> CB: Yes, agreed, and what about whose interests were served by portraying
Eve, a woman , as causing a fall , instead of a rise. Why the interests of
patriarchy, of course. Now correct my history, but didn't patriarchy go all of
the way back to Abraham , in 1900 BC, way before the Roman Empire
and Christianity ?
There is a counter-reading / re-interpretation of the Adam and Eve story by Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality. Her interpretation doesn't hold much water historically, but she does point out that Eve wasn't present when the commands were given to Adam (I'd have to check this to be certain). There is also a good critique of patriarchy by Pamela Milne in the Journal for Feminist Studies in Religion, Spring, 1989, "The Patriarchal Stamp of Scripture."
ken