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"Now that the Genesis creation story is generally interpreted in religious rather than in historical terms, A darn's rib is popularly afforded little more than facetious comments... In what follows, such ribbing will be discounted in an attempt to look at significant treatments of the rib motif in the Judeo-Christian tradition... We can designate the various kinds of commentary under the heads of' androcentric, ' 'gynocentric,' and 'egalitarian' interpretations. "

Adam's Rib: Bone of Contention
By William E. Phipps

DUE to the pre-eminence of the Adamic creation story in western civilization, no portion of the human skeleton has generated more literary consideration than the ribs. That anatomical part was especially intriguing, before the rise of modern science, because it is commonly believed that all human males had one less rib than females. The beginning of the clash between biology and religion can be traced to Andreas Vesalius, the founder of modern anatomy, who boldly stated that the rib cages of both sexes contain the same number of bones. In 1543 he wrote: "The ribs are twelve in number on each side in man and woman ... The popular belief that man is lacking a rib on one side and that woman has one more rib than man is clearly ridiculous, even though Moses, in the second chapter of Genesis, said that Eve was created by God from one of Adam's ribs." ¹ Vesalius received heavy criticism from churchmen for stating an easily verifiable empirical fact.

Now that the Genesis creation story is generally interpreted in religious rather than in historical terms, Adam's rib is popularly afforded little more than facetious comments. Ribald males sometimes pun that woman is unfortunately not abreast of man, but only a side issue. Or they refer to Adam as the earliest electrician because he furnished the spare parts for the first loud speaker. Another side-splitter suggests that woman was taken from

William E. Phipps is Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Davis and Elkins College, West Virginia. He has written before for THEOLOGY TODAY and is the author of two much discussed books, Was Jesus Married? (1970) and The Sexuality of Jesus (1973). His latest book is Recovering Biblical Sensuousness (1975).
¹ Andreas Vesalius, De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem (1543),1, 19.

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man's lower right rib, half-way between his heart and his wallet, to symbolize that she is destined to control both.

In what follows, such ribbing will be discounted in an attempt to look at significant treatments of the rib motif in the Judeo-Christian tradition. What do the varied uses of that motif reveal about our culture's conception of woman's proper place? There are no explicit references to Adam's rib in the biblical era apart from its single mention in Genesis, so our survey must begin with the post-biblical era. We can designate the various kinds of commentary under the heads of "androcentric," "gynocentric," and "egalitarian" interpretations.

I

In medieval Judaism there were several comments about Adam's rib that were uncomplimentary to women, and we can begin the "androcentric" category with some of these. One sermon extols what was presumed to be woman's noblest virtue, while denouncing her alleged vices. God deliberated, so we learn, from which part of man to create woman.

I will not create her from the head for she may carry herself haughtily; nor from the eye for she may be too inquisitive; nor from the ear, for she may be an eavesdropper, nor from the mouth for she may be too talkative; nor from the heart for she may be too jealous; nor from the hand for she may be too acquisitive; nor from the foot for she may be a gadabout. I will create her from a hidden part of the body that she may be modest.

Even when man stands naked, his rib is covered. But this midrash on Genesis goes on to say that God's careful planning miscarried, for woman is conceited, curious, a gossip, a chatterbox, envious, grasping, and a gadabout. ²

Rabbinic lore associated bone properties with characteristics believed to be feminine. Man is easier to pacify than woman because he is made from a clod rather than from a bone. Water will soften a clod at once, whereas a bone will remain hard even after being soaked in water for days. Another Jewish tradition explains why only woman needs perfumes. Man is made from dust which does not increase in odor no matter how long it is kept, but woman is made from a flesh-covered bone which will soon reek if not sprinkled with spices. ³

Such Jewish viewpoints are similar to the outlook of Mohammed. According to early Moslem tradition, he said: "Admonish your wives with kindness, for woman was created from a rib. You will break her if you try to straighten her out, so use her with her crookedness." ⁴ Mohammed, believing that the kinks in woman's character cannot be removed, advised accepting her as she is with all her curvatures.

Christian scholars of the Middle Ages attempted to explain why it was fitting for God to create woman from a rib. Thomas Aquinas,

² Genesis Rabbah 18, 2.
³ Cf. Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia, 1909), 1, p. 67.
⁴ Al-Baghawi, Mishkat al-Masabih.

