Paging G. Wesley, paging G. Wesley, please pick up the white courtesy phone…

Once again, I found myself lying in bed thinking that I have not yet found a nice, collegial, proper “Mogget tone” from which to interact with you. So your patience and thoughtful responses as we talk about these things reflects very well on your character and intelligence. It is I who am learning from you in more ways than you likely appreciate right now.

In any case, I do agree that we cannot afford to ignore these issues, so have at it!

Mogs

Thanks for your patience with me and kind nudgings/remarks/etc. Sorry I’m so slow to get your hints. In my defense…It’s funny: I did not intend this as a post about 1 Tim 2. Not really about a single reading of any text at all. Instead, I was responding to the Beverly Cambell argument — ‘canonized’ in an unfortunate sort of way in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism — that Eve was prescient. That just didn’t strike me as supportable given all the scriptures that say otherwise. That’s the (only) point. 1 Tim 2 is a flashpoint of conflict about Eve’s knowledge, so that’s why I picked it.

Given your comments, though, I will try to respond to at least a couple, over the next days. You’ve laid out some provocative questions, and so I hope to try to respond thoughtfully (with some more time); already I can think of a brief incident as a student in a locked psychiatric unit, and, separately, a very insightful reading by a Catholic scholar that are the seeds of responses to a couple of your questions.

In brief, I think we actually do need to sort out this story, it’s unavoidable, and it merits our attention. Thanks for pushing for a more thoughtful, encompassing approach. Oh, and sorry about the fonts, they worked really well in my browsers…

As I was lying in bed last night I was thinking that perhaps we had not played together very nicely in your sandbox. So here are some nice, chaste, Mogget kisses….

TT is right, I am nudging you in the direction of contextualizing your readings. With respect to texts that highlight Eve’s gullibility and her precedence in the Edenic disobedience, I am gently nudging you in a specific direction. Why do we need to sort this story out so badly?

I find myself less and less convinced that it plays an integral role in the gospel:

*We can talk about the origins of the human condition without it; in Romans, it is Adam’s disobedience that is the issue and in the Gospels Jesus NEVER expresses his mission in relationship to the Fall.

*With respect to 1 Tim 2, Eve’s activity is a proof text. We can certainly talk about the need for culturally appropriate gender relationships without getting into Genesis.

*Eve’s deception and transgression were hot topics in the milieu of the NT so it is surprising that it doesn’t come up more often than it does. Did the majority of the NT authors realize that it was an inappropriate model for gender relationships between disciples?

So I think you’ve raise a good point: Mormons spend a lot of time thinking and writing about Genesis 1-3 and Eve, and much less on texts such as Galatians 3. Why is that? What, in our little corner of Christianity, is it really supporting? And is it something that could be supported in other ways?

I think that we all agree that this is a theologically loaded issue, which is why I think that both Mogget and I are pushing you to examine the theological motives for the interpretions offered in the text. These texts begin with the assumption that Eve was deceived in order to make a point, in some cases a rather strong point as in 1 Tim 2. Eve’s deception is the basis for why women should remain silent, submissive, and child-bearing. Rather than treating Eve’s deception as a bare fact, we should investigate how this interpretation is mobilized for different ends. Perhaps we will discover that this “fact” is mobilized for a variety of different ends, perhaps including some that we might even find liberating.

For instance, consider some of the non-canonical accounts of the fall, which take the Genesis story quite literally, including Eve’s deception, but the serpent is the hero and God is the villain. While other stories start with the assumption that God is good, these texts expose that this is an interpretive choice, not a self-evident truth.

For me, what this points to is that we need to pay attention to how a story is used, and examine those assumptions, not simply what a text seems to say. It may turn out that what a text “says” and what its assumptions are become entirely incompatible with how else we interpret the text. Another quick example is that Paul’s condemnation of “homosexuality” is actually a condemnation of effeminate men, which would include stay-at-home dads. We can’t selectively decide that we are going to accept one assumption of Paul’s and reject another without some good hermeneutical work.

