Eve Was Framed
We centered a woman just to watch her fall.
If you grew up in church, you know the story. Eve took the fruit. Eve led Adam astray. Eve is the reason we can’t have nice things. Centuries of sermons, Sunday school flannel boards, and theology textbooks have made this the default reading of Genesis 3. The woman sinned first. The man was collateral damage.
It’s a tidy story. It’s also wrong.
Genesis 3:6. Read it carefully.
“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. And she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.”
Her husband. Who was with her.
Adam was there the whole time. He could have spoken up at any point. He could have punched the serpent. He could have slapped the fruit out of Eve’s hand. But no. What did Adam do? Nothing. He just went along with everything and took the fruit and ate it, just like Eve did.
Eve has been framed. I ain’t having it anymore.
Centuries of theology have been built on blaming Eve. Whole systems of gender hierarchy erected on the foundation of Eve’s supposed singular guilt. Women silenced, sidelined, and subordinated because of a reading of Genesis 3 that the text itself doesn’t support.
The text says Adam was with her. He was with her. Those four words undo an entire tradition of misogynistic theology. And here’s a question worth sitting with: who is more to blame? The one who takes the fruit? Or the one who stands right there, watches it all happen, says nothing, does nothing, and then eats it too?
I’m not going to answer that. The point isn’t the answer. It’s the asking.
Even the apostle Paul, the famously “misogynistic” writer of half the New Testament, doesn’t play the blame game. Romans 5 is Paul’s extended theological treatment of the fall and its undoing in Christ. And in the entire passage, Paul doesn’t mention Eve once as being responsible. Paul says Adam sinned. Adam, Adam, Adam. Even Paul is not blaming Eve for the fall of humanity.
So what’s the deal with this frame job? “Her husband who was there with her” wasn’t written in invisible ink. So how did Adam’s silent complicity get erased from the story?
The easy answer is (as it so often is in these matters), the #patriarchy.
The more complex answer is that retrofitting the blame for the fall of creation onto Eve gives a sort of retroactive permission for dismissing and even subjugating women within Christian society, not to mention barring them from leadership positions that they historically held within the church.
Eve was never the problem. Women are not innately weaker than men, more easily deceived, and certainly are not morally inferior. That theology was never in the text, it was layered on by centuries of corrupt power structures. The actual story is about two human beings who are complementary and equal, working together, eating together, failing together, falling together.
So the next time someone tries to blame the entire state of the universe, the fall of humankind, on Eve — you just look at them and say Genesis 3:6. Look it up. Read it with your eyeballs. Internalize it.
Adam was there too.
Amen!!!