Div school is always fun (except when I’m eating oatmeal for the third meal in a row and googling the meaning of words I think I know while wearing pajamas at four o’clock in the afternoon), but this week was extra fun because there was so much scriptural women stuff.

Eve and Eden

The first time I ever really started thinking of doing religious scholarship was in a Milton class where we were reading Paradise Lost, and I noticed that Eve’s interactions with divinity always happened through Adam, which annoyed me. Partially because I really, really think the Eden story matters. For Christians and Westerners, it’s one of the stories we understand ourselves through.

As I noted in a previous post, LDS Christians understand the story a little differently than it’s often told—we think that Eve’s choice was brave and necessary. But there are still things that bother me about the story, which is why Carol Meyers’s book Rediscovering Eve has been so much fun. Meyers reads the story straight from the text, trying to filter out the commentary that’s followed it for thousands of years. She points out things I hadn’t noticed before, like the text never indicates that the snake is the devil, and it doesn’t call Eve’s choice a sin—that word first appears when Cain kills Abel. My very favorite part about the book, though, are her alternative translations, like

man=human

Meyer explains that ‘adam is a word that means the proper name “Adam,” as well as "man” and “human.” ‘adam sounds a lot like ‘adamah, which means “arable land.” So when “the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground” another translation could be "the Lord God formed the earthling from the earth” (so delightfully sci-fi). Which means 1. There’s a way of reading the creation of the first human in this chapter as gender neutral and 2. It’s a pun (71).

Meyers also says that “these two words, ‘adam and ‘adamah, are not simply a pun; they are organically connected. And they are not mere labels; they are also signifiers of the very essence of what they designate. The use of ‘adam indicates that the essence of human life is not its eventual classification into gendered categories but rather its organic connection to the earth…. Human life is inextricably related to that which makes life possible” (72). The creation and interdependence suggested here remind me of Mother Earth, an idea I love because, at a biological and evolutionary level, we come from the earth. Biologically, we are translations of water and light and soil and air. Evolutionarily, we come from the depths of her seas. We are children of earth and her water and, like all family, our fates are intertwined.

rib=side

Myers also points out that while many translations of the Bible say that the Lord removes a rib from Adam to make Eve, the word translated as “rib,” sela, can also mean “side,” and most often occurs in the Bible in an architectural context, like “the side of the building.” (It can also mean swinging doors, an apt metaphor for the purposes of the text, since “together they form a wide door; alone they occupy only half the entryway” [74-75].) Opening ourselves up to a translation of “side” rather than “rib” would change this moment from a fairly minor surgery to a splitting in half of the first human to make the second. Meyer argues that this, in combination with translating ‘adam as “human” could indicate that in this understanding of creation, the first human was androgynous and the splitting was the creation not just of Eve, but also of Adam. It was the creation of gender. This makes sense contextually partially because the idea of an androgynous first human is a pretty common part of a lot of creation myths trying to explain romantic and sexual attraction—like Plato’s Symposium.

Asherah, Heavenly Mother, the Tree of Life

In addition to getting to read about Eve, I read a lot about Asherah. In LDS Christianity, we believe in a Heavenly Mother, which is why a lot of LDS Christians I know get excited about Asherah. Quick recap: Asherah is a goddess who was worshipped in a variety of places including, it seems, ancient Israel. There’s a lot of debate about how she’s worshipped, who she is worshipped by, and if she was ever a part of early mainstream Judaisms. In a book called The Early History of God, Mark Smith argues that she was, although he thinks the evidence indicating that she was Yahweh’s wife is not yet conclusive. (Some other scholars I’ve read are pretty sold, some others really rag on the idea, so it’s exactly how you’d imagine a scholarly debate going.)

But here’s the exciting stuff, the new stuff for me: Smith argues that although Asherah’s traces have mostly been expunged from the Hebrew Bible (she largely appears in references to cultic items—staffs or trees located in the temple), she continues to appear in the figure of Wisdom, who regularly appears in the text. Like Asherah, Wisdom “is a female figure, providing life and nurturing.” Just as exciting (even more?) Smith suggests that, because Asherah was regularly represented in temples by a staff or a tree by the alter, the figure of the Tree of Life is also a continued manifestation of her. He points to Proverbs 3:18 as especially revealing here: “She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are made happy” (95).

Of course, this may not be your thing, that’s cool. But me, I love the idea that Heavenly Mother might be preserved in ancient scripture, pressed between its pages despite the efforts of the Deuteronomical record keepers. I love the idea that she is found in the Tree of Life, especially as recent research demonstrates that trees exist in community and take care of each other—they are life-giving and healing and nurturing—all things ancient Israelites associated with Asherah and all things I associate with God.

But then, I don’t take very much convincing, becauseI’ve been in love with trees my whole life. In one of my earliest memories I was as tall as the new Plumaria tree in my front yard and I swung around it, my hand covering its tiny trunk. Years ago my best friend told me that everyone needs “trees they trust,” and I don’t know what that means, but I’ve been looking for them ever since. Trees, like mountains, make me believe in God more, so it’s not a hard sell for me.