I came across an interesting website that explains the word "hawwah." Here it is:
"The name Eve in Semitic languages is the same as the word for the serpent, "hawwah." Goddesses were often symbolized or associated with serpents. Saint Brigit, the Irish Saint, had a monastery at Kildare associated with snakes, though there are no snakes in Ireland. Brigit was, of course, a canonized Goddess and she retained the Goddess's characteristics as a Saint. "
"The origin of the Genesis story seems to have been a story featuring a god, a serpent goddess and a son. When patriarchy became the dominant theology, the serpent Goddess had to be villified while the god had to be raised above it all. The three in the Garden of Eden therefore became Adam—the son, Eve—the Goddess in her female aspect, the serpent—the Goddess in her newly given aspect of the wicked principle. In the Genesis story both aspects of the Goddess are shown as wicked. This suited the authors of Genesis who were urging obedience to a single god called Yehouah upon a formerly polytheistic people who worshipped, among others, a snake god."
"This old story originated in Sumeria, and the Babylonians had a story about a snake stealing a plant of renewed life. Snakes, because they sloughed off their dead skins and looked rejuvenated were associated with immortality, an impression increased by their habit of hiberating. In both Egypt and Mesopotamia, snakes stood for immortality and, in Sumeria, the Goddess, Ninhursag or Ninta, the Goddess of procreation, was symbolized by a serpent. The switch to patriarchy left serpents with a bad or ambivalent reputation. They had to be demeaned in deference to the father god, yet had desirable connotations as a deity of immortality and creation that were hard simply to dismiss."
"Thus we find the elements of the Genesis story. The two aspects of the mother Goddess are both punished. Her symbol, the serpent, is made to crawl on its belly, eat dust and be struck on the head by humankind. The Goddess in her feminine aspect had to bear the pain of childbirth, something Sumerian goddesses never felt, while also being struck on the heel by the crawling serpent. The mother Goddess was disjointed and could no longer give comfort to men or women, while women were made the chattels of men and both were to obey an unforgiving father god!"
"Serpents were demonized. Dragons were huge fearsome serpents that heroes killed. This is an metaphor of the destruction of the Goddess's shrines by the patriarchal warriors. The hero, depicted latterly as a brave knight in armour jousts and kills the terrible dragon that held the maiden captive. The maiden and the dragon are the Goddess in her feminine and her serpent aspects. The hero frees women from her religion because it is a monster! Women are separated from Nature and put in bondage to patriarchy."
"In Babylonia, Marduk murders the earth Goddess, Tiamat, splitting her into two parts which become heaven and earth, proof enough that she was the deity od all things before patriarchy. And this myth leaves the Goddess in charge of the material world, both as Nature or as Cosmothea. This suggests her former great power. She could not just be dismissed by the patriarchs. She was notionally left with her realms but now divided and weakened, to make her subject to the God of Heaven."
"Marduk pretends to be the creator by claiming to have made heaven and earth out of the Goddess, but the Goddess is still heaven and earth, so nothing has happened except that humanity now had to worship a patriarchal pretender, who has supposedly subjected, demeaned and sidelined the Goddess, though she remains as everything in the world! The false god is beyond the world, as he has always remained, supposedly superior but an illusion not even done with mirrors but with force and fear."
"The same changes happened elsewhere, probably at the instigation of the waves of Indo-European invaders. Male gods could invent fanciful ways of giving birth—Athena from Zeus head and Dionysos from his thigh—but ultimately the prime creative act the priests settled on was appropriately the command—the father god ordered something to happen and Nature, the earthly Goddess, obeyed. Commands uttered by god were "god's Word," the Creative Word, the "Logos," later identified with Wisdom then later still with the Son. The identity with Wisdom was an attempt to reassert the Goddess as the creative principle she continued to give birth as only women can do in truth—and destroy what she has made too, in her aspect as Time. Wisdom is simply the Goddess personified once again as God's creative thoughts. The Goddess has become the imaginery God's brain, demeaned but still in charge."
