Making a Woman

I was the first woman to lead all three of the churches that I have served. I don't know if my leadership is supposed to look different than a man's. My husband used to pump me up when I first came to St. John's Cathedral. "Be the Dean!" he would say. I would try not to slouch. I would try to sound confident and tough. But really, I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing. I have been like a blind person groping my way towards some uniquely feminine form of leadership. To tell you the truth, I often didn't think much about it until I started doing retreats for women and they began asking me about what it was like to be a woman leader in the church.

I found myself searching the Bible for answers to their questions about what it meant to be a woman leader. Did women follow Jesus differently? How did they interact with Jesus? How did they worship him? Was there something that I was supposed to be doing?

Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus were the most important women in Jesus's life. One is inaccurately known as a repentant prostitute, the other as a perpetual virgin. These women are defined by whether or not they had sex. But who were they to Jesus? Did he define them by their sexual behavior too?

Mary Magdalene in particular grabbed my heart. Why had the church throughout the centuries painted her dressed in red, the color associated with seduction? Why was she seen as a sexual woman, voluptuous and tempting? In many Renaissance paintings, she looks like she is ready to lure someone to bed. Why was her sexuality so important? And why are fringe elements today trying to convince us that she really was Jesus's wife?

I wanted to get to know the truth about Mary Magdalene. But where to start? My search took me all the way back to the beginning, to the creation of the human race. The role and place of women in relationship to men has been complicated from the very beginning of scripture.

In the Beginning

In the Bible, the most important stories are told more than once. The story of Jesus is told in four gospels. The story of the Exodus is told many times in the Old Testament. And the story of the creation of the world is told twice. Scripture often repeats the most crucial stories as a way of honoring and exploring them, like when we hold up a diamond and examine its many sides. Each of these stories is told from a different angle, another perspective. Sometimes the details may even conflict. For some, the existence of multiple and sometimes divergent tellings of the same story is disturbing and means that none of it really happened. For me, it makes the words more real. After all, if a story is important to me, I tell it many times and so will anyone else who witnessed it. And their story will no doubt be told from a different perspective than mine. God inspired Holy Scripture to be written not as a textbook but as a living word told in many ways from many perspectives.

So there are two creation stories. All you have to do is open the Bible and read to see that this is true. In the first of the two creation stories (found in Genesis 1–2:3), God makes the world in seven days. On each day, God calls the created good. And on the sixth day, God makes humankind. Humans, both male and female, are created in the image of God. They are made in God's image together. And together, God declares that they are very good. In the first story, man and woman are created at the same time as equals and God says that they are very good.

In the second story (found in Genesis 2:4–5), God makes a garden first and puts Adam in that garden. For centuries the translators of the Bible have used the word Adam as the proper name for a man, and later in the book of Genesis, this word is used as if it were the name of the man. But the word in the Hebrew is derived from the word (pronounced adama) which means "earth." So a more accurate translation of the word Adam might be "earth-creature" or "one made from earth." Adam is created when God takes the earth and forms it into a human shape. And God breathes into Adam the breath of life. God then sets about making some company for the earth-creature.

God creates animals, birds of the air, and fish of the sea, but still Adam is lonely. So God makes Adam go to sleep and separates Adam's side from the rest of his body. The result of this split is the creation of and (eesh and eesha), male and female. These words, male and female, are different from the word Adam. So there is one earth-creature which is then split into two parts. And after the split, it seems that Adam and Eve existed in harmony and peace until the arrival of the snake.

We have only just opened the Bible and already the role and place of the woman is confusing. Was woman created alongside and equal to the man? Was she created after the splitting of an earth-creature? Who is she in relation to the man and what is her place in the created order?

These stories coexist to tell us a deep truth about who we are. The relationship between men and women is complicated and it has been from the very beginning.

Lilith and Eve

How can we understand these two different stories that sit side by side at the very beginning of the Bible? Baby lonian Jewish scholars tried to make sense of the two creation stories by imagining that the woman in the first story was equal to the man and that he did not like her. They named her "the First Eve." Later, this first woman became linked with legends of a female lilu (demon), who stalked men in their sleep, causing nocturnal emissions. This demon also caused stillbirths and other pregnancy abnormalities. Jewish myths arose in which this first woman was called Lilith. In these myths, Lilith was banished by Adam because she seemed too powerful, too much like him. So Lilith roamed around in frustration, causing havoc in the night.

And so, the woman in the first creation story who was created right alongside and equal to the man became evil. She was banished for being proud and independent. She was blamed for unwanted sexual desire and abnormal pregnancies. Lilith was both sexual and demonic.

Meanwhile, the second story painted a very different picture of the first woman. Her name was Eve. She was subservient and submissive. In a strange twist of fate, it was Eve, the submissive woman, who became the one blamed for the fall of humanity. And it was her gender, associated with a certain kind of sexuality, which was later considered to be her method of persuasion.

Blamed for the Fall

Eve tempted Adam to eat the forbidden fruit. She ate first. She believed the lies of the snake. It was her fault that Adam fell from harmony with God. Was it because she was a woman that she made this fatal mistake? How did she convince Adam to eat? Was Adam unable to refuse because he found Eve's body so attractive? Is Eve...