A. Tkachenko
Orthodox view on the problem of relationships between men and women
In the famous feature film “Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears” there is an episode that marked the beginning of a controversy that smoothly migrated from Soviet kitchens to modern Internet blogs and does not stop to this day. Main character films - the magnificent mechanic-intellectual Gosha, sorting out the relationship with the woman he loves, says in an ultimatum form:
– Remember, I will always decide everything myself on the simple basis that I am a man.
For the male part of the population of our country, these words of Gosha immediately became a kind of motto and the last, indisputable argument in family disputes. But for many women they evoke completely different feelings - from bewilderment to indignant rejection.
In fact, why do men consider mere belonging to their own gender a sufficient basis for such statements? Why doesn’t a similar phrase spoken by a woman sound convincing either in movies or in real life? After all, even in the film, the heroine of Vera Alentova is in no way inferior in personal qualities, and in many ways even surpasses many men, not excluding her beloved Gosha. She managed to raise her daughter alone, graduate from college, and make a career. She is a major leader, a deputy, earns good money, lives in a spacious, comfortable apartment... In general, she has all the attributes of success in life, but her personal life somehow did not work out. And then the mechanic Gosha appears, living in a communal apartment, who begins to put her in her place, motivating his right to such behavior only by the fact that he is a man.
It turns out some strange picture: a woman can be smarter than a man, have better education, more than he earns, but, despite any, even the highest achievements, she still has one lot left in the family - subordination to her husband. In this state of affairs, a certain predetermination is visible, from which, if desired, one can conclude that a woman in relation to a man is a deliberately flawed and dependent creature.
You can, of course, refer to the traditional patriarchal structure, which for centuries has shaped such a balance of power, but such an explanation does not make it more fair in the eyes of a woman. The way of life has long since changed; we live in post-industrial society. And then, no matter how you look at it, we have to admit that it was from there, from patriarchal times, that all sorts of vulgarities came into our language, like the saying “a chicken is not a bird, a woman is not a person.”
But when modern woman comes to , she is surprised to discover that she is now in Christian tradition the same patriarchal principle of male supremacy. Moreover, it gives this principle an undeniable religious justification in direct definition God: ...your desire is for your husband, and he will rule over you ().
And, probably, many women, having read these biblical words, are puzzled by the same question: why did this happen? Why is a woman doomed to a subordinate position? Did the Lord really create her only as a kind of addition to a man, having no independent value, and is a wife lower than her husband in the eyes of God?
Was Comrade Sukhov right?
IN European culture It is traditionally customary to call women “the beautiful half of humanity.” Man presenting strangers his wife, says: meet my other half. And the word “sex” itself (in the sense: male-female) clearly indicates its etymological relationship with the word “half”, which has the same root.
But can one half be larger than the other? This question even sounds somewhat strange - after all, half is, by definition, the result of dividing something in half, that is, equally. Therefore, speaking about the origins of the subordinate position of the wife in Christianity, it would be wrong to assume that this subordination is a consequence of the ontological superiority of the husband. The saint spoke about it this way: “Although the wife is subordinate to us, at the same time she is free and equal to us in honor.”
In the film “White Sun of the Desert,” Comrade Sukhov, having organized the first hostel for liberated women of the East from Abdullah’s harem, wrote a revolutionary slogan on a piece of calico: “Down with prejudices! A woman, she is also a human being.” And although these words look comical, for all their naivety, they are fully consistent with the attitude towards women that exists in the Christian tradition and has a basis in the text Holy Scripture: Here is the genealogy of Adam: when God created man, in the likeness of God he created him, male and female he created them, and blessed them, and called their name: man, on the day of their creation ().
A woman is equal in honor to a man - primarily due to this common blessing of God received at creation. Therefore, any discussion on the topic of female inferiority and male superiority in the “chicken is not a bird” style can safely be considered unchristian and unbiblical.
There was, however, a curious case in the history of the Church when, at the Macon Council of 585, which gathered the hierarchs of Burgundy, “... one of the bishops stood up and said that a woman cannot be called a man. However, after he received clarification from the bishops, he calmed down. For the Holy Scripture of the Old Testament explains this: at the beginning, where it was about God’s creation of man, it is said: ... he created them male and female, and called their name Adam, which means man made from earth, calling both woman and man that way; thus He called both of them man. But the Lord Jesus Christ is also called the Son of Man because He is the son of the Virgin, that is, of a woman. And He said to Her, when he was preparing to turn water into wine: “What is it for me and for you, Woman?” And so on. By this and many other testimonies this question was finally resolved” (saint. History of the Franks).
