Before theology became doctrine, there was a myth, two of them actually, stitched together at the very beginning of the anthology we call the Bible.
The first describes a world spoken into existence. Light, sea, sky, stars. Creating order out of what seemed to be chaos.
This was the poetry of beginnings.
The writers imagine a flat earth covered by a great dome that held back the waters, the sky a solid roof separating the above from the below. To them, this was how creation worked, not necessarily false but the only language (and science) they had at their disposal.
Humanity arrives to our story last, male and female together, blessed and called good. There are no forbidden trees. No shame, nor exile. Only harmony.
The second tells a different story. A lone human formed from soil, life breathed into his form. A garden planted afterward, animals shaped later, and a female companion made from his flesh. It is a different order, a different theology, probably even written by another hand and later joined to the first. One of the Bible’s earliest contradictions sits right In the Beginning.
And yet, both reach for the same thing: what it means to be human, aware, and to carry curiosity.
In this second myth, the writers imagine a world already touched, dare I say plagued, by pain and mystery. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is not so much a test of obedience as it is a boundary, the place where innocence and curiosity meet awareness.
The story dares something bold.
It makes God imperfect.
And God lies.
He says the day they eat from the tree, they will surely die. They eat, and die they do not. Instead, their eyes are opened. The serpent did tell them this would come to pass, that they would be like the gods, knowing good and evil. And that is exactly what happens.
The serpent tells the truth.
The humans awaken.
The god's warning is false.
Maybe the writers were not trying to make their god deceitful, but like a protective father, softening the truth in hopes of prolonging innocence. But still, that falsehood becomes the pulse of our story. The initial tension in scripture is not necessarily between good and evil, but between truth and protection.
Centuries later, other writers also wrestled with this same ache. Paul used Adam as an analogy, a kind of poetry even. Not quite an accusatory tone. He wrote of Adam as the father of death, not as the carrier of generational guilt. But later theologians turned this into doctrine. Tertullian called women the devil’s gateway. Augustine built an entire theory (now popular in many Christian theological frameworks) of original sin, claiming one man’s failure infected every birth to follow.
A woman’s question became humanity’s crime.
Curiosity transformed into corruption.
A myth about awakening became a theology of shame.
And from that same theology rose centuries of rules meant to keep women quiet, covered, and contained. If Eve’s desire to know was the beginning of all pain, then every woman’s voice carried its memory. Clergymen, kings, and husbands could point back to the garden and say that silence would ensure safety, that modesty was akin to holiness, and that women’s bodies should always be cloaked to protect men from the chaos they might unleash.
The story was told and retold until it became policy. The curiosity of Eve became the reason women were barred from pulpits, kept from receiving an education, punished for showing skin or daring to raise her voice and question. She was the proof text for every purity code and every teaching that warned girls to guard themselves, to obey, and to stay small.
Even now, that message still lingers in classrooms, sermons, and laws. A woman’s hunger for knowledge still frightens those who have built their power on control. Because a woman who is inquisitive and dares to raise her voice is one who is harder to keep in line. Since they have taught that Eve’s voice was the beginning of sin, they never grow tired of trying to shut her up.
It still echoes. I saw a video of a preacher named Jackie Hill Perry who told a group of young kids, “You deserve to die because you were born sinners.” Her tone firm, her words certain.
I thought of Eve, and of newborn babies, the purest lives we know, unguarded except for breath and hunger and the hope of being held by their parents. How could anyone look at a child and call that corruption?
It’s not something I would call holiness. It’s harm, swaddled with the protection of scripture, and what happens when a poem about curiosity is mistaken for a rulebook about obedience.
Eve was never reckless. She was reflective. She reasoned and reached for understanding. She was the first to ask what was true versus what had simply been said about truth.
I'd call her the first theologian, the first to deconstruct.
A pioneer in preferring understanding to comfort.
And Adam followed, albeit quietly, then placed her with the blame.
Even the serpent, later recast in our story as Satan, was never meant as some enemy. In the world of the writers, the ancient Near East, snakes were common and feared, representatives of death and renewal. There was no devil yet, only a clever creature drawn from their experience.
It is strange that later in the same collection another writer imagines truth as freedom. “You will know the truth,” he says, “and the truth will make you free.”
In the garden, truth was what was hidden. Knowledge was forbidden, and the seekers of it were exiled. Freedom and truth were never enemies, only power and protection.
The myth begins with a god who lies to keep creation small, and centuries later, another voice insists that knowing is the only way to be free.
The texts’ argument, not their agreement, could be what makes these stories holy after all. Genesis hides truth to protect innocence, but John celebrates truth as liberation. Each writer is answering the same human ache from a different century.
The story was never meant to condemn us for wanting to know. It was written to explain why knowing hurts. The world was not cursed because humans learned too much. It was already wild and beautiful and dangerous.
The myth simply gave that truth a narrative. A shape.
You were not born broken. You were born curious, like Eve. You were born reaching for understanding, willing to question what you were told. And if innocence happens to be the cost, I’d call it the right price.
Because the moment humanity reached for knowledge was not our fall.
It was our beginning.