For over many years, woman has been the down fall to all humanity, the reason why, sin, hurt, pain, shamefulness, deceit and suffering are in the world. Temptation, lust, and vanity are the detriments supposedly beset by the first woman. Whether Eve or Pandora came first is irrelevant. They will be remembered as the ones responsible for ruining man and mankind forever so to speak. However, both stories should be explored to determine, in ways they can hold some similarity to each other, but in some ways different.
Both Greek and biblical stories hold account for the two women not to obey and refuse the rules given, both walked the earth as the first mortal women, both to be the first to marry and create the population of mankind. Nevertheless, the two are stories have more differences in the true background. Pandora was created out of revenge for the arrangement Zeus had stirred up for Epimetheus for compromising his orders. In his plan, Zeus ordered Hephaestus, the god of smiths, to craft a gorgeous woman out of earth and water; he governed the Gods to create the most perfect looking woman, to be the first mortal woman to walk the earth with men.
The goddess of Love, Aphrodite adorned her with beauty, grace and desire; Hermes, the Messenger god, gave her cunning and boldness (or in the text, a bitchy mind and a cheating heart); Demeter showed her how to tend a garden; Athena taught her manual dexterity and to spin; Apollo taught her to sing sweetly and play the lyre; Poseidon’s gift was a pearl necklace and the god of sea promised her she would never drown, once done, the Four Winds breathed life into her, giving Epimetheus a wife. Although the first woman on earth was too bestowed with unparalleled charm and beauty, Zeus also made her foolish, mischievous and idle.
As a wedding gift to the new couple, Zeus gave Pandora a beautiful box and told her never to open it. With the gift of curiosity and an unopened box, the admiration to peek inside, Pandora just as she did and open the box, only releasing into the world the harmful plagues that still take an effect, old age, sickness, insanity, pestilence, vice, passion, greed, crime, death, theft, lies, jealousy, famine and so on now roomed the earth. In the biblical story, the first woman was Eve; God created man, giving him a garden to tend called Eden.
Giving him everything in the garden his to eat but the tree of knowledge of good and evil, “you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die. ” (Gen2:17) In this God saw that the man who he named Adam; needed a companion, In Gen2:18, God said, “It is no good that a man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him. ” From the rib and flesh of Adam, God created a woman. Together naked they were not ashamed, for shame was not created to them, for the sins of the world were not unleashed.
As for Eve, she was not created out of spite, she was created to be a companion to Adam out of his flesh, “This is now bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man. ” Said Adam (Gen 2:23). In Eve’s confrontation with a serpent (snake) that changed the ways of mankind forever, the bible states, “the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God has made. ” Because Eve knew the words of what God had told her, ‘you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat it you shall surely die. The serpent using his cunning way, says, “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. ” It was the bite that both Adam and Eve took that made them realize, they were naked, and it was then, the shame, remorse, confusion, guilt, and fear that lead to their clandestine behavior after eating the apple. When God asked for their confession, neither could confess nor repent but point the blame. Adam blame God for giving him Eve, and Eve passed the blame on the serpent.
It was here that God in the midst of the curse passage, cursed the serpent to slither on his belly, for women to endure pain in conception, cursed the objection of a man’s labor and made it “reluctantly, yet richly, yield his food through hard work”. Man became liable to all the sufferings and miseries of life, to death. Both women, in history are held accountable for disobeying the rules they were given, both were given hardship for consequences after. However one story, the fair maiden was only made to be a personal vendetta from Zeus.
The other was created to fill the void of a man, and have a companion by his side, but was also tricked by a serpent that was created by God himself. Both stories held the future for both men and women, the only difference is that God himself holds us for our own accounts and forgives us, “when sinners refuse to repent, they suffer judgment, when they do repent they receive forgiveness. ” It is our cultures that have been handed down years after years to point the blame for either woman on either story.
But it’s one’s true opinion to believe that Pandora, “All-gifted, was wrong to have curiosity and open the box, and then in turn be called “the gift of all,” because she open the world to all the emotions mankind will endure in the wrong. Or is Eve, once known as life, to carry children and provide life, now known as death, because of eating the fruit, she spiritually became separated from the will of God and therefore, will can fall out of faith with God. It is only for us to decide.
