Yet Eve is not only Mary’s opposite but also her mirror image—reversed and yet identical. […] Both Eve and Mary were propositioned, even seduced (as certain Rabbinic and Christian texts claimed)—Eve by the serpent and Mary by Gabriel. “Eve,” Tertullian wrote, “believed the serpent; Mary believed Gabriel.” Both suitors claimed to be angelic messengers—and neither lied, though one of those two angels had fallen from God’s grace. Both Eve and Mary, according to the tradition represented in the Salzburg Missal, were impregnated by their supernatural encounters: Eve by Death and Mary by Life. And both Eve and Mary were promised deification. The serpent promised Eve that she would become like a god, while Gabriel promised Mary that she would become the Theotokos, the God Bearer.
