Abstract
[Genesis 2: 8] And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. [9] And out the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for good, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and tree of knowledge of good and evil. [18] … Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” [God makes birds and animals, “every living creature” and has Adam to give them names.] [21] … So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; and the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. [25] … And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed. [3:1] Now the serpent was more subtle than any other wild creature that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?’” [2] And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden”; [3] but God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.” [5, serpent to Eve] “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” [6] So when the woman saw that the tree was delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate. [7] Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons. [Revised Standard Version cited unless otherwise noted.]
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Notes
Elizabeth Gould Davis, The First Sex (New York: Putnam, 1971), p. 142
Robert Graves, Adam’s Rib and Other Anomalous Elements in the Hebrew Creation Myth (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1958), p. 7.
Ronald S. Hendel, “Genesis, Book of,” in ABD, 2: 938–941 (with extensive bibliography); dated but useful is John Skinner, Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1930), 2: 57–97
John L. McKenzie, “The Literary Characteristics of Genesis 2–3,” Theological Studies 15 (1954): 545–546
Robert Graves and Raphael Patai, Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964), esp. pp. 60–81.
“tMyth of Adapa,” Tablet 1.4 in Robert Williams Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament (New York: Abingdon Press, 1912), p. 69
John A. Phillips, Eve: The History of an Idea (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984), p. 3.
Pamela Norris, Eve: A Biography (New York: New York University Press, 1999), p. 19.
Joan O’Brien, “Nammu, Mani, Eve and Pandora: ‘What’s in a Name?’” Classical Journal 79/1 (1983): 38.
E. A. Speiser, The Anchor Bible Genesis (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964), 1: 26.
Jeffrey Burton Russell, Satan: The Early Christian Tradition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981).
Claus Westermann, Genesis 1–11. A Commentary. John J. Scullion, trans. (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984
Karen Randolf Joines, Serpent Symbolism in the Old Testament (Haddonfield, NJ: Haddonfield House, 1974), pp. 64–68.
The Dictionary of World Myth, Peter Bently, ed. (New York: Facts on File, 1995), p. 196
John L. McKenzie, “The Literary Characteristics of Genesis 2–3,” Theological Studies 15 (1954): 564.
Geo Widengren, The King and Tree of Life in Ancient Near Eastern Religion (Uppsala: A-B. Lundequistskea Bokhandeln, 1951), pp. 38–39
J. Andrew McDonald, “Botanical Determination of the Middle Eastern Tree of Life,” Economic Botany 56/2 (2002): 113–129.
James B. Pritchard, The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Text and Pictures (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1958), 1: 74.
Epic of Gilgamesh. N. K. Sandars, trans. (Penguin rev. ed., 1972), p. 116; slightly different trans. by J. B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Related to the Old Testament, 3rd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), p. 96
Ibid., p. 102; see similar translation in James B. Pritchard, The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Text and Pictures, 2nd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1958), p. 64.
Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (New York: Random House, 1988), p. 27.
John Skinner, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1930), p. 94.
J. M. Evans, Paradise Lost and the Genesis Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), p. 18.
Apocryphal Lives of Adam and Eve. 72. Brian Murdoch and J. A. Tasioulas, eds. (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002), p. 40.
Immanuel Löw, Die Flora der Juden (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1967), 3: 212–238
The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English Sir Lancelot C. Brenton, ed. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan repr. of 1851 ed.), pp. 3–4
Wildred G. Lambert, “Devotion: The Languages of Religion and Love,” in Figurative Language in the Ancient Near East (London: University of London, 1987), pp. 30–31.
J. D. Douglas, “Apple,” The New Bible Dictionary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1962), pp. 50–51
M. A. Powell, “Classical Sources and the Problem of the Apricot,” Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture 3 (1987): 156
Proposed by Friedrich Muthmann, Der Granatapfel Symbol des Lebens in der alten Welt (Bern: Abegg-Stiftung, 1982), pp. 14
Lise Manniche, An Ancient Egyptian Herbal (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989), p. 139
Paul Jacobsthal, Greek Pins (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), p. 189.