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following an earlier speculation, wrote:

It was right for the woman to be made from a rib of man ... to signify the social union of man and woman; for the woman should neither use authority over man, and so she was not made from his head; nor was it right for her to be subject to man's contempt as his slave, and so she was not made from his feet. ⁵

The "social union" to which Aquinas referred is coupling for the purposes of procreation, even though the original rib story makes no reference to this. Aquinas made this Augustinian comment about Eve: "She was not fitted to help man except in generation, because another man would have proved a more effective help in anything else." ⁶

Aquinas borrowed from Aristotle the judgment that "the female is a mutilated male." ⁷ However, the Dominican monk was hesitant to accept Aristotle's description as completely true for he found no defect in a woman with regard to her reproductive function. ⁸ For Aquinas, woman was essentially a womb-man.

It was not until two centuries later that some other Dominican scholars related Aristotle's view of woman to Mohammed's view of Adam's rib. Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, who were commissioned by Pope Innocent VIII to stamp out witches, wrote:

There was a defect in the formation of the first woman, since she was formed from a bent rib, that is, a rib of the breast, which is bent as it were in a contrary direction to a man. And since through this defect she is an imperfect animal, she always deceives. ⁹

The book from which this crass bit of misogyny is taken, Malleus Maleficarum, "was the ultimate, irrefutable, unarguable authority" wherever witchcraft trials were held. ¹⁰ The book was a prime basis for the torture and execution of many thousands of European women. ¹¹ Its popularity over the centuries is attested by the fact that it has gone through dozens of editions since it was first published in 1486. Montague Summers, a prominent witchcraft researcher, and a twentieth century Roman Catholic priest, evaluates the book as "among the most important, wisest, and weightiest books in the world." ¹²

Joseph Swetnam, who lived a century after the authors of Malleus Maleficarum, wrote The Araignment of Lewde, Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Women. That publication carried on the crooked rib

⁵ Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1, q. 92, 3; cf. Peter Lombard, Sentences, 1, 2, 18.
⁶ Ibid., 1, q. 98, 2; cf. Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram, 9, 5, 9.
⁷ Aristotle, The Generation ofAnimals, 737a 28.
⁸ Aquinas, op. cit., 1, q. 92, 1.
⁹ Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarton (New York, 1971), p. 44.
¹⁰ Ibid., p. viii.
¹¹ Cf. Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church (Grand Rapids, 1949), 6, pp. 525-529.
¹² Kramer and Sprenger, op. cit., p. viii. If there is such a thing as demon possession, it surely was in the priests who wrote such inhumane treatises on witchcraft.

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theme, and it also was enormously popular in subsequent centuries. ¹³ Swetnam wrote:

A woman was made to be a helper, and so they are indeede: for she helpeth to spend and consume that which man painefully getteth ... They were made of the ribbe of a man, and that their froward nature sheweth; for a ribbe is a crooked thing, good for nothing else, and women are crooked by nature, for small occasion will cause them to be angry. ¹⁴

In the same era, an even more scurrilous attack on woman was given wide circulation in Europe. It was probably stimulated by a comment in the Talmud that the Hebrew word tsala in Genesis 2:22 should be translated "tail" rather than "rib." ¹⁵ From this association of woman with Adam's lost tail, there came the denigrating story of how a dog frustrated the divine plan for creating woman. It seems that while God was washing up after performing surgery on Adam, a dog stole and devoured the rib that had been removed. God then resorted to cutting off the dog's tail and forming Eve from it. So this method of creation is used to explain certain alleged dog-like characteristics of woman. Both creatures were said to wag their hind quarters or bark at their masters when they want something. Around 1550 this story was disseminated in England by Edward Gosynill's Schole House of Women, ¹⁶, and in Germany by a long poem of the famous Hans Sachs, an ardent Lutheran. ¹⁷

Another anti-feminist sentiment is contained in The Taming of a Shrew, by an anonymous Englishman who was Gosynill's contemporary. The heroine of that drama says:

A rib was taken, of which the Lord did make
The woe of man, so termed by Adam then
"Wo-man," for that by her came sin to us;
And for her sin was Adam doomed to die.
As Sarah to her husband, so should we
Obey them, love them, keep, and nourish them,
If they by any means do want our helps;
Laying our hands under their feet to tread." ¹⁸

