Poor Eve! For far to long has she been blamed for mankind’s suffering, for original sin and even for us having to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow. She has been called a wicked temptress, this woman child suddenly aware of her own powers, suddenly aware of her own body and in deep trouble because she was just a little too curious. Yet she was also our mythical foremother, our first female ancestor, this Eve who spoke with a snake and ate of the fruits of the tree of knowledge. Or so the story tells us.

But what really happened in the garden? And why should it matter to us here today where we no longer speak with snakes and knowledge comes to us in kilobytes, instantly, over the internet as our scientist decipher the very code of life? Surely we have grown beyond such childish concerns haven’t we? Or maybe not! For this ancient story has both shaped and greatly distorted our views of women and men over the centuries. And I believe we ignore such stories, deeply embedded in our Western culture, at our peril. Stories can be powerful weapons both for good and for evil. So this day, which is our Valentine’s Day service, I speak in defense of Eve. Like native cultures that speak with respect about their mythical ancestors, the very first man or woman, I want to honor our foremother and suggest a different reading of Genesis. It is not the only creation story in the world, almost every culture has one, but Genesis chapter two is for those of us who grew up in the Western world, uniquely our story. This simple tale of paradise lost has inspired countless painters, poets and writers who used for good to give us beauty. But the same story has also been used for evil to justify oppression of women, to frighten children and make people conform to a rigid dogma and not ask too many questions. It all depends on what choices you make and how you use this story.

What may this story so intertwined with our Western culture yet have to teach us? Do we really know it? Every generation has reinterpreted it as a mirror of its times. Were it written today it would no doubt be easy to market, a veritable blockbuster with assured paperback editions and movie rights. It has those elements that sells: sex, fantasy, a non human villain, just think about the special effects one could create with that snake, and a somewhat tragic ending. Think of Titanic with a different cast. Maybe it could be called: The price they paid for love. It would probably be shelved in the bookstores under science fiction, which tells us something about the status of myths in our society.

But to do justice to the story and find meaning for us today we must read it not as history or as a children's cautionary tale about disobedience to a heavenly father but instead as a myth with meaning, a spiritual allegory. For the story may not mean what you think it does. Think back for a moment at what you remember from Sunday school? Now if you learned this story in Hebrew school you may have gotten a different interpretation. This is how I remember the story told to me when I was seven years old.

Adam and Eve were very happy in Eden, where they had no work to do and all was pure, unadulterated bliss. This was before crime, illness, death or disease came into being. In my mind’s eye I saw this place as a very lush, green jungle like garden, warm and sunny and not at all like the gloomy misty and ice cold Danish winter day I saw outside the windows. Nothing ever withered or died. Plants grew, fruits appeared and all was perfect bliss.

Since I have lived in the South however I do wonder what they did with the kudzu? How did they keep it from covering up paradise? But otherwise as my teacher would say: it was perfect, just perfect, another day in paradise. At this point she looked distinctly embarrassed as she said: Adam and Eve were both completely naked. I remember some girls giggled in the back row. However, she assured us that was really OK, because they did not know it and so felt no shame. This made some of us children wonder if that excuse would work for us. Sorry, I did not do my homework but I didn’t know? But then, she continued, trouble began. That bad, evil snake, that slippery, slithering tempter, sweet talked Eve. Oh, this was a good story I could almost hear him: Hi, there honey, nice apple, real sweet, wouldn’t you like a bite? Meanwhile my teacher continued: And Eve ate of the apple that came from the tree in the middle of the garden, the tree that held the knowledge of good and evil. Then she gave the apple to Adam. Oh, that apple, that powerful apple that began all the trouble we are having today. Well Adam did not hesitate. He took one bite and as they say the rest is history. No paradise, no free ride, lots of work, we all have to wear clothes and there is childbirth too. This is why, my teacher said: we are all sinners. Because of Eve.

Huh? I thought. How does that follow? That is why she continued: we all need redemption. Eve brought original sin and death into the world because she disobeyed God. But even at seven I did not get it. Was sin inherited? Like blue or brown eyes or red hair? How did that work? It didn’t seem fair. And why so little gratitude toward Eve, who was after all, if the story was to be believed, the mother of us all? And why was it bad to have the knowledge of what was good and evil? Wasn’t that how one would know how to do right in this world? Wasn’t conscience a good thing? No it made no sense to me and original sin still does not. But I do not blame the teacher. She was simply giving us all church doctrine, Augustine’ s version.

St. Augustine, a fourth century theologian and philosopher who had more than a passing acquaintance with the sins of the flesh himself before his conversion, believed firmly that neither mortality or sexual desire are natural. Instead he reasoned that both entered into existence to punish Adam's sin, which he was led into by the wicked Eve. Think about this for a moment: the two things that characterize life on this planet, the urge to reproduce and each species eventual demise, he considered to be Un-natural. And he further believed that this sin was inherited to all of Eve's children as original sin. In fact he wondered why God had not created a helpful male gardener instead of this vile temptress.

Tertullian, another church father, wrote this typical letter to what he called his sisters in Christ: Dear sisters, you are the devil's gateway...you are she who persuaded him whom the devil did not dare attack. Do you know that every one of you is an Eve? The sentence of God on your sex lives on in this age; the guilt, of necessity lives on too.

We do not know how his " sisters in Christ " responded to this kind message. Maybe something like this: Dear brother you are sadly mistaken. But we do know that this ancient story or rather a particular interpretation of it has been used to justify not only the subordination of women, but the burning at the stake of women accused a witches. Even today the doctrine of original sin is still being preached in many churches. Sexuality has become both overemphasized, riddled with guilt and like any forbidden fruit, more attractive because of this interpretation of the story. The forbidden becomes more attractive more irresistible.

