“The Voice of Your Wife”: Why an Ancient Interpreter Chose to Voice Eve with a Testament

Eve’s Testament (Greek Life of Adam and Eve 15–30) contains an expansive first-person retelling of the Eden narrative in which an elder Eve remembers her younger self calling to Adam “with a loud voice” and saying, “listen to me!” She then admits that when she opened her mouth, “the Devil was speaking,” and she was able to quickly persuade her husband to eat of the forbidden fruit. The unparalleled decision of an ancient author to voice the primordial woman with a testament builds exegetically on a textual problem in Gen 3:17 where YHWH Elohim punishes the man for “listening to the voice of his wife” when the woman never spoke to the man in Gen 2–3. Eve’s Testament provides the missing voice of Adam’s wife, and through it, we learn how the devil used her voice to get Adam “cast out of Paradise.”

Milton's Manly Angels

<p>The masculine nature of the angels in Paradise Lost, in conjunction with their sexuality as revealed in Book VIII, prompted C. S. Lewis to try and explain away, not entirely convincingly, any potential “homosexual promiscuity” in his Preface to the epic. But other critics are unconcerned about the angels’ sexuality, probably because, unlike Lewis, they see them as essentially immaterial beings. In what follows I argue that a complete understanding of the angels’ sexuality must rest on Milton’s gradual revelation of the angels’ morphic substance, critical to their sexuality and gender identity. Milton’s use of the conventions associated with classical pastoral in depicting the angels suggests a male homosocial model analogous with the learning institutions of Milton’s own historical context – helpful when it comes to establishing the type of society, and relationships, in the heaven of Paradise Lost. Similarly, an exploration of bi-erotic elements occurring elsewhere within the Miltonic canon helps contextualise the bisexual potential of angelic desire. With these things in mind, a comprehensive understanding of the angelic sexuality can be achieved through close study of instances of desire, and sexuality, in Paradise Lost. The strong parallel between the angels, and Adam and Eve infers the potential for their descendants to evolve into a similar state of intimacy free of “Of membrane, joynt, or limb, exclusive barrs”.</p>

Milton's Manly Angels

<p>The masculine nature of the angels in Paradise Lost, in conjunction with their sexuality as revealed in Book VIII, prompted C. S. Lewis to try and explain away, not entirely convincingly, any potential “homosexual promiscuity” in his Preface to the epic. But other critics are unconcerned about the angels’ sexuality, probably because, unlike Lewis, they see them as essentially immaterial beings. In what follows I argue that a complete understanding of the angels’ sexuality must rest on Milton’s gradual revelation of the angels’ morphic substance, critical to their sexuality and gender identity. Milton’s use of the conventions associated with classical pastoral in depicting the angels suggests a male homosocial model analogous with the learning institutions of Milton’s own historical context – helpful when it comes to establishing the type of society, and relationships, in the heaven of Paradise Lost. Similarly, an exploration of bi-erotic elements occurring elsewhere within the Miltonic canon helps contextualise the bisexual potential of angelic desire. With these things in mind, a comprehensive understanding of the angelic sexuality can be achieved through close study of instances of desire, and sexuality, in Paradise Lost. The strong parallel between the angels, and Adam and Eve infers the potential for their descendants to evolve into a similar state of intimacy free of “Of membrane, joynt, or limb, exclusive barrs”.</p>

Created After, From, and For the Man?

This article examines the diachronic development of Shiʿi exegetic discourse on the sentence Khalaqakum min nafs wāḥida wa-khalaqa minhā zawjahā (“created you from a single soul and created its mate from it”) in the Quranic verse 4:1, customarily read as describing the creation of the first couple, Adam and Eve. Applying feminist discourse analysis and focusing on the Arabic-language commentaries of twelve premodern Imāmī exegetes from the third/ninth to the eleventh/seventeenth century, my study reveals that the medieval commentary material both accumulated and transformed along a hermeneutical trajectory comprising three distinctive discursive stages. The first stage established the lore on Eve’s creation in dismissive terms, and the second strengthened these misogynous views to make the potential substance of Eve’s creation even more negligible. This concept was further expanded in the third discursive stage, in which the weak woman, inclined toward the material and the corporal, was seen as created to provide service and entertainment for the man. Her creation was thus used to justify gender hierarchy, even the seclusion of women.

Women Were Not Created of Inferior Celestial Material

The Qur’an establishes the spiritual sameness of men and women, and indeed of all human beings regardless of gender, race, or other physical or indeed mental differences. Adam and Eve were created from the same soul, as mates, and all men and women emanate equally from both Adam and Eve, and from that same soul. The nature of all men and women can moreover be traced back to the “divine breath” itself, as the Qur’an states that God fashioned the human being from clay and water and then breathed into it of His Spirit.

Eve Is Not Blamed for the Fall from Eden, Nor Are Women Guilty by Association

The Qur’an blames Adam and Eve equally for the Fall from the Garden, on one occasion reproaching Adam specifically, no doubt as the symbol of the human race, which is often referred to as the Children of Adam. Eve is never singled out for particular blame nor depicted as the temptress who lured Adam to sin. In the Qur’anic account, rather, Satan whispers to both Adam and Eve and leads both astray, and both are equally accountable.

"Why Archaeology is important for Theology"

The Old Testament is clearly a mixture of myths and real historical figures with their events. There is no question about the contribution of mythology, since much of Genesis has been formed from common mythological accounts from all over the ancient Near East. The stories of Creation, the primordial couple, the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, the Great Flood, and much more, are a commonplace of narratives throughout the region. Although these accounts are mythological, it does not mean that they have not been shaped by real events. Specialists speculate about a great flood that took place in the Near East as a result of rising water levels at the end of the last Ice Age (around 5000 BC). This coincided at a time when the Agricultural Revolution had taken over the Fertile Crescent and Egypt. Various peoples of the Levant adopted mythological narratives and reformulated them to create their own unique and original tales. Some of the main figures of the Bible, such as Adam and Eve, Noah, Lot, finally the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) were their own compositions but, as can be seen with the patriarch Abraham, who was not an exclusive figure of the Hebrew people, his conversion to monotheism is, however, something peculiar to the spiritual creativity of the Jews. Here as in the composition of the New Testament, archeology is the necessary aid to locate the reality and the truth of sacred history and its development in human time.

The Doctrine of Justification in the Neo-Latin Biblical Poetry of Silesian Reformation Poets and their Interpretation of the Biblical Theme of the Fall of the First Parents

The aim of this article is to analyze a selection of works by Silesian Protestants who, in poetic form, explained the biblical theme of the fall of the first parents in the context of the Reformation teaching on justification. The article consists of three parts. The first gives a short presentation of the literary phenomenon of neo-Latin poetic alterations of various books, fragments, and biblical themes by Silesian poets who were active in this literary field from the mid-sixteenth century to the mid-seventeenth century. The scale, area and time frame of the mass distribution of this literature are presented here, and it is noted that it was created as a result of the cultural and educational influence of the leading teacher of the Lutheran Reformation, viz. Philip Melanchthon. The second part of the article provides a theological explanation of the biblical story of the fall of the first parents, or original sin, in the context of the doctrine of justification as interpreted by Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, Huldrych Zwingli, and John Calvin. The third part discusses how some Silesian poets like Thomas Mawer (1536–1575), Laurentius Fabricius (1539–1577), Melchior Ostius (1569–1637) and Fridericus Wolbertus (active at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) presented the doctrine of justification in poems describing the fall of Adam and Eve. The conclusions emphasize the importance of this type of work for the spread of the Reformation doctrine of justification, which opened the peaceful path to ideological and religious discussions in Central and Eastern Europe at that time.