"...ACCORDING TO EVE""

December 24, 1998

David Gergen, editor-at-large of "U.S. News & World Report," engages Cullen Murphy, author of The Word According to Eve.

DAVID GERGEN: Cullen, in your new book, you emphasize that women are not only having an enormous influence upon the pulpits of American churches but they're beginning to have a terrific influence also upon biblical interpretation. CULLEN MURPHY, Author, The Word According to Eve: They are certainly doing both things. In graduate schools of divinity the enrollment of women is now above 30 percent - in most places above 50 percent in some of the elite schools. But the larger issue that I've been focusing on is women who are in the more secular end of academe, who are pursuing biblical scholarship as broadly defined, including literary studies, archaeology, history, anthropology, and additional biblical studies. During the past 20 or 30 years women have entered this field at first by the dozens and then by the scores, and now by the hundreds. If you attend any of the meetings of the professional societies devoted to religion and to the Bible, you'll find that women are the most vital presence there. And one of the things that they are doing is subjecting the Bible to the kind of look that is never received because it is really in the past 2000 years or so - has only been looked at by men. DAVID GERGEN: I was struck that - at how often you said that feminists encountering religion - there are so few women in the Bible compared to the number of men and that of course the Bible has been used through the centuries to justify the subordination of women to men, and that's what they're coming to grips with. CULLEN MURPHY: The Bible is problematic for women in a number of ways. One is that it was simply the product of men's pens, and for all the fact that there may be women's voices in there, there are not all that many of them, nor are there all that many women, compared to men. In the Hebrew bible, for instance, there are about 150 women were given names, to suppose to about 1400 men who are given names. In the New Testament the number is about 50 women who are given names and a lot more men, so women are under-represented. But it's not really an issue of under-representation, as you know. The issue in many cases is what is the Bible saying about women? There are a great many stories in which women are getting a short end of the stick, to put mildly. There are a great many stories whose moral for women is deeply disturbing, and those stories can include the creation stories in Genesis; they can include stories like Jeftha's Daughter; they can include some of the epistles of Paul. There's a great deal there for women to have a problem with. And, as I say, in the last two or three decades women have begun to look at these issues very closely and wonder what do these stories really mean, have we gotten them wrong? What were the societies like that gave us these stories? What were they trying to say? Male interpreters simply didn't look at these issues for the most part ever. The issue of women in the Bible passed below the radar screen of scholarship until very recent times, and this has been an extraordinary development. DAVID GERGEN: Let's come down to cases because you describe in some detail the re-interpretation or what women are bringing to an understanding of the Adam and Eve story. CULLEN MURPHY: Well, the Adam and Eve story is in many ways the beginning. Everyone, of course, is familiar with the story from children's bibles, if not - if the real Bible. There are two creation stories in Genesis. And it is in these creation stories that we have what seemed to be a conflicting notion of equality. In the first creation story it said very simply that many women are created equal in the image of God. The second creation story is the one that contains the story of Adam and Eve. And two issues come up here. The first one has to do with whether woman is a subsidiary creature. As you remember, Eve seems to be made out of the rib of Adam. And she's an after thought, we've been told, and man was the real apple of God's eye, and woman was created to be Adam's help mate, and so this issue of subsidiarity is a big one. And, you know, even today you look in the Encyclopedia Britannica under Eve, and the entry there says, "See Adam and Eve." And Britannica is no brackish intellectual back water. So that's the first issue, and the second issue is the one of woman being endowed with the responsibility for the so-called fall from grace because it is she who first eats of the forbidden fruit. DAVID GERGEN: So what do the women - feminist scholars now bring to this story? What re-interpretation are they bringing? CULLEN MURPHY: On the first issue - the one of subsidiarity - scholars like Phyllis Tribble have pointed out that very translation of that story makes us get it wrong, that, in fact, there is no male creature or female creature at first; that this creature who is called Adam - that the word "Adam" really refers to creature of undifferentiated sex, an earth creature - that's what Adam means - and that it is only when the figure Eve is created, that, in fact, there is also the male figure, so that male and female are being created at the - at the same time, which makes perfect sense in conjunction with the first story in creation. As for the second matter, scholars like Elaine Pagels and others have pointed out that this tradition of interpreting the Adam and Eve story as one whose moral is the blame-worthiness of woman, that it was merely because of woman that humanity was led astray, is a very, very late interpretation, that the very earliest Jewish and Christian interpretations were far different. When they asked the question -- What is this story really about? What is the message we're supposed to be taking away from this story, the message is not let's blame women; the message is humanity is responsible for its own actions. Human beings have moral freedom. Human beings have free will. That's a very profound and sophisticated message. DAVID GERGEN: Final question. I'm sorry, we've run out of time. You speak here about this being an intellectual revolution in the church. Is that what you think is happening, and where does that leave us? CULLEN MURPHY: I think it is an intellectual revolution in religion as a whole. I think elites in this country - to use a word I'm not fond of - tend to belittle religion, not take it very seriously, and underestimate the hold and the affection that it has among Americans generally, but, in fact, it is profoundly important. People take it very seriously, and therefore, anything that is happening inside it has enormous consequences. The most important thing that is happening inside religion right now is the ascendance of women to positions of intellectual leadership and hierarchical leadership. That is not going to be reversed. And the results, which may take centuries, are going to be enormous. We are seeing it in front of us every day. DAVID GERGEN: Cullen Murphy, thank you very much. CULLEN MURPHY: Well, thank you.