This is not the story of Adam and Eve, but the story of Eve and Adam: unraveling gender-based interpretations of the Bible. The original creation story depicts the events that occurred at the very beginning of time while blaming the fall of humanity on a seductive yet simultaneously naive woman. The discovery of ancient Goddess-worshipping cultures in the 19th century allowed us to further analyze the political landscape of these pre-Christian societies. Through the revolutionary discovery of these artifacts, one can argue that the creation story of Adam and Eve was intricately engineered to suppress Goddess-worshipping religions and expand patriarchal ideologies.
Prior to analyzing tangible evidence, it is crucial to understand the sociological dynamics at play. Patriarchy is rooted in the importance of confirmed paternity (indefinitely knowing who the father of each child is). Without it, a woman holds significant power over her offspring, consequently shaping the minds of future societies. My previous article highlights many of the key archaeological records that reveal that the preceding matriarchal economies relied heavily– if not completely–on women .
Sometime between 1300 BC and 1000 BC, the Hebrews conquered Canaan. The land was divided amongst the tribes— with an elite group called the Levites living among each of them. It is during this period that documents reveal the violent attacks the Hebrews launched on the Goddess societies in Canaan. Archaeological evidence and biblical literature suggest Levite priests were in continual contact with the religion of the Goddess.
Living amongst Goddess-worshipping societies proved to be the Levites’ largest societal struggle, with texts revealing wildly antagonistic laws aimed at suppressing these societies. These laws were so severe that they commanded members of the Hebrew religion to murder their own family if they did not worship God, the father (Deut. 13:6). Despite these laws, several reports show women attempting to continue worshipping the female deity.
The Levites were among the first to institute sexual morality by condemning unmarried women who were not virgins (Deut. 22:19). Hebrew women were taught that for a woman to sleep with more than one man was evil — while it was simultaneously acceptable for their husbands to have sexual relations with as many women as they could afford (Exod. 21:10). The Levites wrote that if a woman committed adultery, both she and her lover were to be stoned to death (Deut. 22:20-22).
The Levites’ obsession with paternity extended far beyond adultery. According to their laws, rape was to be equated to marriage and therefore viewed as a declaration of ownership (Deut. 22:28–29). If the rape victim was married, she was to be stoned to death for dishonoring her husband (Deut. 22:23–25). Even the position of a faithful married woman was unstable under Levite law, as only the husband could demand a divorce with a written note (Deut. 24:1).
It was clear to the Levite leaders that the existence of a Goddess-worshipping religion— one in which women held prominent roles— opposing their patriarchal beliefs. Not only were they struggling to integrate gender hierarchies, but they were doing so alongside a religion that completely contradicted their male kinship system.
Thus, they curated a story that antagonized their rival religion and held man to the standard of God’s image while simultaneously extinguishing some of the matriarchal religions’ traditional customs and beliefs. Beliefs that revered pregnant women as the closest resemblance of a creator on Earth. Customs included respecting snakes for their knowledge and eating from the sycamore fig tree as a symbol of worship for the Goddess.
A story in which God created man in His image saw that he was lonely and then formed a woman as his helper from a small rather insignificant part of man (Gen. 1–2). After listening to a malicious serpent, the woman convinces the man to eat the fruit on the forbidden tree (Gen 3:6–11). This first woman is not just to blame for humanity’s downfall, but she is also to blame for the pain of every woman’s childbirth and henceforth be considered property of her husband (Gen 3:13:14–16). The Levites vilified the sacred sycamore fig tree of the Goddess, demonized the prophetic serpents they once revered, and weaponized the physical pain of childbirth, ensuring that all women would identify with Eve. Most significant is the creation story’s conclusion that Eve would only ever desire her husband, laying the foundation for the rise of the male kinship system— possible only with knowledge of paternity.
