Why Eve before Adam in the Fall?
The precedence of Eve to Adam is very common sense and profound. Let us probe it.
Firstly, noting from the above essay, that the two lies of the fall are anti-baptism and then anti-marriage, it is evident that anti-baptism must precede anti-marriage to work for the evil one.
That is, first the dragon must seduce one to no faith and no repentance, before he can get one to live for the creation in this life rather the Creator in the next life,or for fornicating, figuratively, materialism rather than the heavenly marriage.
Why? In this: faith must be destroyed before morals fall. This is because, if one has faith in any divine truths, they must necessarily live for God, and therefore not for this world alone. Consequently, the devil must first annihilate our faith in truth before he can get us to hand ourselves over to immorality.
This is what the dragon did to Eve. That is, the dragon does not tell Eve immediately to take the fruit. Rather, he seduces her to distrust the divine love and benevolence. God is not interested in you, he is withholding.
Once Eve's faith in God's truths and revelation are gotten out of the way, that is, the mark in her forehead is given, the darkening of her intellect, which lies behind her forehead ,then she reaches out with her hand and rips the creation from the tree of God's love, order and gift and takes it to herself for her own selfish purposes, using the Creation as she sees it, and not by God's loving design. The mark in the hand that took the fruit, the works of her hands made evil, the dark choice of her will, the other faculty of soul besides intellect..
Too, Eve images humanity, which is receptive to God. God must give us His truth and grace and the creation. We must receive it. For this reason, the fall of man must involve an assault on humanity's receptivity toward God, his dependence, before he can proactively fornicate with the creation like a brute. Hence, since Eve is the image of this receptivity, the dragon must first target Eve. Toward that end, Eve's evil grasping of the creation away from God and rejection of His truth and grace then show what happens to humanity: when humanity rejects this dependent and receptive disposition toward God, he becomes like a man that now fornicates with the world. Eve gives the fallen creation robbed from the Holy One to Adam, who proactively partakes of it.
To probe deeper: notice the history of the last 1700 years: when pagan Rome became Christian, suddenly the fullness of faith pervaded the greatest temporal power on earth. The dragon does not want this. He wants to world to go back to no faith and no repentance, as in pagan values and such. This is like Eve who has full trust in God. The Gentiles, in one sense or another, fully trust the Church. "Did God really say", becomes, "Did the Church really say? Did Peter really say? Did the Bishops really say? Did Scripture really say? Did Reason really say?" Only when all sources of Divine truth have been annihilated in the mind of man will they turn completely away from God and toward immorality and this world; hence, after reason is gone, in the 20th century (atheism, relativism), materialism arises, man living for this life rather than the next!
And this way, after first annihilating the faith of the world over some 17 centuries, the dragon has brought humanity full circle, back to the lies of pagan Rome, of Noah's day, of Babel, of Egypt, of Greece: no faith, no repentance, and materialism!