Dr Stavrakopoulou is a senior lecturer in the Hebrew Bible at the University of Exeter, and gained a doctorate in theology from OxfordDr Francesca Stavrakopoulou is causing mighty controversy in Britain over her upcoming BBC series ‘The Bible’s Buried Secrets’. I confess that one of my earliest projects decades ago was a small women’s journal ‘The Gospel According to Lilith’, and so this topic fascinates me.

Like growing numbers of academic scholars, Dr Stavrakopoulo argues that Eve was not responsible for the Fall of Man and not even the first woman. The story of the Garden of Eden wasn’t even included in the first book of the Old Testament.

“Eve, particularly in the Christian tradition, has been very unfairly maligned as the troublesome wife who brought about the Fall,” Dr Stavrakopoulou said. “Don’t forget that the biblical writers are male and it’s a very male-dominated world. Women were second-class citizens, seen as property.”

Dr Stavrakopoulou — who admits she is an atheist and is causing a brouhaha because of her admission — argues that God had a wife, based on Biblical texts that refer to ‘asherah’. Religious scholars consider Asherah as a fertility goddess in lands now covered by modern-day Syria, and she was half of a ‘divine pair’ with God.

Dr Stavrakopoulou with a reconstruction of a biblical inscription mentioning Asherah and YahwehTracing the Bible back to Syria 10,000 BC is the theme of ‘Mysteries of the Garden of Eden’, a series running on the History Channel in America. The series is potentially more controversial than the BBC’s because the religious scholars are all men associated with religious universities like Notre Dame and Pepperdine University.

All over the world religious fundamentalism is coming face to face with archaeological facts that dispute literal interpretations of both the Old and New Testaments. Dr Stavrakopoulou is more likely to be dismissed because she is a woman and an atheist.

Dismissing the president of Pepperdine University, who agrees with her, represents a greater challenge to religious fundamentalism. Even the Vatican and Pope Benedict support the theory of evolution, a reality always dismissed by American Christians who embrace a literal interpretation of the New Testament.

Indeed, the plot is thickening in the world of monotheism. Anne

‘Mysteries of the Garden of Eden’ | History Channel | In Latin Apple Means Evil AOC Sensually Yours

‘the apple of my eye’ by British photographer Eleanor Hardwick