"The Son was the patriarchal backlash. Wisdom was recognized as feminine, and that was too much for the patriarchal priesthood. They could not tolerate that and some of them devised a way of making Wisdom into the Son."
"Instead of people being able to venerate the Goddess in their own way, as individuals, families or communities, the patriarchal priesthood insisted that only they could properly interced with God. Properly executed ritual, they insisted was essential or God would be offended, and only the priesthood could do it properly from a lifetime of training. The "folk" religion of hearth and family was destroyed."
"God was cool, rational, emotionless—a hard man elevated to the heavens. People had to forego passion, control their "nature" because Nature, the Goddess, was responsible for such weaknesses. Emotional people were harder to control and less obedient. Sexual love was a dangerous emotion that had to be carefully controlled lest people get more committed to each other than to the state, through the state religion. Holy men themselves were discouraged from indulging and from marrying for the same reason and came to be a huge force of frustrated oppression. Sex, the most essential and natural of pleasures became a sin except under carefully prescribed conditions!"
"Instead, immortality was the carrot granted by the universal God to his donkeys, those who obeyed Him without question. Immortality that had been the life of the parents in the children, an incentive to good parenthood through the Eternal Chain of Being, became a fraudulent and absurd life after death. They could not get there unless the priests were involved to verify that the dying person had indeed been obedient and could be given the appropriate Rites of Passage to the bosom of Abraham, or whatever."
"Brigit must have been a goddess brought into Ireland by the Celts about the middle of the first millennium BC. She was symbolized by a cross, Brigit's Cross (Brent's Cross is the same), but none are found before the Iron Age, suggesting that she came with the Iron Age invaders. The Latinized name of Brigit is Brigantia and it is interesting that Gaulish tribes called the Brigantes were well known. Brigit's monastery in Kildare will have been set up on the site of an Iron Age sanctuary to the Goddess. Kildare was the City of Brigit before the Christians came."
"Kildare means Church of the Oak and the oak was also sacred to the Goddess Brigit. The Druid implications are plain, and the Goddess seems to have had a duty to encourage or provide for the training of bards. Kildare seems to have been a school for them, and the head of the school might have had the title Brigit. It is speculated that the Christian Saint Brigit was one of these Druid teachers, canonized because she boldly apostatized from Druidry to Christianity, taking her school with her to make it into a Christian monastery. More probably this is a Christian attempt to hide the truth that a Pagan Goddess was made a saint to bring Pagans into the Church."
"The Romans associated Brigit with their own Goddess, Minerva. Sul the Goddess of Bath where people even before the Romans came to take the Waters of Sul (Aqua Sulis) was also seen by the Romans as Minerva. Many of Brigit's symbols were the same as those of Isis and of other Goddesses too, so she seems to have taken on their characteristics by syncretism even before Christianity arrived, though the different Goddesses might have been deliberately confused by the Christians trying to eliminate them. There certainly were other Irish goddesses and Ireland seemed to have been a country of Goddesses before Christianity despite the invasiosn of the Celts who were patriarchal. They seem not to have been able to impose patriarchy, or did so only weakly, leaving Goddess worhsip still influential."
"The Sheela-na-gig is a figure of a crouching woman holding open the mouth of her vulva. The old tombs of Ireland were designed as a chamber representing a womb, with a long tunnel-like entrance representing a vagina. The entrance was the vulva. It suggests that the builders of these tombs thought of death as a rebirth or as a preparation for a rebirth."
