11 Sermon Illustrations on Woman

In the year 1158 the medieval poet Peter Lombard said: "Eve was not taken from the feet of Adam to be his slave, nor from his head to be his lord, but from his side to be his partner."

I don't think women have any idea of the power they have over a man. I mean, I've seen 250-pound he-men reduced to quivering jelly by a little 95-pound blonde. Most guys can relate to the trauma of trying to work up the courage just to call a girl for a simple date. I've looked at the phone for 45 minutes, rehearsing all these impressive lines and this macho tone I was going to use. But it didn't matter how long I thought about it, when I finally heard that little voice at the other end of the phone say, "Hello" - my reply would always come back with this halting, pitiful - "Hello-oo-ooh."

Well, I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A A Word With You today about "The Incredible Power of a Woman."

Well, OK, the secret's out - if it ever was a secret. A woman has incredible power to make a man feel very big inside - or very small. And her own happiness may depend on how she uses that tremendous God-given power.

In our word for today from the Word of God, He addresses this power of a woman to work either the construction crew or the demolitions crew. In Proverbs 14:1, God says, "The wise woman builds her house, but the foolish tears it down with her own hands." In that treasured Proverbs 31 description of the woman God is impressed with, it says, "the heart of her husband trusts in her ... she does him good and not evil all the days of her life ... her husband is known in the gates ... her children rise up and bless her ... her husband also, and he praises her."

Now, this is a woman who clearly builds up her man - and the implication is that he is highly regarded in the community largely because of the kind of woman she is. I understand that. I often tell people that heaven will show that most of whatever contribution I've been able to make is because of the wonderful woman I'm married to. And this woman receives back, according to Proverbs 31, the highest praise and respect from her husband, her children, the people who know them, and from God Himself.

Sadly, Proverbs also talks about a woman who tears down her house with her own hands. I don't think any woman means to do that - but in her frustration, she focuses on what the man in her life is doing wrong much more than on what he's doing right. She doesn't understand how her criticism and her attacks wither his confidence and emotionally emasculate him. And in trying to nag and push him to take the leadership he should be taking, she may actually be causing him to doubt himself more and to actually retreat from leading.

And the more dominating and controlling and nagging and critical she becomes, the less the chances he will ever have the confidence to be the leader he ought to be and she needs for him to be. Now, often on this program, I spend a lot of time talking about a man's responsibilities to a woman - but today we're looking at what the Bible says about that awesome power that a woman has to build up or tear down the man she loves.

The secret is that, well, inside most of us men is a pretty insecure little boy - who can blossom or wither, depending, in part, on the godly wisdom of a woman who loves him. That woman has incredible power to make him or break him.

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Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

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[It would be hard to support some of these statements from Scripture! — RGH]

A good woman is proud. She respects herself and others. She is aware of who she is. She neither seeks definition from the person she is with, nor does she expect them to read her mind. She is quite capable of articulating her needs.

A good woman is hopeful. She is strong enough to make all her dreams come true. She knows love, therefore she gives love. She recognizes that her love has great value and must be reciprocated. If her love is taken for granted, it soon disappears.

A good woman has a dash of inspiration and a dabble of endurance. She knows that she will at times have to inspire others to reach the potential God gave them.

A good woman knows her past, understands her present and forges toward the future.

A good woman knows God. She knows that with God the world is her playground, but without God she will just be played with.

A good woman does not live in fear of the future because of her past. Instead, she understands that her life experiences are merely lessons meant to bring her closer to self-knowledge and unconditional self-love…

On the seventeenth of December in the year 1840, Charlotte Diggs Moon, later to be known as Lottie Moon, was born in the small Virginia town of Viewmont. The third of seven children and the second of four daughters, Lottie was born into a family of considerable wealth and power. Her ancestry included “English royal favorites, Quaker scholars, colonial governors, heroes of duels and of the American Revolution, and a Lady Gordon known as 'The White Rose of Scotland'“ (Hyatt p.94). She grew up on a Virginia tobacco plantation surrounded by her family, servants, and several thousand acres of land.

