Paula

Since Eve is part of the original creation of mankind, the “male” from the beginning was the original creation of Adam and the “female” was the original creation of Eve. “From the beginning” cannot be a term that does not include the creation of Adam. This is why I am confident that God created just as he said he did with two genders not one and a half.

This is one possible interpretation, but still an interpretation. It is equally possible to interpret “male and female from the beginning” as from the time both a male and a female existed. To assign meaning to a phrase is to interpret. Many, such as Calvinists, insist that certain things are inescapable logically and that we therefor must accept their conclusions. Likewise, though it looks to you that your conclusion is inescapable, I don’t agree. And that’s okay. And it doesn’t mean I have a low view of scripture or read any more into it than you or anyone else.

When God said “them”, he was referring to both of them – humanity as male and female, not one person as male and female.

Right. But whether this applies to the time there was no female is still not specified by scripture, but is instead a matter of interpretation.

We are told that God’s original creation was male and female.

What about timing? Consider the phrase “slain from the foundation of the world”. If I apply your method I must believe that Jesus was slain when the world was created. Now in this case we know it didn’t actually happen till Jesus came “in the fullness of time”. But with Adam before Eve, there are no statements to clarify. Timing does matter.

I did post a quote from the NET translator notes that show that God is talking to BOTH the male and female in Genesis 1:28 and verse 27 refers to both the original man and both humans.

This same NET also has footnotes that are male supremacist. Point being, they are not infallible, and when experts disagree on a point, an appeal to authority is a logical fallacy. It’s still an interpretation.

All I’m saying in all this is that we have to be careful not to mistake an interpretation with what is actually stated, nor argue from silence about Adam’s condition before Eve. It all hinges on how one interprets “from the beginning” since that phrase always mentions both male and female, and there was a period of time when no female existed. Again, your interpretation could very well be right; but so could mine.

More importantly, this debate has no bearing on the question of male supremacy. As you pointed out, scripture is silent about whether God breathed into Eve the breath of life, or whether she got that existing breath from Adam. Yet this silence does not force us to conclude that Eve is somehow less than Adam. In the same way, and by the same principle, we have silence about the time when there was Adam but no Eve as to Adam’s physical makeup, yet no matter how we deal with that, it does not force us to conclude that Eve is somehow less than Adam. It’s really irrelevant, and for that reason I will make no more rebuttals about it.