“So when the woman saw the tree was good for food, and a delight to the eyes, and to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.” Genesis 3.6

Stories are not always history, though they can be. Too often they are collected to serve a purpose by those who claim that privilege without cause.    

Nowhere is this more evident than in story of Lady Eve. Whether you consider the tale divine revelation, ancient myth or something in between is clearly up to you. But if you think any woman had a hand in its first telling, you and I must disagree.

This is the story about the woman who may have been the very first prophet. It is also the very first story about women prophets that may morph into a history.

The irony, of course, is that the storyteller who has found your attention, this would-be historian of women, is a man. I could try and hide that fact, but over the years there have already been too many lies. You will judge for yourself what my interest in all of this might be. I will say that women have been a great blessing in my life. I owe them my earnest effort at the very least and so much more.

Enough of that. This telling is not about me, though I imagine it will reveal me in the end more fully than if I’d tried. Share stories from the heart and that has a funny way of happening.

Lady Eve’s Story

In the beginning was the word. And the word was brave, undaunted by threat or circumstance. It was spoken by both women and men, by some favored by many but especially those favored by few. The word was spoken by them, but was not of them. For the word seems a revelation to our small ears, but is only truth that we’ve forgotten. For the word is of God and belongs to us all. And when God hears us speak it, she smiles.

This is the word I have for you today. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. She moved over the darkness of the formless deep and brought forth virgin land from the vastness of the oceans. And God covered this new land with grass and trees and soon after filled the air with birds, the sea with fish and the hills with roaming beasts, no two alike. And she saw that it was good. But in all of this new world, there was no one that celebrated their fresh creation, no one who sang the praises of the one and only God.

So the Creator took clay from the earth and made a mortal man and woman to live in this new garden. And God named the woman Eve and the man Adam. She gave the pair freedom to do as they would, with only a single restriction to their freedom. They must not eat from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. And though they didn’t understand just why that was, they agreed to God’s conditions.

Now Lady Eve enjoyed the company of Adam, but she was also restless. She spent her time exploring their garden home and meeting each and every animal that God had made. Eve wanted to discover all there was to know about this grand green garden. She met the lion and the lamb, the wolf and the sparrow, the fox and the crow. Eve even met the serpent, who seemed the friendliest of all. But a question occurred to her soon after they had met that troubled her, if only just a little.

How was it that the serpent alone of all the animals God had made could speak? She asked Adam, but he told her not to worry. And when she approached the serpent himself, he wouldn’t answer her directly. But the words he did speak fueled her curiosity. And curiosity has always been the mother of temptation.

Lady Eve’s Choice

“There is a tree in the center of the garden,” the serpent told her, “the fruit of which God has told you not to eat. It is a burden knowing what is good and what is evil, I will not lie. Know nothing and you never need to choose. But eat from the Tree of Knowledge and I promise that your eyes and ears will be opened and you will know the divinity of truth, the true morality of choice.”

So Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge and her eyes and ears were opened and the gift of discernment was suddenly, irrevocably hers. Eve now saw in the fleeting shadows of the garden what was good and what was evil, as any prophet must. Eve heard in the quiet whisper of the wind the truth of the Divine. And though the things she heard and the things she saw made her tremble, Eve knew she had to share the wisdom she’d obtained, even as the serpent had shared with her.

First Prophet

“Come eat of this fruit, as I have,” Eve told her husband. “And you will know what is good and evil even as God has always known, and as I am just now learning.”

This was the first prophecy of Lady Eve: a prophecy to Adam of what awaited him if he would only do as she advised. And when he ate of the tree, her prophecy came to pass and Adam knew the truth of the garden and God’s intentions. And the humbling good she knew was this: the two of them were made to celebrate creation and its Creator, only that, all of that, and nothing more.

Together, the two suffered the exile from their innocence, as Eve knew with sudden clarity that they must. And while she’d disobeyed the will of their Creator, Eve now better strove to better serve their single purpose. She spoke often to God in prayer and spoke of her beauty whenever the spirit of creation moved her. And she used her hard earned wisdom well, speaking often to her growing family of all things right and wrong.

Lady Eve was our first prophet. She soon was followed by Norea and Melka, of whom you have not heard, and Miriam, the sister of Moses, and many others in the generations since. Not all of them were prophets, though many were. They comprise a chain of women and outcasts who spoke the truth of what they knew, a chain of spoken word unsilenced to this day. But Eve was the first, the first to see what Adam could not, to understand what those who would deny us would never have us know. Eve spoke her truth, no matter what it cost her. And so must we.

What Priests May Try to Tell You

There will be priests among you who will say Lady Eve brought sin into this world, that she disobeyed the will of God and thus was denied eternal innocence and all of us in turn.  There is surely some truth in what they say. To recognize uncomfortable truths will always be a burden, at least at first. Some call sin the mistakes we make of our free will and who am I to say they’re wrong. Yet sins can be forgiven. What cannot be undone is breadth of vision. All of us now eat the fruits of hard earned Knowledge, something the priests are loathe to mention. Is that curse or blessing? I say both. It is also the truth of our condition and so my answer hardly matters.

But why, some ask, if wisdom is a good thing, would God make the tree forbidden in the first place? I can’t claim to fully know her good intentions; be wary of those who say they do. But I offer this.

Perhaps the Creator offered Lady Eve and Adam two paths on purpose: one of blind obedience and the other of willful choice. Perhaps God was hoping for a little rebellion, despite her edict. It certainly made things more interesting ever after.

We know the story of Eve’s sons all too well. But what about her daughter. One extra-Biblical source gives her name as Norea. It is to the Lesson of Norea that we turn to next.

To read more about women prophets in Biblical, extra-Biblical and historical sources click on this link to an overview post on Women Prophets.

Mark Carlson-Ghost

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Photo by Haris Irshad from Pexels.