The Archetypal Eve

 

Creation of Eve, marble relief by Lorenzo Maitani on the Orvieto Cathedral, Italy.

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

To understand the Messianic or Christological Faith that we received from the biblical Hebrew we must distinguish two different threads concerning Eve: the archetypal Eve and the historical Eve. Much theological speculation surrounds the archetype of the woman beguiled by the Serpent, and too little attention is given to the historical Eve, the mother of Cain, a Hebrew city builder.

Theological approaches do not distinguish the historical Eve from the archetypal Eve. On the other hand, an anthropological approach identifies significant data that helps to identify Eve as one of the founders of the Hebrew ruler-priest caste. Because the earliest known Hebrew presence is in the Nile Valley, it helps to consider what Eve represented to her Nilotic Hebrew descendants.

It is evident that the early Hebrew believed in a hierarchical order of creation. God is outside and above that hierarchy. At the pinnacle of the created order are humans, created male and female. Other created beings exist as servants and messengers of the High God. These lesser spirits or angelic beings are venerated but not worshiped. This devotion to a Supreme God while accepting the existence of other lesser divine beings is called “henotheism.” The term was coined by Max Müller (1823-1900) who specialized in Oriental religions. He applied the term to the schools of Hinduism that acknowledge a High God as well as other lesser deities.

In Traditional African religions (TAR) and in the biblical view, God is intimately involved in the affairs of humans as a devoted father. Humans are to their Creator what children are to their biological parents.

The late Dr. Abraham Akrong (McCormick Theological Seminary) explains: "God in Africa is a relational being who is known through various levels of relationship with creation. In relationship to humanity, God is the great ancestor of the human race. Therefore, all over Africa God is portrayed more in terms of a parent than as sovereign."

C. L. Crouch made this observation about the relationship of humans to our Creator. He wrote, "The linguistic and cultural background of the words םלצ [image] and תומד [likeness] supports a reading of Gen. 1:26–7 as a statement of humanity’s divine parentage. As such it is intended to evoke the responsibilities of child to parent and of parent to child in the minds of its readers. Such an interpretation accommodates both the semantic range of the key terms םלצ and תומד and the sense that the statement is meant to be theologically significant."

This clarifies the early Hebrew conception of Eve who disobeyed the command of the Father and succumbed to the temptation of the Serpent. By heeding the Serpent’s voice, the archetypal Eve set aside her moral obligation to her Heavenly Father. Those who wish to be conformed to the image and likeness of the Father must be like Jesus whose priority was always to please his Father. That is summed up in the first and great commandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” (Matt. 22:37-39)

In the early Hebrew conception of the order of creation humans are at the pinnacle over which the Creator rules as a loving Father. As the last of God’s creations, Eve is the crown of the created order. As such, she is the prime target of the Serpent who wishes to invert the pyramid, placing himself at the pinnacle. That is the closest the Serpent can get to the level of God since the archetypal Serpent (the Devil) is also a creature.

Eve’s submission to the belly-crawler exchanged her exalted position for the serpent's dust and surrendered her glory for a baser image. In submitting to the serpent's will, the pyramid of God’s design was inverted. The serpent now reigns over the fallen world. This is why Satan is called “the prince of this world” in John 12:31.

In the scheme of redemption, a daughter of Eve is appointed to bring forth the Son of God. In this sense, the Bible is the Woman’s story; beginning with Eve’s failure and climaxing with the Woman who brings forth the Son of God who crushes the Serpent’s head (Gen. 3:15). This is the theological thrust from Genesis to Revelation and it involves historical people. The narrative suggests that women were held in higher regard by the early Hebrew than is generally recognized. Certainly, women play a significant role in God’s plan of salvation.

The archetypal Eve is wrapped in theological speculation about the origin of sin and death, the presence of evil, and the necessity of divine intervention. Theological speculation rarely connects to historical realities. However, considerable data is available to gain an accurate picture of the historical Eve. She was the Hebrew mother of at least one surviving son, Cain. Cain had a brother, Seth, who may have been the firstborn of Adam’s second wife (assuming that Adam observed the marriage and ascendancy pattern of the biblical Hebrew). Both Cain and Seth were clan chiefs and rulers over territories. Their descendants intermarried (caste endogamy) according to a marriage pattern that was already well established. Their heirs ascended to positions of authority. They established settlements, built fortifications, navigated rivers, patronized skilled craftsmen, engaged in commerce, observed and recorded celestial patterns, pioneered medical treatments, and enforced sacred law. 

