Tru316.com Correction Number 3: “you … persuaded him … whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack.” What persuasion? What lack of attack?
If Tertullian wondered how the man was persuaded to eat the forbidden fruit he only needed to pay attention to the plural pronouns used by the serpent tempter at the tree. Every “you” that was spoken included them both. And when she ate she handed the fruit to the man who was right there “with her.”
Here is Tertullian again:
“And do you not know that you are (each) an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: The guilt must of necessity live too, You are the devil’s gateway: you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s image, man. On account of your desert – that is, death – even the Son of God had to die.”
From Tertullian, “On the Apparel of women,” The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 1968), p. 14.
Text and note from Joy Fleming, A Rhetorical Analysis of Genesis 2-3, with Implications for a Theology of Man and Woman, University of Strasbourg, France, 1987, p. 14