"When the Christians took over, telling people that churches were now the proper preparation for eternal life, the Irish took churches to be the womb of the earth, and they carved on to them their familair symbol of the Goddess holding open her womb to receive. The Priests were perhaps able to explain this as a necessary symbol of the sins of the flesh for a lusty society. So the Sheela-na-gis were carved above the entrances, or in less prominent places, of irish churches. At Lillinaboy, she is carved into the arch above the main door to the church, making the imagery of the entrance as the entrance to a womb plain enough. It is said to be Brigit, the mother Goddess."
http://www.adelphiasophism.com/enemies/28.html
"The name Eve in Semitic languages is the same as the word for the serpent, "hawwah." Goddesses were often symbolized or associated with serpents. Saint Brigit, the Irish Saint, had a monastery at Kildare associated with snakes, though there are no snakes in Ireland. Brigit was, of course, a canonized Goddess and she retained the Goddess's characteristics as a Saint. "
"The origin of the Genesis story seems to have been a story featuring a god, a serpent goddess and a son. When patriarchy became the dominant theology, the serpent Goddess had to be villified while the god had to be raised above it all. The three in the Garden of Eden therefore became Adam—the son, Eve—the Goddess in her female aspect, the serpent—the Goddess in her newly given aspect of the wicked principle. In the Genesis story both aspects of the Goddess are shown as wicked. This suited the authors of Genesis who were urging obedience to a single god called Yehouah upon a formerly polytheistic people who worshipped, among others, a snake god."
"This old story originated in Sumeria, and the Babylonians had a story about a snake stealing a plant of renewed life. Snakes, because they sloughed off their dead skins and looked rejuvenated were associated with immortality, an impression increased by their habit of hiberating. In both Egypt and Mesopotamia, snakes stood for immortality and, in Sumeria, the Goddess, Ninhursag or Ninta, the Goddess of procreation, was symbolized by a serpent. The switch to patriarchy left serpents with a bad or ambivalent reputation. They had to be demeaned in deference to the father god, yet had desirable connotations as a deity of immortality and creation that were hard simply to dismiss."
"Thus we find the elements of the Genesis story. The two aspects of the mother Goddess are both punished. Her symbol, the serpent, is made to crawl on its belly, eat dust and be struck on the head by humankind. The Goddess in her feminine aspect had to bear the pain of childbirth, something Sumerian goddesses never felt, while also being struck on the heel by the crawling serpent. The mother Goddess was disjointed and could no longer give comfort to men or women, while women were made the chattels of men and both were to obey an unforgiving father god!"
"Serpents were demonized. Dragons were huge fearsome serpents that heroes killed. This is an metaphor of the destruction of the Goddess's shrines by the patriarchal warriors. The hero, depicted latterly as a brave knight in armour jousts and kills the terrible dragon that held the maiden captive. The maiden and the dragon are the Goddess in her feminine and her serpent aspects. The hero frees women from her religion because it is a monster! Women are separated from Nature and put in bondage to patriarchy."
"In Babylonia, Marduk murders the earth Goddess, Tiamat, splitting her into two parts which become heaven and earth, proof enough that she was the deity od all things before patriarchy. And this myth leaves the Goddess in charge of the material world, both as Nature or as Cosmothea. This suggests her former great power. She could not just be dismissed by the patriarchs. She was notionally left with her realms but now divided and weakened, to make her subject to the God of Heaven."
"Marduk pretends to be the creator by claiming to have made heaven and earth out of the Goddess, but the Goddess is still heaven and earth, so nothing has happened except that humanity now had to worship a patriarchal pretender, who has supposedly subjected, demeaned and sidelined the Goddess, though she remains as everything in the world! The false god is beyond the world, as he has always remained, supposedly superior but an illusion not even done with mirrors but with force and fear."
"The same changes happened elsewhere, probably at the instigation of the waves of Indo-European invaders. Male gods could invent fanciful ways of giving birth—Athena from Zeus head and Dionysos from his thigh—but ultimately the prime creative act the priests settled on was appropriately the command—the father god ordered something to happen and Nature, the earthly Goddess, obeyed. Commands uttered by god were "god's Word," the Creative Word, the "Logos," later identified with Wisdom then later still with the Son. The identity with Wisdom was an attempt to reassert the Goddess as the creative principle she continued to give birth as only women can do in truth—and destroy what she has made too, in her aspect as Time. Wisdom is simply the Goddess personified once again as God's creative thoughts. The Goddess has become the imaginery God's brain, demeaned but still in charge."
