This page was migrated in July 2022 from my older website, biblicalambiguities.net.
31 July 2022 Navigate 'up to the Genesis index: index-genesis.
And Yahweh God caused a tardemah to fall on the man, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. And the rib, which Yahweh God had taken from the man, he made into a woman, and brought her to the man.
In Hebrew, Yahweh God took one of the man's tzelaot. What is a tzela? Without going too far into it, the usage suggests that rib is a perfectly good guess in this context. Maybe it is the only reasonable guess. I'm not sure. But at least two other possibilities have been proposed.
One proposal is that it refers to the baculum, about which I will say nothing more other than to let you google it yourself. I think it's an understatement that the baculum theory has not obtained widespread scholarly support.
Rashi's commentary a charming piece of rabbinical exegesis. On this reading, the word means "side" here (as, to be fair, it really does in some other passages). Thus, the original human was a two-gendered creature, basically a man and a woman fused at the back, facing in opposite directions. The act of "becoming one flesh," then, is a reconstitution of what was originally together.
This kind of idea is not limited to Judaism. You can find something similar in Plato, should you choose to google it.
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