queerlychristian:

hereticallygay:

Eve wasn’t Adams wife she was a friend and his equal and there to help take care of the garden you can’t change my mind

i’m with you! for one thing, biblical Hebrew doesn’t have language for the concept of “husband” and “wife” and had no concept of marriage akin to ours; and surely the first humans didn’t have a concept of marriage either! I’ve posted about that based on a textbook from my Old Testament class before. 

Once marriage similar to what we know as marriage does enter the Bible, in the Second Testament (aka New Testament), it is saturated with patriarchy (as it tends to be in our own cultures): the wife is subordinate to the husband in a way that is not implied when it comes to Adam’s and Eve’s relationship in Genesis. 

The phrase ezer kenegdo (עֵ֖זֶר כְּנֶגְדּֽוֹ ), often translated helpmate, used to describe Eve in Genesis 2:18, includes that word ezer that is used most often in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) to describe God! It means a helper, not in the sense of a subordinate but in the sense of someone who is at the very least your equal helping you out with something you could not accomplish yourself. That other half of the term, kenegdo, means something like “as opposite him” – she’s face-to-face with him, on equal footing. God is a helper for human beings who seems more distance, someone we cannot see face-to-face; Eve is for Adam a helper who is right next to him. Hoperemains talks about this Hebrew (and it all checks out based on my knowledge of Hebrew from seminary).