Women, Sexism and our Origin Story

Based on Genesis 2+3

We all have a personal origin story–a story we tell ourselves about who we are, where we have come from, and what drives us.  Through these stories, we understand our own experiences.  They are the lens through which we view and experience the world, whether we know it or not.  

Comic book heroes are all about the power of the origin story.  For example:  Superman was born on the planet Krypton, but at an early age, his parents knew that the planet would be destroyed by an asteroid.  So they sent little superman to earth where he landed in a cornfield in the Midwest.  There, earth parents adopted him and cared for him.  When his adopted father was killed in a farm accident, Superman committed to saving people’s lives, since he couldn’t save his own father from his untimely accident.  

Superman viewed the world through the lens of his experiences, and the stories he knew about himself and his history.  Just as we do. 

In the Abrahamic traditions, we have our own origin story, the story of how the world was created, how animals and humans were created, and how our relationship with God and each other began.  

Genesis 1-3 are powerful myths that tell us a lot about ourselves and our relationship to God, each other and to the natural world. And what the origin story tells us can have far reaching impacts into our lived experiences.  

This is the story we usually hear: God created the first man, Adam, and then worried that Adam would be lonely. So from a piece of Adam’s rib God created Eve, and God put them both in the Garden of Eden.  God told them not to eat from one particular tree in the garden.  And the serpent talked Eve into eating the fruit, and Eve tricked Adam into eating, therefore sending humanity into sin for all time.  The ways our myths have been told in the Christian tradition have some far-reaching implications, for women and men.  

From this traditional telling of the story, women are less than men, because they were formed from a piece of a full man.  In this telling, women are responsible for humanity being flung out of the garden of Eden, and are sneaky, conniving, and not to be trusted.  

If our origin story says that women are less than men, and women are the root of our separation from God, well, that has some far reaching consequences–culturally, theologically, socially, and inter-personally….

These beliefs about women aren’t a recent problem.  They go way back:  

• We see the way Israelites treated women in the Biblical accounts.  They were lesser humans, and accounts do not either include women’s names or give them much to say.  
• 1st Century Jewish Historian, Philo, believed that this Genesis story did indeed mean that women were inferior to men.  Further, he said that God created in men the intellect, and in women God created the lesser powers of feeling and sensing.  
• There are also Apocryphal Texts–those texts that are written between the Old and New Testament–that warn about the danger of women leading people into sin. 

But these aren’t the only ways the church has understood these texts:  

• Throughout history, Rabbis and students of the Hebrew scripture have marveled at the complexity and nuance of this story, which is not conveyed through our english translation.  
• What’s more, the early church, the church that formed after Jesus’ death and resurrection, was wildly radical compared the culture of the Jewish community in the roman empire.  It included women as apostles.  These women were serving with men in leadership roles.  But we don’t know much about these women, do we?  Because their names were either changed or in some cases they were literally erased.  
• In Romans 16: 7, Paul gives greetings to Junia the apostle.  Early translators believed the feminine version of this was wrong–because women couldn’t possibly be apostles–and changed the name to the masculine form of Junio.  

We read a text through the lens of culture.  And if culture believes women should not possess an equal position to men, then we read and translate the text ways that validate our beliefs.  It’s just human nature for us to read a text with bias.  

I went back to the original Hebrew with some reliable, scholarly companions who’ve been doing this work for a long time.  And this is the translation we came up with.  

Take a listen.  You may even want to note the places where the text sounds different than what you are used to.  

Watch video of scripture here:  https://youtu.be/9DUS06mOnOA

I hope you heard the differences between the story that you were told, and the story this translation was trying to tell.  There are many differences, but for the sake of time, I’ll only point out a couple. 

That first human created had no particular gender.  It was simply Adam, also translated as “human”.  Adam from adamah.  Human from the Humus. Earthling from the earth.  It is only until God created a companion by essentially cutting the human in half, that one human was distinguished from the other, becoming Adam the man and Eve the woman.  

Our traditional translations say that Eve came from Adam’s side, which we then translate into rib, but a close reading indicates that the entire side or half of Adam became Eve.  Dr. Wil Gafney describes this as something like cell division.   

The implication of being an equal half of an original human is far reaching.  We women aren’t just a small piece of men, we come from the same stuff, in equal parts.  And yet, we are very different.  And what’s more, we humans, formed from the same stuff, come from each other, and need each other.  We come from each other, and are created and designed to return to each other.  

This is what God had in mind, when God created humans.  Because we came from each other, we are always returning to each other.  We love, support and cling to each other. We are created by God to be companions to each other. 

Which brings me to the next thing I want to point out.  