In the seventeenth century, there was little difference between the Catholic and Protestant interpretations of Adam's rib. Jesuit Francis de Sales wrote:

Woman was taken from that side of the first man which was nearest his heart, to the end that she might be loved by him cordially and tenderly ... God ... was pleased to ordain that the woman should depend upon the man, being bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, and that she should be made of a

¹³ There were fourteen editions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Cf. Katharine Rogers, The Troublesome Helpmate (Seattle, 1966), p. 105.
¹⁴ Joseph Swetnam, The Araignment of Lewde, Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Women (London, 1616), p. 1.
¹⁵ Eurbim, 18a.
¹⁶ Cf. Francis L. Utley, The Crooked Rib (Columbus, 1944), p. 256; Carroll Camden, The Elizabethan Woman (Houston, 1952), p, 25.
¹⁷ Cf. Theodor Reik, The Creation of Woman (New York, 1960), p. 46.
¹⁸ F. S. Boas (ed.), The Taming of a Shrew (London, 1908), p. 62.

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rib taken from under his arm, to show that she ought to be under the hand and guidance of her husband. ¹⁹

Puritan John Milton also associated the rib cage with the essential adjacent organ in the chest cavity. Adam, in Paradise Lost, speaks endearingly of the formation of his "other half": "Out of my side to thee, nearest my heart." ²⁰ Adam expresses an ambivalence toward Eve for she is at once a lovely and gracious being but an imperfect expression of true humanity. Regarding the former, there is this ode to Eve:

O fairest of Creation, last and best
Of all God's Works, Creature in whom excell'd
Whatever can to sight or thought be formd,
Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet! ²¹

But in spite of this superlative tribute, Adam comes to lament that the one he has been riven to rule is "a Rib crooked by nature":

O why did God,
Creator wise, that peopl'd highest Heav'n
With Spirits Masculine, create at last
This noveltie on Earth, this fair defect
Of Nature, and not fill the World at once
With Men as Angels without Feminine,
Or find some other way to generate Mankind?" ²²

In a tract advocating the right of divorce, Milton viewed Adam's rib as having the potential to become a large, painful thorn when it is returned to its original place in marriage. It is likely that he was alluding to the apostle Paul's "thorn in the flesh" imagery when, in reference to Adam, he wrote: "If God took a rib out of his inside, to form of it a double good to him, he would far sooner dis-joyn it from his outside, to prevent a treble mischief to him ... then nail it into his body again, to stick for ever there a thorn in his heart." ²³ Lord Byron appropriated Milton's figure when he has Don Juan remark that "a rib's a thorn in a wed gallant's side." ²⁴

Richard Whitlock, an English contemporary of Milton, considered a jawbone to be more apt than a thorn for comparison with the rib. He wrote: "I am confident a practising Rib shall kill more than the Jawbone of an Asse; and a Quacking Dalilah, and a valiant Sampson." ²⁵

The androcentric interpretation of Adam's rib has continued unabated in more recent centuries. Several representative treatments from the past century may be noted. Elizabeth Stanton, the leading suffragette of the late nineteenth century, believed that the story of Adam's rib was intended to teach "that woman was made after man,

¹⁹ Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, 3, 38.
²⁰ John Milton, Paradise Lost, 4, 11. 484 and 488.
²¹ Ibid., 9,11. 896-899.
²² Ibid., 10, 11. 149,884,888-894.
²³ C. L. Powell (ed.), The Works of John Milton (New York, 1931),4, p. 93.
²⁴ George Byron, Don Juan, 11, 46.
²⁵ Richard Whitlock, Zootomia (1654), p. 61.

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of man, and for man, an inferior being, subject to man." ²⁶ Hence, she warned against accepting as normative the values espoused by the Bible. Contemporary feminists Paula Stern and Kate Millett also believe that the Adamic myth intended to portray woman as a mere divine afterthought, fashioned from an insignificant portion of the masculine frame. ²⁷

Literary historian Katharine Rogers considers the myth to be "unquestionably misogynistic" for it shows that "woman was created almost reluctantly, when no other creature could satisfy man's needs." ²⁸ James Frazer likewise believes that the ancient myth-maker had a "deep contempt for woman": "The lateness of her creation, and the irregular and undignified manner of it-made out of a piece of her lord and master, after all the lower animals had been created in a regular and decent manner-sufficiently mark the low opinion he held of her nature." ²⁹

II

Since most writings in history have been composed by men, it is understandable that philogynistic interpretations of Adam's rib are much more scarce than the misogynistic ones. Actually, most of both types of interpretations have been recorded by men.

