Francesca Stavrakopoulou is an Exeter University Professor at the Theology and Religion department. She studied Theology at the University of Oxford, where she also got her doctorate. She spent over three years doing research and as a teacher in Oxford in the Faculty of Theology, before joining Exeter’s Department of Theology and Religion in 2005.
She was selected to a personal chair in 2011. Along with her scholarship and teaching activities, Francesca also embarks on various media activities, including hosting the BBC 2 TV documentary series Bible’s Buried Secrets, which aired in the UK in 2011.
Dr. Stavrakopoulou is known for her strong opinions, she has been given a prime-time slot on the BBC; she says Eva has been unfairly maligned by middle-aged men with beards and should not have been blamed for the fall of man. And she claims that God had a wife, making them a divine couple. Some may raise eyebrows and might feel offended by what she has said, including her suggestion that Eve was not the first woman in the Bible, because the Garden of Eden had no place in the original Old Testament.
This Professor at the University of Exeter, told Radio Times that Eva (especially in the Christian tradition), has been unfairly vilified as problematic wife. Francesca has also confirmed that she does not believe in God. She has said that she is an atheist with a huge respect for religion. She sees what she does as a branch of history like any other. In a recent article she wrote that the archaeological evidence including inscriptions, ancient texts and figurines along with details in the Bible, are proof that not only God was one of several ones worshiped in ancient Israel but there had to be a Goddess. Such Goddess was worshiped with him at her temple in Jerusalem.