However, from one historical curiosity it does not at all follow that the problem of whether a woman should be considered a human being was ever seriously resolved. 6th century Western Europe was the century of Christianization of barbarians. And the remark of one of the participants in the Macon Council was only an echo of the pagan ideas about women among the newly converted Franks and Gauls. So it was not Christianity that gave rise to this ridiculous question. On the contrary, it helped remove it.
"Bone Without Brain"
The biblical story of the creation of a woman from Adam's rib in Soviet time was a favorite target of lecturers and propagandists of scientific atheism from the “Union of Militant Atheists” (later bashfully renamed the “Knowledge” society). In their presentation, the creative act of creating a wife was represented by something like artistic carving by bone, since they proposed to understand the word “rib” exclusively in the anatomical sense. A by-product of this atheistic vulgarization of the text of Holy Scripture was a new set of vulgar jokes on the topic of female “inferiority,” which now played on the idea that a woman was created from a single bone that did not contain a brain.
It is clear that it has nothing to do with Christian doctrine there is no such interpretation. The Hebrew word "tsela" used in this passage of the Bible was indeed translated into European languages as "rib", but in Hebrew its meaning is broader and can be translated as "side", "side". This broader interpretation was used by the Holy Fathers, who believed that in the primordial man both the male and female principles were initially present in equally, and when creating a wife, the Lord only separated the feminine side of human nature from the masculine and gave her personal existence: “A rib or bone here is not something simple. It must mean the whole half of the being separated from Adam during sleep. How this happened, Moses does not say and it is a mystery. What is clear is that first a common organism had to be formed, which then divided into two types: husband and wife” (St.
The same opinion can be seen in the saint, who wrote that ... “creative wisdom divided what from the very beginning was one, in order to later unite again in marriage what She had divided.”
This thought is expressed even more definitely by the venerable: “With the words: he created them male and female, Moses makes it known that Eve was already in Adam, in that rib that was taken from Adam. Although Eve was in him not in mind, but in body, however, not only in body, but also in soul and spirit; because God added nothing to the rib taken from Adam except beauty and external image. Since the rib itself contained everything that was necessary for the formation of Eve from it, it is rightly said: He created them male and female.”
In light of this understanding of the Biblical story about the creation of the wife, it can be assumed that the writers of humorous variations on the theme of the “brainless bone” were probably not particularly burdened with brains themselves.
Christianity claims that the wife is really half of the husband, and not in the allegorical, but in the actual direct meaning, because in marriage the metaphysical unity of masculine and feminine, which existed in Adam before their separation. And in the creation of a wife from Adam, of course, there is nothing derogatory for the fair half of humanity. On the contrary, the saint saw the meaning of this Divine creative act in “...to show the identity of nature.”
There is such an element in Gothic architecture - a pointed vault. Its essence is that two walls bend at an acute angle over the opening being blocked and, having closed, serve as support for each other. In the same way, the wife was created to support her husband, as the Scripture says about this: ... You created Adam and gave him Eve as a helper, and his wife as a support. From them came the human race. You said: it is not good for man to be alone, let us create a helper like him () The word “helper” here does not indicate the secondary role of the wife, just as the word “support” is not evidence that the primordial Adam could not independently maintain an upright position, and the wife was given to him as a crutch. The phrase “... let us make a helper like him” in the Hebrew text of the Bible can also be translated as: “... let us make him a helper who will be before him.” How each of the walls of the pointed vault has its support the opposite wall, in the same way, husband and wife, according to God’s plan, should have mutual love replenish each other's existence.
But if all this is really so, if the Church teaches about the identity of nature and equality of honor between man and woman, then God’s definition of the subordination of a wife to her husband may seem even more incomprehensible and unfair. However, such an impression arises only if one very important circumstance is not kept in mind. The fact is that this definition was not made at the creation of the first people, but only after their fall. And the first attempt to rise above one’s God-given half in marriage, oddly enough, was made... by the woman herself.
Bitters
Contrary to popular belief, the Fall was not related to the sphere of gender and did not involve physiological communication between Adam and Eve. This absurdity is another product of ignorance and atheistic propaganda, since only people who were completely unfamiliar with either the text of the Holy Scriptures or the teaching of the Church on sin could invent such a wild tale and believe it.
