Cheryl Schatz

Paula,

I am going back to the comments from #10 as I took a break for a few days to deal with other matters.

I am glad that you agree with me that the passage is literal. I asked you “what was Adam in the creation male or female or both” and you answered “or neither”. If your answer is neither, then God created a human without gender.

Timing is the key here. The statement “male and female he created them” is in the first, less detailed overview of creation week. Chapter two goes into detail absent from chapter one. After Eve, we have no doubt that Adam was male and Eve female. Before that, we just don’t know. The important thing of course is that Eve and Adam were made of the same flesh and bone, making them absolutely equal.

Yet Jesus told us that God made them male and female “from the beginning” so we cannot say that we don’t know what there was before Eve was created.

Matthew 19:4 And He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE,

Jesus didn’t say that “from the beginning” man was an ungendered person AND female. He said that “from the beginning” he made them male and female.

If God created Adam as a male-female, then we can help God out by putting that into the text. Otherwise it appears God made a mistake. Adam wasn’t exclusively male so then God didn’t create the male, he became male by default. Had God taken out the male part, he would have been female?

We don’t have to help God out at all. Jesus said they were male and female “in the beginning” and he didn’t make a mistake since he was there “in the beginning”. The scripture does not contradict Jesus by telling us that Adam wasn’t exclusively male. Neither does Jesus say that “after the split” there was male and female. He said “in the beginning” and I believe him.

There’s a lot God left out of the text, on a gazillion topics. I mean, come on… “there was light”. Little help, eh?

I agree that there is a lot left out, but what is there is enough and what is there by the testimony of two of three witnesses will not contradict what we think God meant. If God didn’t say that ungendered was there “in the beginning”, and he said “male and female” then we can cross “ungendered” off our list of possibilities. Jesus has never misled us yet and I would rather trust him than the word of any mere man.

And I don’t try to supply what God didn’t say either.

But that is what you appear to be doing. You are saying that Adam was NOT male in the beginning. Please show me a verse that will contradict Jesus’ testimony and then please explain how Jesus was wrong.

If there’s no mention of ribs anywhere else in the Hebrew Bible, then how do you know it means rib and not just “side”? I considered the LXX too. And you still haven’t told me what “flesh” came out of Adam.

Adam’s testimony has not been impeached. He said that what Eve was made from was his flesh and his bone. The only bone in the side of man is rib. In the LXX it renders it as something “angular” and the word “organ” is not in the original. Everything meshes with Adam’s rib. Since there is flesh attached to the rib and God apparently did not scrape the flesh off the rib, it makes perfect sense.

There is also not one reference in the Old Testament to a side chamber inside a person. The only reference is to an “angular” “board” “rib” which shows something hard. If I saw actual evidence there there was a female organ attached to the rib I would consider it. However there is no evidence in the scripture nor from Adam’s testimony. Adam did not say that God took out an organ. He said “flesh” and “bone”. An organ is not usually called “flesh”.

Again, if the word for rib is only found here in Genesis, then nobody can say for sure what it must mean in this context. Side is the meaning in the LXX which predates (AFAIK) any Hebrew text available by several hundred years. It’s at least something to go on. If we say it must mean rib because we think the context supports it, that would be circular reasoning since there is no other context to compare it to.

There is no doubt that the rib was taken from Adam’s side. But to take the location (side) and try to prove that it is an organ just doesn’t make sense to me.

So it wasn’t only a bone after all? Just a little muscle attached to it? Can we arbitrarily decide that’s what “flesh” means here, and not anything else?

It wasn’t just a bone. I never said it was just a rib. The text says it was flesh and bone. Flesh is defined as: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/flesh

the soft substance of a human or other animal body, consisting of muscle and fat or skin.

Again, very consistent with the the rib and the flesh around it and not consistent with an organ.

Cheryl, I’ve been biting my tongue all this time so I wouldn’t accuse you of this, even though I could. Let’s not judge motives now, okay? That’s what male supremacists do to us all the time.

