Cheryl Schatz

Fixed it for you Paula.

Don,

Regarding whether Adam gave the prohibition to Eve, we have evidence from scripture that we need to look.  We know for a fact that Eve knew the prohibition.  Did she get it from Adam and she got it wrong?  How is that possible?  If she couldn’t get a simple command right, then how could God say that she was one who had the capabilities of giving the needed assistance to Adam?  That would make her rather like a two year old who needs to be carefully watched and looked after so that she doesn’t bumble along making a mess of everything she does.  It would make the needed helper into one who was helpless.  No, the good creation of God was fulfilled in Eve.  She knew the command and she said that “God said…”  We have no reason to believe that she added to God’s word (a sin) or messed up a simple command that Adam gave her ( a command that even a two year old could understand thus making her a full-fledged idiot) or lied to the serpent (there was no reason to lie and she was a sinless woman at the time).  Since we also know that God personally gave information to both Adam and Eve regarding what they could eat (Gen. 1:29) there is no reason to assume that he left out the most important information about the prohibition.  After all Eve’s testimony is that “God said…”  When our prejudice causes us to distrust what women say then we will also distrust a sinless woman’s testimony.  How sad.

Now regarding Adam’s “authority”, we have no direct evidence that God gave him this authority over Eve neither do we have any evidence from God’s testimony when he confronted both of them.  Adam did not speak about Eve’s failure to follow his “authority” and Eve did not give a testimony that Adam failed to take authority over her.  The only “evidence” one can have is what one reads into the text.  Don, you are certainly right in that the way one reads into scripture says a lot about their own thought process.  If we want women to be in subjection to men, we can make a subjected Eve through out own presupposition.