The Bible directly says that the fall of the first people consisted of violating the only prohibitive commandment that people received in Paradise - not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And it was the wife who was the first to violate God’s prohibition, succumbing to the admonitions of the tempting serpent:
...And the serpent said to the woman: Did God truly say: You shall not eat from any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent: We can eat fruit from the trees, only from the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, God said, do not eat it or touch it, lest you die. And the serpent said to the woman: No, you will not die, but God knows that on the day that you eat of them, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil. And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes and desirable because it gave knowledge; and she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave it to her husband, and he ate ().
This is where the sad story of submissive relationships in marriage begins. Having eaten the forbidden fruit before her husband, without consulting him and single-handedly deciding to break the commandment, the wife was the first to try to violate the equality of honor. She not only believed the serpent’s slander against God, but wanted to rise above her husband and appear as a goddess before the one from whom she descended as a man. According to the monk, she “...out of jealousy did not allow her husband to taste first; wanted to become higher than Adam, to take the first degree, and give Adam the second. Since she wanted to enslave her husband, the Lord exposed her secrets and said to her: “He will have possession of you.”
Submission to her husband became a bitter but necessary medicine for the wife, since God not only punishes a crime, but, above all, heals the disease, heals the damage caused by sin. And since the illness manifested itself precisely in the wife’s desire to dominate her husband, God protected her from possible relapses of this syndrome of lust for power, entrusting her to the care of her husband. And the definition - “... the one who will possess you” does not in any way contradict the equality of honor and the identity of nature, does not in the least humiliate the wife and does not at all elevate the husband.
Suppose parents left two twin boys at home, strictly forbidding them to play with matches. But fire is so interesting! And so, one of them, violating the parental ban, nevertheless tried to light a fire on the parquet floor... As a result, a fire broke out, the apartment burned down, and the children miraculously survived. Yes, of course, the second boy is also to blame. Yes, he also wanted to look at the fire, and he also sat by that ill-fated fire. But still, it was not he who set him on fire, but his overly proactive brother. And is it any wonder that since then the parents have entrusted their brother with looking after the unlucky pyrotechnician, although they are equal in everything, alike as two peas in a pod and even have the same chromosome set?
The wife wanted to be first, and therefore became second. It was not the inferiority of nature that became the reason for her subordination, but the desire for domination over her husband, to whom the Lord instructed to limit her lust for power in order to protect her from various troubles arising from the thirst for power. John Chrysostom writes about it this way: “In the beginning, says the Lord, I created you equal in honor to my husband and wanted you, being of the same dignity as him, to have fellowship with him in everything, and entrusted both the husband and you with power over all creatures. But because you did not take advantage of equality as you should, for this I subject you to your husband.”
Reward or obligation?
You can talk for a very long time and competently about the wrongs of feminism, criticizing it from a variety of positions, for example, from the biblical one. And, probably, these arguments will be fair and correct in many respects. But still there is in this kind of criticism vulnerable spot, which supporters of the patriarchal way of life somehow don’t really like to remember. Yes, of course, a modern woman strives to be equal to a man in everything, moreover, in some ways she has even surpassed him. Yes, this state of affairs is contrary to God's determination and with Christian point vision is abnormal. Only now, for some reason, it is customary to consider exclusively women with their irrepressible initiative and thirst for independence to be to blame for all these incongruities. In newspaper and television disputes about the “gender issue,” men are often presented as the injured party.
But if, after the Fall, lust for power became a factor for women increased risk, if God Himself instructed the husband to take care of his wife and protect her from excessive manifestations of independence, then the demand for her condition and behavior, first of all, is from him. And what's in modern world women have largely supplanted men, is just a statement of a sad fact: a man slowly ceases to correspond to the task entrusted to him by God, ceases to be the head of his wife and gives her the place in the family and in society that he should have occupied. Why this happened is a topic for a separate big conversation, but it is obvious that blaming women alone for the current situation would be dishonest from any point of view, and even more so from a biblical one.
After all, domination over the wife, given to husband after the Fall, there was no reward at all - well, why can you reward someone who himself has sinned? Rather, it is a heavy duty, the need to make decisions in the family and bear the burden of responsibility not only for yourself, but also for your beloved half, for your beautiful rib, for the one who is flesh of your flesh.
When, on a hike, one of the travelers suddenly twists his ankle, and the other, making his further journey easier, takes on part of his load, is there really anything humiliating in this? No, of course not! And if this is how the husband understands the words of the Bible about his dominance, then there can be nothing humiliating for the wife in submitting to the one whose love and care God Himself has entrusted her with.
