Prophets are often depicted as a type of Christ. For example, Moses was nearly killed in infancy by a wicked king, just as Herod sought the life of Jesus as a baby. Joshua’s name is literally Yeshua in Hebrew, the namesake of Christ himself, meaning deliverer. Every persecuted and martyred prophet, such as Joseph Smith, suffered and died for the truth of the Gospel, as did our Savior. In this essay, I will argue that Eve, our first mother, also is a type of Christ in her rescuing of, first, Adam, and then all of us from spiritual stagnation. Her pivotal choice to partake of the fruit in the Garden of Eden even parallels Christ’s own Garden experience in partaking of the bitter cup.
According to the Hebrew tradition, when Adam first arrives in the Garden of Eden, he is all alone. That is, all the animals have a partner but he, somehow, does not. The fact that this is conveyed as a problem certainly aligns very well with a Latter-day Saint perspective; what other religion emphasizes marriage to such a degree in a paradisaical or heavenly state? The word adam in Hebrew means mankind, or humanity. It is not an unusual or rare word for this meaning, either; whenever you read “mankind” in the Bible you are reading adam. So for the Hebrew reader, the story of the Garden starts with all of us. It could read, “It is not good that humanity should be alone.” [1] However, in the Hebrew tradition, immediately following this verse is not in fact Eve’s appearance, but rather the introduction of all the animals. Adam spends time naming and getting to know these creations. By this intermission, the conundrum is emphasized and reiterated that humanity still continues to be alone.
In this state, Adam is in the presence of God. He is in a paradisaical garden much like the heaven-scape of the pre-mortal life. However, he, or Humanity, has received a body but is without a partner. The take-away from this is that even after receiving an immortal body (that is, we could not “surely die” until after eating the fruit of knowledge), humanity could not continue on to become as God the Parents if remaining alone.
The solution God proposes for humanity’s solitary state is translated into English as a “help meet.” However, the original Hebrew hidden behind these words is far more insightful than the English rendering suggests. Ezer [2] translated into “help” is better translated into “rescuer.” That is, when ezer is used in the Bible, it is often in the context of seeking God’s aid. [3] Although Eve is equal to Adam, in the context of the Genesis story she plays the role of Adam’s rescuer when she saves him from solitude and thus the inability to continue on to become as God. The second word translated into “meet” is the word neged literally meaning “face to face.” This connotes the fact that Eve is on equal standing with Adam, the only true counterpart he had not been able to find among all the other creations. [4]
However, there is something unique about Eve that points to her (as well as Adam’s) divine potential and also to Eve’s role as a deliverer in the Garden. Her name is not the natural counterpart of Adam, which would have been Adamah, the feminine form of Adam in Hebrew. What is more, Adamah would have seemed appropriate: since it means earth or soil, it would have pointed to the symbol already in Adam’s name, that we are the “dust” [5] of the earth. Adamah would have pointed to our physical bodies that we received in this life.
However, that Adamah was not to be Eve’s name means that there was more for us to learn about their divine natures as well as her personal role. As we know, Eve’s name means Life, [6] “The Mother of all Living.” [7] This is a powerful name connoting Eve and Adam’s potential to one day become as their Heavenly Parents, and points to the New and Everlasting Covenant. Valerie Hudson summarized it thus: “The Restored Gospel teaches that the term “God” means an exalted woman and an exalted man married in the New and Everlasting Covenant.” [8]
Just as Christ spoke of being the “bridegroom” to all of us, [9] Eve literally was the bride to Adam, saving all of us from certain solitude. Eve’s appearance made it possible for Adam (representing all of humanity) to fulfill his destiny and become as God. However, beyond the New and Everlasting Covenant of marriage, Eve’s name points to her children, and a great sacrifice made in order for them to progress.
More specifically, in order to be the Mother of All, and in order for her children to be, she would need to sacrifice her state in the Garden of Eden. Eve would have to leave the presence of God in order to deliver her children as a mother delivers in childbirth. At the critical choice to partake of the Fruit of Knowledge of Good and Evil, Eve takes on the role of “deliverer” as a woman who chooses to become a mother, but Eve is also a deliverer in saving her children from spiritual stagnation in the Spirit World. None of us would be able to receive bodies until and unless she made this crucial choice. At this point in the Garden story, all of us were spirits awaiting our foremother Eve’s decision. Eve’s next step was to decide whether to physically and spiritually deliver her own children. Only she could do this.
It is at the crucial point in the narrative that the story shifts from Adam’s perspective to Eve’s: the choice whether to partake of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. Eve, the Mother of All Living, chooses to eat this fruit. Yet why? Out of mere curiosity? Because of Satan’s temptations? Within her decision lies a greater sacrifice than we might initially realize.