Unlike most women during her time, Charlotte had many opportunities to succeed due to her high education and extensive knowledge. She was educated at the Albemarle Female Institute where, at her 1861 graduation where she received a master's degree in classics, she earned the reputation of being one of “the first southern women [along with her four classmates] ever to earn the A.M.” (Hyatt p.95). Another important occurrence in college took place when Lottie reluctantly attended a campus revival only to discover that it would forever change her life. She has said, about the revival, “I went to the service to scoff, and returned to my room praying all night” (Jeffreys p.1). While this was Lottie's first true connection with God and His word, her second connection, a sermon by Reverend Headden would be by far more powerful than the first.

In addition to her education, Lottie's strength and determination as a woman, and more importantly as a woman of faith, was due in large part to the influence of her mother and her sisters. In 1852, Edward Moon, Lottie's father, died in a riverboat accident. From then on, her house was a complete matriarch with her mother in charge of everything that went on in regards to the house life as well as the plantation. Under the influence of her mother, Lottie and her siblings all grew into very individualistic and strong-minded adults. Her older sister, Orianna, refused to go to finishing schools, became the first woman to earn a medical degree south of the Mason-Dixon line, and was a Lucy Stone feminist (Hyatt p.94). Even though Lottie was not known as a true feminist, she absorbed much of her mother's and sister's spirit and independence. This independence would later help her as she would spend forty years of her life as a missionary in the North Chinese cities of Tengchow and P'ingtu.

In the 1860s, Lottie taught in the states of Alabama and Kentucky, where she met a woman by the name of Anna Cunningham Safford, and together they started a female high school in Cartersville, GA in 1871. Lottie was soon dissatisfied with teaching and sought something else, but did not know exactly what her destiny was until she went to church one day. That particular day, the Reverend Headden was giving his sermon on the topic, “Lift up your eyes and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.” That sermon struck a chord in Lottie and she knew that day that her destiny was to become a missionary and to spread God's word. She mentioned that she was interested in going to China to follow in the destiny that God had set for her. Many thought that this move to China was extremely drastic, for how could a woman “raised in the midst of culture, society, and educational advantages” leave all of this behind for a foreign and unknown land only “to live in poverty and difficulty” (Creweburkeville.com p.1)? Disregarding other people's concerns, Lottie followed her vocation, and left for North China, following her younger sister, Edmonia, who had already been there for a year as a missionary.

In December 1873, Lottie Moon was greeted in Tengchow, China by two other missionaries in the North China Mission, which, at the time, consisted of Martha and T.P Crawford, Sally Holmes, and Edmonia Moon. There, she began working in a group with the other women missionaries that was known as Women's Work. “Women's work was in a sense a feminist movement, obviously, but is rationale and basic orientation were always evangelistic. The main goal was to save the souls of Chinese women, for their own sakes and because the men would eventually follow” (Hyatt p86). Lottie participated in Women's Work for the majority of the time that she was in China and saw it grow as an accepted missionary group. Upon arriving in Tengchow, she was instantly intrigued by the Chinese people, noting that they “depicted an interesting mixture of heathenism with advanced culture and ethical teachings” (Hyatt p96). The first few years in Tengchow were a period of personal adjustment where Lottie remained close to home and close to her sister. She initially tried to establish a boarding school for girls of upper-class families in Tengchow, but after 6 years, she only had 15 pupils (Creweburkeville.com p.1). While she saw an increasing number of students at her school, she didn't feel as though she was reaching out to enough people, and that, as a servant of God and His Word, she needed to do more. There were other important problems going on in Lottie's life during this same time period. One dealt with her sister, Edmonia, and the other with Dr. Crawford Toy.