Dear Natalia.
You are absolutely right, from the way a woman was created we can draw important conclusions about her essence and life task.
The division into male and female halves is inherent not only to humans, but also to many other living beings. And yet there is between them fundamental difference. In animals, the male and female exist on their own, and their connection occurs only to ensure the continuation of the species. And even those of them that “create a family” do this, again, only for more productive production and raising of offspring (there are exceptions, such as the fidelity of a pigeon, etc., and for special reasons).
Therefore, when creating male and female animals, they were created separately.
The situation is completely different with a person. The masculine and feminine principles were created in him as a single whole, and only after that they were separated. The reason for this is that a person in the full sense of the word is only a combination of the male and female sides! This is what the sages teach us, saying (Yevamot 63a): He who has no wife is not called Adam, as it is written (Bereishit 5:2) “Male and female he created them, and blessed them, and called their name - Adam- only when they are together are they called Adam - man, because only in this state can a person achieve the desired perfection and goal of his creation.
The unity of the male and female halves is the ultimate goal, but the path to this unity lies precisely through the state of separation into two separate people, independent of each other. The Torah speaks about this (ibid. 2:18): “And the Almighty said: It is not good for man to be alone (in a state where both principles are in complete unity), I will make him a helper corresponding to him” - the separation of the feminine principle from the masculine principle was for the good ( comrade) person. But in order to facilitate the task, the Almighty initially created man in his perfect state (together with his wife), which introduced into the very nature of man and woman a mutual feeling of natural intimacy and kinship, as it is said (ibid. 2:24): “Therefore a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and become one flesh.”
Just as Chava was nothing more than a part of Adam, so any wife is nothing more than a part of her husband! In the spiritual aspect, they are one soul, divided only in the material dimension, at its lower level. And although it seems to us that dating happens completely by chance, different people, strangers to each other, one day meet, decide to start a family - in fact, this is the fruit of the Creator’s careful providence, veiled by the veil of chance, like most of its other manifestations (but, as our sages say, it is in this area that it is much easier to trace the guiding hand of Heaven easier than anything else).
Therefore, the very sense of one’s own “I” is different for a man and a woman. A man, being created as a separate creation, feels his “I” in himself, while a woman identifies herself with her husband, because she is part of him (this is why Judaism places such a great emphasis on the respect of a husband for his wife - one should show her more more respect and attention than to yourself).
Just as a man without a wife is half a man (see above), so a girl who has not yet been married is compared to an unfinished vessel, the completion of which will occur only after the wedding.
The Torah tells us that the material world was created by the Creator with the letter “hey” ה, and the spiritual world with the letter “yud” י. It is no coincidence that these two letters distinguish between a man ( ish - אי ש) and a woman ( isha -אשה ). Each received his own special task: the man - to devote himself to spiritual pursuits, and the woman - to provide for his material needs.
However, it is a mistake to believe that the role of a woman is limited to purely material spheres. She is a man's equal partner life path. In addition to helping in solving everyday problems, a woman complements his vision of the world. Just like two different people they look at the same thing differently, everyone catches some special aspect that is noticeable only to him, and in general there is a male and female approach to everything, and only their combination makes the vision of things complete.
In addition, let's not forget that it is a woman who brings a new generation into the world, and again we are not talking only about the material aspect. A mother raises her children, and through affection and love naturally instills in them the necessary skills and qualities of character with the help of which they can build a worthy future life.
But there is also a deeper point here. The above-mentioned spiritual and material worlds are in constant relationship: the spiritual world is the giving side, the material world is the receiving side. Likewise in the family: the husband influences, and the wife accepts and implements his influence ( clear example this means conceiving a child). This is one of the reasons why man and woman were divided in two - in order to influence someone, it is necessary to see in him a separate object, a vessel capable of receiving influence.
In this, man is likened to the Creator: the purpose of all creation is to give man good, the essence of which is communion with the source of good and perfection, with the Almighty. And this task is entrusted to man precisely within the framework of “distance” from the Creator and a certain concealment of His reality. But how exactly is it possible to approach Him? For this, two things are necessary: the fulfillment of the commandments of the Torah, the spiritual influence of which creates this closeness, and secondly, the development of one’s own “image of G-d” ( Tzelem Elokim), i.e. positive qualities character. By bestowing goodness and love on his wife, the husband becomes like the Creator, who pours out goodness to man, and by this likeness he approaches Him.