"The Son was the patriarchal backlash. Wisdom was recognized as feminine, and that was too much for the patriarchal priesthood. They could not tolerate that and some of them devised a way of making Wisdom into the Son."
"Instead of people being able to venerate the Goddess in their own way, as individuals, families or communities, the patriarchal priesthood insisted that only they could properly interced with God. Properly executed ritual, they insisted was essential or God would be offended, and only the priesthood could do it properly from a lifetime of training. The "folk" religion of hearth and family was destroyed."
"God was cool, rational, emotionless—a hard man elevated to the heavens. People had to forego passion, control their "nature" because Nature, the Goddess, was responsible for such weaknesses. Emotional people were harder to control and less obedient. Sexual love was a dangerous emotion that had to be carefully controlled lest people get more committed to each other than to the state, through the state religion. Holy men themselves were discouraged from indulging and from marrying for the same reason and came to be a huge force of frustrated oppression. Sex, the most essential and natural of pleasures became a sin except under carefully prescribed conditions!"
"Instead, immortality was the carrot granted by the universal God to his donkeys, those who obeyed Him without question. Immortality that had been the life of the parents in the children, an incentive to good parenthood through the Eternal Chain of Being, became a fraudulent and absurd life after death. They could not get there unless the priests were involved to verify that the dying person had indeed been obedient and could be given the appropriate Rites of Passage to the bosom of Abraham, or whatever."
"Brigit must have been a goddess brought into Ireland by the Celts about the middle of the first millennium BC. She was symbolized by a cross, Brigit's Cross (Brent's Cross is the same), but none are found before the Iron Age, suggesting that she came with the Iron Age invaders. The Latinized name of Brigit is Brigantia and it is interesting that Gaulish tribes called the Brigantes were well known. Brigit's monastery in Kildare will have been set up on the site of an Iron Age sanctuary to the Goddess. Kildare was the City of Brigit before the Christians came."
"Kildare means Church of the Oak and the oak was also sacred to the Goddess Brigit. The Druid implications are plain, and the Goddess seems to have had a duty to encourage or provide for the training of bards. Kildare seems to have been a school for them, and the head of the school might have had the title Brigit. It is speculated that the Christian Saint Brigit was one of these Druid teachers, canonized because she boldly apostatized from Druidry to Christianity, taking her school with her to make it into a Christian monastery. More probably this is a Christian attempt to hide the truth that a Pagan Goddess was made a saint to bring Pagans into the Church."
"The Romans associated Brigit with their own Goddess, Minerva. Sul the Goddess of Bath where people even before the Romans came to take the Waters of Sul (Aqua Sulis) was also seen by the Romans as Minerva. Many of Brigit's symbols were the same as those of Isis and of other Goddesses too, so she seems to have taken on their characteristics by syncretism even before Christianity arrived, though the different Goddesses might have been deliberately confused by the Christians trying to eliminate them. There certainly were other Irish goddesses and Ireland seemed to have been a country of Goddesses before Christianity despite the invasiosn of the Celts who were patriarchal. They seem not to have been able to impose patriarchy, or did so only weakly, leaving Goddess worhsip still influential."
"The Sheela-na-gig is a figure of a crouching woman holding open the mouth of her vulva. The old tombs of Ireland were designed as a chamber representing a womb, with a long tunnel-like entrance representing a vagina. The entrance was the vulva. It suggests that the builders of these tombs thought of death as a rebirth or as a preparation for a rebirth."
"When the Christians took over, telling people that churches were now the proper preparation for eternal life, the Irish took churches to be the womb of the earth, and they carved on to them their familair symbol of the Goddess holding open her womb to receive. The Priests were perhaps able to explain this as a necessary symbol of the sins of the flesh for a lusty society. So the Sheela-na-gis were carved above the entrances, or in less prominent places, of irish churches. At Lillinaboy, she is carved into the arch above the main door to the church, making the imagery of the entrance as the entrance to a womb plain enough. It is said to be Brigit, the mother Goddess."
http://www.adelphiasophism.com/enemies/28.html