The Transformation of Deception: Understanding the Portrait of Eve in the "Apocalypse of Abraham," Chapter 23 -- By: Megan K. DeFranza

Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 23:2 (Spring 2009)
Article: The Transformation of Deception: Understanding the Portrait of Eve in the "Apocalypse of Abraham," Chapter 23
Author: Megan K. DeFranza


The Transformation of Deception: Understanding the
Portrait of Eve in the Apocalypse of Abraham, Chapter 23

Megan K. DeFranza

MEGAN K. DeFRANZA is a graduate of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a doctoral candidate at Marquette University writing her dissertation on theological anthropology and intersex. She lives with her husband, Andrew, and daughters, Lórien and Eden, in Beverly, Massachusetts.

My three-year-old daughter, Lórien, is just beginning to ask that perennial human question, “Why?” I find that I need to take a deep breath before attempting to respond. Sometimes I have an answer. Sometimes I do not have patience to explain the real reason. And sometimes I find myself using that line that parents have employed for generations: “Because I said so!”

The question “Why?” has plagued humankind for as long as we can remember, and the question, “Why is there evil and sin in the world?” continues to push pastors, theologians, small group leaders, and parents to the heights of their creative resources to come up with answers. The Apocalypse of Abraham is one such attempt. It is an ancient piece of literature that was circulated among Jews and Christians to help them understand their faith in a troubled world. Though written in a different style that feels foreign to modern readers, the Apocalypse has been read in the same way that Christians today read the works of C. S. Lewis. Just as Lewis’s fiction and nonfiction illuminate the Christian life, enabling us to wrestle with old problems in new ways, the author of the Apocalypse reworks the story of Adam and Eve in order to answer the perennial question: Who is to blame for sin and evil in the world? To answer this question, he does what any good preacher would do: he takes us back to Genesis. But here we find the story of Eve transformed from her simple confession, found in Genesis 3:13, “The serpent deceived me and I ate,” into the sin of sexual seduction.

How did such a transformation take place? Given its relative obscurity as a Jewish legend preserved in Old Slavonic by the Russian Orthodox Church, it would be easy to dismiss this Apocalypse as simply erroneous, irrelevant, or out of sync with Jewish and Christian teaching on the first woman. Unfortunately, as this article will show, the suggestive portrait of Eve found in the Apocalypse of Abraham witnesses to a common stream of biblical interpretation that may extend as far back as the first century before Christ. What is worse is the fact that this ancient prejudice persists today.

We all know the power that stories have to shape the ways we look at the world, especially their power to form opinions that we...

You must have a subscription and be logged in to read the entire article.
Click here to subscribe
visitor : : uid: ()