Let us make a reservation that we have only touched lightly on this huge topic, and also have not dealt with a more specific question: why the creation of woman was precisely from Adam’s rib, and not from some other organ (and what is meant by “rib”), but that's a separate topic.
Adam's rib had to be cut out
And the Lord created a woman from bone:
The rib was the only bone
devoid of any brain.
I. Guberman, “Gariki for every day.”
Indeed, among the misogynists of our time there is such an opinion: a woman was created from a man’s rib, a bone devoid of any brain. And, accordingly, a woman is stupid, she is lower than a man and must obey him in everything.
To resolve this issue, let's turn to the Bible... Indeed, God created the first man (Adam) from clay in his own image and likeness. Woman was created by God not simultaneously with man, but after him, for him and from his rib. The account of the creation of man does not mention whether God breathed into Eve living soul. (This, by the way, served as the basis for subsequently raising the question: is a woman a human being at all; it was seriously discussed at one of the church gatherings in the 4th century; the “rehabilitation” of Eve took place against the backdrop of the most intense and fundamental discussions about the very essence of Christian doctrine nature of Christ; the nature of the Savior is divine-human (everything else was declared heresy), and since he is the son of the Lord and the Virgin Mary, the woman is human; otherwise, from whom did Christ inherit human nature?).
At the same time, in the Book of Genesis there is a thesis that later became the cornerstone of the theological apology for women: “On the sixth day, God created man in his own image and likeness and made man male and female.” Here, as we see, there is not a word about the later creation of woman; human nature is interpreted as androgynous, masculine and feminine.
An interesting fact is that with the development of the cult of the Virgin Mary, an idealistic view of women became stronger. In parallel with the reverent attitude towards the Mother of God, the idea of the superiority of the feminine over the masculine also developed. One medieval author states quite unequivocally: “Woman is to be given preference over man in everything, namely: in material, because Adam was made of clay, and Eve from Adam’s rib; by place, because Adam was created outside of paradise, and Eve - inside it; in conception, because the woman gave birth to God, and the man could not do this; in the appearance, because Christ appeared to the woman after the resurrection; in exaltation, namely, the Virgin Mary hovers above the choir of angels.”
Much attention was paid to the problem of female nature in early Christian literature. Let us dwell on the views of those Christian thinkers who influenced medieval ideas.
Since the 2nd century, the leading tradition has been a negative attitude towards women, although the ambivalence inherent in the Christian doctrine itself remains.
Tertullian (c. 160 - after 220) is considered one of the classics of misogyny. In his essay “On Women's Attire,” Tertullian argues that as long as this world stands, Eve’s guilt remains valid. At the same time, the same Tertullian believed that a woman can overcome the weakness of her sex, that in a spiritual marriage the wife is equal to the husband.
Among the church fathers who were most favorable to the nature of women, one should name Ambrose of Milan (c. 339-397). Ambrose actually criticizes the view that men and women are not equal in origin. He interprets the Lord’s words that “it is not good for man to be alone,” spoken after the creation of Adam, as an indication that humanity will be perfect only if we add the female gender to the male.
Of course, woman is to blame for the Fall, however - and this is fundamental - Adam bears much greater responsibility for this. Eve was the first to succumb to temptation, but God also gave Adam a commandment, which he violated. Meanwhile, an excuse can be found for a woman, but not for a man: after all, she resisted the mighty power of the devil, and the man did not even resist her, weak Eve, and obediently tasted the forbidden fruit from her hands.
If we talk about modern times, the times when a woman was considered inferior to a man have long gone into oblivion. Elements of discrimination still remained, especially in the spiritual sphere, but compared to the Middle Ages, when a woman had practically no rights and was actually the property of her husband, progress is obvious.
Men who believe that a woman is created from a rib only because this bone does not have a brain, doom themselves to a life of “emptiness.” But take this “emptiness” away from them... What then? Who will they become without the One who has always been a companion, friend, lover, wife and mother, protector, guardian? hearth and home? After all, a woman can live without a man; she is by nature more resilient and resilient, less susceptible to pain, strong and courageous. Even in prehistoric times, a woman carried a multi-kilogram prey killed by a man while hunting. But a man without a woman will die out like a mammoth during the Ice Age. Slowly but surely and irreversibly.
So why did God choose the rib when creating woman?
