Was Eve Made From Adam’s Missing Penis Bone?
According to the Bible, God fashioned Adam out of dirt while Eve, who was created as a companion for Adam, was made out of one of Adam’s ribs. Or was she?
"The Bible starts, as most people know, with the creation of the universe, animals, and human beings. According to the Bible, God fashioned Adam out of dirt while Eve, who was created as a companion for Adam, was made out of one of Adam’s ribs. Or was she? A shocking academic theory proposes that rather than being whittled out of a rib, Eve was actually formed out of Adam’s os baculum or, to put this much more directly, man’s now-missing penis bone. As you might imagine, the theory has caused something of a stir.
Even from an ancient perspective, the idea that Eve was created out of a rib has some problems. Though ancient understandings of the machinations of the body were limited, death, decay, and ancient burial rituals meant that knowledge of the human skeleton was hardly out of reach. Moreover, as anyone who has taken an elementary class in human anatomy knows, the ribcage is not asymmetrical: generally speaking there doesn’t appear to be a rib missing on one side: most people have 12 pairs. Given that ancient people are as likely to have known this as we moderns, it’s worth asking what ancient readers thought was happening when God “caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and… took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh” (Gen. 2:21). Explanations for what this strange ancient organ transplant involved is where things take a turn for the scandalous . . .
Even when they argue for a meaning other than “rib,” later interpreters wonder if perhaps the tsela’ is a tail. Perhaps the most compelling evidence of all is the fact that God takes “one of [Adam’s] ribs” to make Eve. The expression assumes that there was more than one of whatever bone Eve was made and there’s no evidence at all that Adam had more than one penis.
In evaluating these theories, Dr. Robert Cargill, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review,told The Daily Beast that “Both arguments have merit. Creating womankind out of a spare rib taken from the first man is certainly in keeping with the low view of women present in Genesis 2–3. Then again, creating a woman from the male sexual organ, and simultaneously explaining why men don’t possess a bone that so many other animals possess, including most primates, offers an etiology that is in keeping with the overall sexual nature of this myth.”
What the story exposes is how difficult and uncertain the project of translating ancient texts is. It is difficult to get inside the idioms, euphemisms, and colloquialisms of an ancient culture in which none of us can actually be enculturated. We have a history of interpreting words in a specific ways but even then we might be using powers of deduction. The jury is certainly out about what ancient people thought was happening in the Garden of Eden. . ."
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