I chose this week’s web post on our course packet reading
Genesis. I have a background as a born and raised Catholic. So I was actually
surprised that I did not know about the first story of the creation of man and
woman. It makes me think about patriarchy and the church’s belief of man and
woman’s equality. If the nuns and brothers had taught us about the first story
of God’s creation which is “God created man in his image, in the image of God
he created him; male and female He created them” (CP). Then I may have thought
differently about Eve who apparently made woman the way we are with menstrual
cycles each month, and pain of bearing children. The second story, the most popular
story of the Catholic teaching is God’s creation of man and woman, where woman
was created by a rib taken from man. In this picture below, we can see the
typical painting of Adam and Eve. But the serpent is also woman. We discussed
last class period that Eve who is portrayed more weak fell for the serpent’s temptation.
It’s just bizarre that in this painting the serpent is also woman.
Source:Course packet by Dr. Wolbrink
images: google
images: google
2 comments:
Lucy, I agree with you that often the first story of the creation of Adam and Eve is often "overlooked". I come from a Southern Baptist background and I cannot recall a time when the actual physical descriptions of the serpent were explained to me. I always just pictured the serpent to have the head of a snake. Like we mentioned in class on Wednesday, I never really thought of the serpent being either male or female.
Lucy, I also had never heard of the serpent in the Garden of Eden being described as a female. And like you had not seen these images before. I think the point of it being included in our discussion Wednesday is to suggest that people sometimes shape stories, including the creation story, to fit their world view. It also shows how messages can be portrayed to the public in subliminal ways by suggesting that the snake was female it suggested negative things about women to churchgoers in the Middle Ages who might have been illiterate or who did not own a bible.
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