If we turn to anatomy, we can see that the role of the rib bones is very different from the role of all the others and, unlike the musculoskeletal system, they, first of all, form an area for the comfortable arrangement of all vital organs and at the same time are their support and reliable protection. The rib is the closest bone to the human heart. His defense. In addition, there is no “rigidity” in a woman, no fixation on One thing, including her own person. A woman collects grains of wisdom throughout her life, she never considers herself smart from birth (unlike a man), she is open to everything new. Changing herself and the world around, she easily moves through life without going to extremes. She is endowed with an unprecedented sensitivity to dangers, pitfalls and hidden currents that a man is not able to discern. She senses the moral and spiritual situation in the family and is the first to sound the alarm if something goes wrong. A woman endures many hormonal and physical changes when conceiving and carrying a child, has unprecedented strength and courage to give birth to him and is endowed with exceptional patience and tenderness to nurture, educate and set him on his feet. Can a man do this?
No one, even the best friends, can become a closer friend than a woman. After all, she is an ABSOLUTE complement to a man! And not only physically, which is also, unfortunately, generally accepted, but also spiritually. Only a woman can be both a formidable protector of the family and a tender, affectionate wife and mother. Only she has the ability to drive a man into the deepest depression and bring him out of it. Wars started because of women and because of them they stopped. And if we look at history, we get the impression that there is no impossible goal for a man if it is set in an effort to conquer a woman.
So what can be said about those men who dare to so rudely humiliate women and thereby exalt their own “I” at their expense? They are the Void, albeit created in the image and likeness of God, whom no one has ever seen. In this case, we can say that a man has neither a Beginning nor an End. He appeared out of nowhere and had nowhere to develop. Its essence is closed on guesses and assumptions that will never find confirmation. And in general, can a person who is capable of lowering the image of a Woman at his feet, without a Woman, succeed as a man, or at least be called a man? It’s better not to say anything, but just sympathize with him.
In the Old Testament text, the origin of Eve is described as the act of creating a living being from a part - a rib - of an already existing one, Adam. God plunged the latter into deep dream, then removed one of his ribs from his chest and created a companion from this bone for Adam (Genesis 2:21-24). Created from one body, man and woman are two halves of a single whole.
Made from a rib and obedient
This provision affirms not only the unity of partners in a family union, but also the subordinate position of the wife in relation to her husband. Since woman was not created in the “image and likeness of God” from clay, as happened with the first man, she is in some way a being of a lower rank. A wife is to submit to, honor, and fear her husband (Paul to the Ephesians 5:33).
Why God created Eve precisely from the body of Adam is explained by near-church Christian and Kabbalistic literature (Book of Zohar, Kurman Scrolls, Alphabet of Ben Sira, etc.). Before Eve, there was another attempt to give Adam a companion. God created her just like a man, from clay. But this woman - Lilith - imagined herself equal to her husband. Pride pushed the rebellious creature to revolt, for which it was punished with a divine curse.
God “drew conclusions” from the current situation. Eve appeared from the rib of her future husband in order to always remember her subordinate role in the married couple. But why exactly from the rib, and not from any other part of the body, the Bible itself is silent about this. The inquisitive human mind could not ignore this topic. Over time, many interpretations of the unexplained point have appeared.
Not a rib, but a Priapian bone
Zaioni Zevit, a professor at the American Jewish University and a renowned biblical scholar, proposed another version: the foremother was born not from a rib at all, but from a different bone, the Priapus. In biology it is called "baculum". This element is present in males of many mammals (rodents, bats, monkeys). The baculum is located in the penis, which promotes a longer erection and increases the chances of conception from this particular male.
The Priapus bone of many monkeys - the creatures closest to us, from a biological point of view, is very small. For example, in chimpanzees it is equal to some 6 mm. Men don't have it at all. British anthropologist Matilda Brindle suggested that the baculum could have existed in human ancestors, but at some stage of evolution it disappeared.
The reason for this “loss” is not clear. This has prompted people trying to explain the evolutionary process from a biblical point of view to argue that Adam lost his Priapus bone during the process of God's creation of Eve. There is no evidence of this either in the Old Testament or in the works of the ascetics of the church.
Translation Features
The primary source of the modern Old Testament, written by the ancient Jews, helps shed light on the events of the creation of the world. The original mentions the word ἡ πλευρά (pleura). In Hebrew, it denoted not only a human rib, but also - in a broader sense - a side, part of the body, side, as well as the edge of some object, formation, area. Ancient strategists called the flank of an army "pleura".
It is quite obvious that the Scripture originally indicated that the Lord took the side or half of Adam and created Eve from it. It’s amazing how many millennia the metaphorical expression “halves of each other” has survived without losing its sacred meaning!