The biblical data makes it clear that Eve and her Hebrew people were not the first humans on earth. As far as the material evidence goes, the first humans lived in Africa between three and four million years ago.

Related reading: The Adam and Eve of History; Hebrew Rulers with Two Wives; The Social Structure of the Biblical Hebrew; A Book about the Nephilim; Why Nekhen is Anthropologically Significant; Mounds of the Horite and Sethite Hebrew; The Historical Eve; The Father of Adam and Eve

Ayahuasca and iboga are used to communicate with other life-forms, especially snakes.

http://www.archive.org/stream/serpentworshipin211hamb/serpentworshipin211hamb_djvu.txt

Serpent Most Subtle

Now the snake was the most subtle of all the wild animals that Yahweh God had made. It asked the woman, 'Did God really say...?' (Gen. 3:1 NJB)


Alice C. Linsley


None should ever doubt that God has an enemy. That enemy is portrayed from very ancient times as a serpent who self-presents as one who offers advice. This reflects the experience of shamans who consume certain plants and plant combinations that cause them to see and even speak to snakes. Such shamanic religion was forbidden to Abraham and his people and is forbidden to "people of the Book" even today.

In his book The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge (1999), Jeremy Narby tells of his fieldwork with the Ashaninca and Quirishari of the Peruvian Amazon. Through use of the hallucinogen ayahuasca, derived from a serpent shaped vine (shown on left), Narby encountered the metaphysical reality presented in Genesis 3: the beguiling cosmic serpent who "was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say...?"

Ayahuasca vine

Narby explains, “I began my investigation with the enigma of ‘plant communication.’ I went on to accept the idea that hallucinations could be the source of verifiable information. And I ended up with a hypothesis suggesting that a human mind can communicate in defocalized consciousness with the global network of DNA-based life. All this contradicts principles of Western knowledge."

Plants with similar chemical properties have been found in Africa and Asia. The Genesis story is critical of seeking knowledge and wisdom from the wrong source. The story of Eve, the serpent, and the tree is likely an ancient criticism of using plant material from certain trees to alter consciousness so as to gain knowledge by occult means.

In his book Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis notes the Devils' many tactics. He stirs pride, hatred, animosity, cruelty and greed. He discourages, distracts and promotes doubt. He presents as one who is wise to those who are seeking knowledge. He casts doubt in our minds about God's Word and the true order of creation.

He suggests that God isn't good. Yet all of creation testifies that what God has made is good and reflects God's goodness. Were the angels to remain silent, these very stones would cry out "Hosannah!"

The cosmic Serpent tempts us to look only on the outer appearance and believe that the material is all there is. He urges men to set aside their only hope and to believe that there is no God, no eternity, no soul. Satan is the ultimate materialist.

He seeks to invert God's order of creation by bringing the woman, the crown of creation, under the authority of a creature who slithers on the ground. She is Ha-Va, the birther. The V is a very old glyph indicating the life-giver. Many words contain this glyph. Two are especially significant: vagina and the verb volcar, to overturn. The serpent understood the true nature of things. He needed only to go after the crown of creation to corrupt the whole. By consenting to the serpent's designs, Ha-Va (Eve) inverted the hierarchy of creation from this ▲ to this ▼. Each of us continues to do this daily when we consent to anything that is not of God.

The serpent is called the "dragon" in Revelation, and his end is described there. John's vision comes between the proclamation about the eternal Kingdom of Christ and the vision of the blasphemous Beast who makes war on the Saints. This recapitulates Genesis 3:15, the first promise of Scripture concerning the Woman and her Seed, the Holy One who crushes the Serpent’s head. This was accomplished at Christ’s birth, death, resurrection and ascension (“The Christ Event”) and the vision describes the victory in these words: “The woman was delivered of a boy, the son who was to rule all the nations with an iron rod, and the child was taken straight up to God and to his throne.” (Rev. 12:5) Revelation identifies the dragon as "that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray." (Rev. 12:9, 20:2)

Related reading: The Serpent of Eden; Serpent Symbolism; The Cosmic Serpent Exposed; The Biblical Meaning of Eve

The Tree in the Middle of the Garden

Alice C. Linsley


The Church Fathers agree that Humans were created originally to enjoy perfect communion with God. That would be possible only without sin. So the first humans were innocent, but something happened to cause them to sin. What happened involved a serpent and a tree and humans making the wrong choice, which is called disobedience.

