This is funny! BAR article asks: "Was Eve Made from Adam’s Rib—or His Baculum?" But what is a Baculum?

by fulltimestudent 16 Replies latest jw friends

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  fulltimestudent

  We all know the bible story (as its translated into English) that Eve was made from Adam's rib. Now Bible scholar, Ziony Zevit, Distinguished Professor of Biblical Literature and Northwest Semitic Languages at American Jewish University in Bel-Air, California has written In the 'Biblical Archeological Review' that the Hebrew word that is traditionally translated as “rib” which is 'istsela‘ has been wrongly translated.

  Zevit says, "It was first translated as “rib” in the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the mid-third century B.C.E. However, a more careful reading of the Hebrew word for “rib” in the Adam and Eve story suggests that Eve was created from another, very different, part of Adam’s anatomy—his os baculum (penis bone)."

  Now we all know that human males do not have a 'penis bone,' and Zevit argues that the point of the story was (at least, in part) that, since humans do have a istsela, but many animals do, the story explained how humans lost their penis bone.

  Women reading this, will once again recognise that the bible account is a typical story based on male arrogance, since males cannot exist without a woman's body to form them in the womb.

  Full story at:

  http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/bible-interpretation/the-adam-and-eve-story-eve-came-from-where/?mqsc=E3807311&utm_source=WhatCountsEmail&utm_medium=BHD+Daily%20Newsletter+Daily%20Newsletter&utm_campaign=E5B817
  

  
  
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  3rdgen

  Yeah, and we have been getting boned ever since.
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  Village Idiot

  Penis envy?
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  CalebInFloroda

  It's an interesting hypothesis, but it isn't accepted etymological theory.

  The Hebrew word for "rib" in Gemesis 2 actually isn't "rib" at all. The word is actually "side" as in hillside or the side of a building.

  I subscribe to the theory that since the word is so often used to refer to "walls" that the expression is describing Eve's creation in terms of making a building. A "side" or "wall" was taken from Adam, so to speak, to create the "building" of Eve. Semitic concepts of humans often pictured them as vessels and even arks (boxes or chests). The same word appears in reference to the walls of Noah's ark, the sides of the ark of the covenant, and the walls of various chambers and rooms in the First Temple.
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  Phizzy

  If any part of Adam was used to make Eve then surely "she" is genetically a clone of him, and not really female ?

  I am not too clear on the science of this, but with modern knowledge, is not the story just that ? a story ? not to be taken, and dissected, as though literal.
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  tiki

  The penis bone huh ?..explains why some women are such dicks....eve was #2 though..lilith came first and directly created...not from some unknown adamic anatomical part. She got zapped though....
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  CalebInFloroda

  @Phizzy

  According to most Jews, Catholics, and some mainstream Protestants this narrative is indeed seen not as historical but as one of three creation stories in Scripture.

  In the first, in Genesis chapter 1, Adam and Eve seem to be separate creations. But this first story was likely a redaction added to Genesis after the exile to Babylon ended.

  The second story is the one we are discussing. It is the most ancient, and it tells the same story but employing older narrative devices. One of them is that humans are made from the elements that make up the universe: man from the earth and woman from man.

  The third story is the Noachin flood and it is probably older than either of the first two stories as it originates with the Mesopotamian societies that surrounded the Hebrews. The popular cosmogony of the time what that the earth was placed in a cosmos made up not of a vacuum of space but completely full of water. This shared mythology did not concern itself with or promote belief in a universe that had a beginning but mainly stated that the gods created the current world from a previous one, flooding the older one away and starting anew. In the Jewish adaptation, Noah and his wife are the original parents.

  While these are definitely not to be read as literal history they do have some historical significance and elements. To begin with they explain what ancients believed about the universe and how this shaped their view of society and their place in it.

  Second, read within the Jewish sphere the stories employ personages believed to be historical but set within the scope of narratives designed for catechesis. The reason appears to be to teach lessons not on how the universe literally began but to support Jewish concepts on morality, values, and theology.