But in the Septuagint - the translation of the original Old Testament from Hebrew into Ancient Greek - this meaning was lost. The ancient Greeks had a more down-to-earth understanding of peace and love. For them, the unity of souls replaced the insatiable physical attraction, the desire to possess. Probably, the translators simply did not find worthy analogues for the word “pleura” in ancient Greek and substituted “rib” instead, using one of its meanings.
This is how Eve was born from Adam’s rib. In the end, the translators were not so wrong. The rib is the most suitable bone in the human body. If the Creator had removed Adam's jaw, hip joint, thigh, or forearm, he would have made the first man a wretched cripple, and this certainly did not coincide with God's plan.
God created Eve not from a rib, but from a completely different bone, which Adam’s descendants have since lost. This is the so-called priapic bone, found in the penises of many mammals, including apes, but not humans.
This hypothesis was put forward in the United States by a specialist in the analysis of biblical texts, professor at the American Jewish University in Bel-Air (California) Zaioni Zevit. Today he, together with his colleagues, including the founder of the Biblical Archaeological Society in the USA, Herschel Shanks, intends to substantiate it at a press conference at the National Press Club of the USA.
Zevit, an expert on ancient Semitic languages, believes that the word "rib" in the canonical translations of the Book of Genesis does not accurately reflect the Hebrew source. It is more correct, in his opinion, to relate the word contained there to the bone, which is in modern science known as the baculum, also known as the priapous or gutter bone.
Adam and Eve
“And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man; and when he fell asleep, he took one of his ribs and covered the place with flesh. And the Lord God made a wife from the rib he had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.” Bible. Old Testament. Genesis 2:21-22.
Adam, Lilith and Eve
Deciding to give Adam a girlfriend so that he would not be lonely, God put him into a deep sleep, took one rib out of his chest, made a woman out of it and closed the wound. When Adam woke up, he said: “She will be called woman, for she was taken from [her] husband... and the [two] will become one flesh.” The name he gave her was Eve, that is, "Mother of All Living."
Some believe that God created man and woman in His own image on the sixth day, giving the whole world to their care; but Eve was not yet there. So, God ordered Adam to give names to all animals and birds and all living creatures. When they passed in front of him in pairs, Adam - already like an adult man - became jealous of them, and although he tried to copulate with all the females in turn, he did not find pleasure in it. Then he exclaimed: “Every creature except me has a friend like him!” And he began to pray to God to correct this injustice.
Then God created Lilith, the first woman, just as He created Adam, except that He used dirt and silt instead of pure dust. From the union of Adam with this demoness and with another similar to her, named Naamah, the sister of Tubalcain, Asmodeus and many other demons were born, who still plague humanity. Many, many years later, Lilith and Naamah came to Solomon’s judgment, hiding under the guise of Jerusalem whores.
Adam and Lilith could not get along together; when he wanted to lie down with her, she was offended if he asked her to lie down below. “Why should I lie under you?” she asked. “I was also created from dust, so I am your equal.” When Adam tried to force obedience from her, Lilith, in a rage, uttered the secret name of God, flew into the sky and disappeared.
Adam complained to God: “My girlfriend left me.” God immediately sent the angels Senoi, Sansenoi and Semangelof to return Lilith, and they found her on the shores of the Red Sea, where there were many lustful demons and where she gave birth to more than a hundred lilims a day. “Return to Adam without delay,” said the angels, “or we will drown you!” But Lilith asked: “Can I return to Adam and become an honest wife again after my life on the Red Sea?” "To refuse is to die!" - answered the angels. “Can I die,” Lilith asked again, “if God has given me all newborn children: boys until the eighth day, that is, before circumcision, and girls until the twelfth day? However, if I ever see your three name or your image on the amulet above the newborn baby, I promise not to touch it." They agreed on this, and God punished Lilith by having one hundred demonic babies born to her die every day; and if she could not harm a human baby because of the angelic amulet, then she turned her hatred on her own offspring.
Lilith is said to have been a queen in Zmargad and possibly Sava; and she is the same demoness who tormented the sons of Job. Yet she, unlike Adam, escaped death, since they separated long before the Fall. Lilith and Naamah not only strangle babies, but also seduce sleepy men, of whom anyone sleeping alone can become their victim.