The Church Fathers don't agree on the question of original mortality. As the original humans were flesh, and therefore finite, they would experience death. If you follow this line of reasoning, St. Paul is speaking of spiritual death, not physical death, when he speaks of sin entering the world by Adam and by sin, death.

St. John Chrysostom (347-407 A.D.) held that the first humans were created midway between corruption and incorruption and were free to choose. It is like the story (Deut. 27:11-26) of the Israelites gathered in the valley between Mount Gerizim (of blessing) and the Mount Ebal (of cursing) and God telling them to "Choose life!"

The Fathers speak of the tree in the middle of the Garden as having both a material and geographical presence and as representing a state of being. Adam stretched out his hand and took of the fruit of that tree. Christ stretched out his arms on the Tree (Cross) and broke the curse of Adam. The Cross, like the tree in Paradise, had a material and geographical presence but is also a state of being. As Christians we take up the cross and in doing so we choose life.


Related reading:  Trees in Genesis; The Sacred Center in Biblical Theology

St John Chrysostom on Eve's Sin

Alice C. Linsley


Eve was created to enjoy a unique relationship with the Creator. Being made in the Creator's Image, she enjoyed communion with the Creator as no other living thing. She also enjoyed a special intimacy with Adam, from whom she was made while he slept.

In considering Eve, we note that she had two trustworthy relationships in her life: one with her Creator and another with the man from whom she was created. In both relationships, Eve experienced a unique and special existence. She was a woman of high estate whose life was encompassed by great potential for fulfillment and joy.

What happened with Eve? Why did she act against her high estate and against the trustworthy relationships that were to bring her fulfillment? Why did she listen to the serpent’s lies instead of listening to God in whose image she was made? In listening to the creature rather than to the Creator, Eve became subjected to a creature of low estate. She exchanged the natural for the unnatural. So the first trespass was against the order of creation.

Likewise, instead of listening to God, Adam listened to his wife's delusion and became like the serpent, eating dust all the days of his toil. Adam’s fall recalls his origins from dust: "And God formed man of the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (Gen. 2:7).

St. John Chrysostom, one of the greatest biblical expositors of Christianity, explains that Eve's action is that of exchanging truth for falsehood. He wrote:

"...she revealed the secret of the instruction and told him what God had said to them, and thus received from him a different kind of advice, bringing ruin and death. That is to say, when the woman said, 'We do eat of every tree of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden God said, Do not eat or even touch it,' that evil creature, enemy of our salvation, in his turn offered advice at odds with that of the Lord. You see, whereas the loving God had forbidden their tasting that fruit on account of his great care for them lest they be subject to death for their disobedience, that evil creature said to the woman 'You will not truly die.'[ Gen 3:4 ] What kind of excuse could anyone find appropriate to the woman for being prepared to give her complete attention to the creature that spoke with such temerity? I mean, after God said, 'Do not touch it lest you die,' he said, 'You will not truly die.' Then, not being satisfied with contradicting the words of God, he goes on to misrepresent the Creator as jealous so as to be in a position to introduce deceit by this means, get the better of the woman and carry out his own purpose. 'You will not truly die,' he said. 'God, you see, knows that on the day that you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.' [ Gen 3:5 ] See all the bait he offered: he filled the cup with a harmful drug and gave it to the woman, who did not want to recognize its deadly character. She could have known this from the outset, had she wanted; instead, she listened to his word, that God forbade their tasting the fruit for that reason 'He knows that your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good from evil' puffed up as she was with the hope of being equal to God and evidently dreaming of greatness.

