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Let’s move on to the Old Testament, and particularly the second creation story, which is where so much of our attitudes toward women started. If there is a reason to believe Gen. 2&3 as just that “a story“, what it said and says about women is argument enough.
St. Jerome is a typical male example, of what the creation story put into the minds of men as he said, “When a woman wishes to serve Christ more than the world, then she will cease to be a woman and will be called man“. There are no words to describe such stupidity, which unfortunately still runs rampant in churches today.

Back to the Garden!

Men wrote this story, not women. And while Moses may have spoken or written some of the Hexateuch, or Pentateuch, he surely didn’t write much of it which was penned many centuries after his death. Do you think the “story” would have been different if a woman had written it? Duh!

Mankind has received from this male view of creation the following views.

1-Women (Eve) were, and are, the reason for the downfall of mankind!
2-Women are weak!
3-Women are responsible for the introduction of evil in the world.
4-Women are easily duped and conned (if a Hebraic speaking snake can beguile a woman, who can’t?)
5-Women are responsible for causing men to have such a tough life as she fed him (Adam) that “apple” (which was not an apple) which is now stuck in his throat forever (Adams apple!)

The over-arching mindset that came from this creation story though is that woman as NOT created in the image of God, but of man! Her role was to be a helper of man. As the male written text reads, Adam was bored with life so God who created the animals for Adam created this woman-thing and here’s a biggie, Adam “names” her, just as he had named the animals: the connection isn’t easily lost. She was to be obedient, subservient, and loyal.

And this IS God?

So now we have more duality: male-female, master-servant, superior-inferior, which all led to the following Old Testament lifestyles and laws. Men could punish women for any disobedience (his call), divorce them whenever he felt like it, and all manner of treating these subhuman women who had subverted the greatness and goodness of God’s creation.

And then there were the prejudicial laws like Leviticus 12:2,5 which my paraphrase and shortened version is, if a woman conceives a male child she’s unclean for one week, but she’s unclean for two weeks if it’s a female child!

Ridiculous!

I could go on, but it’s depressing enough and I’m not a woman who can truly understand the pain of such views. That great saint Tertullian (155-230) who is often times noted as the “Father of the Latin Church”, held this opinion, “You women have so easily destroyed God’s image of man“.

Man’s “consciousness” was not very well developed in 400-800BCE when the creation story was written, was it!