Reading Genesis 1-3

Many readings of Genesis 1-3 commit what may be a retrospective fallacy. When they are read by communities or societies where men dominate or have dominated over women, these chapters are read as a justification for that dominance. Women are a secondary creation intended to be helper, i.e. servants, to men and women are subordinate to me because the first women tempted the first man to commit a sin.

Scholars who adopt the tools of semiotics, a form of structuralisim, note that the structure of the story does not substantiate this reading.

The following is a very cursory and simplified introduction to semiotics intended to equip an undergraduate student with enough vocabulary and conceptual tools to arrive at a different interpretation of Genesis 1-3 than the sort described above. For a more extensive introduction, visit the following site: Semiotics for Beginners:

Semiotics

Roland Barthes: "[Semiology is the study of] any system of signs, whatever their substance and limits; images, gestures, musical sounds, objects and the complex association of all these, which form the content of ritual, convention or public entertainment: these constitute, if not languages, at least systems of signification. Elements of Semiology, 1967, p. 9

Semiology offers a very technical account of how items from the world of nature and culture are combined into systems of signification.

Key Methodological Assumptions:

• Meaning is generated by difference
• Analysis requires division into binary or polar semantic oppositions (e.g. Male/not male good/bad)
• These binary oppositions are a feature of culture not nature
• Pairs tend to be hierarchical

Roland Barthes: Texts are cultural constructs of reality in terms of similarities and oppositions.
The structure of the texts works to privilege one set of values and meanings over the other.
Oppositions are resolved in favor of a dominant ideology

Lori Hope Lefkovitz, in "Eve in the Semiotic Garden," adds the following to the list:

• Meaning is created in language.
• Naming creates meaning and thereby creates the world. To name is to own.
• The relationship between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary.
• Meaning is located where difference is perceived. It is relational or oppositional.
• Opposites are arbitrarily established, but within closed systems they seem inevitable.
• Where there is opposition, there is hierarchy.
• When we recognize that meaning exists as codes rather than as "imitations of reality," we are in a position to decode the tradition, expose false dichotomies, and assess the underlying assumptions and values of a tradition.

What are the significant binary oppositions in the creation accounts? Note: the word sin does not appear. What limb of the opposition is privileged? Where do the stories introduce ambiguity or ambivalence?

Bibliography:

Ellen von Wolde, A Semiotic Analysis of Genesis 2-3: A Semiotic Theory and method of Analysis Applied to the Story of the Garden of Eden (Van Gorcum, 1989) and Lyn M. Bechtel "Rethinking the interpretation of Genesis 2.4b-3.24"," A Feminist Companion to Genesis, Athalya Brenner editor (Sheffield Academic Press, 1992) pp. 77-117.

Carol L. Meyers, Gender Roles and Genesis 3.16 Revisited," A Feminist Companion to Genesis, Athalya Brenner editor (Sheffield Academic Press, 1992) pp. 118-141.

David Jobling, "Myth and its Limits in Genesis 2.4b-3.24', in The Sense of Biblical Narrative II. Structural Analyses in the Hebrew Bible (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1986): 17-43.