Eve

EVE. - Progenitress of the human race. Eve was created so that man might have "a help meet for him" (Gen. 2:18-20). She was called Eve by Adam (v.) (Heb. Ḥawmāh) from the verb ḥājāh, "to live": hence "mother of all the living" (Gen. 3:20).

So that man might realize his superiority over all other beings, God ordained that the animals of paradise should come near to Adam, who gave each a name corresponding to its nature, or he understood that no animal species was like man; feeling himself alone, he desired a help meet for him, or almost his own image, and God, to whose creative work he turned, granted his prayer. "So the Lord God sent a deep sleep upon Adam" (Gen. 2:21: Heb. tardīnah), during which Adam was to know God's intention, who formed the woman from a rib or from flesh of his side (ṣilāʾ). The narrative, anthropomorphic in character, means that God, by his omnipotent will, formed the woman from a part of the man. The sacred writer, as the very form of the narrative in a historical book suggests to us and as St. Paul confirms (1 Cor. 11:6), intends to relate a real fact. Metaphysically it signifies the moral and social relations of the two sexes: the man will love the woman as a part of himself, and the woman will lean upon her husband as upon her head, who loves her and on whom she depends.

Origen, responding to the sarcasms of Celsus, spoke of allegory; Cajetan believed that it was a metaphor, drawing on Aristotle's opinion that woman is a defective male (vir laesus); Hummelauer, out of an exegetical caprice as M.-J. Lagrange called it, maintains that God did not really take a rib from Adam, but only in vision; M.-J. Lagrange upholds the parabolic sense, by which one would insist only on the fact that man must love woman as a part of himself. But setting aside these few discordant voices, arising from having extended the anthropomorphic element too far, the Fathers and doctors of the Church, in moral unanimity, hold for the literal historical sense, which, according to the decision of the Biblical Commission (June 30, 1909), cannot be called into doubt "in the formation of the first woman from the first man."

The reality of the historical fact is required also by Adam's words (Gen. 2:23); in the Hebrew text the name "woman" (ʿīfāh) is the feminine form of the name "man" (ʿīf), which the Vulgate rendered: "haec vocabitur virago quia de viro sumpta est." Enlightened further by God, Adam probably reveals the indissoluble and total bond of spouses (Gen. 2:24; cf. Mt. 19:4-6).

To these considerations the Apostles and Fathers add other reasons, such as: 1) that man might be the principle of the whole human race and the unity of origin and of species might be established (Mt. 19:4; Acts 17:26; cf. Gen. 3:20; 5:1-2); 2) that the dignity and authority of man might be evident (1 Cor. 11:7-9; 1 Tim. 2:13-14); 3) that the union of Christ and the Church might be prefigured (Eph. 5:23-32; Jn. 19:34).

After original sin, of which Eve was the initiator, God pronounced sentence against Eve: "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception... yet thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee" (Gen. 3:16); to pride and sensuality, the essential elements of the fault, the punishment corresponds. The condition of woman as spouse has not changed, but as a natural consequence of sin the subjection of woman will be hard and painful (St. Thomas, Sum. Theol., 2a-2ae, q. 164, a. 2, ad 1). To the first parents God's kindness deigned to give consolation by announcing the Redeemer, or new Adam, and also the co-redemptrix, or new Eve, as the Fathers called Mary Most Holy (cf. St. Justin, C. Tryph.: PG 6, 710; St. Irenaeus, Adv. Haer., III, 22, 4: PG 5, 19, etc.).

Vincenzo M. Jacono

GOSPEL of Eve - Apocryphon in use among the Nicolaitans, heretics of the apostolic period, according to St. Epiphanius (Haer., 26, 2, 3, 5: PG 41, 334-35, 339). From the two brief citations that Epiphanius makes of it, it appears that this apocryphon was of a Gnostic character, composed in the literary form of an apocalypse. From a phrase of Hippolytus on Eve (Philosoph., 5, 16), Harnack concludes to the use of the Gospel of Eve also by the Peratae.

Francesco Scadufora