Recently, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints published new guidance for members regarding translations of the Bible to use in personal study. As has been the case from the beginning, English speakers are encouraged to use the King James Version, which sets a standard with the dignity and beauty of its language. Importantly, though, the Church also now recognizes that other translations of the Bible may be helpful to those seeking to understand its stories and teachings more deeply, and it includes suggestions of translations that will be of particular value.
An example of how these additional helps might come into play is found in this week’s Come, Follow Me reading at Genesis 3:20:
And Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.
Have you ever wondered about that statement? The word “because” here would seem to indicate that there is a relationship between the name “Eve” and her role as “mother of all living.” But what is it? There is no obvious linguistic connection between the name “Eve” and “living” or “life.” If we look to the footnotes of the official edition, we are referred to the Topical Guide sections on “Marriage” and “Motherhood,” but no further information specific to our question is offered. Here is a case where turning to a modern translation might be worthwhile. Some of the editions in the new list of suggested translations note at this verse that the Hebrew word for Eve resembles the Hebrew word for “living” (see, for example, the New Revised Standard Version [NRSV] and the English Standard Version [ESV]), and our suspicion is confirmed that something like a play on words is involved. We can see this by turning to the Hebrew text. Following the expert (but not freely available) English translation of Robert Alter, I’ll surface the relevant Hebrew words in this verse:
And the human called his woman’s name Eve (Ḥawwah), for she was the mother of all that lives (ḥay).
By looking at the Hebrew words for “Eve” (Ḥawwah) and “lives” (ḥay) we can immediately begin to see how they resemble one another. The fuller story here is that the name Eve descends through a series of unfortunate events from a very different original in the Hebrew (for a summary of that story, see the “Extra Credit” reading at the end of this post). At the same time, the Hebrew word for “living” (ḥay) was also masked by translation so that the phonetic resemblance between ḥay and Ḥawwah was obliterated. What was once immediately obvious to any reader or hearer of the text was now invisible and inaudible. There no longer seemed to be any reason for the word “because” in the sentence.
But to see an even deeper significance here, let’s turn back a page or so to the second account of the creation of humanity found in Genesis. Again, I will add in the Hebrew words that matter.
Then the LORD God fashioned the human (ʾadam), humus (ʾadamah) from the soil, and blew into his nostrils the breath of life (nishmat ḥayyîm); and the human became a living creature (nefesh ḥayyāh; Genesis 2:7, Alter).
The name Adam begins in the Bible not as a reference to a single person, but to a class of creature: ha-adam, best translated as “the human.” Only in later chapters, after the creation and naming of the woman, Eve, does it take on the specific property of an individual name for that first human (see Genesis 5:1–3). From this reading, we learn that Adam’s name, too, is meaningful. Adam’s name indicates where he comes from; Eve’s name adumbrates where she (through her posterity) is going. As representatives of all humanity, the first man and the first woman stand at the center of a timeline that points backward and forward. And it is rightly Eve who initiates that forward motion for them, and Adam understands the importance of following that course, even though it means that one day his dust will return to the dust from which he was originated.
And there is more. Notice the language about how God breathed life into Adam. In the Hebrew nishmat ḥayyîm we once again find a word for “life” that is related to Eve’s name. Ironically, it is this, more than the word for “breath” itself, that has the breathiest pronunciation, and Eve’s name (Ḥawwah) even more so. To pronounce it, there is never any stoppage—just a constant flow of air from within the lungs, up through the throat, and out the open mouth. In a story in which life is introduced by divine breathing, the name Ḥawwah functions not only semantically but also performatively, enacting, through sound, the airy vitality it denotes. Recovering the original sound of Eve’s name, then, and situating it next to the sound of “life” in the Hebrew allows us to appreciate an elegant aspect of her origin story. Not only is Eve’s original name connected semantically with the concept of life, but it also sounds like the act of giving life we find dramatized in Genesis. In her very name, the first woman bears an echo of the moment of divine quickening.
