Built Women in Men’s Paradises: A Critical Analysis of the Garden of Eden Narrative and Alex Garland’s Ex Machina

Bringing the biblical story of the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2-3) into conversation with Alex Garland’s 2014 film Ex Machina, this paper examines and compares the male-scribed nature of paradise stories that describe the “building” of woman-creatures. From ancient Judean scribes to modern film-makers and computer coders, male-guarded forms of literacy enabled and continue to enable storytelling and world-building. A comparison of the accounts of the creation of Eve of the Garden with Ava of Ex Machina highlights that male control over literacy more generally and creation accounts more specifically yields diminished woman-creatures designed to serve the specific needs of men in male-imagined paradise settings. Although separated by millennia, ancient Judean scribes and modern computer programmers have imagined and built woman-creatures with a limited set of functions and programmed routines that include providing help, serving as a companion, and heterosexual receptivity.

FIRST PHOTOGRAPHIC RECORDS AND NEW DISTRIBUTION RANGE OF THE ENDANGERED LONG-TAILED NESOKIA NESOKIA BUNNII (KHAJURIA, 1981)

In the 1970s, the world knew the long-tailed nesokia Nesokia bunnii (Khajuria, 1981) (Rodentia, Muridae) from the Mesopotamian marshes of Garden of Eden in Southern Iraq. This distinct rodent was known from only five voucher specimens collected at the confluence of Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in southern Iraq while its occurrence in Southwestern Iran had never been reported. In the 1990s, a large extent of its natural habitat was catastrophically desiccated and the animal was last seen in the 1970s. Since then, the status of this elusive rodent was shrouded in mystery. In 2007, an extraordinary photograph of a carcass of this species came to the light from Hawizeh Marsh which was interpreted as concrete evidence of the species’ persistence in the marshes of southern Iraq after the desiccation in the last century. In 2021, after more than 40 years, exclusive photographic records of living N. bunnii were obtained for the first time from Central Marshes in southern Iraq and from Edhe’am Marsh in southwestern Iran. The new distribution range is highlighted in this note. Furthermore, the first photographs of living N. bunnii are provided along with notes on its ecology and behavior.

Does God Command and Punish in the Garden of Eden?

Most interpretations of Gen 2–3 center the motifs of divine command, human obedience, and divine punishment. These ideas, however, are not intrinsic to the narrative. They represent only one possible way of interpreting certain semantic and narrative ambiguities in the story. One can also read Gen 2–3 as a story about a divine warning and a consequential decision. This alternative reading does a better job making sense of the narrative details and better reflects the unique way the J source of the Pentateuch understands how God interacts with humanity.

"Why Archaeology is important for Theology"

The Old Testament is clearly a mixture of myths and real historical figures with their events. There is no question about the contribution of mythology, since much of Genesis has been formed from common mythological accounts from all over the ancient Near East. The stories of Creation, the primordial couple, the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, the Great Flood, and much more, are a commonplace of narratives throughout the region. Although these accounts are mythological, it does not mean that they have not been shaped by real events. Specialists speculate about a great flood that took place in the Near East as a result of rising water levels at the end of the last Ice Age (around 5000 BC). This coincided at a time when the Agricultural Revolution had taken over the Fertile Crescent and Egypt. Various peoples of the Levant adopted mythological narratives and reformulated them to create their own unique and original tales. Some of the main figures of the Bible, such as Adam and Eve, Noah, Lot, finally the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) were their own compositions but, as can be seen with the patriarch Abraham, who was not an exclusive figure of the Hebrew people, his conversion to monotheism is, however, something peculiar to the spiritual creativity of the Jews. Here as in the composition of the New Testament, archeology is the necessary aid to locate the reality and the truth of sacred history and its development in human time.

Bravery

This chapter analyzes the Scriptures in several hymns prescribed for Holy Wednesday, whose central theme is bravery as exemplified by the sinful woman who anointed Jesus’s feet (Luke 7:36–50). The gospel story was turned into a liturgical hymn, known as the Kassia hymn, after its composer, the ninth-century female hymnographer Kassia of Constantinople. The sinful woman’s bravery is contrasted with Eve’s timidity and shamefulness. Unlike the sinful woman who approached Jesus’s feet seeking mercy, Eve, after having sinned, hid herself among the trees of the Garden of Eden at the sound of God’s “feet” walking through the garden (Gen 3:8). The “feet,” whose “striking sound” (krotos) Eve heard, as Kassia notes, were the same as Jesus’s feet which the sinful woman saw, touched, anointed, and kissed. The contrast between Eve and the sinful woman points to God’s revelation that moves from the “sonic” (Eve) to “visual” (the sinful woman) phase.

Walter Benjamin: Analysis of the Concept of Adam State

This paper attempts to provide an explanation about the concept of “Adam’s state” put forward by Walter Benjamin according to his theological thinking. Adam’s state is divided into Adam’s paradise state in the garden of Eden and Adam’s secular state after his fall. As the origin of human beings, paradise state is a harmonious, unified and perfect heaven state. The secular state is the broken exile life of mankind after Adam’s fall. The paradise state is the metaphysical basis of Benjamin’s philosophy of language, while the secular state is the background where Benjamin’s philosophy presents the fragmentary characteristics and points to the doctrine of redemption. Benjamin’s Adam state is not only an important content of Benjamin’s theology, but also one of the important logical dark lines of Benjamin’s thought.

Ben Ammi’s Adaptation of Veganism in the Theology of the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem

This article will look at the ideology of veganism in the AHIJ. Since the early 1970s their diet has been a core part of their ideology and of their message to the world. Acknowledging that a black/Jewish meat-free diet is far from the exclusive property of the group, let alone a new development on their part, I will argue that it is an expression of the syncretic “bricoleur” nature of Black Israelite thought (Dorman 2013), reflecting, drawing on, and transforming traditions existing in both African American and Jewish thought in and before the twentieth century – principally articulated as a concern for health in the former and a messianic return to the peaceful Edenic existence in the latter. However, Ben Ammi skillfully intertwines it into their theology by arguing that a return to the veganism of the Garden of Eden is part of the community’s redemption of humanity from primordial sin and ultimate overcoming of the curse of death.