Edmonia, who was still a young woman at age 19, was not adapting well to her missionary life in China. She constantly complained of different illnesses and shocked the other missionaries with her constantly obnoxious behavior. Not only was she becoming a problem to the North China Mission, but also the Chinese people found her overwhelming and rude. Eventually Edmonia became too much to bear and Lottie escorted her back to Virginia and stayed with her until she was well again. As soon as Edmonia had recovered, Lottie immediately requested more funds to be sent back to China and was returned on Christmas Eve. The other problem that Lottie faced involved her fiancé, Dr. Crawford Toy. After refusing his proposal several times, Lottie finally agreed to marry Dr. Toy, but the engagement was called off once again due to his religious beliefs. Dr. Toy was fascinated with Darwinism and the theory of evolution, all contradictory to Lottie's beliefs as well as her mission in China. She decided that she could not love a man who was not a follower of God as she was and broke off the engagement. She described her emotional conflict between God and Dr. Toy when she stated, “God had first claim on my life, and since the two conflicted, there could be no question about the result” (Hyatt p.99). This decision was also a huge turning point in Lottie's life in that it signified her complete devotion to God and the church as she surrendered herself to carrying out his will. But when she set off for China the second time, she was even more alone than ever for she lacked both her fiancé affections and her sister's support.

Lottie Moon faced many challenges during her time in China, including adapting to a new style of dress, speaking a new language, eating different food, and trying to understand a new culture with different traditions and ways of life than her own. Lottie eventually overcame these obstacles, as she became a fluent speaker of Chinese, she adapted their style of dress, and even angered a male missionary when she refused to shake his hand because it was a custom that the Chinese people thought to be weird (Hyatt p107). One of her biggest challenges in China was coping with the gender conflict. There, she clashed with the male leadership and refused to follow by their rules, demanding, “What women want who come to China is free opportunity to do the largest possible work. What women have a right to demand is perfect equality” (Jeffreys p1). Lottie was only allowed to teach God's word to women and children because it was uncustomary for a woman to preach to a man; so peasant women became the focus of her work. In reaching out to women and children, she hoped that some of her influence would rub off on the men since she wasn't able to reach them directly. However, later on in her life, pastors and men of high position came seeking her for conferences because, through her determination in spreading the word of God, she had become an inspiration to the people of North China whose lives she touched (Creweburkeville.com p3).

In total, Lottie spent four decades in China, dividing her time mainly between two towns, Tengchow and P'ingtu. While she traveled occasionally to surrounding villages, she considered both of these places her home. Her life in Tengchow was completely different from that in P'ingtu. Tengchow was a city that was wealthier, busier, and harder to reach the closed hearts of the citizens, whereas P'ingtu was much poorer but was home to a more devoted and open-minded community. Lottie was constantly torn between the two villages; she had the comfort of better-living and the support of her American missionaries in the city, but she had the attention and friendship of those in the country to aid in her ultimate mission. Also, when Lottie lived in Tengchow, she had a nice house that was referred to as “Little Cross Roads” by those who visited, but when she was in P'ingtu, she lived as a commoner in an attempt to reach the locals by becoming one of them. In P'ingtu Lottie initially picked up the habit of wearing the traditional dress and living without any of the luxuries that she had while living in the city. At first the village was opposed to her and ran down the street after her calling her “Old Devil Woman,” but she continued in her determined manner to prove to them that there was nothing special about her and this attitude eventually earned her the respect of the majority of the community and more friends than she had made in ten years of living in Tengchow. She also adjusted her method of reaching out to people, waiting now for them to approach her, and stated that “we need to make friends before we can make converts” (Hyatt p109). While she reached more people in P'ingtu, as she got older, Lottie remained in her house in Tengchow where she could receive the help of the other missionaries.

