13 Kerryn,

Your point is well taken. Many try to credit Eve with sinning before she ate the fruit but this cannot be right. If Eve misrepresented Adam quoting of God or if she misrepresented God then she was either stupid (how could she get a very simple command wrong?) or guilty of a huge sin of adding to God’s words. Neither option makes sense. Surely the first woman who was said to be a “helper suitable for Adam” would not be a childlike creature incapable of understanding a simple sentence nor did she have any reason to lie about what God said. The simplest and most reasonable conclusion is that God spoke to Eve and told her not to touch the fruit and she accurately spoke what she was told. The thing that has made me wonder is why has it been so easy to doubt Eve’s words and why would we charge her with the sin of adding to God’s words when neither Adam nor God charged her with this sin? It appears to me that our Society’s prejudice against women has made this tradition seem right in that almost no one has bothered to challenge it before. Incredible!