After the prosecutor had made his case against her, she stood in the hushed court and began her defense. During her speech, the Judge's face grew increasingly red and fierce. Sweat poured from his temples: his crown continually slipped over his forhead and fell off.
"I can accept death, your honor, and hardship, and the pain of childbirth, and endless labor. But what I will not accept is guilt. My actions have a consequence, it's true: but I will not allow you to besmirch my good name. I have not done wrong. I have only done an act that results in suffering. I accept my suffering, but I do not accept the condemnation you would attach to it, and to my children."
"But," spluttered the judge, "I clearly told you, as your magistrate and king, that you must not eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. You ate it. Therefor you disobeyed. Disobediance is an evil. Thus you are condemned as a sinner forever!"
"You are mistaken, O Judge and King. For when you told me not to eat of the fruit, you did not tell me that disobedience was an evil. And because I had not yet eaten of the fruit of knowledge, I knew not what evil was. Therefor I ate in innocence."
The sweaty crown began to slip. The veins pulsed on the Judge's neck. "Insolent woman!" he shouted. "Naturally you knew that you must obey my commandment, for I created you, and that which is a creature is a natural born slave to its creator! Therefor you should have known, you should have known!"
"Quite the contrary, sir," said the mild woman with a small sad smile, a smile that nevertheless grew as she spoke until it flashed from her eyes and her brow, and her whole being shined with a light brighter than the tinsel on the crown of her accuser. "You did not create me to be a slave. For you declared, 'Let us create humanity in our own image and likeness.' Did you not say that I was to be the ruler of this earth and have dominion over all its creatures? Did you not make me as your earthly reflection, to be your co-creator? And what does it mean to be your image if not to reflect your freedom, your power of choice? Therefor I ate of the fruit as a noble act of freedom. I was not disobedient: I was simply being true to my nature, the nature you gave me when you created me in the image of your own free will."
The judge rose, flecks of saliva shaken from his lips by the words he proclaimed: "You are condemned to exile, sorrow, pain and death!"
"I know," she replied gently, "I know. But I will wear my suffering as a crown more noble than yours. My suffering is not punishment for sin: it is simply the birth pang of the soul who rises from innocence to experience. Though I have lost my innocence, I have not lost my virtue. In fact, it is you who have done evil!"
Everyone in the court gasped at this impertinence.
"Yes," she continued, "It is you who have sinned. For when you condemn me, you condemn me unjustly, since I acted out of innocence, not yet having any knowledge of good and evil. Sin for me had no meaning. To accuse me of sin, then, is both a falsehood and an injustice. Since falsehood and injustice are ungodly, then you by condemning me deny your own godly nature, while I have remained true to mine. You, my God, are the sinner, not I!"
From the back of the courtroom, a young man moved from the shadows to the light and stood beside her.
"You again!" said the Judge. "I sent you away, away, yet you always come back when I condemn one of these sinners! What do you want this time?"
"I have come for her sake," the man said, "not for your's." Then he smiled to the woman, taking her hand. "Come, I will accompany you through the valley of the shadow of death. I cannot remove your pain. But friendship can heal the blight of judgment. You will go forth as a sufferer, but not a sinner. All that you endure, I will endure: not to take it from you, but to give you the assurance that you have a friend."
"What is a friend?" asked the woman, warily.
He answered, "A friend is someone who knows your sorrows as if they were his own."
Together they turned to the jury. The judge demanded, "Have you reached a verdict?'"
"We have, your honor?"
"How do you find the defendant, guilty or not guilty?"
"Your honor, we sentence the defendant to suffering and death, but we find her not guilty."
The judge stared at the young man, his eyes smouldering. "Your Mother is behind this, isn’t she? Ever since I divorced the woman, she has been sending you back to confuse my judgment! Can’t you and that woman just leave me to my work? Can’t you see its all a simple matter of right and wrong; guilty and not guilty; Heaven and Hell? Why must you always ruin justice with your God-forsaken mercy?"
The defendant walked out of the courtroom with the young man, as the Judge turned toward the officers, shouting, "Bring in the next slave for me to judge. There must be someone here who is guilty!"
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