gengwall

Mark claims that Adam had the “priority” in authority over the animals and that his expression of that authority was naming the animals. As a converse, he denies that Eve had “equal authority” to Adam as it relates to naming the animals. But, he concedes that Eve and all women have equal authority with men in naming children (BTW – the only Hebraic cultural naming practice from which we can draw). Moreover, he has not gone to the absurd length of claiming that naming animals is a unilaterally male task. Still, he shows no evidence (nor is there any) that the naming of animals is “mostly” a male task or that Adam’s presumed unilateral naming authority in the garden had some future expiration date. The contradictions in this line of thinking should be obvious. The rational, logical conclusion if that Eve was equal with Adam in regards to naming animals. If such naming was an act of authority (I do not believe it was), then Eve’s authority was equal to Adam’s in this context. If Eve was equal to Adam in authority, it would have been a great ussurpation of that balanced authority for Adam to exercise an authority over Eve that she possesed with him in equal measure. It also would have been terribly degrading for Adam to put Eve at the level of the animals who she had equal authority over. Therefore, Adam’s act of calling Eve “woman” was either not at all related to any authoritarian hierarchy, or a very sinful precursor to “he will rule over you”. Since the latter, I hope all would agree, is impossible, we must conclude exactly what the text tells us, that “she shall be called woman…” is nothing more than his joyful recognition that his ezer neged had finally arrived.