The Staining of Feminine Innocence in Ancient Abrahamic Texts
The Staining of Feminine Innocence in Ancient Abrahamic Texts

Summary/Abstract: Beside the midrashic purpose, the illusory staining of Bathenosh’s and Sarai’s feminine innocence in the Dead Sea Scrolls opened new ground for captatio benevolentiae, as it revisited the archaic history with a new feeling of drama, tragedy and redemption. In On the Origin of the World, the scene which includes the rape of the earthly likeness of Eve by the archons reveals the high intensity of the divine-cosmic-human drama implied by the Gnostic Myth of Light and Darkness, by ontological and Gnostic continuities which permeate the narrative concerning Eve of Zoe or Eve of Life and her earthly likeness with the tragedy of redemptive knowledge, of redemption through gnosis at the core of Gnostic cosmology and anthropology. The tragic blend of light-soul and darkness-body in the structure of human being is thus enframed in the explanation of the origin of evil in the universe, offered by the Gnostic system of thinking. The portrayal of Mary in the Christian Gospel or the Muslim “Gospel” and in the Toledot Yeshu as a Jewish anti-Gospel, as well as the portrayal of Aisha bint Abi Bakr in the Quran and in the defamatory writings authored by the Rafidah, indicate the staining of feminine innocence as a focal topic during the polemical-theological encounters of the Abrahamic religions through counter-history and counter-narratives. From the hermeneutic perspective of counter-history, some of the alpha female characters of the Abrahamic sacred texts may be scape-goated at the crossroads of the Abrahamic religious realms, with the purpose of being identified by various human powers as symbolic lightning-rods of inter-religious hate and revenge, as a consequence of intensifying religious and political conflicts or confrontations opposing the Abrahamic religious communities.

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