The 1st Adam in the Hebrew Scriptures #3 With his partner

The first chapter of the first book of Moses, the Bereshith or Genesis, indicates that even in this manuscript giving a summary of the events of the evolution of all things it was recognised that there where two sexes.

27 Thus God created the man in his image: in the image of God created he him: he created them male and female.

From the first story in the Holy Scriptures we come to know how God from disorder created order and place man in His universe of order. In a world where sun and moon interchanged and animals and plants had a reason to be, humanity was called to serve God and was allowed to have some saying in that world of God of which he had become part. [It was not until the Fall (Genesis 3) that disorder enters the world.]

God showed whereof man’s body was created, to the intent that man should not glory in the excellency of his own nature. Man also had to know its Creature who is the Maker of everything. He being allowed to give the animals names, saw that they came to him by pairs, though he himself had no mate. Adam felt his lone station keenly. He was to appreciate the gift of a ‘helper fit for him’. As the first man was given the permission to name things he also when the person who was made out of him was brought before him, made the pronouncement that she be called ‘ish-shah’, which is ‘mannin‘, or Manness, (because she cometh of man), coming ‘from man’ which in English became to be a ‘woman‘.

19 So the Lord God formed of the earth every beast of the field, and every fowl of the heaven, and brought them unto the 1man to see how he would call them: for howsoever the man named the living creature, so was the name thereof.
20 The man therefore gave names unto all cattle, and to the fowl of the heaven, and to every beast of the field: but for Adam found he not an helper meet for him.
21 Therefore the Lord God caused an heavy sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in stead thereof.
22 And the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man, 1made he a woman, and brought her to the man.
23 Then the man said, This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called 1woman, because she was taken out of the man.
24 Therefore shall man leave 1his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be one flesh.
25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and they were not ashamed.

God “built” a new human being to become a ‘meeter’, a helper correspondent to the 1° Adam, the one taken from the earth, by taking a rib to start of, making her suited to him, to be his counterpart or to be a companion. Some bible translations translate Adam was brought to an ecstasy (Septuagint) or trance (Spurrell) and got that mannin conducted to her (Spurrell). From then onwards man was to become destined to cling (Knox) to the other sex or to the mannin or cleave (AKJV) to his wife.

Being united they, having a clean spirit, were both naked and felt no shame or had no sense (Bible in Basic English) of shame. From this we may assume that for before sin entered, all things were honest and comely.

The name “Eve” originated in the experience of the Fall of man, when God had laid disabilities on the tempter, on Adam and on his wife. Then it became apparent to Adam that the life of mankind was tied up with his wife, and he called her hawwah a form that may bear some relation to hayah (“to live”). This too is an instructive play on words, aiding the memory, but it is not an etymological study of scientific accuracy. She was called “Eve” because she was to be the “mother of all living“.

It is apparent that Eve served to supplement the life of Adam, for a man’s life without a woman is incomplete. To this the thought is added that the purpose of having two persons united in marriage is procreation (Genesis 1:28). It is also broadly indicated that the sex relationship was uniquely pure, for though naked the first parents felt no shame.

The whole experience was a vision informing man as to the actual relation of the woman to the man.

But that what was pure got under pressure by seeing all the good things around man. It looked to good to be true that they could be part of this universe which seemed so great. In their minds started growing the thought that God perhaps withhold something from them. Perhaps He was not telling them everything they should know and perhaps He kept something even better from them away. Those thoughts did not come from some native defect. God had created them perfect or better complete. That completeness meaning that they had their own minds which they could liberate let free.

In later Gnostic writings we can clearly find one of the bigger problems troubling the minds of Adam and Eve. They had God before them and He was and is the “One Who Is”. The One and Only One without Him life is not possible. He is the “I Am” the Gnostic writings refer to which did Eve wonder if she too could be the one in herself.

I am thou and thou art I (Gnostic gospels)

went on in her mind.

In the Gospel of Eve, mentioned by Epiphanus of Salamis (Pan XXVI 2.6), we find on a high mountain the narrator who sees two figures, and is thus addressed

I am thou and thou art I, and where thou art there I am, and I am sown in all things; and whence thou wilt thou gatherest me, and when thou gatherest me, then gatherest thou myself.

In that same gospel we also find the scattering of the Logos and its subsequent collection recalls the myths of Osiris and Dionysus. It is that Logos which shall, because of the gnostic thoughts and Roman-Greek pagan teaching cause problems by a lot of people making them to think that the logos is at the same time Jesus and God, them being one and the same person in a Trinity.

The woman was there for man to be united with man and both having to become of of flesh or having to be one. (This last bit not meaning like many trinitarians take it that they should be one and the same person, like they take the unity of Christ to be the sign that Jesus has to be God, which also would make the unity man has to have with Christ and with God, but also with their partner, having to be one, making them one and the same person and making them into God also.) It was that last bit what made the heads toll of the two first human beings.

* Bible quotes from 1599 Geneva Patriot’s Edition

Preceding articles

The 1st Adam in the Hebrew Scriptures #1 Beginning of everything

The 1st Adam in the Hebrew Scriptures #2 Beginning of mankind

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The 1st Adam in the Hebrew Scriptures #4 The Fall