Another well-known trait of Lottie Moon was her prolific letter writing, which were often pleas for money in support of missions. “Most of her writing was directed toward Baptist women in appeal for foreign mission support. She saw that women were the ones who saved the Southern Methodist Church, so she believed they could do the same with the Baptist church” (Cobern p1). In fact, when she asked that all money in support of missionaries be handled solely by the women of the church, she spawned a religious, feminist movement in the United States by helping form the Women's Missionary Union. Her writings were printed in missionary magazines all over the world and helped raise awareness of her experiences in China as well as the need for more missionaries to China and all over the world. Probably her most famous letter was dated the 15th of September 1887, and it is credited with providing the inspiration for the creation of a Southern Baptist offering to support international missions, which later became the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. In part of this letter she wrote: “In a word, Southern Methodist women, in one year, have contributed to missions, clear of all expenses, nearly sixty-five thousand dollars! Doesn't this put us Baptist women to shame? For one, I confess I am heartily ashamed” (Moon p1). Part of Lottie's success as a missionary was her ability to touch the hearts of others through her writings to gain financial support, while at the same time inspiring others to become missionaries themselves to help spread God's message to foreign lands and even within the United States.

In 1912, nearly forty years after Lottie initially embarked to China, her mission came to an end. Due to the famine outbreaks that were occurring in China, Lottie contributed her salary as well as her inheritance in an effort to help out those in need by forming a relief service. Her savings dwindled away and her relief efforts were failing, and Lottie fell into a deep depression. In an attempt to sympathize with the people that she had grown to love in the country that she had grown to call home, she started starving herself. Her condition worsened and when the other missionaries became deeply concerned, they put her on a boat to be sent back to the Virginia where she could be nursed to health. However, on Christmas Eve, 1912, Charlotte Diggs Moon died aboard a ship while docked at a port in Japan. She was cremated according the Japanese law and the ashes were sent back to Virginia, where, on the marble marker next to her burial site the words were written, “Faithful unto Death,” and “Forty years a missionary of Southern Baptist Convention in China” (Creweburkeville.com, p2).

The teachings of Lottie Moon are so lasting because her ideas were so radical to the Chinese people and to the missionary in general. Being a Southern Belle from a wealthy and privileged family, she made radical feminist statements that caused controversy in missionary magazines all over the world. She once wrote “Simple justice demands that women should have equal rights with men in mission meetings and in the conduct of their work,” which some this as being “improper in her role as a female missionary” (Cobern p1). Her actions were also radical, as she once walked through an angry anti-Christian mob and demanded that “they would have to kill her first,” and eventually broke up the mob. In fact, during her four decades in China, she endured the bombings of the Japanese, lived through the ravages of the Civil War, and even convinced feuding warlords to cease-fire as she traveled across battlefields (Bridges p1). She was never afraid of death, for she always believed that she was in the hands of God and that when her time was over, then it was God's wish. Lottie also knew that she had to be different and have radical ideas in order for her to achieve her mission. If she had remained “in her proper role” as a woman, then Lottie Moon would be just another missionary who failed to convert people to the Gospel. And the institutions that came out of her extreme ideas and actions, such as the Women's Missionary Union and Women's Work, have ensured her immortality.

Lottie's influence is as prominent today, more than 100 years later, as it was when she was living in North China. The Lottie Moon Christmas Offering donations totaled more than $120 million in the year 2001, where all of the proceeds go to support the missionary movement and missionaries who are currently abroad following in Lottie's footsteps (www.imb.org, p1). The first Lottie Moon Christmas Offering was collected in 1888, and the donations have been steadily increasing up to the current date. It is no coincidence that the Lottie Moon offering is during the Christmas season since all of her most important life events happened in the month of December: her birth, her first arrival in China, and her death. While Lottie gave everything she had to offer to the Chinese, ironically, it was her failure to arouse interest in others in giving to missions that insured her most lasting legacy (Jeffreys p1). Lottie's influence can still be seen in North China, where there is a great openness to the gospel. Now that her teachings have been rooted in North China for several generations, the people of North China have accepted the gospel and are traveling to other provinces in order to spread God's word and keep the memory of Lottie Moon alive (Bridges p1). The name of Lottie Moon has become a legend among missionaries and Baptists and she has been described as “setting her face like flint toward China and using every ounce of her life to tell the good news and wrap her God-filled life among the broken ones she met” (Rogers p1). Even in her death, she is still able to touch the lives of thousands each year by helping others continue her work to spread God's word and follow His destiny.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bridges, Erich. “The Power of a Life Freely Given.” International Missions Emphasis. . 1 Feb. 2002.

