Literal Rib?

[COPLAND_3]

Well… it’s difficult not to reach that conclusion. After all, the text says, "[God said, ']And yet, you suggest that the Church Fathers thought otherwise. Can you provide a citation that demonstrates that any of them thought that the creation of the animals (in Genesis 2) was actually a ‘teaching moment’ for Adam?

Certainly I’m doing no such thing. But, now that you mention it… can you provide an alternative explanation? You’ve attempted one here, of course, but I’ve demonstrated that it fails to explain the narrative of Genesis 2. Perhaps you have some other explanation in mind that we might consider? I’m hoping that you might have a reference to Aquinas that might shed light on your wholesale refusal to consider my question.

I searched many of the Fathers and Aquinas hoping that I would find any of them actually mentioning something that would be related to an interpretation that you brought up, because to be quite honest I had never thought of it that way and you did bring up an angle that intrigued me. But I found nothing that hinted that they even saw that in the passage or countered it in order to dismiss the notion. Oftentimes they would, especially the scholastics like Aquinas, would commentate in a manner that would answer possible questions that could be found in a given passage, and then after answering possible questions they would conclude with their straight answer to what it meant. I also checked St. Bede, Chrysostom, St. Ephraim, some of Augustine, and the Questions and Answers from Theodoret and did not find any hint of that being a possible interpretation.

The whole idea that Creation in Genesis being a myth is not at all grounded in anything other than modern scholars.

As for the ‘teaching moment’ that I brought up, I did not mean that I found that example for that passage, but that is a similar example that I have seen throughout many of the exegetical comments I have ran across by the Fathers and so on in my studies and research in similar types of passages. One example is when God asked Adam, ‘where are you?’ Not that God did not know where he was, but God asked that so Adam would think and realize what he had done and where he ended up. Another example is in Jonah when God said in 3 days he was going to destroy Nineveh. Did God not actually know that Nineveh would repent? Of course not, because He knows everything, past present and future. God made that threat so that it would scare them to death so that they would repent and God would then change His sentence. So, in this passage about finding Adam a suitable partner, I tried to think (within my weak limitations) within the spirit of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church as to why God would ‘try’ some things before finding the best solution for Adam. Maybe it was for Adam’s benefit so that he would see for himself that the woman was the best and most suitable partner for him, rather than God immediately giving him the woman and later on something crazy running through Adam’s mind like wondering if one of the animals would be better than Eve.

 

[abucs]

We are not required to believe either way, but if you believe it literally then you would be in great company of many saints of the Church.

I think this is the answer to the question.
Personally I see much of early Genesis as a metaphor.

We can believe this literally [and for which we should], and it will not mean that women would have one less rib than men.

If, for example, we remove a rib from a man (surgically, of course), will his offspring now have one less rib, just like him?

Very good point.

This takes me back to Catholic High School. Our science teacher was talking about the human skeleton and mentioned Genesis and the fact that men have one more rib on one side than the other. He waited a few seconds and then laughed himself silly as every boy in the class had their hand up their shirts counting their ribs.

:extrahappy:

 

[Richca]

I think we’ve covered this before but…Just came home from Good Friday Mass and during the Homily our priest something about Adam and Eve and that Eve was made from Adams side, his rib. Do we, as Catholics need to believe this literally or can we believe this part of Genesis as figurative?
And before anyone says it has to be literal because women have one less rib than men, they do not.

I do not know of any place in Holy Scripture, the church fathers, or the official teaching of the Catholic Church where it states that the formation of Eve from the rib of Adam is to be taken figuratively although is does have a mystical meaning. St Paul, alluding to genesis, says that
“For Adam was formed first, then Eve.” (1 Timothy 2:13); and “For man did not come from woman, but woman from man” (1 Corinthians 11:8). God has not revealed to us any other means of the formation of Eve except that of what Genesis records and Genesis is the word of God.
As I said, the formation of Eve from the side or rib of Adam has a mystical meaning too. For the Church teaches that the bride of Christ, i.e., the Church, was born from the side of Christ as he hung on the cross when he was pierced with a lance and out flowed blood and water which alludes to the two principle sacraments of the Church, baptism and the eucharist. As St Paul says, Christ is the second Adam.

 

[COPLAND_3]

I do not know of any place in Holy Scripture, the church fathers, or the official teaching of the Catholic Church where it states that the formation of Eve from the rib of Adam is to be taken figuratively although is does have a mystical meaning. St Paul, alluding to genesis, says that
“For Adam was formed first, then Eve.” (1 Timothy 2:13); and “For man did not come from woman, but woman from man” (1 Corinthians 11:8). God has not revealed to us any other means of the formation of Eve except that of what Genesis records and Genesis is the word of God.
As I said, the formation of Eve from the side or rib of Adam has a mystical meaning too. For the Church teaches that the bride of Christ, i.e., the Church, was born from the side of Christ as he hung on the cross when he was pierced with a lance and out flowed blood and water which alludes to the two principle sacraments of the Church, baptism and the eucharist. As St Paul says, Christ is the second Adam.

