Eve

"But I fear lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is toward Christ"—very carefully and didactically the apostle has spoken.

that is, from those who pursue the heresies and persuade her to fornicate away from the one husband, God Almighty—lest, as the serpent deceived Eve, the so-called Life, we too, through the lecherous craftiness of the heresies, transgress the commandments.

So she who began the transgression was called "Life," because she becomes the cause of the succession both of those who are born and of those who sin—the mother alike of the righteous and of the unrighteous, since each of us makes himself righteous or, on the contrary, prepares himself for disobedience.

and out of him he made the female, a helper for him answering to himself.

Taking, then, the serpent as the workshop of his own deceit, through it he spoke with the woman, and, persuading her to eat of that forbidden tree in the hope of becoming a god, through her he deceived Adam also — for so the first-formed man was called.

275. to drag down into the pit of passion that soul beloved of God, just as once it did to the first father by means of Eve, miserably driving him, alas, out of paradise and from God, and contriving that he should become liable to death instead of to the blessed and immortal life. For when the girl heard those words filled with all wisdom, being without understanding she did not understand them; b …

The same goodness provided a helper too, lest anything should not be good.

At once the woman is condemned to bring forth in pains and to serve her husband — she who before, without any saddening, had heard of the increase of the race through blessing:

And therefore He did not curse Adam himself and Eve, as candidates of restitution, as relieved by confession.

For those skin tunics, which Adam and Eve, stripped of paradise, put on, will not be, as some would have it, the reshaping of flesh out of slime — since somewhat earlier Adam recognized, already in the woman, the offshoot of his own substance as flesh ("This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh"), and the very portion drawn off from the male was filled out into the female with flesh — to …

Even if anyone will dare to argue the holy land to be paradise rather, which it may also receive to be called the land of the fathers — of Adam and Eve, namely — then likewise a restitution into paradise will seem promised to the flesh, which was allotted to dwell in it and keep it, so that such a man be recalled thither as was driven thence.

For behold, you have been deceived by the serpent more bitterly than Eve.

At any rate, according to the exact speech of the Hebrews, the name "Hevia," with the rough breathing, is interpreted as "the female serpent.

For this cause — since there is one deceiver who from of old led astray Eve, and now leads the rest of men down to death — there is also one helper and succourer for us, the Lord, who from the beginning foretold by the prophets, and now plainly calls us to salvation.

For Adam was the one husband of Eve, and Eve his one wife, one woman, one rib.

For the primordial law was given to Adam and Eve in paradise as the womb of all the precepts of God.

For if Adam and Eve, from the knowledge of good and evil, felt the need to cover their shameful parts, then from the moment we feel this very thing, we profess the knowledge of good and evil.

since Apelles too — not the painter, but the heretic — by setting up souls, male and female, before bodies, as he learned from Philumene, assuredly makes the flesh, as the later, receive its sex from the soul.

Mary believed Gabriel.

" But to us Moses, a prophetic, not a poetic, shepherd, describes the first woman, Eve, as having girt her parts of shame with leaves rather than her temples with flowers.

If as great a faith lingered upon earth as the reward of it which is awaited in the heavens, no one of you at all, dearest sisters, from the time she had come to know the living God and had learned concerning her own condition—that is, the condition of woman—would have desired a more cheerful, not to say a more glorious, garb;

And therefore the man of God, Adam, and the woman of God, Eve, having performed one marriage between themselves, sanctioned for men a model from the authority of their origin and the first will of God.

" For he would have said "helpers," if he had destined him for several wives.

since indeed God named Eve, not yet having known a man, woman and female — female, in respect of the sex generally, woman, in respect of the grade of the sex specifically.

The woman, the moment she was approached by him, was — I would not say rashly — breathed upon, through that very colloquy of his, with a spirit infected with impatience.

When that kind of second human being was made by God for the help of man, that female was at once named "woman," while yet happy, while yet worthy of paradise, while yet a virgin.

But even if she is to be veiled on account of the angels, without doubt the law of the veil will operate from that age at which the "daughters of men" could draw on lust for themselves and suffer marriage.

" For he could not name a later woman, of whom Christ was not to be born—that is, one who had known a man—but that one who was present, who was a virgin and was called a "woman" according to the propriety of this term, defended for the virgin, and thus for the whole female kind, according to the form of the beginning.