Such, after all, are the stratagems of the enemy: when ever he lures someone to a great height through deceit, at that very point he casts them down into a deep abyss. The woman, you see, had dreams of equality with God and hastened to taste the fruit; she had evidently set her mind and her thinking on that goal, and she thought of nothing else than how to drink the cup prepared for her by the wicked demon. That is to say, listen to the account Scripture gives so as to learn that she was bent on this course after receiving that deadly poison through the serpent's advice. 'The woman saw that the tree was good for eating, pleasing for the eyes to behold, and attractive to contemplate. She took some of its fruit and ate it.' [ Gen 3:6 ] True it is that 'evil converse corrupts good behavior.' [ I Cor 15:33 ] Why was it, after all, that before that wicked demon's advice she entertained no such idea, had no eyes for the tree, nor noticed its attractiveness? Because she feared God's direction and the punishment likely to follow from tasting the fruit; now, how ever, when she was deceived by this evil creature into thinking that not only would they not come to any harm from this but would even be equal to God, then evidently hope of gaining the promised reward drove her to taste it. Not content to remain within her own proper limits, but considering the enemy and foe of her salvation to be more trustworthy than God's words, she learned shortly afterwards through her own experience the lethal effect of such advice and the disaster brought on them from tasting the fruit. The text says, remember, "She saw the tree was good for eating, pleasing for the eyes to behold and attractive to contemplate," and she reasoned with herself, probably from the devil's deceit which he proposed to her through the serpent: If the tree is good for eating, can so delight the eyes and has some indefinable attractiveness about it, while tasting it provides us with the highest esteem, and we will have honor equal to the Creator, why should we not taste it?

Do you see how the devil led her captive, handicapped her reasoning, and caused her to set her thoughts on goals beyond her real capabilities, in order that she might be puffed up with empty hopes and lose her hold on the advantages already accorded her? 'She took some of its fruit,' the text says, 'and ate it; she gave it to her husband also, and they both ate it. Their eyes were opened, and they realized they were naked.' [ Gen 3:6, Gen 3:7 ] O woman, what have you done? You have not only followed that deadly counsel literally and trampled on the law imposed on you by God, spurning his instruction and treating it with such displeasure as to be discontented with such great enjoyment, but you have also presumed to take fruit from the one tree which the Lord bade you not to lay hold of, you put faith in the words of the serpent, you regarded its advice worthy of greater heed than the instruction given you by the Creator, and have been ensnared in such awful deception as to be incapable of any claim to excuse. Surely you're not, after all, of the same nature as the one who offered you the advice? He happened in fact to be one of those under your control, one of the servants placed by providence under your authority. Such being the case, why did you disgrace yourself, departing from the one for whom you were created, as whose helpmate you were made, in whose dignity you had equal share, one with him in being and one in language why then did you agree to enter into converse with the serpent, and by means of this creature accept the advice of the devil, which was plainly at variance with the Creator's injunction, without being turned aside from such evil intent, but rather presuming to taste the fruit through hope of what had been promised?

Well and good, then: so you cast yourself into such an abyss and robbed yourself of your preeminent dignity. Why did you make your husband a partner in this grievous disaster, why prove to be the temptress of the person whose help mate you were intended to be, and why for a tiny morsel alienate him along with yourself from the favor of God? What excess of folly led you to such heights of presumption? Wasn't it sufficient for you to pass your life without care or concern, clad in a body yet free of any bodily needs? to enjoy everything in the garden except for one tree? to have all visible things under your own authority and to exercise control over them all? Did you instead, deceived as you were by vain hopes set your heart on reaching the very pinnacle of power? On that account you will discover through experience itself that not only will you fail to achieve that goal but you will rob your self and your husband of everything already given you, you will fall into such depths of remorse that you will regret your failed intentions while that wicked demon, responsible for concocting that deadly plan, will mock and insult you for falling victim to him and incurring the same fate as he. I mean just as he had ideas above his station, was carried away to a degree beyond what was granted him, and so fell from heaven to earth, in just the same way did you have in mind to proceed, and by your transgression of the command were brought to the punishment of death, giving free rein to your own envy, as some sage has said: 'By the devil's envy death entered the world.' [ Wisdom 2:24 ]

Our text says, 'She gave it to her husband also, and they both ate it. Their eyes were opened.' Great was the man's indifference, too: even though like him she was human and his wife as well, still he should have kept God's law intact and given it preference before her improper greed, and not joined her as a partner in her fall nor deprived himself of such benefits on account of a brief pleasure, offending his benefactor who had also shown him so much loving kindness and had regaled him with a life so free of pain and relieved of all distress.

After all, were you not free to enjoy everything else in the garden in generous measure? Why did you not choose for yourself to keep the command that was so easy? Instead, you probably listened to the promise contained in the deadly advice coming from your wife, and buoyed up in your turn with hope you readily shared in the food. As a result you incur the penalty from each other, and experience teaches you not to place greater importance on the wicked demon's advice than on God.

Read all of St. John's commentary here.



Related reading:  The Biblical Meaning of Eve; Hierarchy in Creation: The Biblical View; Image of God or Imaging God?