Generally, Latter-day Saints imagine that Eve and Adam would have had free access to The Tree of Life before partaking of the Tree of Knowledge. What would it be like to partake of this glorious fruit? Lehi tells of his own vision of such a tree that it filled him with “exceedingly great joy” and that it filled him with desires to share it with his family, for “it was desirable above all other fruit.” [10] It is interesting to consider that the very same word--“desirable”--parallels Eve finding the fruit of Knowledge desirable. Yet this desire wasn’t a mere whim or fancy, and I would argue it wasn’t a desire of allurement and temptation either. It was a righteous desire and I believe it was an informed one, as well. Where did she learn that this fruit was desirable “to make one wise” [11]? From her Mother, the seat of Wisdom herself.
Wisdom is often personified in the scriptures, particularly in the Proverbs, as a feminine entity. [12] Carol Meyers discusses the mythos of the “Semitic wisdom goddess” as a cultural phenomenon in the ancient Levant. [13] In the Garden, Eve was in the presence of the Goddess Herself and all of Her wisdom and knowledge was at Eve’s disposal! Let us imagine again Eve partaking of the Fruit of Life, her own namesake. Eating of this fruit would have symbolized receiving wisdom of her Mother. She would have learned about her own name “The Mother of All Living” and who she was meant to be. She would have eaten freely from the fruit of life that her Mother gave her. What is more, this tree is a symbol of the Mother God herself and of Eve’s divine potential to become like Her.
The tree in the ancient Levant was often used as a symbol of goddesses. The Israelites worshipped the Asherah, [14] a female tree figurine in a grove of trees. Groves are sacred places for the Latter-day Saint as well, as Joseph Smith had his first vision in a grove (interestingly, a place he probably learned of from his mother). [15] Moses also spoke with God in a burning bush or tree, [16] and Abraham planted a tamarisk tree by the well of Beersheba where he called upon God. [17] Margaret Barker also talks about the tree representing the throne of God. [18] The tree in the garden of Eden is a paradisaical tree that also represents the presence of God and is sometimes referred to as a “cosmic center.” [19]
So the Tree of Life to the ancient reader would have been interchangeable in their minds with a Goddess of Life. This Goddess of Life bears fruit, i.e., children that are eternal and glorious. For certainly, the glory of God is Their children. [20] However, the choice facing Eve was not about the Tree of Life, her eternal destiny. Rather, the choice presented to her concerned the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil bore fruit of moral understanding. Without moral understanding, Eve could never become a mother herself. And without moral understanding, neither Eve nor Adam nor any of us could spiritually progress. But the price for this understanding was great: sorrow, affliction, physical death. But the payoff for this understanding was joy and eternal life—for Eve, for Adam, and for all of humanity. All heaven hung upon Eve’s moment of choice.
So while learning deeply and growing in truth, “grace for grace,” [21] I believe Eve would come to know the deep desire of her Parents, Their work and Their glory to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of Their children. Eve began, I believe, to understand the necessity of choosing to partake of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, even if that demanded a profound sacrifice. As I continue the analysis, I will continue to depict it in the context of a Mother-daughter relationship, although certainly our Heavenly Father was equally involved.
Now she had a choice, a sacrifice to make on our behalf. She would leave the Tree of Life that was her namesake, she would instead become the Tree bearing those of knowledge of good and evil. That is, she became our mother, the literal deliverer of us all into the world and out of spiritual stagnation. But she would retain the hope that she would in the future return conqueror, to finally take her place by the throne of God, a Tree of Life and Glory indeed. [22] Just as Adam, or Humanity was all alone without a “meet” partner, so too, we could not come into the world without someone choosing to bear us, to deliver us from the Spirit world. In choosing the fruit of moral knowledge, that is, knowing good from evil, she chose to bear us.
Adam finds her choosing this fruit, and he cries out, “Do you not know you shall surely die?” [23] But what if she chose in wisdom, as her Mother had taught her? Eve would have been choosing to come to earth to die, the very same choice Christ made. [24] She chose in that act to take on “a tabernacle of clay,” [25] to no longer have an immortal body but one that would someday die. The translation of the word “surely” in that phrase points to a literary device in Hebrew in which the verb is repeated in two forms in order to emphasize its importance. With the evidence we have gathered thus far, the emphasis surely takes on a new meaning. I believe it was added in order to point to her noble sacrifice in choosing all of us, rather than the traditional interpretation of her choice as being damnable.
Latter-day Saints “surely” know that Eve’s choice was the only way that we could receive bodies, the only way for Eve and Adam to have children at all. We know her choice was glorious and part of God’s plan. As a daughter chosen before this life to fulfill her role as Mother Eve, it fits that her choice was one of sacrifice, a deliberate sacrificial choice she made to save us all from never receiving bodies and remaining in spiritual stagnation. Eve chooses to leave the throne of God, the Tree of Life, her Mother, to birth and deliver all of us. Hudson refers to Eve’s partaking of the Tree of Knowledge as an ordinance. [26] It is a rite that mothers in this life perform as they clothe each child with a precious body like God’s.
