Creation Account

A critical analysis of reader-text, especially the sacred texts as the important topic of hermeneutic, is one of the focal points of attention among scholars of humanities. This paper, through a comparative study between the Bible and the Qur’an, concentrates on the image of woman in the account of creation. The paper first shows that there are deep differences between these two sacred texts concerning the image of woman. Then it argues that throughout the Judaea-Christian history and the Islamic traditions multi and contradictory interpretations and understandings of the account have been produced by religious authorities, scholars and critics. The main purpose of the paper is to show that despite the differences between the two texts, there is a common paradigm between Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions regarding the image of woman. This paradigm is that the authoritative discourses of both traditions have used the creation story, as a theoretical tool to downgrade women. Certainly, many factors are influential in producing this paradigm including disposition of the authors, extratextuality (the context of reading) and intertextuality (relationship of texts). In this paper, the notion of intertextuality will be emphasized, as an important factor in bringing about this paradigm.