GENDER, CLASS, AND THE SOCIAL-SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF GENESIS 2-3 Gale A. Yee Episcopal Divinity School ABSTRACT The study of gender in the Hebrew Bible cannot be analyzed in isolation from socioeconomic class. The two are inextricably combined. I will be presenting the results of a materialist investigation on Genesis 2-3. Ostensibly a story about male-female relations, Genesis 2-3 functions as a "symbolic alibi" that mystifies and conceals the class interests of the text. To legitimate royal inter- ests, as well as to justify the current lower status of the peasant in a native tributary economy, Genesis 2-3 shifts the point of conflict from the public arena of class relations between men to the more private domain of house- hold relations between men and women. While stressing the nuclear family and marital bond in these domestic relations, the story simultaneously subverts lineages and other local power authorities that threaten the state. INTRODUCTION This paper is a Marxist literary analysis of a very well known story, the Yahwist creation narrative in Genesis 2-3. 1 A Marxist literary analysis complements a feminist examination by studying issues of class and economics, along with the study of gender (Yee, 1995:146-53,1999:534-37). A major focus of a Marxist analysis is the mode of production dominant in the society that produces a particular text. Gottwald presents a succinct definition of mode of production in the following: At a minimum, the concept of mode of production coordinates the economic dimension (who produces what, by what technical means, and with what organization of labor?) with the political dimension (among existing eco- nomic options, who determines what will be produced, who benefits from what is produced, and by what mechanisms?). For the full picture of the social formation, however, mode of production encompasses a social dimension (into what groupings do the producers fall according to occupation, class, status, 1 This article is part of a larger work (Yee: forthcoming). -177-