The irony cuts deep. For centuries, the Bible has been accused of pinning humanity’s original sin on a woman. But a careful reading of Scripture reveals a far more exacting standard than many of its interpreters have allowed. It does not shield women from blame where blame is due, nor does it let men hide behind the women in their stories. Samson answers for Samson. David answers for David. Solomon answers for Solomon. That consistency runs from Genesis to Revelation.
Yet, the narrative has shifted. Women have long borne a disproportionate share of blame for men’s failures—a burden neither Scripture nor history always places on them. The idea has become so ingrained that it’s rarely questioned. Repeated often enough, it has taken on the weight of settled truth, even when the text tells a different story.
No passage has done more to cement this than the Garden of Eden. Many Christians can recount the tale without opening a Bible: Eve met the serpent while Adam was elsewhere. She listened, ate, and then persuaded her husband to join her. This version has passed from sermons to art, from children’s books to dinner table debates. But few have tested it against the text.
Genesis says something else. After eating, Eve “gave also unto her husband who was with her; and he did eat.” Adam was not a latecomer. He was there, watching the serpent challenge God’s command. He heard every word. The fruit passed from Eve’s hand to his, and he chose to eat. Adam cannot plead ignorance. God had spoken directly to him about the tree before Eve was created. The command was his first.
The conversation after the Fall is equally revealing. Adam blames the woman. Eve blames the serpent. Neither confession is complete. God accepts neither. Each stands before Him for their own actions. The serpent answers for deception. Eve answers for eating. Adam answers for eating. Paul, too, reads it this way. He notes Eve was deceived, but when explaining how sin entered the world, he points to Adam. He follows Genesis. Later generations did not. Over time, Eve became the villain, bearing more blame than the passage itself assigns. Adam never vanished, but he steadily faded from view.
This pattern extends beyond Eden. Delilah is now the defining figure in Samson’s story, yet the Book of Judges spends remarkably little time on her compared to Samson himself. Long before Delilah, Samson had grown careless with his calling. He dismissed his parents, pursued whatever caught his eye, and lived as if God’s favor would survive every compromise. Delilah met the man Samson had already become. She asked the same question repeatedly. Samson knew what she wanted. He answered with half-truths, and each time she tested them. He could have walked away after the first attempt. He stayed after the second. He remained after the third. When he finally revealed his secret, the decision was his. Delilah deceived him. Samson chose to stay. Both facts are undeniable.
David and Bathsheba follow the same pattern. Bathsheba’s beauty has often overshadowed David’s conduct. But Samuel never lets David disappear. David saw her. David sent for her. David took her. When she became pregnant, David tried to cover it up. When that failed, he arranged Uriah’s death. Every decisive move came from David. Nathan the prophet leaves no room for doubt. Standing before the king, he doesn’t start with Bathsheba. He starts with David: “Thou art the man.”
Solomon receives the same treatment. Scripture says his wives turned his heart. It also says Solomon loved many foreign women and married them despite explicit warnings. Those marriages didn’t happen to him. They were part of his own policy, his own ambition, his own confidence that he could live beyond the boundaries set for those before him. Their influence followed decisions he had already made.
This way of thinking predates the Bible. In Greek tradition, Pandora was blamed for humanity’s suffering. Helen of Troy is still blamed for the Trojan War, even though the poems make clear the conflict was fueled by wounded pride, dynastic ambition, broken treaties, and the choices of rulers who needed no persuasion to go to war. Helen bore the blame. The kings who chose war rarely did.
Philosophers once argued openly that women were weaker in judgment and naturally suited for subordination. These ideas didn’t stay in philosophy. They seeped into law, education, literature, and public life. They influenced how later generations read ancient texts. Ideas pass subtly from one generation to the next, often without anyone asking where they came from.
This is not to say Christian interpretation simply absorbed those ideas without question. But some assumptions found their way into preaching, art, and everyday storytelling. Eve gradually overshadowed Adam. Bathsheba’s beauty often eclipsed David’s abuse of power. Delilah came to overshadow Samson’s own choices. The text did not change. The reading of it often did.
None of this excuses the women in these stories. Eve sinned. Delilah deceived. Jezebel corrupted. Potiphar’s wife lied. Scripture says so without embarrassment. Women answer for what they do. Men answer for what they do. One does not diminish the other. One person’s guilt does not lessen another’s. Adam’s disobedience remains Adam’s. David’s abuse of power remains David’s. Solomon’s apostasy remains Solomon’s. That is where Scripture stops the story.
Little has changed in modern society. A prominent politician leaves his wife, and public discussion quickly settles on the woman he was with. A well-known pastor falls into scandal, and attention shifts to the woman as the “devil’s agent” rather than the deception or abuse that made the scandal possible. A successful businessman abandons his family for a younger woman, and people label her for “stealing” him, as if she could suspend his judgment and dissolve promises freely made. The circumstances differ, but the habit is the same. The man makes the choice. The woman often bears a greater share of the blame than his choice can justify.
That is why these passages deserve a careful reading. Not because Scripture has changed, but because so much has gathered around it. Every generation inherits explanations along with the text itself. Some clarify it. Others gradually take its place. The difference often becomes clear only when we ask a simple question: where does the Bible actually say that?
That question returns us to Eden. Genesis does not say Adam came back after the serpent had gone. It does not say Eve sought him out before giving him the fruit. It says he was with her. That detail has always been there. Nothing has been added. Nothing has been unearthed. We have simply become more familiar with one explanation than with the words themselves.
The question extends beyond Eve. It concerns how we read Scripture. Once inherited explanations carry more authority than the words on the page, assumptions begin to speak with an authority they were never meant to possess. The only remedy is to return to the text itself.
The discussion need not end by turning women into innocent bystanders or men into helpless victims of influence. Scripture does neither. It leaves every person with their own choices. There is no reason to ask more of Scripture than Scripture asks of us.
Chinedu Moghalu is a lawyer, strategic communications expert, and public policy adviser with over two decades of leadership across government, international organisations, and development institutions.
