It's rare that my jaw drops and I swear out loud as I'm listening to the radio. But this happened today as I was listening to a podcast of The Spirit of Things the episode "Spiritual Classics Pt 3: Judaism" and the interview with Mary Phil Korsak who has translated a Genesis titled “at the start”. I had always struggled to know exactly what was going on in Genesis 2 with the creation of man and woman.
In the Hebrew God creates a non sex specific being called "ha-adam" (sorry no Hebrew characters in blogger - i wonder if they answer why not in their FAQ?) which is means most literally creature of the earth and then not till the taking of the rib does genesis start using "Is" for man and "Issa" for woman and then the man gets called “adam”. (roughly speaking)
Now, what Korsak does in her translation that made my jaw drop (and swear out loud) was instead of God taking the earth creature’s rib God takes the creatures side (the Hebrew word is basically never translated as rib elsewhere. Eg: Exo 26:26 You shall make bars of acacia wood, five for the frames of the one side (rib???) of the tabernacle.) It is then with this side of the creature that God makes woman.
This just gave me a vivid image of one side (or even half?) of the earth creature being taken from it and made into woman leaving man as a creature with a missing half. This idea is then echoed in verse 24 “Therefore a man ("is") leaves his father and his mother and clings to his woman ("issa"), and they become one flesh.”
Now I’m not 100% about this and will have to do some checking but it put so many up in the air pieces together for me that I had to post.
In the Hebrew God creates a non sex specific being called "ha-adam" (sorry no Hebrew characters in blogger - i wonder if they answer why not in their FAQ?) which is means most literally creature of the earth and then not till the taking of the rib does genesis start using "Is" for man and "Issa" for woman and then the man gets called “adam”. (roughly speaking)
Now, what Korsak does in her translation that made my jaw drop (and swear out loud) was instead of God taking the earth creature’s rib God takes the creatures side (the Hebrew word is basically never translated as rib elsewhere. Eg: Exo 26:26 You shall make bars of acacia wood, five for the frames of the one side (rib???) of the tabernacle.) It is then with this side of the creature that God makes woman.
This just gave me a vivid image of one side (or even half?) of the earth creature being taken from it and made into woman leaving man as a creature with a missing half. This idea is then echoed in verse 24 “Therefore a man ("is") leaves his father and his mother and clings to his woman ("issa"), and they become one flesh.”
Now I’m not 100% about this and will have to do some checking but it put so many up in the air pieces together for me that I had to post.
No comments:
Post a Comment