This is beautiful in its own right, but it is also significant for how it shapes our understanding of our first mother’s role in the events that led to her and Adam’s expulsion from the garden. For centuries, the dominant theological interpretation of that event has been that it was a disaster brought on by the woman and that it reverberated through her posterity. Beginning with Augustine and elaborated by those who followed him in teaching of “the Fall,” Eve’s beguilement by the serpent was seen as the start of an ongoing catastrophe from which humanity could not extricate themselves; it would require a divine sacrifice to rectify what had been set askew in Eden. Eve’s statement that she was “beguiled” by the serpent, and God’s subsequent pronouncement of painful childbirth upon her, were all the evidence anyone needed to conclude that she was culpable in bringing about a tragic state of affairs for the whole world.
But there are arrows pointing in the other direction, too, indicating that if Eve bore responsibility for her choice and its consequences, she was also worthy of honor and even gratitude for what she had done. The occasion of Adam announcing her name is the first such indication. Note that it comes after her decision to partake of the forbidden fruit and his choice to follow her in it, and after their encounter with God, in which the consequences of their choice were spelled out. Just as God’s warning, “You shall surely die,” is being recalled in their imminent expulsion from the Garden, Adam prophetically gives an honorific and hopeful name to Eve. She is not called the mother of spiritual death, the mother of catastrophe, or the mother of the Fall; she is called Ḥawwah, because she is “the mother of all living.” Here is a reminder, every time her name is pronounced, of the divine breath of life that had made their being possible in the first place; and if a reminder of divine origins, then a reminder, too, of divine hope for the renewal of life that would also come from God in the fullness of time.
Restoration scripture affords us additional indications of the esteem in which Eve is to be held. After she and Adam have begun their family, Adam, under the influence of the Holy Ghost, declares: “Blessed be the name of God, for because of my transgression my eyes are opened, and in this life I shall have joy, and again in the flesh I shall see God” (Moses 5:10). Adam has already begun to realize the potential that his decision to follow Eve has opened up for them, and Eve confirms his understanding with her own resounding proclamation: “Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient” (Moses 5:11). And Adam and Eve together “blessed the name of God” and began to teach their children the purpose of the plan (Moses 5:12). Because of the wisdom and courage she showed in her “recognition of the necessity of the Fall and the joys of Redemption,” Eve, Ḥawwah, the mother of all living, “will share eternal glory with [Adam]” (Bible Dictionary, s.v. “Eve”), and she serves to this day as a pattern for all of us to emulate.
Extra Credit Reading: From Ḥawwah to Eve
The journey began in the centuries before Christ when the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Koine Greek—a version known as the Septuagint. Many consequential decisions were made during this translation, one of them being how the Hebrew name of the first woman, Ḥawwah, was rendered. The problem arose from a phonetic limitation. Greek has no easy way to represent breathy consonants like “h,” of which Hebrew has at least two. Nor does it have a consonant like “w.” So, when a Hebrew name with these sounds had to be rendered in Greek, the consonants were often omitted, and the surrounding vowels were left to do the work. Thus, the Hebrew Ḥawwah became Eua in Greek.
Several centuries later, we see the Bible undergoing another important translation, this time from Greek into the Latin of the emerging Christian empire. Once again, the new language had limitations that required compromise. Latin represented the Greek “u” sound with the letter “v,” which in classical pronunciation was articulated much like an English “w.” To a reader of classical Latin, the difference between Eua and Eva would have been negligible. But over the next several centuries, there was a phonetic shift in Latin during which the letter “v” stopped being pronounced like a vowel or “w” and acquired the fricative pronunciation we know today.
So, when the first translations of the Bible into Early Modern English were made, the familiar old Latin spelling with a “v” was retained, and Eva became Eve. Even translators like Tyndale, who worked directly from Hebrew and Greek manuscripts, kept the already-established name Eve, and that is what she has been called in English ever since—a far cry from the original Ḥawwah.
D. Morgan Davis is a Research Fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. He holds a PhD (2005) in Arabic and Islamic studies from the University of Utah, an MA in history from the University of Texas at Austin, and a BA in Near Eastern Studies from Brigham Young University.
Art by Maureen Merrell (@maureen.merrell.art).
This series is published in collaboration with the Maxwell Institute: https://mi.byu.edu/old-testament-reflections.
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