Decrypting Adam’s Masculinity: Agrippa on Sexuality and Redemption

The Lehrhaus, 2022

In Adam's fall we sinned all," read generations of schoolchildren learning the alphabet in colonial New England. The story of Adam and Eve has received considerable commentary over the past few millennia. The biblical account defies easy interpretation, contains manifold ambiguities, and raises serious theological questions. For both Jews and Christians, the primordial sin reflects deeper themes about the past, present, and future of humanity. Historically, misogyny has cast a long shadow over Jewish and Christian interpretations, which tend to emphasize Eve's erroneous behavior. Yet a close reading and comparative analysis of a midrash on Adam's role in the narrative sheds new light on the primordial sin. These novel interpretations shift the blame and reinterpret the narrative in unexpected ways that offer the modern reader surprisingly relevant moral teachings about sexuality.

“Inherited sin?” Erbsünde? Forscher aus dem Osten und Westen Europas an den Quellen des gemeinsamen Glaubens, 2024

Canadian-American Theological Review, 2020

Humans routinely use conceptual metaphors to understand complex concepts . On the subject of human evolution, scientists frequently employ the conceptual metaphor of childhood development/maturity as a framework for understanding . This article examines three such examples in the co-evolution of the human brain, language, and morality . Scripture likewise uses conceptual metaphors . Within Genesis 1, for instance, the conceptual metaphor of creation as a temple helps us to understand the meaning of God's creation and the role of humanity in it as imago Dei . This article argues that Genesis 2-3 also employs conceptual metaphor to explain humanity's "fall" and subsequent alienation from God . Since the action in the garden narrative begins with ha'adam naming the animals (language) and climaxes with the human couple's acquisition of the "knowledge of good and evil" (morality), the conceptual metaphor employed is childhood development. Humanity did not begin with a literal first pair, but the metaphor of maturity reveals many "virtual parallels" between the garden narrative and the evolutionary narrative. The "fall" of the first humans thus mirrors the "coming of age" not just of humanity, but of every individual person . Ha'adam therefore functions as an archetype-the "original pattern" that all have followed . Ultimately, these points of contact suggest a time period within which a "historical fall" could have occurred-between 75,000 years ago and the "Out of Africa" departure from the Levant 10,000 years later .

Although various literary methods have shown how the multidimensionality of the Eden story can be explicated in different ways, indeed in competing ways, there is hardly a reading that does not leave a remainder. If no single reading perspective can account for all the data, the only question is whether one reading can account for more of the data than another in a coherent way. In any case, it may take multiple readings to account for all the data. The claim to significance of the following reading lies in its capacity to minimize the remainder by providing a structure for illuminating the narrative that explains its overal thrust, accounts for the interaction of its characters, and sheds light on interpretational difficulties. 2 Although the reading is primarily synchronic, focusing on the narrative as a whole, it takes into account literary issues raised by a diachronic reading. 3 Minimally, a reading worthy of the name has to deal with the reasons for the Bible beginning its account of human history with a tree of knowledge, humans seeking to acquire divine-like knowledge, and serpents talking to women. In doing so, it must focus on the role * The biblical translations frequently follow the renderings of the NJPS The Torah or that of Everett Fox, In the Beginning (New York: Schocken, 1983), whose translation seeks to retain the exegetical possibilities of the Hebrew. 1 I am indebted to my colleague, Marc Brettler, and students, Michael Carasik and Aryeh Cohen, for their probing questions and helpful suggestions. 2 An alternative reading is that of Jerome T. Walsh, "Genesis 2:4b-3:24: A Synchronic Approach," JBL 96 (1977), pp. 161-77. Coming across this after composing mine, I was pleasantly surprised to find a reading that diverges so much in detail converge so much in conclusion. 3 Such a reading is becoming increasingly necessary in the light of the difficulty of source-critical readings at achieving consensus on either the literary unity or the genre of Gen. 2:4b-3:24; see John Van Seters, Prologue to History (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), pp. 109-19. © E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1996 Biblical Interpretation 4, 1 2 REUVEN KIMELMAN

In B. Becking & S. Hennecke (Eds.), Out of Paradise. Eve and Adam and Their Interpreters (pp. 50-66). Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press. (Hebrew Bible Monographs)., 2011

