Jesus cited the Genesis 1 creation narrative to assert gender equality in marriage. In contrast, Paul cites the Genesis 2 variant to justify gender inequality in church leadership. The passage is well-known:

A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. But women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint. (I Timothy 2:11-14).

Paul begins with a general command ("A woman must…") and ends with a general observation about women ("A woman will be preserved…"). It’s possible that in the "I do not allow" sentence Paul is merely expressing a personal preference for women not to teach or to exercise authority in his ministry. That should be indictment enough, since Paul surely knew that his example carried a lot of weight, and especially since he justifies his stance by invoking God’s creation. If there had been no Adam and Eve story in the Bible, Paul wouldn’t have been tempted to offer up this offensive bit of polemics; he’d have had to justify his predilection for men-only leadership on other grounds.

The Adam and Eve story is, one must acknowledge, rather sexist. The woman is created not for her own sake, but as a helper for the man. God creates Adam directly, whereas Eve’s creation is contingent on that of Adam, accomplished through a thoracic surgical procedure that sounds more like voodoo chicanery than divine intervention. And the fault line of sin is clearly etched in gender politics: if only the woman hadn’t listened to the tempter, if only the man hadn’t listened to the woman… Paul’s inferences from the story are consistent with the story itself.

The idea of the first male of a species preceding the first female makes no real sense from an evolutionary standpoint. Maybe if this second creation narrative had been excised from Genesis Paul might have avoided the temptation to follow its sexist trajectory.