Vatican media publishes article dismissing the realities of original sin and the devil
It is not found in Genesis—at the root of a misunderstanding
The serpent, the woman and the fruit. And Satan?
When reading the opening pages of the Bible, a question inevitably arises: how does the Garden of Eden—where God placed the human being "to cultivate and care for it" (Genesis 2:15)—transform from a place of delight into an abyss of despair (Genesis 3:24)?
Thus, in just a few strokes, one of antiquity’s most poignant religious myths reveals the grandeur and the wretchedness of the human being—the most extraordinary of creatures, closest to the divine, yet simultaneously the only one burdened with the bitter awareness of not being God. The dialogue between the serpent and the woman constitutes the Bible’s first great theological discourse, encapsulating the core of ancient Israel’s wisdom theology: the realization that humans are the ones who hold dominion over all other beings in the world, yet their power is subject to a prohibition—it is not infinite. To be like God—that is, to be able to eat from the tree of life—is the dream and desire that ancient Near Eastern religions identified as the root of humanity’s instinctive rebellion against the divine, and which Israel regards as the only true assault on faithfulness to its God. It is striking that, in Eden, the woman takes on the role of the one who has the courage to engage with this desire, to assert the right to it and debate its limits, and to help define the insurmountable boundary separating humans from God—a boundary beyond negotiation. That theological exchange between the woman and the most cunning of all living creatures marks a point of no return at the beginning of the Bible; it establishes that the desire to be like God is simultaneously a yearning and a curse, yet also an essential, creaturely condition of humanity that shapes its destiny. It is no coincidence that the man, Adam, names the woman Eve—meaning "mother of all the living" (Genesis 3:20)—for from her, all living beings inherit the desire to understand and even to negotiate with God.
Why, then, at the dawn of the third Christian millennium, did Mel Gibson—in the opening sequence of his hugely successful film The Passion—choose to depict the Devil’s final temptation of the Messiah by having a serpent with distinctly feminine features and a lascivious face slither through the Garden of Olives? Woman and the Devil: an equation that has weighed upon Christian thought for centuries.
And yet, the ancient biblical myth known as the Fall contains no Devil, no divine power to which humans are held captive; everything unfolds—as Israel’s monotheistic faith dictates—within the relationship between the one God and His people, for this is inscribed in the very origins of life. This is the common thread that—in widely varying ways depending on the historical era and theological sensibilities—connects every page of the Bible, starting right from the Garden of Origins. Yet, the Genesis account of the transgression leaves not even the slightest trace in the rest of the biblical writings; it is as if the entire history of the Chosen People—a history marked as much by transgression and betrayal as by obedience and fidelity—is driven from within by that same dynamic and branded by that same contradiction: belonging to God and being chosen by God does not mean being *like* God. Yet therein lies the inexhaustible tension between humanity and the divine, not sin itself. To be sure, the Bible—especially the prophetic writings—speaks often of sin, but always to condemn the people’s collective straying from God’s Law, the warmongering choices of kings, or unfaithfulness to the covenant God had established with Israel. These references are always linked to historical events, never to Eve’s transgression.
Why, then, does our religious imagination—shaped by childhood catechism and relentless preaching—remain imprinted with the idea that right there, in that initial transgression (attributed entirely to the woman and her dealings with the devil), lies an original guilt—a condemnation no human can ever escape? Admittedly, feminist battles both within and outside the church have sought to rethink Eve’s role and absolve her of the blame accumulated over millennia; indeed, in recent literature, the "mother of all the living" is sometimes no longer seen as the one who—by yielding to demonic temptation—brought evil into the world, but is instead credited as a figure of critical knowledge.
In reality, albeit relatively late—starting around the 6th century BC—speculation regarding evil spirits (a feature common to all ancient belief systems) introduced new elements into Jewish and Christian theology, such as the concept of angels who rebelled against God and were cast into hell, thereby beginning to alter the original narrative. The serpent is identified with a supernatural creature, yet it is only in a much later text, heavily influenced by Hellenistic culture, that the devil appears as a distinct entity: "But through the devil’s envy death entered the world, and those who belong to his party experience it" (Wisdom 2:24). This concept, however, quickly became part of Christian theology, as evidenced by the entire New Testament tradition—from the accounts of Jesus’s temptation (Matthew 4:1–11 and Luke 4:1–13) to Revelation 12:9 and 20:2. The leader of the fallen angels would go by many names: Devil, Satan, Dragon, Ancient Serpent, and Beelzebul. For his part, Paul echoes an interpretation of the story of woman’s creation—evidently circulating within the Judaism of his time—that enshrined the hierarchy of the sexes as a law of creation (1 Corinthians 11:8); later, a disciple of his would reinforce this view: "For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was the one who transgressed, having allowed herself to be seduced" (1 Timothy 2:13–15). These mark the beginnings of a burden that would weigh heavily upon the subsequent Christian tradition.
The three protagonists of the Genesis narrative—the serpent, the woman, and the fruit—would come to be identified as the devil, women, and sin. Everything, moreover, is traced back to sex: at the root of it all lies a patriarchal view of sexual difference—a distorted view, as it serves to uphold the social hierarchy between the genders—and the conviction that, because the woman bears the weight of the more burdensome aspects of sexual difference, this stems from the fact that the primordial transgression must be attributed to her.
From that ancient biblical text to the headlines of today, everything testifies to the fact that sexual difference is one of life’s great mysteries, precisely because it lies at the origin of life itself. It is significant not only as a condition for procreation and the formation of the family unit, but also as a symbol of any possible encounter between different beings, for "It is not good for the man to be alone..." (Genesis 2:18).
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