The post-biblical Jewish tradition can be given the credit for the first "gynocentric" interpretation as well as for the first "androcentric" interpretation. The Talmud contains this story:

A Gentile ruler said to Rabbi Gamaliel, "Your God is a thief, because he stole one of Adam's ribs." Thereupon the rabbi's daughter said to her father, "Leave him to me; I will answer him." Turning to the ruler she exclaimed, "Thieves broke into our house and stole a silver vessel, leaving a gold one in its place!" The ruler laughed and said, "I wish I could have burglars like that every day." "Well," she retorted, "that is what our God did: he took a mere rib from the first man but in exchange he gave him a wife." ³⁰

If the analogy between wife and gold is pressed, then this bit of Jewish lore treats woman as property, possessed by the sons of Adam, and it would better be given an androcentric classification. But since persons and things were assigned different values in ancient Judaism, it is unfair to maintain that women had significance only as property.

As we have seen, Adam's rib was usually not extolled during the age of chivalry. However, Humbert de Romans, a thirteenth century master general of the Dominican friars, asserted: "God gave women many prerogatives, not only over other living things but even over man himself. . . In the world of nature she excelled man by her origin, for ... man He formed of the slime, but women of man's rib." ³¹

²⁶ Elizabeth Stanton (ed.), The Woman's Bible (New York, 1895), p. 7.
²⁷ Paula Stern, "The Womanly Image," The Atlantic Monthly, Mar. 1970, p. 87; Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (New York, 197 1), p. 80.
²⁸ Rogers, op. cit., pp. 3-4.
²⁹ James Frazer, Folk-Lore in the Old Testament (London, 1918), 1, p. 5.
³⁰ Sanhedrin, 39a.
³¹ Quoted in Bede Jarrett, Social Theories of the Middle Ages (New York, 1966), p. 72.

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Four centuries later, Englishman William Austin also stated that woman was made from a more refined substance than the "slyme" from which man was made. He believed that there was an ascending sequence in the creation account from inorganic plant to animal to human. Then, within the human species, the female follows the male: "Every worke being still more perfect than other, still ending in the most perfect of all, He rested as having all in her, beyond whose perfection no creature more could be added, created, or imagined." ³² Robert Burns, the eighteenth century Scotsman, gave poetic expression to the view that woman was the revised, perfected copy of humanity. He added a feminine characterization of the Creator:

Auld Nature Swears the lovely dears
Her noblest work she classes, O:
Her 'prentice han' she tried on man,
And then she made the lasses, O! ³³

With the advent of social Darwinism in the late nineteenth century, there became popular the view that later in development implies higher in quality. Writing in the Woman's Bible, Lillie Blake argued: "It cannot be maintained that woman was inferior to man even if ... she was created after him without at once admitting that man is inferior to the creeping things because he was created after them." Blake thought that Genesis 2 affirms that woman is "the last and crowning glory ofthe whole." ³⁴

More recently, Phyllis Trible has asserted that Genesis 3 also shows woman's superiority to man: "She is not an afterthought; she is the culmination ... Throughout the myth she is the more intelligent one, the more aggressive one, and the one with greater sensibilities." ³⁵ According to Trible, the man is "passive and bland" and "takes no inititive in decision-making ." ³⁶ She echoes the outlook of Samuel Terrien: "The order of creation goes from the imperfect to the perfect. Woman constitutes the crowning of creation ... While the woman exercises critical judgment in her dialogue with the serpent, the man does not even argue with her ... She is a real person. Man is a brute." ³⁷

Some feminists speculate that the Genesis story of Adam's rib is a patriarchal transvaluation of a more archaic story. Elizabeth Davis, in her book The First Sex, claims that some Hebrew male so resented the humiliation of being born of woman that he recast a matriarchal story so as to make woman subservient. She writes:

The Adam and Eve myth has been completely reversed from its original meaning; Eve is not born from Adam's rib, but Adam from Eve's ... The

³² William Austin, Haec Horno (London, 1637), pp. 13-14.
³³ Robert Burns, Green Grow the Rashes, stanza 5.
³⁴ Stanton, op. cit., 1, p. 19.
³⁵ Phyllis Trible, "Depatriarchalizing in Biblical Interpretation," Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Mar. 1973, pp. 36, 40.
³⁶ Phyllis Trible, "Biblical Theology as Women's Work," Religion in Life, Spring, 1975, p. 8.
³⁷ Samuel Terrien, "Toward a Biblical Theology of Womanhood," Religion in Life, Autumn, 1973, pp. 325, 327.