In the final scene of the Garden, God clothes Eve and Adam in the garments of the Priesthood. It is possible that these robes would have been of many colors. The priesthood robes of the Israelites were multicolored to represent the garden of Eden. [27] Only on the Day of Atonement did they wear robes of white. [28] The priestly robes Eve wore represented the heavenly garden she gave up for us and the godly tree she represents in choosing us.
In The Continuous Atonement, Brad Wilcox points out that these priestly garments were made of “coats of skins” and that this could have been the “first animal sacrifice” to represent the Atonement of Christ. [29] These garments were to honor her foundational role in initiating the Fall and the start of Christ’s Atonement. She fulfilled her role to deliver us from spiritual stagnation in the premortal life, and she would also fulfill it as creator of our bodies in this life.
Christ finished the Atonement in the Garden of Gethsemane, another sacred grove of trees to represent the paradise where God dwells, a place that represents the Holy of Holies. [30] There, Christ labored all night in order to deliver us. His actions act as a metaphor to parallel and honor the labor Eve went through, symbolically as a mother delivering her child, while she was in her own sacred garden. Her experience in the Garden, the trial she endured to partake of the bitter fruit in order to deliver us, likewise, points us to Him.
NOTES:
[1] Gen. 2:18. [Back to manuscript].
[2] Ezer is the third-person masculine singular conjugation of the verb. Hebrew does not have fixed vowels in its writing, but the root of the word could also just be written as AZR. I will use the 3ms conjugation of each Hebrew word to make it easier to read. [Back to manuscript].
[3] For examples of this see: Carol Meyers, Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 85. [Back to manuscript].
[4] Meyers, Rediscovering Eve, 90. [Back to manuscript].
[5] Gen. 2:7 [Back to manuscript].
[6] The Hebrew could be transliterated as: Chavvah. [Back to manuscript].
[7] Gen. 3:20. [Back to manuscript].
[8] V.H. Cassler, “The Two Trees: An LDS Revisiting of the Garden of Eden,” SquareTwo, Vol. 9 No. 1 (Spring 2016). [Back to manuscript].
[9] See Matt. 9:15. [Back to manuscript].
[10] 1 Nephi 8:12 [Back to manuscript].
[11] Gen. 3:6 [Back to manuscript].
[12] See Prov. 4:5–9. [Back to manuscript].
[13] See Carol Meyers, Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 91,152. [Back to manuscript].
[14] T. M. Lemos, "Asherah/Asherim: Bible," Jewish Women's Archive, https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/asherahasherim-bible --- [Back to manuscript].
[15] Lucy Mack Smith, "History, 1844–1845," p. [10], [miscellany], The Joseph Smith Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/lucy-mack-smith-history-1844-1845/250 --- [Back to manuscript].
[16] Exod. 3:4. [Back to manuscript].
[17] Gen. 21:33. [Back to manuscript].
[18] Margaret Barker, The Mother of the Lord, vol. 1, The Lady in the Temple (London: T&T Clark, 2012), 161–62. [Back to manuscript].
[19] See Carol L. Meyers, The Tabernacle Menorah: A Synthetic Study of a Symbol from the Biblical Cult (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2003), 135. [Back to manuscript].
[20] Moses 1:39 [Back to manuscript].
[21] Doctrine and Cov. 93:12 [Back to manuscript].
[22] See Doctrine and Cov. 138:39. Joseph F. Smith, prophet at the time, receives a vision including “glorious Mother Eve.” [Back to manuscript].
[23] See Gen. 2:17. [Back to manuscript].
[24] Beverly Campbell points out a “symbolic parallel between the two Gardens in which death was the only real choice if souls were to be saved.” See Eve and the Choice Made in Eden (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2003), 81. [Back to manuscript].
[25] Mosiah 3:5. [Back to manuscript].
[26] V.H. Cassler, “The Two Trees: An LDS Revisiting of the Garden of Eden,” SquareTwo, Vol. 9 No. 1 (Spring 2016). [Back to manuscript].
[27] Scripture Central, "Priest & Priestess: New Testament with Lynne Wilson (Come, Follow Me)," YouTube video, 6:11, December 10, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTAas9gl5RU&t=371s --- [Back to manuscript].
[28] Lev. 16:4. [Back to manuscript].
[29] Brad Wilcox, The Continuous Atonement (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2009), 47. [Back to manuscript].
[30] See Donald W. Parry, 175 Temple Symbols and Their Meanings (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2020), 150. [Back to manuscript].
Full Citation for this Article: Clinton, Ashley (2026) "Eve as a Christ Figure," SquareTwo, Vol. 19 No. 2 (Summer 2026), http://squaretwo.org/Sq2ArticleClintonEveChristFigure.html, accessed <give access date>.
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