Adam's Rib, and other translation questions in Genesis 2-4

 This part of the Old Testament is so rich in symbolism and meaning, one could spend an entire year studying just Genesis 1-5. Last time we did the Old Testament I wrote two posts on The Fall

Fall part 1

Fall part 2

So I want to narrow my focus to discuss two translation issues concerning mother Eve. 

The first was brought to my attention by my daughter.  She texted me one day and said, "I heard on a podcast that the word translated in Genesis 2:21 as "rib" in the KJV doesn't mean rib, but side." So when I got a chance I used my Bible Vocab app to look at all the other places that word is used in the Torah.  She was right.  The word is צלע and all the other times it appears in the Torah it just means "side."  Most of the references refer to building the tabernacle and the sacred objects it held,  such as in Exodus 25:12 (talking about the ark of the covenant,) "And thou shalt cast four rings of gold for it, and put them in the four corners thereof; and two rings shall be in the one side of it, and two rings in the other side of it." The words for "side" are צלע.  Also, in Exodus 36:32 it refers to the two sides of the tabernacle itself.  In 2 Samuel 4:6 in the JKV the word "rib" appears, but there it is a different word in Hebrew, חמש. 

So the question is, where did the idea of the "rib" come from? I looked up the Latin translation of the passage, and the word there, "costa," is ambiguous.  It is used to mean "rib" or "flank" of an animal, but also the coast, as in the shore of a lake or ocean. The word in the Greek Septuagint, πλευρῶν, specifically refers to a rib, the side, or flank of an animal or human. It doesn't have the broader sense of a side of an object, so maybe that is where the idea of the "rib" started to creep into the English. (click here to checkout my blog post about Biblical languages) In all of these languages it would have been justified to translate the passage as, "And God took one side of Adam, and God made from the side...a woman." (paraphrasing.) In Hebrew, the original language, that would have been the more accurate translation.

One has to wonder why, when the scholars were making the King James translation, they chose to translate the passage as "rib" instead of "side."  We know from history that they mostly used the Septuagint while translating more than the Hebrew, so the Greek word would have influenced them. But they did have a Hebrew version and Hebrew scholars they could refer to when a question arose about the Greek. Did they even discuss whether they should use the word, "side" or "rib" or did their male dominant brains automatically default to "rib" because, how could a woman be made out of one whole "side" of the man. 

One also has to wonder how the world would have been different if they had chosen the other translation. What if the scriptures everyone was using said that God took one half of Adam and from that made Eve?  Would that have changed how women have been treated in Western society for the last 2000 years? Thinking of Eve as one half of Adam makes Genesis 2:24 make more sense, "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh."  We are not just sticking one little rib back on the man to make one flesh, we are taking one half and one half and sticking them back together to make a whole.

The second translation issue about Eve isn't nearly as controversial. 

In Genesis 4:1 we read "And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord."

This translation is fine, but it misses a beautiful play on words that is found in the Hebrew. Cain's name קין is a play on the verb in the sentence, קיניתי.  The verb means to possess or acquire. It is used in Genesis 14:19 that says, "And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth:" Not only was the God of Abraham the possessor, but the creator of the earth, and the word קיניתי has the connotation of creating or establishing. The word translated "from" is the Hebrew "את" can mean "from" or it can be "with".  A Hebrew scholar I follow, Michael Carasik, translated it this way, "I have created a person, along with the LORD." I like the idea that when we have a baby, we are teaming up with the Lord to create a person. We couldn't do it without him, but he chooses to do it with our help and it is a team effort.

Genesis 1-2

 As we start back over with Genesis, I want to try to introduce new ideas that I didn't cover last time I blogged about the Old Testament. Last time I did a post about 

God's Name in the Old Testament

Creation Symbols

Today I want to expand on my discussion of the creation symbols.

One of the things that the writer of Genesis was trying to do in the creation narrative was to show that the God of Abraham was the God of the whole earth.  The people surrounding the children of Israel were polytheists. They had a different god for every aspect of nature and their lives.  They had a weather god, a god of agriculture, a water god, a god of home and hearth etc. In contrast, the God of Abraham created and rules all these different elements. He created light and darkness, the sun and the moon, sea and land, plants and animals. The creation narrative distinguished the Hebrews as monotheistic in a polytheistic world thus showing that their God was better than the surrounding gods. 