Great point that I forgot to mention! Also people do need to be aware that there is a big difference between a spiritual or mystical meaning vs being outright mythical story that some of the modern scholarship teaches. The different senses of Scripture seeks to find not only the literal but the Christological and moral sense. I just bring this up so other readers may not get confused that the good ol spiritual senses of Scripture is somehow the same as being a didactic fable.

 

[Faith1960]

Great point that I forgot to mention! Also people do need to be aware that there is a big difference between a spiritual or mystical meaning vs being outright mythical story that some of the modern scholarship teaches. The different senses of Scripture seeks to find not only the literal but the Christological and moral sense. I just bring this up so other readers may not get confused that the good ol spiritual senses of Scripture is somehow the same as being a didactic fable.

I’m lost then. How is Eve being formed from Adams rib a spiritual or mystical meaning vs being an outright mythical story?

 

[Gorgias]

I searched many of the Fathers and Aquinas hoping that I would find any of them actually mentioning something that would be related to an interpretation that you brought up, because to be quite honest I had never thought of it that way and you did bring up an angle that intrigued me. But I found nothing that hinted that they even saw that in the passage or countered it in order to dismiss the notion.

The question, though, is whether they attempted the argument that you offered – that God was in some way testing or teaching Adam in his fruitless attempt to find a helpmate from the animals God had created for this purpose. That’s really the argument you’re trying to convince us of, isn’t it? Otherwise, there’s no answer to the question, “why would an omniscient God provide a solution that clearly fails?”

The whole idea that Creation in Genesis being a myth is not at all grounded in anything other than modern scholars.

Yet, I never claimed it as a ‘myth’. Instead, I was pointing to a feature of the text that would be inconsistent with the perspective of historical truth, and asking how we might deal with it.

Another example is in Jonah when God said in 3 days he was going to destroy Nineveh. Did God not actually know that Nineveh would repent? Of course not, because He knows everything, past present and future. God made that threat so that it would scare them to death so that they would repent and God would then change His sentence.

Yet, in that case, we also see in Scripture (cf Jonah 4) that Jonah knew what the game was; he was to preach against the Ninevites in order that they might repent. There’s no indication here that God was teaching Adam something that He already knew, is there?

Maybe it was for Adam’s benefit so that he would see for himself that the woman was the best and most suitable partner for him, rather than God immediately giving him the woman and later on something crazy running through Adam’s mind like wondering if one of the animals would be better than Eve.

Right; that’s a reasonable approach. And, without anything in Scripture pointing to that interpretation, it’s pure eisegesis; and, without any other support in the Fathers or elsewhere, it fares no better than my approach, which you claim has no support anywhere, as well!

 

[Faith1960]

And here’s something that the Biblical Commission said in 1993:

Note especially that literal ≠ literalist, and that “the literal sense does not necessarily imply belief that the facts recounted actually took place.”

So where did Eve came from then?

 

[edwest2]

So where did Eve came from then?

God made her from the rib and flesh of Adam. Otherwise, we have a God with zero God-like power. How did Jesus raise the dead?

Peace,
Ed

 

[Richca]

If you believe this story literally, then you therefore are required to believe that God didn’t realize that an animal wouldn’t be a good ‘partner’ for Adam – that is, He had to wait until Adam gave each animal a ‘try-out’ before He said, “Hmm… I guess I’ll have to make another creature to be a proper help-mate; after all, none of these ones worked out.”

In other words, if you believe in this story literally, then I guess you don’t believe in an omniscent God…

I don’t follow your logic here. How does Eve being formed from the rib of Adam have anything to do with not believing in the omniscience of God?

 

[Gorgias]

I don’t follow your logic here. How does Eve being formed from the rib of Adam have anything to do with not believing in the omniscience of God?

The case I’m making is that God says, “Hmm… Adam needs a helpmate. OK… I’m gonna make animals! One of them will be a suitable helpmate!” But, then, Adam looks at each of them and none of them fit the bill. So, God says, “OK… let’s try ‘Plan B’: Adam, go to sleep; I need to borrow a rib.”

In other words, if we wish to take this passage literally, then we’re literally saying that God didn’t know that the animals wouldn’t work as a suitable helpmate. (Otherwise, why present them to Adam as candidates for such a role?) Copland makes a reasonable response: what if God did this in order to demonstrate to Adam that the animals weren’t the helpmate?