As my initial comment states, recognizing problems with authorship is relevant for potentially determining what *Paul’s views* are on women in general, and Eve in particular. That’s all I said, and that’s all I meant. Inasmuch as the person of Paul himself is relevant to the topic of this post I thought it was worth mentioning.

Further, as I said, the quote from 2 Cor. is still up for discussion; but there is more about woman/women in 1 Tim 2 than simply that Eve was “deceived”, and Paul should not necessarily be labeled “the eternal enemy of women” for it.

Best wishes,

TYD

So, first, to get it out of the way: yes, Dart and Julie, I agree there are good reasons to consider that the author of 1 Timothy (the Pastor, as Mogget calls him/her) might not be Paul. But I did not consider authorship relevant to this discussion, and I still don’t, which is why I didn’t nibble on Mogget’s very gently dangled initial bait. Indeed, the very gist of my argument is that there are many places in our canon stating that Eve was deceived. I don’t see how it is relevant whether it is Paul or another author is the one making the claim in 1 Tim, or even if the other six verses were written by the named authors or a pseudonymous writer; typically when a message is repeated this many times in scripture, our confidence in it is high.

As a side note (which I can see are the ones that get me in trouble!) while intellectually the process of deciphering authorship is as much fun as a good mystery novel, most of the time I find myself more on the Childs/Alter side of the deconstruction aisle, choosing the more difficult task of facing up to the whole canon as we’ve received it. As Mogg points out, no one is proposing taking 1 Timothy out of the canon, so whether it was the Pastor or Paul speaking in 1 Tim 2:14 might be relevant in some discussions – but not in this one.

Furthermore, in many Mormon contexts making the distinction between “Paul” and “the author of 1 Timothy” can come across as sort of show-offish, even condescending, so I’ve generally reverted to treating it the way I do the BC/AD versus BCE/CE debate: if you feel strongly about it, sure, I can go along with it, but it’s not something I get worked up about anymore. If it’s important to you-all that no matter what the context, I be careful to say, “the author of the Fourth Gospel” instead of “John,” then fine, I can do that if I really must. I simply find it more efficient and less distracting to say, “Matthew,” as a surrogate term for what I am happy to concur is frequently a much more complex and nuanced issue, and save the space and energy for the point at hand (unless that point is textual deconstruction).

Tim, yes, you’ll find that the “Books have been written…” link in my second sentence of the original post links to Campbell’s book, so yes, I’m aware of it. It’s an argument that’s been around for a long time, and it is her sort of argument that prompted my initial post: stating that Eve’s actions were prescient is contradicted by multiple scriptural texts. 1 Tim 2:14 is the one that uses the word “deceived,” so it has gotten the most attention, but to restate my point, lots of verses support this assessment. And Clark and fMhA, Eve’s (and Adam’s) reaction to God’s query as to their actions seems to make it clear that Adam and Eve understood that they had clearly gone against God’s wishes.

As for “rejecting the texts [I] find objectionable,” I’m not sure where I’ve done that. I think TT and Mogget are taking my parenthesis that Eve’s deception does not mean all women are deceived as somehow rejecting a text somewhere, to which I ask, huh? what text would that be? TT, what text says “all women are responsible for the fall,” as your comment states? Not even sure Paul/The Pastor seems to be saying that in 1 Tim 2, though I agree he says things we now ignore (trivial example: wearing pearls, v 9).

But do I agree that our current culture does make it hard to have a “plain” conversation about Eve, for as Shaw, Moggett, and so many others have noted, 1 Tim 2 has been used, and continues to be used, to justify some terrible treatment of women. Those centuries of mistreatment color all discussions about the Eve story, and I guess you all are correct; I can’t really ignore that elephant, much as I might like to suppress it. And the “current (modern) situation of Christianity” is included in this IMHO: we in the Church too frequently take this foundational story farther than the text suggests, perhaps even the opposite of what the text says. I lament that the story of Eve has been used to justify the mistreatment of women. But Campbell’s argument that Eve was prescient falls flat on its face. We can and should do better. (I’m working on it, hopefully some of you are too… )