Harold N. Moldenke and Alma L. Moldenke, Plants of the Bible (Waltham, MA: Chronica Botanica Company, 1952), pp. 189–191
R. B. Y. Scott, “The Pillars Jachin and Boaz,” Journal of Biblical Literature 58/2 (1939): 145
Carol Meyers, “Jachin and Boaz,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 45/2 (1983): 167–178.
André Lemaire, “Probable Head of Priestly Scepter from Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem,” Biblical Archaeology Review 10 (1984): 27.
Nahman Avigad, “The Inscribed Pomegranate from the ‘House of the Lord,’” The Biblical Archaeologist 53/3 (1990): 157–166.
Kathleen M. Kenyon, Excavations of Jericho, 2 vols. (London: British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, 1965), 1:392–393
David Hendin, Guide to Ancient Jewish Coins (New York: Attic Books, 1976), p. 16.
Sara A. Immerwahr, “The Pomegranate Vase: Its Origins and Continuity,” Hesperia 51/4 (1989): 397–410.
Ann Suter, Narcissus and the Pomegranate: An Archaeology of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), p. 5.
Helene P. Foley, The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 107.
Hymn to Demeter, 411–413 (Helene P. Foley); John L. Myres, “Persephone and the Pomegranate (H. Dem. 372–374),” Classical Review, 52/2 (1938): 51–52
Claudian. De raptu Proserpinae 1. 28–36, 98–110 (David Slavitt, trans.); see also discussion by Stephen M. Wheeler, “The Underworld Opening of Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae ,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 125 (1995): 113–134
J. Prytz Johansen, “The Thesmophora as a Women’s Festival,” Temenos 11 (1975): 80.
Athens Nat. Mus. 484 and reproduced by Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (London: Merlin, 1961), p. 275.
Soranus, Gynecology. Oswei Temkin, trans. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956), 1. 62
See John M. Riddle, Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 25–26
David Zohary and Maria Hopf, Domestication of Plants in the Old World. 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 170–171
Mary Anne Murray, “Fruits, Vegetables, Pulses and Condiments,” in Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology. Paul T. Nicholson and Ian Shaw, eds. (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 624–625.
Juvenal, Satirae, 6. 595 (Green trans. p. 149); see also John M. Riddle and J. Worth Estes, “Oral Contraceptives in Ancient and Medieval Times,” American Scientist 80 (1992): 226–233
Riddle, “Coins and Contraceptives: The Plant That Made Kyrene Famous,” Celator 17/12 (2003): 34–35.
Manniche, p. 139; Alfred Lucas and J. R. Harris, Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries, 4th ed. (London: Arnold, 1962), p. 36
F. N. Hepper, Pharaoh’s Flowers: The Botanical Treasures of Tutankhamun (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1990), p. 64.
Manniche, p. 140 citing Ebers 50 and 63; see also Cyril P. Bryan, Ancient Egyptian Medicine: The Papyrus Ebers (Chicago: Ares, 1974), pp. 120–121.
Fred Rosner, Medicine in the Bible and the Talmud (Yeshiva University Press, 1995), p. 93; David M. Feldman, Birth Control in Jewish Law (New York: New York University Press, 1968), p. 38.
John Riddle, “Women’s Medicines in Ancient Jewish Sources: Fertility Enhancers and Inhibiters,” in Disease in Babylonia. I. L. Finkel and M. J. Geller, eds. (Boston: Leiden, 2007), p. 202.
Merlin Stone, When God Was a Woman (New York: Dial Press, 1976), p. 217.
James Hall, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art. Rev. ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), p. 249.
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© 2010 John M. Riddle
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Riddle, J.M. (2010). Pomegranate as Eve’s Apple. In: Goddesses, Elixirs, and Witches. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230105515_3
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