  In other words the narratives are used not as the foundation for doctrine as in the Watchtower religion, but as a means to reiterate doctrine already in existence in Judaism.
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  Crazyguy

  There's an old Babylonian story where a god Enki with the help of a goddess make mankind. She takes a rib, and forms man with it. I can't remember where she gets the rip, maybe it was from Enki . In an older story they the other gods kill a god to make man, anyway it's this rib story from Babylon where I'm willing to bet they came up with the rib from Adam.
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  CalebInFloroda

  @Crazyguy

  Two problems with your theory:

  1. The "rib" story predates Babylonian exposure. The previous creation story, chapter 1, about the six creative days is the one that came about after Babylonian captivity. Philologically speaking the second story, from Genesis 2, is not only much older but clearly comes from Hebrew oral narrative.

  2. The word in Hebrew is NOT "rib," which is the point of the thread. The use of the word "rib" comes from Gentile renderings and is anachronistic, such as the way people picture an "apple" as the forbidden fruit. While you are correct that the idea of a rib comes from heathen sources about creation, this has influenced the TRANSLATION of the Hebrew text, mostly by Christians who from their exposure to such stories inserted the idea of a "rib." The Hebrew expression is ambiguous at best and hard to situate, and outside of borrowing some Mesopotamian cosmogony this narrative has many original elements unseen in other mythologies.
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  fulltimestudent

  CalebInFloroda: It's an interesting hypothesis, but it isn't accepted etymological theory.
  The Hebrew word for "rib" in Gemesis 2 actually isn't "rib" at all. The word is actually "side" as in hillside or the side of a building.
  I subscribe to the theory that since the word is so often used to refer to "walls" that the expression is describing Eve's creation in terms of making a building. A "side" or "wall" was taken from Adam, so to speak, to create the "building" of Eve. Semitic concepts of humans often pictured them as vessels and even arks (boxes or chests). The same word appears in reference to the walls of Noah's ark, the sides of the ark of the covenant, and the walls of various chambers and rooms in the First Temple.

  Your right, of course, in all you say. The BAR article notes the conventional meaning and then quotes Zevit's* re-interpretation:
  

  Of the 40 appearances of tsela‘ in the Bible, the Adam and Eve story is the only place where it is translated as “rib.” Usually it means the side of something. Zevit explains the nuance of this word:

  (and the BAR then apparently quotes Zevit directly)

  This Hebrew word occurs some 40 times in the Hebrew Bible, where it refers to the side of a building or of an altar or ark (Exodus 25:12; 26:20, 26; 1 Kings 6:34), a side-chamber (1 Kings 6:8; Ezekiel 41:6), or a branch of a mountain (2 Samuel 16:13). In each of these instances, it refers to something off-center, lateral to a main structure. The only place where tsela‘ might be construed as referring to a rib that branches off from the spinal cord is in Genesis 2:21–22.

  According to Zevit, “rib” is the wrong translation for tsela‘ in the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible. Zevit believes that tsela‘ should be translated as “a non-specific, general term,” such as one of Adam’s lateral limbs, in the Adam and Eve story. Thus, it refers to “limbs lateral to the vertical axis of an erect human body: hands, feet, or, in the case of males, the penis.”

  Which of these lateral limbs lacks a bone? Human males do not have a penis bone, but many mammals do. Zevit concludes that in the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible, the woman was created from the man’sbaculum to explain why this appendage does not have a bone.

  So yes, Zevit's interpretation conflicts with the contemporary view of what is 'tradition.' But can his interpretation be ruled out? I'll let you argue that, other than commenting on the swags of information that passes me every day (in only the academic sphere) me every day, I really don't care if Eve, was the result of an union between Adam and a Orangutan.

  A further search indicates that the BAR may be quoting from a recent book written by Zevit, " What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden?" (Yale University Press, 2013). http://www.yalebooks.com/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300178692

  * For anyone who may be curious enough to ask who Zevit is, this is Yale Press's biographical note on Ziony Zevit: Ziony Zevit is Distinguished Professor of Biblical Literature and Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. He is widely recognized for his publications in Hebrew epigraphy, biblical studies, and ancient Israelite religion.