Eve
Eve is the first woman in the creation narratives of the Book of Genesis, the wife of Adam and, in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the mother of all humankind. As with Adam, whether she was a historical individual is a question of faith and interpretation, not of historical evidence.
In Genesis
- Creation. God makes the woman from a rib taken from the sleeping Adam, who greets her as "bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh" (Genesis 2:21–23).
- The fall. The serpent persuades her to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; she gives the fruit to Adam, and both are expelled from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3). Her punishment includes pain in childbirth (3:16).
- Her name. Adam names her Ḥawwāh "because she was the mother of all living" (3:20); the name is linked to the Hebrew word for life.
- Children. She bears Cain and Abel (Cain and Abel, Genesis 4:1–2) and, after Abel's death, Seth, "another seed instead of Abel" (4:25).
In later traditions
- Judaism. Medieval Jewish folklore, in the Alphabet of Ben Sira, adds Lilith as Adam's first wife, made from the earth like him, with Eve as the second.
- Christianity. Early Christian writers such as Justin Martyr and Irenaeus contrasted Eve's disobedience with the obedience of Mary, whom they called the "new Eve". The figure of Eve was long used in arguments about the nature and role of women, and has been reread by feminist theologians.
- Islam. The Quran does not name Adam's wife; tradition calls her Ḥawwāʾ. It describes Satan deceiving the couple together, both eating from the tree and both repenting (7:19–25), so it does not single her out for blame.
In culture
Eve appears in most depictions of the fall, from Albrecht Dürer's engraving Adam and Eve (1504) to John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667). In genetics, "Mitochondrial Eve" is the most recent common ancestor of all living humans in the direct female line, estimated to have lived in Africa over 100,000 years ago: a statistical construct, not the figure of Genesis.
Sources
- Genesis 2–4: https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.2
- Quran 7:19–25: https://quran.com/7/19-25
See also
Filed under Society and history.
Structured data
type:"person"
kind:"religious_figure"
name:"Eve"
name_hebrew:"חַוָּה"
name_arabic:"حواء"
meaning:"linked to the Hebrew for life; mother of all living (Genesis 3:20)"
0:"judaism"
1:"christianity"
2:"islam"
]
0:"Genesis 2–4"
1:"Quran 7:19–25"
]
spouse:"Adam"
0:"Cain"
1:"Abel"
2:"Seth"
]
}