Cobern, Kristie. “Charlotte 'Lottie' Diggs Moon.” Women of Faith. 3 Feb. 2002 .

Hyatt, Jr., Irwin T. Our Ordered Lives Confess. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1976.

Jeffreys, Mary Ann. “Lottie Moon: A life poured out in China.” Crosswalk.com: The Intersection of Faith and Life. 2 Feb. 2002 .

“Meet Lottie Moon: One Rebellious Lady.” Crewe Burkeville Chamber of Commerce 5 November 2000. 2 February 2002 .

Moon, Lottie D. “The letter that started it all.” International Missions Emphasis. . 3 Feb. 2002.

Rogers, Jenny. “Jenny's Light and 'Lottie's China.'“ International Missions Emphasis. . 31 Jan. 2002

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An assessment of Eve from a liberal perspective:

1. Eve and Women

Art has always played and continues to play, an important role in the service of what has been called “gender ideology,” communicating ideas about social order through the representation of female and male sexuality. The themes and styles of works of art often function as a prescription for relationships between women and men.

Images of women and men can effectively incite both sexes to adopt certain self-images, attitudes, and behavior. Male-constructed images of women, and men, are so embedded in Western culture that they appear quite “natural.” Once it is recognized that they are constructions, it becomes necessary to ask not only how they are constructed but also why.

The constructed social relationship between women and men in the West is rooted in the Genesis story of Adam and Eve. For the last 2,500 years it has underpinned our perception of sex and gender and thereby influenced how women and men are represented in art. Any discussion of images of women and men must therefore be prefaced by an examination of the opening chapters of Genesis.

The story of Adam and Eve is a creation story, and creation stories, which are accounts of how humankind came to be, can reveal a great deal about the ethos of the culture. Stories or legends about the origin or creation of humankind offer clues about how a culture perceives the world and the relation of living things to it and to each other.

The “message” of the Judaeo-Christian creation myth, recounted in the Biblical story of Genesis 1-3, shows a particular conception of the origins of humankind. It is claimed that God created man in his own likeness, was given dominion over “every living thing”, and leave to subdue the earth with his offspring. Equally significant is the prominence given to men; God is male and his most important creation is male. The story stresses the primacy of man and the centrality of his place in the universe, while making it clear that women play a subordinate role. The story also recounts how the woman, whom Adam subsequently named Eve, was disobedient and succumbed to temptation the result of which was the expulsion of both Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.

For the past two thousand years or so the story of Adam and Eve has communicated social and religious values to Western civilization. Whether you regard the story as an innocuous folk tale or as an invidious, misogynistic tract[*], it has successfully presented its “truths” about women in particular as God-ordained and universally valid.

Throughout the Christian period, the story of Eve has provided men with the reason why they should restrain and restrict the social, sexual, religious, political, and economic freedom of women. It has also given men the justification to hold women responsible for all the misfortunes suffered by mankind.

All women are like Eve, and their only chance of redemption is to become like the Virgin Mary, another patriarchal fantasy, who represents absolute obedience and purity. The story of Eve and its many misogynistic interpretations have over the centuries defined the image of woman in Western civilization.

2. Eve in Genesis

Genesis has been subjected to any number of interpretations, none of them satisfactory to the modern mind. Though the intent of the story is clear, as a narrative it lacks sense. Even the literalists who want to read it as straight fact find themselves following pretzel-like paths of explanation.

Apart from such knotty and awkward questions as from whence came evil in a new world God proclaimed as “good,” and the incestuous situation which must have prevailed for the human race to continue (by whom did Cain father children?), a fundamental problem is the fact that the story has two different accounts of the creation of man.