(Yet, I still have problems with this thought: after all, it was God, not Adam, who wanted a helpmate for Adam; it was God who seemingly attempted to answer this need with a new creation – animals – which did not previously exist; it was God who said, “oops! maybe another human is the way to go!”. And, of course, we haven’t even begun to address another problem with a literalist interpretation: the order of creation differs between Genesis 1 and 2. )

So, unless we have something that we can cling to, in embracing a literalist interpretation of the 2nd creation story, we have a serious problem…

 

[Faith1960]

God made her from the rib and flesh of Adam. Otherwise, we have a God with zero God-like power. How did Jesus raise the dead?

Peace,
Ed

His power is not dependent on whether Eve was made from Adams rib or not.

 

[Richca]

The case I’m making is that God says, “Hmm… Adam needs a helpmate. OK… I’m gonna make animals! One of them will be a suitable helpmate!” But, then, Adam looks at each of them and none of them fit the bill. So, God says, “OK… let’s try ‘Plan B’: Adam, go to sleep; I need to borrow a rib.”

In other words, if we wish to take this passage literally, then we’re literally saying that God didn’t know that the animals wouldn’t work as a suitable helpmate. (Otherwise, why present them to Adam as candidates for such a role?) Copland makes a reasonable response: what if God did this in order to demonstrate to Adam that the animals weren’t the helpmate?

(Yet, I still have problems with this thought: after all, it was God, not Adam, who wanted a helpmate for Adam; it was God who seemingly attempted to answer this need with a new creation – animals – which did not previously exist; it was God who said, “oops! maybe another human is the way to go!”. And, of course, we haven’t even begun to address another problem with a literalist interpretation: the order of creation differs between Genesis 1 and 2. )

So, unless we have something that we can cling to, in embracing a literalist interpretation of the 2nd creation story, we have a serious problem…

Hello gorgias,
I think you are reading more into the biblical narrative than is actually there. Where does it say that one of the animals other than Eve will be a suitable helpmate and that God has to resort to a plan B? The fact is that the narrative progresses from the animals being brought to Adam as helpmates as in fact they are, for example, we use animals to plow our fields and for transportation and we also use them to eat. Finally, Eve is formed from the rib of Adam and brought to him and Adam says “This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; This one shall be called ‘woman,’ for out of man this one has been taken.”

There is no sufficient reason to not take the formation of Eve from the rib of Adam literally as the word of God recounts since their is no evidence in all of Sacred Scripture, the entire Tradition of the Catholic Church, or even of modern science to suggest otherwise.

 

[COPLAND_3]

I’m lost then. How is Eve being formed from Adams rib a spiritual or mystical meaning vs being an outright mythical story?

That wasn’t what I was saying at all, because i firmly believe in the literal sense, what i said concerning what you quoted was in response to a post.

 

[edwest2]

His power is not dependent on whether Eve was made from Adams rib or not.

That’s not the question. Was the rib literal? Yes.

Peace,
Ed

 

[buffalo]

21 Then, Yahweh God made the man fall into a deep sleep. And, while he was asleep, he took one of his ribs and closed the flesh up again forthwith. 22 Yahweh God fashioned the rib he had taken from the man into a woman, and brought her to the man.
23 And the man said: This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh! She is to be called Woman, because she was taken from Man.
24 This is why a man leaves his father and mother and becomes attached to his wife, and they become one flesh.
25 Now, both of them were naked, the man and his wife, but they felt no shame before each other.

Ribs are able to regenerate themselves.

 

[Aloysium]

God made her from the rib and flesh of Adam. Otherwise, we have a God with zero God-like power. How did Jesus raise the dead?

It is as good an explanation as. far better in fact than anything else. Far, far better than any biological theory that cannot even explain how it is that you and I really, truly exist as ourselves.

 

[Gorgias]

I think you are reading more into the biblical narrative than is actually there.

That, of course, is the easy response – “I’m reading it literally, but your literal reading that differs from mine is wrong.”

Where does it say that one of the animals other than Eve will be a suitable helpmate and that God has to resort to a plan B?

It says that God identifies a problem (Adam needs a helpmate) and devises a solution (creation of animals). Later, when the solution fails (none of the animals was a suitable helpmate), God comes up with a new plan (creation of Eve from Adam’s rib). It literally says that.

The fact is that the narrative progresses from the animals being brought to Adam as helpmates as in fact they are, for example, we use animals to plow our fields and for transportation and we also use them to eat.

