EVE

EVE (Heb. חַוָּה, Ḥavvah), the first woman, wife of adam , and mother of the human race. After Adam had reviewed and assigned names to the animals, but had not found a suitable mate among them, God put him to sleep, removed one of his ribs, and formed it into a woman. Adam immediately recognized this being as an integral part of himself, his own bone and flesh, and called her "Woman" (Heb. 'ishah) because she was taken "from Man" (Heb. 'ish). (Unlike the two English words, the Hebrew ones are completely unrelated etymologically, despite their outward resemblance.) For this reason, a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife so that two become one (Gen. 2:23–24). It was the woman whom the serpent induced to eat the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and she in turn gave some to her husband to eat. It brought them intellectual maturity (some say also sexual awareness, but this was more likely born with the first recognition of physical kinship; see above), and earned for the woman the pain of childbirth and subjection to her husband, and for the man drudgery. After this incident, Adam named his wife Eve Ḥavvah because she was "the Mother of all Living" (Gen. 3:20), an epithet with strong mythical overtones suggesting that Eve was originally a goddess who was demythologized by the biblical writer. The Greek translates the name as Zōē ("life"), in keeping with the wordplay. Rabbinic exegesis, however, connected the name with Aramaic ḥewyā ("serpent"), and observed that the serpent was her undoing and that she was her husband's "serpent." This etymology has been revived in recent times by the connection of the name with a ḥwt, probably Hawwat, a Phoenician deity attested in a stela from Carthage in North Africa, and on urns from Cagliari in Italy. That she was a serpent-goddess is based only on the Aramaic etymology. In biblical Hebrew (Job 18:12) şēlāʿ is an epithet meaning "wife." Eve's creation from Adam's rib or side (Heb. şēlāʿ) provides the epithet with an etiology. The Sumerian Paradise Myth of Enki and Ninhursag provides another possible sidelight   on the role of the rib in the biblical story. When Enki had a pain in his rib, Ninhursag caused the goddess Nin-ti, "Lady of the Rib," to be born from him. The Sumerian logo-gram ti means both "rib" and "life," and it may be that the Mesopotamian "Rib Lady" lies behind the rib/life motif in the biblical story. Eve gave birth to Cain and Abel (Gen. 4:1–2), and after Abel was murdered, she gave birth to Seth as a replacement (Gen. 4:25). The etiology of women's sexual subjugation to their husbands (Gen 4:16) is extended in the New Testament. According to I Tim. 2:14, the story of Eve's creation after Adam and the fact that she, not he, was deceived justify female subjection to men and their exclusion from speaking roles in the church. Although nothing further is related of Eve in the Bible, her figure continues to generate an enormous amount of feminist and theological literature. (Marvin H. Pope / S. David Sperling (2nd ed.) -In the Aggadah Eve was created from the 13th rib on Adam's right side (Targ. Jon., Gen. 2:21) after Adam's first wife, lilith , left him. God chose not to create her from Adam's head, lest she be swellheaded; nor from his eye, lest she be a flirt; nor from his ear, lest she be an eavesdropper; nor from his mouth, lest she be a gossip; nor from his heart, lest she be prone to jealousy; nor from his hand, lest she be thievish; nor from his foot, lest she be a gadabout (Gen. R. 18:2). As soon as Adam beheld Eve, who was exceedingly beautiful (BB 58a), he embraced and kissed her. He called her Ishah (אישה), and himself Ish (איש), the addition of the letter yod to his name and the letter he to hers indicating that as long as they walked in a godly path, the Divine Name (Yod-He) would protect them against all harm. However, if they went astray, His Name would be withdrawn, and there would remain only esh (אש, "fire"), which would consume them. Ten resplendent bridal