From a woman sin began

From a woman sin had its beginning, and because of her we all die. Not in the Protestant canon. In the Catholic and Orthodox canons, and quoted by every church father who shaped the Western view of women.

Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) is the writing of Jesus ben Sira, a Jerusalem sage, around 180 BCE. The book is part of the Septuagint — the Greek Jewish scriptures the early church used as its Old Testament — and is received as canonical in the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Ethiopian Orthodox traditions, and as non-canonical but useful by Anglican and Lutheran traditions. Protestant Bibles generally omit it. Sirach 25:24 pins the entrance of sin and death onto Eve specifically, a reading Paul himself does not use (Paul consistently names Adam as the source in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15). The verse's influence runs through patristic theology: Tertullian calls woman diaboli ianua ("the devil's gateway") in a passage that reads as a gloss on Sirach; Chrysostom, Augustine, and Jerome all echo the line. More of the Christian teaching against women's leadership draws its emotional force from Sirach 25:24 than from Genesis 3:16.