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Garden of Eden in the Genesis story represents the lost golden age of the Great Goddess, Eve ... The whole intention of the distortion manifested in the Hebrew tale of Adam and Eve is twofold: first, to deny the tradition of a female creator; and second, to deny the original supremacy of the female sex. ³⁸

Theologian Mary Daly agrees with Davis' contention that the Genesis story of human creation is a ludicrous falsification, affirming as it does "that Eve was born of Adam, the first among history's unmarried pregnant males who courageously chose childbirth under sedation rather than abortion, consequently obtaining a child-bride." ³⁹ Daly states that Aristotle believed what has now been shown to be the reversal of scientific truth. The male, she asserts, should be thought of as a misbegotten female inasmuch as he is produced by a "Y" chro-mosome-which is an incomplete -X" chromosome. ⁴⁰

III

Over against "androcentric" and "gynocentric" interpretations, we note the "egalitarian" interpretation that understands the rib passage of Genesis to teach that both man and woman share the same nature and ought to be accorded the same dignity. In 1836, Angelina Grimké, the Quaker abolitionist, evaluated the status of woman in Genesis 2 in this way: "A companion and equal, not one hair's breadth beneath him in the majesty and glory of her moral being; not placed under his authority as a subject, but by his side, on the same platform of human rights, under the government of God only." ⁴¹

Since Angelina, and her older sister Sarah, grew up on a Charleston, South Carolina, plantation, it is tempting to speculate that she may have heard a black preacher in her youth holding forth on some such topic as "Behold de Rib!" James H. Cone has given us the background and some of the sermon:

So God put Adam into a deep sleep
And took out a bone, ah ha!
And it is said that it was a rib.
Behold de rib!
A bone out of man's side.
He put de man to sleep and made wo-man,
And men and women been sleeping together ever since.
Behold de rib!
Brothers, if God
Had taken dat bone out of man's head
He would have meant for women to rule, hah!
If he had taken a bone out of his foot,
He would have meant for us to dominize and rule.
He could have made her out of back-bone
And then she would have been behind us.

³⁸ Elizabeth Davis, The First Sex (Baltimore, 1972), pp. 142-144.
³⁹ Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father (Boston, 1973), p. 195.
⁴⁰ Ibid., P. 95.
⁴¹ Angelina Grimké, Letters to Catherine Beecher (Boston, 1836), Letter 12.

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But, no, God Almighty, he took de bone out of his side
So dat places de woman beside us.
Hah! God knowed his own mind.
Behold de rib!

As Cone interprets the sermon, the rib symbolized equal status simply because it is not a "foot-bone" or a "back-bone"-both of which represent inferiority. "It is a'side-bone,' thereby making woman equal to man." ⁴²

Phyllis Bird has plausibly demonstrated recently that the writer of the Yahwist creation story in Genesis 2, as well as the writer of the later Priestly creation account in Genesis 1, had a similar estimation of woman's role. She states:

While the two creation accounts of Genesis differ markedly in language, style, date and traditions employed, their basic statements about woman are essentially the same: woman is, along with man, the direct and intentional creation of God and the crown of his creation. Man and woman were made for each other. Together they constitute humankind, which is in its full and essential nature bisexual. ⁴³

The egalitarian interpretation has considerable internal evidence in its favor. Man's superiority can no more be posited on the basis of his prior creation than can woman's superiority be attributed to her being created last. Woman should no more be called Adam's rib than man should be called earth's mud, for God directly created man from the passive earth and woman from the dormant man.

