---
title: Eve, the First Woman
description: Eve in different traditions.
author:
  name: Graciela Paula Caldeiro
  url: http://graciela-caldeiro.idoneos.com
canonical: https://mitosyleyendas.idoneos.com/en/diosas/eva,_la_mujer_primera/
source: en/diosas/eva,_la_mujer_primera/index.md
---

<h2 id="eva-la-mujer-primera">Eve, the First Woman</h2>

Eve, according to the account in Genesis, was the first woman, created from a rib of **Adam**. **Eve**, seduced by the serpent, eats the fruit of the forbidden tree and incites Adam to disobedience. It is believed that this tradition would be a patriarchal version of the man-god myth, born from the Earth Goddess who returns to her in order to be reborn.

Yet in a later tradition, Adam would have had a wife before Eve: **Lilith**, in the Mesopotamian regions the name of the Almighty Goddess. Along the same lines, the name of Eve refers to the secret name of the power of God. "YHMH" derives from the Hebrew root "HWH," which means both "life" and "woman," and corresponds to the Latin letters "EVE."

<figure class="commons-illustration" data-commons-id="74546793">
  <img src="/diosas/eva,_la_mujer_primera/resources/commons-74546793.jpg" width="568" height="1600" alt="Eve standing before Adam, amid flowers and colorful decorative forms." loading="lazy" decoding="async">
  <figcaption>Adam and Eve, Gustav Klimt (1917–1918). Belvedere, Vienna.<br>Source: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gustav_Klimt_-_Adam_und_Eva_-_4402_-_%C3%96sterreichische_Galerie_Belvedere.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Wikimedia Commons</a>. Public domain.</figcaption>
</figure>

<h2 id="eva-en-la-tradicion-gnostica">Eve in the Gnostic Tradition</h2>

For [Gnosticism](https://gnosticos.idoneos.com/), it was Eve and not God who created Adam. The first man, made of blood and clay (a practice common in the cult of the Goddess and the God of Fertility), was created by Eve. In the Nag Hammadi manuscripts, specifically in the Coptic document "The Hypostasis of the Archons," reference is made to a psychic Eve who raises Adam and then to a spiritual Eve, likeness of the divinity, through whom she transforms him into a spiritual being: she makes him conscious of himself, guides him so that he may find food, and helps him to conceive the third and fourth child (Seth and Norea). As for the tree of knowledge, the Gnostic tradition identifies it with the woman — she WAS the tree.