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Photo by the Grand Design/SuperStock

ON THE COVER: British artist Arthur Easton (1939–) depicts the past, present and future of Eve in his Temptation of Eve (1998). On the left, birds frolic and fireflies illuminate the Eden night. On the right, east of Eden, crows seem to taunt Eve and a serpent scales past the forbidden fruit. In the middle stands a bifurcated Eve. Though the fruit is yet uneaten, the moment of truth has arrived: Her shadowy half, soon to be condemned to the thorns and thistles of the field, peers toward Eden with doleful eyes. As Susan L. Greiner notes in “Did Eve Fall or Was She Pushed?” Eve’s “bad” reputation derives not from the Genesis account, but from extrabiblical texts known as the pseudepigrapha. Though little known today, these texts have greatly influenced our view of Eve and of women in general over the past 20 centuries.