Unfortunately, many of the translations of the orignal Hebrew make it appear as though woman is man's vassal. According to Genesis 2:20, woman is created to be an ezer neged, which is commonly translated "a fitting helper." In contemporary usage a helper refers to a person in a menial position. However, an examination of the twenty other usages of ezer in Hebrew Scriptures displays that it never connotes someone in a servile role. It often refers to a superior person and occasionally is associated with divine assistance. For example, a psalmist proclaims: "Happy is he whose helper (ezer) is the God of Jacob." ⁴⁴ Ezer is joined by neged, which means a like counterpart. Ezer neged can best be translated "a partner corresponding to him."

Adam poses another translation problem because, like the English word "man," it can refer both to a male and to humanity. At some points in the story adam refers to a person with male sexuality. For example, it is as a heterosexual male that he is lonely and finds the animals too inferior to provide the companionship he needs. But adam is

⁴² The citation from the sermon on "Behold de Rib!," is taken from Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps, Book of Negro Folklore, 1969, p. 234. The interpretation by James H. Cone is from his article, "The Story Context of Black Theology," THEOLOGY TODAY, July, 1975, pp. 144-150.
⁴³ Phyllis Bird, "Images of Women in the Old Testament," in Rosemary Ruether (ed.), Religion and Sexism (New York, 1974), p. 72.
⁴⁴ PS, 146:5, The Hebrew exegesis is examined by Katharine D. Sakenfeld in "The Bible and Women: Bane or Blessing?" (THEOLOGY TODAY, Oct., 1975, pp. 222-233).

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also an androgyne containing both sexes. The diagram that follows expressed the way in which adam is used generically in the Yahwist creation story:

This androgynous treatment of adam harmonizes well with the Priestly account of creation. Genesis 1:27 states that "God created adam in his own image" and points out that both male and female belong to this genus. Both components of adam are commanded to share the responsibility of populating the earth and taming nature. It was on the basis of the Priestly comment in Genesis 5:2--Male and female God created them ... and named them adam"-that a medieval Jewish commentator refers to adam as an androgyne. ⁴⁵

IV

Looking back on Eve's three faces, it can be seen that she and her daughters have usually been regarded as inferior beings vis a vis Adam and his sons. Occasionally, in western civilization, woman has been regarded as the superior sex. But relatively little attention has been given until the past century to a balanced view that avoids both extremes.

⁴⁵ Genesis Rabbah, 8, 1.

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Viewpoints on astronomy provide an instructive parallel to these sex role outlooks. Through most of human history a geocentric view of the universe was accepted without question. Then Copernicus defended a revision of a heliocentric view which had earlier been speculated on by some Pythagoreans. There are some today who assume that Copernicus was correct in his substitution of the sun for the earth as the center of the universe. Yet Newton showed that neither viewpoint is correct since there is no center. Rather there are galaxies galore and each body within the vast universe exerts a mutual gravitational attraction on every other body.

Likewise, in reacting against the traditional androcentric view of woman, some have assumed that truth is to be found in the opposite gynocentric view which a few held in an earlier era and which has more frequently been championed in modern times. Both views are as myopic as the views of those who think that our sun and its planets are at the hub of the world. Neither male or female, neither sun nor earth has ultimate primacy. There is a mutuality between the sexes that the nameless "Newton" of anthropological myths discerned several millennia ago.

Due to the pervasive concept of evolutionary progress in our culture, it is often assumed that history has been moving in a linear manner from repressive attitudes toward women to an egalitarian outlook. However, our Adam's rib motif study shows that the nadir of feminism was during the Renaissance era when many were obsessed with persecuting alleged witches whose criminal behavior was rooted in the crooked rib. On the other hand, a high point for feminism was when the Genesis creation myths were composed. Contained there is the story of a male who finds no full companionship with other animals. It was not until woman is created that he exclaims, "This at last is bone of my bone!" Moreover, contrary to patriarchal mores, the male leaves his parents in order to cleave to his wife.

The myths of one era often contribute to the establishment of social practices at a latter time. It is significant that Jesus was one of the first Jews to state overtly that he regarded the Genesis 2 story to be normative. He rejected the androcentric divorce law of his culture by referring to the ideal of Genesis 2:24 which states that "the two shall become one flesh." ⁴⁶ His philogynous outlook on women was probably partly due to the influence of that Genesis myth. Hopefully, others who are emancipated from warped interpretations of the myth may find in it a reinforcement for treating each sex as a hemisphere of a psychologically androgynous human nature.

⁴⁶ Mark 10:2 9.