Eve and Adam

My endebtedness to Nem, and particularly her post yesterday, is important to note at the outset here!

I briefly mentioned the nature of ‘fallenness’ in the Lash post yesterday. I have just read some interesting comments by Phyllis Trible, an American feminist OT scholar whose lucid and profound interpretation of some particular ‘problem texts’ in the OT is well-known – I will write about her and Judges 19 (surely the most horrifying of all biblical stories) at some point.

She was asked in an interview if she would talk about ‘Adam and Eve’. She replied: ‘Eve and Adam would be better’. Asked why, she suggests: ‘It got your attention for one thing. If shifts the whole discussion. It undercuts the concept of order, the man first and the woman second.’

It’s interesting what happens when our familiar language is subverted. Perhaps most noticeably, we take a second look and think about something in a fresh way that our former familiarity with the language may not have permitted. This is a central feature of Trible’s scholarship, of looking for the voice of the woman in a story told almost exclusively by powerful men.

I was schooled in the Roman Catholic tradition, and most of my teachers were women. The Romans get a rather bad press about their view of women, particularly in the priesthood – and not without good reason. Yet the centrality of Mary in its liturgy and symbolism makes an important commitment to the witness of women in Scripture, and especially the story of Jesus. After the festive period, the person of Mary is often forgotten, and even during the festive period the gospel of Luke is not read very often. The Magnificat remains one of the central pieces of Anglican liturgy, with its message of humility, peace and the inversion of power structures nowhere better embodied than in the one who sings it: Mary, a young girl.

Dan Brown’s stuff about Mary Magdelene marrying Jesus is interesting enough, but risks drawing attention away from the real concerns of women in Scripture. Interesting that in Brown’s view, Mary Magdalene is associated with scandal and illegitimacy – a persistent and damaging view of women. Forgetting Brown’s mention of the apocryphal ‘Gospel of Mary’, perhaps feminist scholars are attempting a construction of the testimony of women in biblical stories, of using different language and ideas as a way of shedding some new light on these ancient texts.

A further point about Dan Brown is his seeming unwillingness to actually get the real shape of the gospels’ portrayal of women, in which Mary Magdelene is a part. If the early church sought to discredit Mary Magdalene through giving her the traditional status of a prostitute, they did a rather bad job. Mary’s clear place within the gospels’ array of usually poor and devout women, attentive to the words and works of Jesus (I might add, because of his hospitality and welcome towards them) makes their place in the narratives hardly worthy of one sought to be ‘slandered’, as Brown suggests.

If you’ve made it this far, my sincere thanks, and apologies for a second essay-length post. Perhaps being more concise might be a wise new year resolution.