canopies, studded with gems, pearls, and gold, were erected for Eve by God, who Himself gave her away in marriage and pronounced the blessings, while angels danced and beat timbrels and stood guard over the bridal chamber (PdRE 12). samael (Satan), prompted by jealousy, chose the serpent to mislead Eve (PdRE 13). According to another tradition, the serpent itself wished to lead Eve to sin since it desired her (Sot. 9b; Shab. 196a). The serpent approached Eve rather than Adam since it knew that women are more readily persuaded (ARN1 1:4). Initially, Eve hesitated to eat the fruit itself, and only did so after touching the tree and discovering that no harm befell her (Yal., Gen. 26). Immediately she saw the Angel of Death before her. Expecting her end to be imminent, she resolved to make Adam also eat of the forbidden fruit lest he take another wife after her death (PdRE 13). Nine curses and death were pronounced on Eve in consequence of her disobedience (PdRE 1). Eve conceived and bore Cain and Abel, according to one view, on the day of her expulsion from Eden (Gen. R. 22:2). Afterward Adam and Eve lived apart for 130 years (Er. 18b). After they were reunited, she bore Seth (Gen. R. 23:5). When Eve died, she was interred beside Adam in the cave of Machpelah in Hebron (PdRE 20). -In Christian Tradition The New Testament mentions the deception of Eve as a warning to Christians (II Cor. 11:3), and stresses Adam's precedence in support of the view that women ought to be submissive and find their fulfillment in childbearing (I Tim. 2:11–15; cf. I Cor. 11:8–12). While Eve does not figure as a type in the New Testament, Paul's doctrine of the "New Adam" (i.e., Jesus) and his implicit comparison of Eve and the Church (Eph. 5:22–23) anticipate the development of later Christian typology according to which the creation of Eve from Adam's rib represents the emergence of the Church from the open wound in the side of Jesus upon the cross. Justin, Irenaeus, and other Church Fathers compared and contrasted Eve, the first woman, and Mary, the mother of Jesus. Mary is seen as "new Eve," a title which Paul assigned to the Church collectively. The disobedience and the infidelity of the first (who, like Mary, was married and a virgin at the time of sin) is contrasted with and followed by the obedience and faith of the second. Eve is thus restored to wholeness in the Virgin Mary as Adam is in Jesus. Protestants, in their opposition to the Catholic veneration of Mary, did not develop this typology (see adam in Christianity). -In Islam Eve (Ar. Hawwāʾ), the name of Adam's wife, is not mentioned expressly in the Koran; she is called the "spouse" in the tale of their sinning against Allah, having been influenced by Iblīs, the Satan (7:18, 20:115). Nevertheless, this name is found in three poems of the old-Arabic poetry, one of Umayya ibn Abī-al-Salt and two of ʿAdī ibn Zayd, a Christian living in the times of Muhammad. (The third poem is suspected to be a falsification.) For Eve in the arts, see adam , In the Arts. (Haïm Z'ew Hirschberg) -BIBLIOGRAPHY: H. Gressmann, in: ARW, 10 (1907), 358ff.; S. Reinach, in: RHR, 78 (1918), 185ff.; A.H. Krappe, in: Gaster Anniversary Volume (1936), 312–22; T.C. Vriezen, Onderzoek naar de Paradijsvoorstelling (1937); S.N. Kramer, Enki and Ninhursag (1945); idem, History Begins at Sumer (1958), 195–6; J. Heller, in: Archiv Orientalni, 26 (1958), 636–58 (Ger.). IN THE AGGADAH: Ginzberg, Legends, index. IN CHRISTIAN TRADITION: New Catholic Encyclopedia, 5 (1967), 655–7; Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, 5 (1913), 1640–55; Dubarle, in: Recherches de Science Religieuse, 39 (1951), 49–64. IN ISLAM: J. Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen (1926), 108–9; Hirschberg, in: Rocznik Orientalistyczny, 9 (1933), 22–36; J. Eisenberg and G. Vajda, in: EIS2 (1966). ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: KAI II, 102–3; E. Pagels, Adam, Eve and the Serpent (1988); H. Wallace, in: ABD II, 666–67; N. Wyatt, in: DDD, 316–17.