Lila: You are mine
Matnan: Present, gift
Mazor: Bandage, medicine
Naarit: Maiden, young woman
Nave: Dwelling place, pasture
Renana: Song, exultation, prayer, chant
Reut: Friendship, compansionship
Shet: Appointed
Sivan: Season, time
Sufa: Storm
Tuval-Kayin: Metalsmith
Tzukit: Singing bird, thrush
Yedod: Spark
Zeeva: Wolf
The majority of these came from The Complete Book of Hebrew Baby Names by Smadar Shir Sidi, HarperOne, 1989.
AUTHOR’S NOTES
Like Demon: A Memoir, I wrote Havah to revisit ideas so ingrained in our pop and religious cultures as to be cliché.
The problem, though, was that I simply had no idea the scope of the project I had undertaken or what I was getting myself into. In planning this book’s writing, I found myself confronted by a growing list of questions. Among them:
• Where was Eden?
• What’s that about a talking snake? (Did other animals talk?)
• Was Adam tempted to eat the fruit before Eve’s creation?
• Where was Adam when Eve ate it?
• After eating it, did they know immediately that something had changed?
• How long were they there before the fateful fruit-eating day?
• When they fled, did they ever look back or attempt to return?
• How did they learn basic skills such as growing, harvesting, storing food, fire-making, and tool-making?
• What guidelines would they have for living in the absence of role models or law?
• Why did God not favor Cain’s sacrifice?
• Did Cain know he was killing Abel?
• What was Cain’s mark?
• Where was Nod?
• How many children did Adam and Eve have?
• Were Adam and Eve faithful to one another?
• What was the population of the earth at the time of Adam’s death?
• Did they ever see Cain again?
• What secrets remained to them alone, that they might not have passed on?
I think I single-handedly drove at least one pastor, two scholars, and one theologian crazy.
Three resources I found to be invaluable: Amy-Jill Levine’s Lectures on the Old Testament (The Teaching Company, 2001); Genesis, Robert Alter, ed. (Norton, 1996); and The Bible as It Was, James L. Kugel (Belknap, 1997).
Other sources that never left my desk: The Jewish Study Bible (Tanakh translation, Oxford University Press, 1999); Word Biblical Commentary: Vol. 1, Genesis 1–15, Gordon Wenham (Word, 1987); The Pentateuch as Narrative, John Sailhamer (Zondervan, 1992); The New International Commentary on the Old Testament: The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1–17, Victor Hamilton (Eerdmans, 1990).
References of additional interest: Biography: Adam and Eve (A&E Home Video, 2005); The Learning Channel’s In Search of Eden (2002); A&E’s Mysteries of the Bible: Cain and Abel (1996); A Biblical Case for an Old Earth by David Snoke (Baker, 2006); Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphic texts, including The Apocalypse of Moses, The Book of Jubilees, The Books of Adam, and the Midrash.
In addition to the questions with which I plagued academic and theological thinkers alike (“If the no-death-before-the-fall thing applies to animals, wouldn’t the earth have been overpopulated if Adam and Eve hadn’t eaten the fruit?” “Uh, is it possible that the garden might have existed but in another dimension, and that’s why we can’t find it?”), were other questions of translation (Did God increase Eve’s pain in childbirth or her pregnancies? Was she Adam’s helper or his sustainer?), and even whether to include rain or meat-eating in the antediluvian world—a matter of significant theological importance to some.
If one assumes a literal garden and literal first couple, there are many things we simply cannot know.
There is also no way to determine the kind of language an adam might have spoken with his god. Some Midrashic sources assume it to be Hebrew, but the Torah was written in the vernacular of the Israelites. I did choose Hebrew names for my characters and nontransliterated names for the principals mentioned in Genesis, simply to help escape the felt-board Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel. I wanted to examine them anew.
I used the adam for most of the book because, as Havah notes in the story, Adam was never properly named. Ha-Adam means merely “Man from the (red) earth,” or “earthling.” Additional sources reason that the adam became distinctly male (Ish) only after Isha was created from him. Dozens of great morsels like these—too many to list here—are within the footnotes of Alter’s Genesis and the other sources listed above.
“Eden,” or the “fertile plain,” was the place within which the garden was situated—but not the garden itself. I have refrained from openly basing the garden of this book on any one location, but found Legend: The Genesis of Civilisation by David Rohl (Arrow, 2000) and investigation into the theories of American archaeologist and Middle East specialist Juris Zarins fascinating. Regardless of the compelling nature of these and other theories, if one believes in a literal Eden, we can safely assume that we know more about the terrain of Mars than we do about Eden’s garden today.
It is my opinion that we have placed far too great a weight on English translations of the Scriptures. It is my personal belief that those of us who base our conduct on biblical principles even do ourselves and our relationships potential harm by not investigating the more complex subtleties of the Hebrew Scriptures. We also miss out on the delightful intricacies, poeticisms, and even puns of the text by going no deeper than our English versions.
Last, and from my heart, I think we are remiss if we do not examine the nature, meaning, and equality of genders as designed by God, recorded by the Genesis author, and influenced—for good or ill—by the world. Too many poorly applied translations of this story have fueled the subjugation and even abuse of women throughout history (and to this day). I do believe it is possible to seek the heart of God with the best of intentions and still grossly miss the mark—and injure ourselves or others in the process.
I was challenged and encouraged by Katherine Bushnell’s God’s Word to Women (Christians for Biblical Equality, 2003) and Susan Greiner’s article “Did Eve Fall or Was She Pushed?” (Bible Review, August 1999).
Whether you subscribe to a literal or figurative Eve, a young or old earth, one thing remains unchanging: the aspects of our nature formed in the image of the One—the propensity to love, to create, to feel pain and joy.
In that way we are all the same.
Selah.
To learn more about Tosca and her books, please visit www.toscalee.com.
For additional bonus material on Havah: The Story of Eve, go to: www.pureenjoyment.com.
Table of Contents
Prologue
The Garden
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
The Fruit
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Exile
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Kayin
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Generations
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Adam
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Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Acknowledgments
Names/Meaning List
Author's Notes
Tosca Lee, Havah
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