When the humans ate the fruit, there was not coercion.  Eve ate, and passed the fruit on to Adam.  And he willingly ate.  They both willingly ate of the fruit of the tree of knowing good and evil.  And when God came to the garden, these humans did not support and cling to each other as they were created to do. Instead, they ran and hid in fear.  

And when God called out to the humans, did you notice what Adam said?  He did not respond with “we” but with “I”.  In fact, right there in the translation of the original Hebrew, Adam said, “I…I…I…I”  We may think that he was stuttering, but the word, “I”, shows up four times in a row. The authors of this story wanted to emphasize the individuality of Adam.  He told on Eve, because he was concerned about his own self.  “He” was no longer part of a “we”.  He was an “I”, a human looking out for himself.

And Eve did the same thing.  She passed the blame onto the snake.  

Everyone in this story was concerned about themselves.  No one was clinging to each other, loving each other, supporting each other.  They were only concerned about protecting themselves.  

Superman did not know his origin story for a while.  He didn’t understand why he had powers or where they came from.  It was only when he understood the story of his birth parents and his original home, that he better understood and valued his own powers.  

That is exactly what happens to me when I read this translation of the creation myth.  When we peel back the cultural lens of patriarchy, we see a more true version of the myth, our origin story.  We see God creating an equal partner for that first human, a fitting companion.  And from that partnership, we see two humans that complement each other.  And we see that companionship go badly when both humans, uncoerced, eat from the tree of the knowing of good and evil.  

This story points us to the ongoing struggle for humanity.  That we are always protecting ourselves, saving ourselves, and looking out for “me first.”  We struggle to care about our companions, our neighbors, our partners in this life, in the same way we care about ourselves.  

This story has been derailed to focus on the weakness and sin of women and the vulnerability of men to women’s knowledge and power.  A more appropriate focus is the story of human’s need for mutual companionship and support.  

The first version of the story pits women against men (an unholy endeavor, come to think of it), and because of that, men will always “win.”  The second interpretation of the story looks at men and women as equally beautiful creations, demonstrating what happens when we don’t love, honor and support each other in our lives. 

The first version of the story makes women look conniving and deceitful for handing a piece of fruit to the man, and you know this comes out in the ways women are viewed in our culture.  This is what the “me too” movement was all about.  One in five women are sexually assaulted in some way in their lifetimes.  And when a handful of these one in five women come forward, they are not trying to entrap or humiliate men.  They are simply trying to be safe, and to make sure others can live in safety too.  When women take the brave, sometimes dangerous step of reporting crimes against them, they are met with accusations of “liar, temptress, trickster” or worse, “You were asking for it” or “You liked it.”

What if we took that generous interpretation of Genesis two and three and truly made it our origin story. I believe we can do that.  And I believe it has positive ripples for us in our lives.  

If we believe that we were created to be companions to each other, and not to scapegoat each other, than when a woman reports sexual violence, we believe her.  

This year, beloved Christian composer David Haas was credibly accused by dozens of women of assault.  And guess what happened–after decades of the church ignoring these allegations, or dismissing them, these allegations came into the light.  And people believed these women.  And embraced them.  

In addition to believing these women, many churches have decided to take a break from singing David Haas’ songs.  Our new hymnal, Voices Together, which comes out in a few months, will not include his songs.  

This was a tough call–because we all like to sing “Peace before you” and “I will come to you in the silence”.  But churches are choosing not to sing these songs out of respect for the women who had the courage to come forward.  How would it feel to a woman who has been hurt by Haas or assaulted by any other person to try to sing “I will come to you in the silence” in a worship service, knowing Haas’ story and history?  It is re-traumatizing.  It is dehumanizing.  It is alienating. And that is not who we have been created to be.

For this reason, Frazer’s worship planning team has made the difficult decision not to sing these songs for a time.  We honor women’s stories, and see them as fully human, divine images of God.  We want to be fitting companions for the women and men among us who have experienced assault and other forms of violence.  We want our decisions to reflect our origin story, and who we have been created to be.  Our decision reflects that we were created as equals, and companions, and we look out for each other. We believe victims when they bravely come forward.  And we trust and honor them, because that’s who God created us to be, and how God created us to be in relationship to each other. 

This move, this decision, allows our origin story–the story of us all being created in the image of God, the story of us being created to love and compliment each other–to come into fullness of being.  

Our origin stories are the lens through which we view the world.  And as we continue to be immersed in scripture and in the stories of who we are and who we have been created to be, we learn more about the God who created us and the vision God has for us. 

We were created by God from each other.  We were created as “we”, not “I.”  We were created as interdependent equals, and fitting companions for one another.  AMEN.