The first is told briefly in Genesis 1:27: God “created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

The term “man” in this instance is to be understood in the collective sense as meaning mankind. This plural or inclusive use of the word “man” is made clear in Genesis 5:2 where it is again stated that “Male and female he created them and blessed them and called their name man on the day of their creation.” The passage therefore may be interpreted to mean that men and women were created in one act, both sexes together, equally and at the same time.

The second, much lengthier account is given in Genesis 2 and 3. Instead of simultaneous creation, the story tells first of God forming man out of the dust, breathing life into his nostrils, and setting him down in the garden of Eden.

Only after the first act of creation does the story go on to recount the making of a woman from the man’s rib, the story of the serpent’s temptation of the woman, and the subsequent expulsion of the man and the woman from the garden into our world.

Biblical scholars currently believe that the first account given in Genesis 1:27 was written much later than the second story, having been composed according to the “P” source or “Priestly Code” (so called because of its cultic interests and regulations for priests) probably by Jewish theologians around 500-400 BCE.

The longer second story, related more in the language of folklore, is derived from the “J” or “Yahwist” source (so called because it used the name Yahweh [Jehovah] for God) and was probably written down by members of Hebrew tribes around 1000-900 BCE during the time of King Solomon.

3. Eve’s Identity

Whether or not you believe the Bible was divinely inspired, the Book of Genesis has served as the primary source in the West for definitions of gender and morality.

Although much of the story of Adam and Eve can be explained within the context of Hebrew culture, and its patriarchal bias shown to be historical rather than divine in origin, it is nonetheless perceived as containing fundamental, and largely negative, “truths” about the nature of women.

For the last two thousand years or so, Eve has represented the fundamental character and identity of all women. Through Eve’s words and actions, the true nature of women was revealed; her story tells men what women are really like.

Eve represents everything about a woman a man should guard against. In both form and symbol, Eve is woman, and because of her, the prevalent belief in the West has been that all women are by nature disobedient, guileless, weak-willed, prone to temptation and evil, disloyal, untrustworthy, deceitful, seductive, and motivated in their thoughts and behavior purely by self-interest.

No matter what women might achieve in the world, the message of Genesis warns men not to trust them, and women not to trust themselves or each other. Whoever she might be and whatever her accomplishments, no woman can escape being identified with Eve, or being identified as her.

In the West, the story of Eve has served over the centuries as the principal document in support of measures and laws to curtail and limit the actions, rights, and status of women. The Pseudo-St. Paul, for example, in his Pastoral Epistle to St. Timothy, could cite Genesis as the reason why women should not be allowed to teach or to tell a man what to do:

For I do not allow woman to teach, or to exercise authority over men; but she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. (1 Timothy 2:12-14)

The early Christian theologian Tertullian (c. 155/160-220 CE) reminded women that they all share Eve’s “ignominy...of original sin and the odium of being the cause of the fall of the human race”:

Do you not believe that you are (each) an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives on even in our times and so it is necessary that the guilt should live on, also. You are the one who opened the door to the Devil, you are the one who first plucked the fruit of the forbidden tree, you are the first who deserted the divine law; you are the one who persuaded him whom the Devil was not strong enough to attack. All too easily you destroyed the image of God, man. Because of your desert, that is, death, even the Son of God had to die. (The Apparel of Women, Book I, Chapt. 1)

During the Middle Ages, St. Bernard of Clairvaux could claim in his sermons, without contradiction, that Eve was “the original cause of all evil, whose disgrace has come down to all other women.”

This perception of Eve has endured with remarkable tenacity, and persists today as a major stumbling-block in attempts by women to correct gender-based inequalities between the sexes. Consciously or unconsciously, it continues to serve as the ultimate weapon against women who wish to challenge male hegemony.

