After being given their sentence, “Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all living” (Genesis 3:20). It is difficult not to connote the etymology of Eve’s name (meaning “Living”) with God’s condemnation, as the title suggests she is responsible for what has become of living after God’s punishment. Although, as Paul wrote in Romans 5:12, “it was by one man that sin came into the world”, meaning the responsibility of having been cast out of Eden is a shared one. However, if it is to be believed that Adam was not present while Eve ate the fruit (as Jerome would like us to believe), then his only crime is to have trusted Eve to be on her own, transforming a shared responsibility to one weighed more heavily on women. If
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Pandora’s is the only Greek myth to provide an answer for the creation of the first woman, written around 700BC - a century or more after the myth of Adam and Eve was composed. The similarities between the book of Genesis and Hesiod’s myth (beyond the subject matter) seem to borrow from the motifs of ancient Babylonian and Egyptian texts , which both Hesiod and the Hebrew author of Genesis were likely mutually aware of through oral tradition. However, there is no evidence that there was a shared oral tradition between the Greeks and Hebrews regarding the topic of human …show more content…
Pandora herself was made in the image of imperfect goddesses for the purpose of deceit and destruction, with “a bitch’s mind and a thief’s temper”, as an act of retaliation by Zeus against Prometheus (forethought), who had stolen heavenly fire for all mankind to admire. This creation to be a gift for Prometheus’ less cautious brother, Epimetheus (afterthought). Before Epimetheus accepted the booby-trapped gift, men “lived like Gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief” (Works and Days, 110-115). This contradicts the myth of Eden, where the ability to live “like God” is something advocated by Lucifer, resulting in the couple’s expulsion from paradise. Before being sent into the wilderness, Adam and Eve’s only equality to the existence of God was that they were made in his image. Hesiod’s patriarchy, unlike the Hebrew patriarchy, is anthropomorphic; women represent the position of Lucifer, and men the position of
Pandora’s is the only Greek myth to provide an answer for the creation of the first woman, written around 700BC - a century or more after the myth of Adam and Eve was composed. The similarities between the book of Genesis and Hesiod’s myth (beyond the subject matter) seem to borrow from the motifs of ancient Babylonian and Egyptian texts , which both Hesiod and the Hebrew author of Genesis were likely mutually aware of through oral tradition. However, there is no evidence that there was a shared oral tradition between the Greeks and Hebrews regarding the topic of human …show more content…
Pandora herself was made in the image of imperfect goddesses for the purpose of deceit and destruction, with “a bitch’s mind and a thief’s temper”, as an act of retaliation by Zeus against Prometheus (forethought), who had stolen heavenly fire for all mankind to admire. This creation to be a gift for Prometheus’ less cautious brother, Epimetheus (afterthought). Before Epimetheus accepted the booby-trapped gift, men “lived like Gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief” (Works and Days, 110-115). This contradicts the myth of Eden, where the ability to live “like God” is something advocated by Lucifer, resulting in the couple’s expulsion from paradise. Before being sent into the wilderness, Adam and Eve’s only equality to the existence of God was that they were made in his image. Hesiod’s patriarchy, unlike the Hebrew patriarchy, is anthropomorphic; women represent the position of Lucifer, and men the position of