of images of the warrior God defending his people with his strong right arm. Some of these struggles seem just, as when the Children of Israel are brought out of slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land, as told in Exodus. Others seem genocidal, as when the soldiers of Israel are ordered to wipe out every living thing – men, women, children and cattle – and burn conquered cities to the ground. In some of these battles, we can faintly recognize the process by which an earlier, goddess-centered religion was wiped out in Canaan and replaced by the religion of Israel. It is these images of triumph in battle and slaughter which informed the worst atrocities of the Crusades and which inspired our forebears on this continent as they conquered the original inhabitants of these parts.
Theodore Parker, Unitarian preacher in Roxbury and Boston in the 1840’s and 1850’s, used to address his prayers to “Father Mother God.” Would it make a difference if we began to broaden our perspective on God’s nature and character? We read stories of heroes as a way of understanding the possibilities which lie in front of us. These days we read of business leaders and their triumphs, but there has also been a booming market in biographies of great leaders of our nation – the founding fathers, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt. We have tried in our Unitarian Universalist tradition to hold up women leaders from our ranks as well as men – Julia Ward Howe, Olympia Brown, Margaret Fuller, Susan B. Anthony, Dorothea Dix. Clearly our understanding of the possibilities of our own lives expands when we see examples of what others have done. What we hold sacred also affects our understanding of our possibilities as human beings. If God is a warrior king, then the greatest honor on earth must lie in emulating such a God; but if God is a nurturant mother, a whole different set of possibilities are open to us.
Jesus was, of course, a man, and he lived in a patriarchal society. Women had certain rights, in some cases more rights than in societies around them, but men were clearly dominant. His followers believed he was the Messiah, the anointed one, the one who would rescue the Jewish nation from its bondage to their rulers, who acted at the direction of the Romans and who oppressed them mercilessly. They expected a warrior like King David, the greatest of the ancient kings of Israel. Jesus spoke constantly of the Kingdom of God, but he didn’t seem to be describing quite the sort of Kingdom his followers had hoped for. His kingdom was paradoxical, impossible to describe in everyday terms, something best shown forth in stories, parables, myths if you will. These stories have come down to us and continue to inform our language and our thinking, just like other stories of the Hebrew Bible and other myths we apply in our living. Think of the parable of the Good Samaritan, or the Good Shepherd, or the Prodigal Son.
Jesus did not, on the whole, present God as a powerful king and warrior but as an intimate companion, “Abba” or Daddy. It’s certainly true that other parts of the New Testament, most notably the book of Revelations, present Jesus in the role of triumphant ruler and avenging military leader, but we don’t see these images very much from Jesus himself.
Consider the parable of the Prodigal Son [Luke 11-32]. A certain man has two sons, and the younger son asks to be given the share of the property he will inherit when his father dies; the father consents, and the son goes off to a far land where he spends his inheritance in dissolute living. He’s finally reduced to tending pigs; and
16 He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. 17 But when he came to himself he said, 'How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! 18 I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands." '
He set off for his father’s house, but his father saw him coming from afar and ran to him. The son offers his confession as he had planned,
22 But the father said to his slaves, 'Quickly, bring out a robe -- the best one -- and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; 24 for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!' And they began to celebrate.
The older son, when he learned what was happening, protested at this extravagance and refused to come to the feast. Like a typical sibling, he said to his father
[29] 'Listen! For all these years I have been working like
a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never
given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. 30 But
when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with
prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!' 31 Then the father said to
him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32 But we
had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has
come to life; he was lost and has been found.'"
The father – who stands here also for a loving God – is shown as anxious for forgiveness and reconciliation. This is an image of God our Universalist forebears could hold up as the kind of God who would choose to reconcile everyone to righteousness rather than a God who would choose to condemn some to everlasting punishment. This is not the dominating, warlike image of a God of wrath, it is instead the image of a nurturing, forgiving God.
We need to find images which point to a bigger God, a more inclusive God. Remembering the Goddess gives us another way of opening our minds to possibility. As individuals, it is helpful to remember that both masculine and feminine virtues can be useful at different times. As parents, we need to find in our families a blend of strength and forbearance, justice and mercy, expectation and love. As a nation, we need to remember that force is not the only means to protect ourselves, that there are a range of means for responding to threats and challenges.
Let me close with this invocation of the Goddess by Emily Dickinson:
Nature—the Gentlest Mother is,
Impatient of no Child—
The feeblest—or the waywardest
Her Admonition mild—
In Forest—and the Hill—
By Traveller—be heard—
Restraining Rampant Squirrel—
Or too impetuous Bird
How fair Her Conversation—
A Summer Afternoon
Her Household—Her Assembly—
And when the Sun go down
Her Voice among the Aisles
Incite the timid prayer
Of the minutest Cricket—
The most unworthy Flower—
When all the Children sleep—
She turns as long away
As will suffice to light Her lamps—
Then bending from the Sky—
With infinite Affection—
And infiniter Care—
Her Golden finger on Her lip—
Wills Silence—Everywhere—[4]
Amen
[1] “Eve and Lilith,” Christopher L.C.E. Whitcombe, Eve and the Identity of Women, http://witcombe.sbc.edu/eve-women/7evelilith.html
[2] Raine Eisler, The Chalice & The Blade: Our History, Our Future, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1987, p. xvi.
[3] Joseph Campbell, quoted in Merlin Stone, When God Was a Woman, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976, pp. 7-8.
[4] Emily Dickinson, “Nature—The Gentlest Mother Is,” in The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry, ed. Stephen Mitchell, New York: HarperCollins, 1989. p. 117.