40 FEMINIST VIEWS THAT UNDERMINE SCRIPTURE
in the Genesis narrative. He is not just denying that there was a “crafty”
serpent who spoke to Eve (Gen. 3:1). He also denies the entire theme of
primogeniture found in Genesis 2. That is, he denies the entire narrative
structure that shows the man as created before the woman, for this is
the basis for the primogeniture theme he sees Paul referring to when he
says, in 1 Timothy 2:13, “For Adam was formed first, then Eve.”
How much of Genesis 2 does that involve? In order to deny that
Adam was created first, then Eve after him, how much inaccurate mate-
rial has to be inserted into Genesis 2 either as a literary device fore-
shadowing the fall (reason 1), or as an accommodation to the situation
familiar to readers at the time of Moses (reason 2), or as an anticipation
of an agrarian society that would be established after the fall (reason 3)?
It is no small amount:
- God placing the man alone in the garden (Gen. 2:8)
- God putting the man alone in the garden “to work it and keep it”
(2:15) - God commanding the man alone that he may eat of every tree of
the garden but not of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
(2:16-17) - God saying, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will
make him a helper fit for him” (2:18) - God bringing the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens to
the man alone to see what he would call them (2:19) - the man alone giving names to every living creature (2:20)
- there not being found a helper fit for the man (2:20)
- God causing a deep sleep to fall upon the man and taking one of
his ribs and forming it into a woman (2:21-22)
This entire sequence, summarized by Paul in the statement “For
Adam was formed first, then Eve,” is merely a literary device that did
not actually happen, according to Webb. And all of this then enables
Webb to say that Paul’s appeal to the creation of Adam prior to Eve is
not proof of a transcultural ethical standard. But if a theological argu-
ment has to deny significant portions of Scripture for its support, it
should surely be rejected by evangelicals who are subject to the author-
ity of the entire Bible as the Word of God. Webb’s three ways of deny-