Not disheartened by Adam's first failure to find a girlfriend, God gave it a second try and allowed Adam to watch as He created a woman from bones, tendons, muscles, blood and glands, and then covered it all with skin and added hair where needed. . This sight aroused such disgust in Adam that when the First Eve stood before him in all her glory, he felt an irresistible disgust. God realized that he had failed again and took the First Eve away. Where He took her, no one knows exactly.
God made a third attempt, but this time he acted more carefully. Having put Adam to sleep, He took a rib from him and created a woman from it, then attached her hair, adorned her like a bride with twenty-four jewels, and only after that he woke Adam up. Adam was delighted.
Agrat is the third wife of Satan, one of the “mothers of demons.”
Some believe that God created Eve not from Adam's rib, but from a tail with a sting at the end, which Adam originally had. God cut off the tail, and the stump - a useless tailbone - still remains with the descendants of Adam.
And others say that God originally intended to create two people: a man and a woman, but instead He planned one person with a male face in front and a female face in the back. Then he changed His mind again and, removing the woman’s face, made a woman’s body for him.
But some are still sure that Adam was originally created as a bisexual creature with female and male bodies, as if stuck back to back. Since this made movement and conversation very difficult, God divided the androgen into two people, whom He placed in Eden and forbade them to copulate.
The traditional opinion is that a man’s first sexual experience was with animals, and not with a woman, as, by the way, in Arab folklore. Solomon suspected that the Queen of Sheba was Lilith because of her hairy legs. His trial of two harlots is reflected in 1 Kings III, 16 ff. According to Isaiah XXXIV, 14-15, Lilith lives in the desolate ruins of the land of Edom among satyrs, buffalos, pelicans, owls, jackals, ostriches, snakes and kites. Lilith's children are called lilim. In the Targum Yerushalmi, the priestly blessing from Numbers VI, 24 begins: "May the Lord bless you and keep you from Lilith!" Commentator of the 4th century. n. e. Jerome identifies Lilith with the Greek Lamia, the Libyan queen who was abandoned by Zeus and whose children were destroyed by Hera. So she began to take revenge, taking children from other women.
The lamias, who seduced sleeping men, drank their blood and ate their flesh, as Lilith and other demonesses did, were also known by the names Empusae, "squeezing ones," or Mormolyceia, "frightening she-wolves"; the Hellenes considered them “children of Hecate.” A bas-relief from Hellenic times shows a naked Lamia straddling a man sleeping on his back. This is very interesting for a civilization in which women were considered chattel and therefore had to take the place below during intercourse, which Lilith refused. The Greek witches who worshiped Hecate occupied the highest position, as we know from Apuleius; and we find the same thing in the Sumerian description of sexual intercourse, but not in the Hittite one. Malinowski writes that Melanesian girls laugh at what they call the “missionary position,” which requires them to lie still.
The name Haamah, "pleasant," is explained as "a demoness who sings pleasant songs to idols." Zmargad, possibly smaragdos, semi-precious aquamarine; a hint of her underwater home. There is a demon named Smaragos in Homer's Epigrams.
The creation of Eve from Adam's rib, a myth that asserts male superiority and denies Eve's divine origin, has no parallel in Mediterranean or Middle Eastern mythologies. The subject may have been taken iconotropically from an ancient bas-relief or other image in which the naked goddess Anath, poised in the air, watched her lover Mot kill her twin brother Alian; Mot (mistaken by the mythographer for Yahweh) plunged a curved dagger under Alian's fifth rib, without intending to pull out the sixth rib. There was also a pun on the word tsela, the Hebrew "rib": Eve, although intended as Adam's friend, was in fact tsela, "mistake," "misfortune." The creation of Eve from Adam's tail is an even stranger myth; it may be based on children born with residual tails, which happens relatively often.
The story of Lilith's flight to the East and Adam's marriage to Eve, oddly enough, may reflect a long-standing historical incident: nomadic shepherds, admitted to the Canaanite kingdom of Lilith as guests (see 16.1), suddenly gain strength and, when the royal court flees , occupy the second kingdom, which is subjugated to the Hittite goddess Hebe.
The meaning of the name "Eve" is unclear. Hawwah is explained in Genesis III, 20 as "the mother of all living"; but it may also be a modified form of the sacred name Heba (Heba), Nebat, Hebat, Hiba, that is, the name of the wife of the Hittite storm god. She is sculpted riding a lion in Hattusas (equating her with Anath), and she is described as Ishtar in Hurrian texts. She was worshiped in Jerusalem. Her Greek name is Hebe (Hebe), and she was the divine wife of Hercules.