Thomas Aquinas (1224/5-1274) is one of the best known thinkers in the Latin West and his thought has been particularly influential in the Catholic Church for a long time. With regard to his view on women, Aquinas has a very poor reputation. It is easy to collect a number of quotations from his work that portray Aquinas as an extreme sexist: Eve is only created for the sake of procreation, in which the woman is passive and the man active; Eve is a 'mutilated male', subordinated to Adam. Women are not as intelligent as men, and are therefore less fully the image of God etc. One can leave it at that and depict Thomas Aquinas as an icon of medieval clerical misogyny. However, there have also been attempts to somehow exonerate him from the charge of sexism. Basically, two strategies have been developed to argue that Aquinas's ideas about gender are not as bad as the quotations given above would suggest at first sight. One strategy is to counterbalance the challenged passages with other texts from Aquinas that are more gender egalitarian. The other is to blame the social, artistic, scientific and juridical beliefs of the 13th century and argue that Aquinas' androcentrism is only a reflection of what was commonly held at that time. Both strategies are meant to lead to the same conclusion, viz. that the androcentric statements are 'not essential' to Thomistic thought. The first strategy is followed e.g. by Joseph Hartel, while the second is taken by Catherine Capelle. 1 Most common is a combination of both lines of argument, which we find, among others, in Kari Børresen's almost classical study Subordination et Équivalence and in the studies of Otto Hermann Pesch and Isnard Frank. On the one hand, they point at the growing influence of Aristotle's philosophical and biological views on generation and gender in the 13th century and its negative impact on Aquinas's ideas. On the other hand, they refer to Aquinas's properly theological ideas about grace and the order of salvation, where there is equality of the sexes, in contrast with the order of nature. 2 These strategies are not absurd, but they remain limited and somewhat superficial. In this chapter I propose to deal directly with some of the contested passages and argue that their meaning is not always what it seems to be at first sight: their textual and theoretical context, developments in Aquinas's thought and the historical background offer clues for alternative readings. It is not simple to reconstruct Aquinas's view on Adam and Eve. Aquinas did not write a commentary on the book of Genesis, nor a separate treatise on gender and sex. He also claims that the difference between the sexes is of physical nature and, therefore, not a proper subject for theological inquiry. The theologian's task is to reflect on human beings as regards their souls, he says. The body becomes only part of theological discourse insofar as it is related to the soul. 3

In this article, I study Eve's largest discourse in The life of Adam and Eve, greek version. At first, I introduce the theme of the change of perspective through a contemporary novel, Jostein Gaarder's Vita Brevis. Next, I show fastly the text with which I work, showing why I consider it as a Jewish text (and not Christian as it can seem to be at first). Then, I aproach Eve's main discours, observing in what way it is inserted in the narrative. I think about the way in which the change of perspective of Eve's retelling makes possible the construction of a narrative which mix “to tell” and “to interpret”, like agadic Midrashim. Moreover, I observe that this interpretation-tale presented by Eve opposes the traditional male-centred interpretation of the story of the Eden. In this sense, I propose that Eve's version of the story aims to desconstruct the aversion to Eve that used to be (and still is) very productive among the interpreters of the Bible. Eve sharply makes evident that there is another way of filling the gaps of the canonical narrative and, in this way, she shows the fragility of traditional interpretations. It is a literary (and comparative) study about a simple but very rich text, which can contain an ancient example of combative (and narrative) hermeneutic. This hermeneutic and its study, I think, can be useful in order to make us reflect about our contemporary hermeneutics, specially our feminist hermeneutics.

African Journal of Gender, Society and Development ISSN: 2634-3614 E-ISSN: 2634-3622, 2021

In Genesis 2-3, the story of Eve in the Garden of Eden has served as a major tool in the justification of women as evil, seductive, temptress, and the subordination of women. This paper explores the concept of creation and fall (sin) of humanity both in the biblical and some African creation myths. It also underscores the prevalent belief of all subsequent women as daughters of Eve

Vetus Testamentum, 2006

Augustinian Studies 23 (1992): 125–47.

2020

The purpose of my research is to explore the ways that intellectuals reinterpreted Eve using the Humanistic method during the Renaissance, questioning the naturalized relationship between women and sin. Humanism, a growing movement during the 15th century, placed emphasis on ascertaining meaning through analyzing works for their intended meaning and considering the context, while also revering God and antiquity alongside attention to the individual. Christine De Pizan and Isotta Nogarola use the Humanistic method of analysis in different ways to argue that Eve, and womankind, do not deserve a devious reputation and it is not justified by God. I will use historical artworks and writings to show how Eve was depicted prior to and during Renaissance Humanism. For example, Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel depiction of the Fall fundamentally differs from other previous works by redistributing the culpability of Adam and Eve; no longer is Eve a sensual being, nor entirely to blame for the Fall. Additionally, as is necessary with any historical analysis, I will examine the contextual factors that allowed for the reinterpretation of Eve, especially by women, including the ways that both were a product and yet also ahead of their time. Whether the reinterpretations are pro-feminine or not is irrelevant in many respects, for the significance stems from women taking back a piece of historiography of the prototype woman, Eve.