In our times where true confessions dominate the airwaves, in this age when we seem as a culture to be at once condemning and utterly obsessed with other people’s sexual behavior, it is time I think to redeem and reclaim Eve.

There is you see another way to read this story. In which the real message of the snake was: Come on, have a bite of this powerful apple from the tree of knowledge. Don’t you want to grow up Eve? Don’t you want to do more, know more than this eternal perfect garden? Don’t you want to claim you human choice? Don’t you want to have a conscience?

Let us look closely at this ancient text. Despite what you may have been told there is no mention of the word sin in it and no Satan either. There are two accounts of creation in Genesis. The Woman’s Bible, a commentary published in 1898 by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the revising committee, consisting of Unitarian and Universalist women ministers and scholars takes note of this. Inscribed on the front are these words by Mrs. Stanton: Genesis chapter one says that woman and man were a simultaneous creation, Genesis chapter two that she was an afterthought. Which is true?

Or as some jokes go was Adam a rough draft?

In the first humanity is created, male and female together at once. In the second Adam has already named the animals but found no suitable and equal companion there and Eve was then created for him. In fact the revising committee had a not very high opinion of Adam whose conduct they considered, in the words of the late nineteenth century, to be dastardly! So fasten your seat belts. We are going to look closer at this story. This translation is by Naomi Rosenblatt:

But there went up a mist from the Earth and watered the whole face of the ground. Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the earth and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And man became a living soul.

And God planted a garden Eastward in Eden and placed there the man whom he had formed. Eden by the way is the Hebrew word for delight.

And from the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that was pleasing to the sight and good for food, with the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Thus in the story good and evil grows from the same root, intertwined just as they are as in human life.

And the Lord God commanded the man saying to him: Of every tree in the garden you are free to eat but as for the tree of knowledge of good and evil you must not eat of it; for the day you eat of it you shall surely die. Or shall he become conscious as no other animal is of his own mortality? What is this knowledge? The Hebrew word for knowledge here is a word play, it refers both to knowledge about life and to sexual knowledge.

God said: It is not good that man shall be alone; I will make for him a helper who is his equal. But for Adam no fitting companion was found. So the Lord cast a deep sleep upon the man and while he slept he took from his side and closed up flesh at that spot. And God built the side that he had taken from the man into the woman and he brought her to the man. The literal translation for the word tzela is side as in the side of a ship, not rib, which is a mistranslation. Woman being made from his side implied two halves of a larger whole

Earth, in Hebrew is Adamh and Eve in Hebrew connotes life. Earth and life are indeed interconnected and life did spring from earth. As Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote in 1898: It is a pity that not all versions of the Bible do give this word Life instead of the Hebrew Eve. She was life, the eternal mother.

The text continues: The two of them were naked, the man and his wife yet they felt no shame. Now the serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild bests that the Lord God had made. Or was it the wisest? The serpent was revered in ancient Mesopotamia as a god of eternal life. The serpent’s fate in Eden may be a rebuke of this god and the cults of immortality that surrounded the Jewish people at the time this story was written. Think of Egypt and its cult of eternal life with pyramids and mummies. Seen in this light the story tells us that we humans are mortal.

So what happened when the most naked and wisest of all wild beasts meets the woman alone?

He said to her: Did God really say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

And the serpent said to the woman; You are not going to die but God knows that as soon as you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be as God, knowing good and evil. And 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 did eat. She also gave some to her husband and he ate of it. Adam shows no hesitation by the way, he swallows it whole and lies down to sleep.

Then the eyes of both were open and they knew that they were naked. God discovers them and the secret is out. Adam does not cut a fine figure here. The woman you put at my side - she gave me of the tree and I did eat. The woman blames the snake: The serpent beguiled me and I did eat. You know the rest of the story. They are banished to grow their own food, outside the garden. This did of course happen in the Ancient Near East when the society changed from hunter gatherers to agricultural societies some 8000 years ago. There may be some memory there of easier times.

But the real lesson is that Paradise is lost to those who know of their own mortality and to those who know the difference between good and evil. We can long to return to such child like innocence but the gates are guarded by time itself, fierce angles that will not let us pass. Eve’s real gift was knowledge and choice. Unlike the tiger or a house cat, who has no regrets over killing his prey we have been given the gift of conscience. Which makes us both like humans and like gods.

Who was Eve? Was she merely a seductress and agent of sin? Another reading would say that Eve was the founder of civilization and the giver of wisdom. She realizes that within the sheltered garden nothing will ever grow or change.

In From Perfection, Good Lord Deliver Us, Mary Z. Gray writes: In the privacy of our hearts we are sure we could have made a better world than the Creator." This is not a perfect world " we say. If only God had consulted us.

But our Universe operates within a dynamic tension that surges between order and chaos, good and evil, light and darkness, life and death. Eve was wise enough to know this: In a Gnostic poem she says: I am the one whom they call life and you have called death....

Yes, sexuality is a powerful force and it can be very destructive. It can make fools out of wise men and women not just for love, but even for simple lust. It is the life force itself we are dealing with. And that is nothing to make light of and something to show great respect. But it is not evil. It depends on the choices we make. Choice and knowledge, life and wisdom those are Eve’s ancient gifts to us. Let us give Eve her good name back: Life, mother of us all. So, come on, have a bite!