The harmful myth of Adam and Eve
How to wake up from indoctrination
The following is an excerpt from the book, “When God was a Woman” by Merlin Stone (1976). This excerpt was one of handful of powerful truths that woke me up - not just to my childhood Catholic indoctrination but to the current programing of the masses without very little questioning for 2000 years. For me, a big part of waking up is confronting thousands of myths and out-right lies, that I am willing to challenge for me and for future generations.
This is the true value of waking up.
“As a child, I was told that Eve had been made from Adam’s rib, brought into being to be his companion and helpmate, to keep him from being lonely.
As if this assignment of permanent second mate, never to be captain, was not oppressive enough to my future plans as a developing member of society, I next learned that Eve was considered foolishly gullible. My elders explained that she had been easily tricked by the promises of the perfidious serpent. She defied God and provoked Adam to do the same, thus ruining a good thing- the previously blissful life in the Garden of Eden. Why Adam himself was never thought to be equally as foolish was apparently never worth discussing.
But identifying with Eve, who was presented as the symbol of all women, the blame in some mysterious way mine - and God, viewing the whole affair as my fault, chose to punish me, by decreeing:
“I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.” (Gen. 3:16)
So even as a young girl, I was taught that, because of Eve, when I grew up I was to bear children in pain and suffering. As if this was not sufficient penalty, instead of receiving compassion, sympathy or admiring respect for my courage, I was to experience this pain with guilt, the sin of my wrongdoing laid heavily upon me as punishment for simply being a woman, a daughter of Eve.
To make matters worse, I was also supposed to accept the idea that men, as symbolized by Adam, in order to prevent any further foolishness on my part, were presented with the right to control, me – to rule over me. According to the omnipotent deity, whose righteousness and wisdom I was expected to admire and respect with a reverent awe, men were far wiser than women. Thus, my penitent, submissive position as a female was firmly established by page three of the nearly one thousand pages of the Judeo-Christian Bible,
But this original decree of male supremacy was only the beginning. The myth describing Eve’s folly was not to be forgotten or ignored. We then studied the words of the prophets of the New Testament who repeatedly utilized the legend of the loss of Paradise to explain and even prove the natural inferiority of women.
The lessons learned in the Garden of Eden were impressed upon us over and over again. Man was created first. Woman was made for man. Only man was made in God’s image. According to the Bible, and those who accepted it as the divine word, the male god favored men and had indeed designed them as naturally superior. Even now I cannot help wondering how many times these passages from the New Testament were read from the authoritative position of a Sunday pulpit or from the family Bible that had been pulled down from the shelf by father or husband – and a pious woman listened to:
“Let the women learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach or usurp authority over a man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression…” (I Timothy 2:11-14)
“For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. Let the women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, so saith the law. And if they learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home; for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.” (I Corinthians 11:3,7,9)
…
But there was still something about the myth of Adam and Eve that lingered, seeming to pervade the culture at some deeper level. It appeared and reappeared as the symbolic foundation of poems and novels. It was visually interpreted in oils by the great masters whose paintings glowed from the slide projectors in my art history courses. Products were advertised is high fashion magazines suggesting that if a woman wore the right perfume, she might be able to pull the whole disaster off all over again.
It was even the basis of dull jokes in the Sunday comics. It seemed that everywhere woman was temping man to do wrong. Our entire society agreed; Adam and Eve defined the images of men and women. Women were inherently conniving, contriving and dangerously sexy, while gullible and somewhat simple minded at the same time. They were in obvious need of a foreman to keep them in line - and thus divinely appointed, many men seemed quite willing.”
In my next entries I talk about:
Waking up to the Human Condition
How the ego works
How psychology helps with awakening
Thank you for joining me.
Stay tuned.
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