[GCFL-discuss] Creation

[Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies List]

Tackling another joke on another subject under another heading:

"What can I get for a rib" is an amusing punch line, but Adam did in fact
pay something more like an arm and a leg. The original Hebrew word which
shows up in English, Latin, Greek, etc. translated "rib" should more
accurately be translated "side." G-d took one side of Adam, and from it
made a woman. What was left over became a man.

The orthodox rabbi who explained the word to me (in Latin alphabet it is
generally rendered as tzela) insists that the original Adam had an
androgynous body, and when G-d put him into a deep sleep, this body was
separated into two sides, male and female.

IMSHO, I doubt that. Since everything else more complex than a sponge was
already male and female before the creation of man, and since the
original verse on the creation of man says "male and female created he
them" -- I suspect that the existence of male and female bodies was not
an afterthought at all, but that the separation of the Image into male
and female sides was done metaphysically, to correspond to existing
biology.

But either way, it takes both a male and a female to equal the image of
G-d. This also supplies some clue to why G-d is bent out of shape by
same-sex couples. Literally, the image is bent out of shape -- it does
not reunite the Adam.

Siarlys
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