It is so deeply rooted in the socio-religious psyche of Western civilization that attempts to discredit it, or dismiss it, or simply ignore it as self-serving patriarchal fiction and myth-making have met with little success. One strategy has been to adopt a revisionist approach to the story itself and to re-read it, and re-interpret it, in feminist terms. It has been argued that Genesis 2-3 is not inherently patriarchal and efforts have been made to recover it from centuries of misogynist reading.

Phyllis Trible, Professor of Sacred Literature at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, for example, holds that far from being a secondary or dependent being, Eve is in fact the “culmination” of creation.

The argument that the order of creation, in which Adam was created first and Eve second, indicates hierarchy and therefore Adam’s superiority ignores the fact that animals were created before Adam. As Adam is superior to the animals, then the hierarchy of creation should be reversed, and Eve seen as God’s ultimate creation.

Trible also argues that at the time of their creation, Adam and Eve were equals and that the inequality between them enters only after Genesis 3:16 as a consequence of disobedience. In other words, inequality between the sexes was not originally part of the divine plan. It would therefore follow that attempts by feminists today to restore equality are in keeping with God’s original plan.

A point made by Trible and others is that at the time of creation in Genesis 2:7, ha-’adam, which has been conventionally translated as “man,” “the man” (ha read as the definite article “the”), or “Adam,” had no gender. Gender comes into existence only with the creation of woman in Genesis 2:22, following which, in 2:23, the “earth-creature” or “groundling” (suggested alternative translations of ha-’adam) is sexually differentiated as “man” (ish), and woman as ishah.

A note can be added here on the word “rib.” Sarah Roth Lieberman points out that the Sumerian word “ti” means both “rib” and “to make alive.” In ancient Mesopotamia, Ninti, whose name means both “lady of the rib” and “lady who makes alive,” is the goddess created by Nimhursag to heal Enki’s sick rib. The double meaning may explain why Eve, who is called “mother of all living” (Genesis 3:20), was created from Adam’s rib (an otherwise very odd piece of male anatomy to chose). Unfortunately, in the Bible, the association is lost because the Hebrew words for “rib” and “life” are two different words with unrelated roots.

Attempts have also been made to correct the popular belief that Eve was a temptress who tempted Adam into eating the fruit despite the fact that according to Genesis 3:6, after she ate the fruit herself, she then “gave some to her husband and he ate.”

This simple, and by any other measure, generous and unselfish act of sharing has, in a list assiduously compiled by Jean Higgins, been variously interpreted over the centuries by Biblical scholars and commentators to mean that Eve “tempted, beguiled, lured, corrupted, persuaded, taught, counseled, suggested, urged, used wicked persuasion, led into wrongdoing, proved herself an enemy, used guile and cozening, tears and lamentations, to prevail upon Adam.”

In the Vulgate, St. Jerome uses the word seducta to describe Eve’s transgression clearly implying that she used her sex to tempt, or seduce, Adam into disobedience. Such damning commentary has long supported the wide-spread conviction that Eve tempted Adam to sin and was therefore responsible for Adam’s fall.

However, despite the sometimes ingenious efforts by feminists in particular, it has proved remarkably difficult to correct popular belief and redefine Eve in more positive terms.

The negative view of Eve and of women in general has been constantly reinforced in the West over the centuries. In a medieval liturgical drama of the story of Adam and Eve, acted both inside and outside of many churches, at the moment of their Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Adam, after hurling a wailing Eve to the ground, kicking her, and dragging her by the hair, cries out in fury and dismay:

Oh, evil woman, full of treason....

Forever contrary to reason,

Bringing no man good in any season:

Our children’s children to the end of time

Will feel the cruel whiplash of your crime!

Moreover this view of Eve and of women in general has been insinuated into the culture to such an extent that both men and women believe it defines a natural condition of women. It is a pernicious view and the degree to which it continues to subtly influence in negative ways our perception of women must be constantly born in mind.

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* Holwick: certainly other understandings are also possible; it is apparent the author has a low view of Scripture.