Exonerating Eve

In the epic film Noah, the screenwriters do the impossible: they give a positive twist to the famous raging flood by saying it cleansed the world of pollution. A similar cinematic twist is needed for the Garden of Eden story, for it too has a problem with pollution: for millennia it has polluted the birthright of Eve and all her daughters.

In long-standing biblical interpretation and the popular mind, Eve gets what's coming to her, because she disobeys God's order not to eat the fruit of a particular tree. She not only eats the fruit--a fig--but also gives it to Adam. For defying God, the story goes, she is hit with a three-fold punishment. First, she and Adam must leave Eden; second, she must suffer the pangs of childbirth; and third, she must die.