My intention was not to offend you and if I have, I apologize. When I said that there is no evidence for an ungendered human and those who see it that way, it appears to me that they would like to see this in the text, I was not intending to judge anyone’s heart. I was making an observation about the fact that there is no evidence. I have given evidence to the contrary by quoting scripture and I have now buttressed this with Jesus’ words who tells us what there was “in the beginning”. If there is any evidence for the contrary then I want to see it. However without evidence, it appears to me that people who have a good heart and good motives, want to see something in the text that is not there. I also believe that adding in an ungendered human “in the beginning” messes up God’s good intention for the genders. God’s intention was not an after thought because male and female was his purpose “in the beginning”. If I offend someone with these words, I truly do not mean to be offensive. I would like to push you to prove your point from evidence instead of from silence. If the point cannot be proved, I would like to push you to see the beauty of gender right from the beginning. It does not lessen my value because I am female. In fact I believe it gives me more value. I was made with a purpose and I was meant to add value to the man because I am one of those whom the man needs.

And I haven’t seen any witness to say he was a male as we know them. The text just calls the pre-Eve Adam “human”. Only this, and nothing more.

If this is the case then perhaps Adam became nongendered again when he got kicked out of the garden because God did not call him “male” but THE human. When God called Adam “THE human” and kicked him out does this prove that Adam was non-gendered? If not, then how could it prove that he was non-gendered in the beginning?

I really think that these are valid points because honestly this belief makes me feel somewhat embarrassed. I know that complementarians make fun of those egalitarians that believe that Adam was non-gendered or male/female gendered in the beginning. I think that they have a point. There is no evidence for this in the text and they see those who believe this way as trying to make us all non-gendered now. I know that this is not the case but their concern that if one can read into the text about a non-gendered human in the beginning, what else do we read into the text? I do not want to be accused of this because I value evidence that has two or three witnesses so that I can be sure of what I believe.

I don’t argue that the part taken from Adam was necessarily a “female part”. It was an Adam part. Maybe it was something we associate now with the exclusively female now, maybe not.

I agree that it was an “Adam” part. It was his own flesh and bone and not hers in the beginning. But it makes no sense at all to say that what was taken out was not necessarily a “female part” but could be now exclusively female. What on earth is a female part now that wasn’t female before? This just appears to be stretching things farther and farther into speculation and conjecture and farther away from the actual text especially since we have a solid word from Adam about what was taken out.

Are you saying I’m embracing a Greek myth, just because I won’t close a door I don’t see closed in scripture?

No, I don’t think you are necessarily embracing a Greek myth. What I am saying is that the only backup we have is from mythology. Even the Jews had a great amount of mythology including the addition of a “first wife” to Adam. According to their myth, Lileth was the one created equal to Adam, but Adam needed another wife created from his side to be in submission to him because the first one who was equal wouldn’t submit to him.

You can read about Lileth here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilith#Folk_tradition

The idea that Adam had a wife prior to Eve may have developed from an interpretation of the Book of Genesis and its dual creation accounts; while Genesis 2:22 describes God’s creation of Eve from Adam’s rib, an earlier passage, 1:27, already indicates that a woman had been made: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” The text places Lilith’s creation after God’s words in Genesis 2:18 that “it is not good for man to be alone”. He forms Lilith out of the clay from which he made Adam, but the two bicker. Lilith claims that since she and Adam were created in the same way, they were equal, and she refuses to submit to him:

I am fully honored to have such intellects who come here and who are so far above me that I look like a country hill-billy. There is no doubt at all in my mind that you are way smarter than I am. But even with your intelligence, there may be something that I can challenge you on and help you to unlearn. If I am right, then the challenge is a good thing and it is godly. If I am wrong, then I submit to learn from real evidence. In your evidence to me you will have to deal with Jesus’ words that “in the beginning” God created them male and female and you need to teach me why I should see Jesus’ words differently. I do not want to be misled by mythology or anything of my own flesh that would like to make myself created for a different purpose than I have been created. I am happy and content to be what God created me to be and I am happy and content to believe God. If I can be persuaded by God’s word that there is another option and the persuasion comes from clear texts that show that from the beginning they were not gendered, at least there was one ungendered human, then I am happy to admit that I may stand to be corrected. Until then I would like to encourage everyone to study hard. Study to show yourself approved unto God a workman that needeth not to be ashamed. Don’t look at scriptures through your emotions. Test all things and hold fast to what is good.

It will take me awhile to answer the rest of the comments as this is a very busy week for me, but I do intend to work my way through them all. If a biblical proof for an ungendered human “in the beginning” pops up in the text and anyone has the ability to correct me on this one, feel free to proof text away. In the meantime I stand firm that Jesus and Genesis are correct as gendered humans (male and female) were “in the beginning” and the other view is only supported in the myths.