Two thoughts here: first, it’s not that God just brings animals to Adam; He creates them in response to the helpmate problem! If God had only brought already-existing animals, then we could make the claim, as Copland has, that this approach is merely meant to keep Adam from misinterpreting the animals’ existence. However, that’s not what’s going on here. Second, if we’re hanging our hat off a literal interpretation, animals aren’t human food at this point: in Genesis 1, God gives man & woman plants to eat. (Even in the context of this narrative, in Genesis 3, Adam isn’t a herdsman, but instead, will labor in order to produce food from the earth.)

There is no sufficient reason to not take the formation of Eve from the rib of Adam literally as the word of God recounts since their is no evidence in all of Sacred Scripture, the entire Tradition of the Catholic Church

Other than the quote I provided from the PBC. Other than the catechism, which states that "“God did not create man a solitary being. From the beginning, ‘male and female he created them’” (CCC 383).

 

[QNDNNDQDCE]

The problem, Gorgias, is you are using a bad translation. Your interpretation only makes sense if God made the animals for the purpose of making a helper for Adam. This hinges on the word “so” at the beginning of Genesis 2:19 in your translation, implying that God making the animals is a logical consequence of Adam needing a helper. In fact, this is not part of the original text. Look at this interlinear layout of the verse and find the Hebrew word corresponding to the “so” in your translation (New American Bible).

biblehub.com/interlinear/genesis/2-19.htm

Did you find it? I didn’t. There is nothing in that text that demands a causal conjunction like “so.” That is why most translations state something like, “and God formed.” Two exceptions to this are the NAB (which you are using) and the RSV.

In addition, we already know from the previous chapter that the animals were made before Adam. This is clearer in the Latin translation of the verse where the clause is rendered as an ablative absolute (“and God having (already) formed the…”). When it says, “and God formed [the animals etc.],” it is referring to a past event rather than dictating everything in chronological sequence, in order to give deeper context for the creation of woman. It also says that God brought the animals to him so Adam would name them, but it never says that this logically follows from God looking for a helper for Adam, as if God brought the porcupine as a “helper” for Adam but only then realized it was too sharp and pointy for Adam. Your translation also uses the word “proved,” implying that the animals were tested after they were created in order to find out whether they were adequate helpers. Your translation is supposing that this is like a case where the a princess wants to get married so her parents invite all the princes of the land to vie for her hand, but none prove worthy of her. In actuality, the biblical story is better described that the princess’s parents invited a bunch of weenies who didn’t have any chance of impressing the princess so she wouldn’t want to marry them anymore. The expression used in the NAB, “none proved to be a helper suited to the man”, carries different connotations than that used in other translations. For example, the RSVCE says, “but for the man there was not found a helper fit for him.” The two expressions are largely synonymous, but one still conveys a different sense than the other.

These contradictions are not something in the text. They are conjectures based on presupposing that Genesis is a hackjob of various contradictory sources put together over time by different redactors (the documentary hypothesis) and that none of the redactors ever noticed these blaring contradictions when they read over their work. If there is something that could be read as contradictory or coherent, they choose to read it as a contradiction, even when there is a reasonable explanation of why the text isn’t contradicting itself. Sometimes, as in this case, they go so far as to insert new contradictions that aren’t even based on text. One blatant example in the NAB is when Abraham casts out Hagar and Ishmael from his house.

Placing the child on her back: a reading based on an emendation of the traditional Hebrew text. In the traditional Hebrew text, Abraham put the bread and the waterskin on Hagar’s back, while her son apparently walked beside her. In this way the traditional Hebrew text harmonizes the data of the Priestly source, in which Ishmael would have been at least fourteen years old when Isaac was born; compare 16:16 with 21:5; cf. 17:25. But in the present Elohist story, Ishmael is obviously a little boy, not much older than Isaac; cf. vv. 15, 18.
origin.usccb.org/bible/genesis/21/#01021014-1

To summarize, they say they are discarding all the textual and manuscript evidence and “emending” it to contain an invented contradiction based on what hypothetically might have been contained in a hypothetical source. Try reading the story of Genesis 2 in a different translation and see if the contradiction still seems so necessary.

 

[QNDNNDQDCE]

His power is not dependent on whether Eve was made from Adams rib or not.

You’re right, but you’re also missing the point. The question here is not whether God did make Eve out of Adam’s rib, but rather whether God was able to make Eve out of Adam’s rib. God made all things out of nothing, and he further made things out of things which were not what he made them to be, such as when he turned water into wine at Cana. Therefore, if one actually believes in God, it is not an absurd thing to think that God could have made Eve out of Adam’s rib. However, many people discard it as a possibility because they do consider it absurd.

 

[PNEUMA]

So where did Eve came from then?

There was no literal Eve, there was no literal rib, there was no literal paradis, the whole creation of paradise story, is a metaphor ! Or do you really believe “they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze” ? God is spirit ! remember ?