Has a new speech by the Bible’s ‘Eve’ been found?

A startling moment in Bible scholarship

In the late 1990s, a literature student was taking a graduate class in the Bible. Thinking about one of its most bizarre passages, he had an extraordinary idea.

All the confusion over Romans 7:5–25, Austin Busch suspected, was because Christian readers had assumed the speaker was a man. The speaker, he thought, was a woman.

Indeed, the references seemed clear. The speaker was Eve herself.

Midjourney (2023)

I’m catching up on two decades of discussion of Busch’s theory.

When I first read it, I was sure startled. I read his 2004 paper that laid out his case, and I read later scholars discussing it. There didn’t seem to be any discussion outside Bible scholarship.

I’ll try to explain the issues, starting from the beginning.

The book of Romans is a long letter by the apostle Paul. He goes on and on, and it’s all him speaking. That’s how it’s read.

But at verse 7:5, rather weirdly, a different voice seems to intrude. There’s odd talk of having “bore fruit for death.” Was that Paul?