Later, in the time of Jesus, the Jews were again living among polytheists, the Romans. Paul on Mars Hill pointed out the superiority of his One God to all their idols. But the apostles were also trying to convince other Jews that Jesus was the God of the Old Testament incarnate. As the the writers of the New Testament chose which stories to include in the gospels, they conscientiously included the same symbols as are found in the creation story (and in other Old Testament stories I will discuss in later blog posts)  in order to affirm to the Jews that Jesus is the very God of their father, and to the Gentiles, that Jesus is the one true God, superseding their pantheon of different gods over different forces of nature.  Let's look at the creation symbols and then tie them to stories from the gospels to illustrate this idea.

Days of Creation

1. Separate Light from darkness

    A new star appears at Jesus' birth and when he dies, darkness covers the earth for three hours.

2. Separating waters of the ground from waters of the air

    Jesus calming the storm (waters of the air) while quieting the waters of the Sea of Galilee (waters of the ground)

3. Creating dry ground and vegetation

    Consider the lilies of the field parable. Also, more obliquely, feeding the 5,000 which shows his ability to abundantly supply physical needs for food.

4. Making the Sun, Moon, and Stars appear

    (see #1)

5. Creating sea creatures and birds

    The fishermen's nets being filled with fish. The tax coin found in the fish's mouth.

6. Creating land creatures and mankind.

    Jesus' ability to heal showed his creative power in relation to the human body. 

The creation symbols show that the God of the Hebrews is both all-powerful and good. (not all pantheistic Gods were beneficent). He created order out of chaos, light from darkness, abundant vegetation from wasteland, and man out of the dust of the ground, but in his own image. The gospel writers are trying to argue and show that God is not only worthy of our worship because of his omnipotence, but also because of his omnibenevolence. 

The Book of Abraham and the Book of Moses

 This week in Come Follow Me we studied Moses and Abraham 3.  Both books are in the canonized scripture that we probably speak the lest about, The Pearl of Great Price.  The book of Moses is a revelation that Joseph Smith received while working on his "translation" of the Bible.  The book of Abraham is from a "translation" of some Egyptian scrolls the church acquired at great expense in 1835.  There is a reason I put the word "translate" in parenthesis.  When I was young I thought that Joseph Smith translated these two documents in the traditional sense.  He saw the text in another language, deciphered the meaning of the words in the original text, and then wrote the words in English as the new text.  Now we know that Joseph Smith didn't really translate any text this way.  He didn't know ancient Egyptian or or the Nephite language. He, at one point, tried to learn Hebrew, but I, having studied Hebrew for several years now, can imagine that, with all else that was going on in his life, he never really mastered that ancient language either. 

What then does it mean when we say that Joseph Smith "translated" the Book of Mormon, the Bible, and the Egyptian papyri?  We need to go back to the root of the word "translate."  It comes from two Latin word parts: "trans" which means, "across" and latus, which comes from the participle of a verb that means, "to carry."  So, to translate something is to carry it across from one state to another.  When you translate in the traditional sense, you carry a word from one language to another. In this case, however, Joseph Smith carried a message from God to us.

Some people get worried about the Book of Abraham. When I was little, historians thought that the original papyri Joseph Smith had were all destroyed in the great Chicago fire. Since then, researchers have found fragments of the papyri that were not destroyed in the fire, and have translated them (in the traditional way) and found they are standard Egyptian burial texts from the 1st century BCE.  

So the question is, did the original papyri that was burned in the fire contain the Book of Abraham as we now have it in the Pearl of Great Price, but written in a different language (Hebrew or Egyptian), or did Joseph Smith make it all up?

The answer is probably "no" to both questions. I, personally, doubt that the papyri ever contained an account written by Abraham. I think they were probably just the standard funerary texts found with most Egyptian mummies. Yet, I don't believe that Joseph Smith just made it all up. I think we need to remember that Joseph Smith was as much of a prophet as Abraham was. As a prophet, he could receive revelation from God, just like Abraham did. 

We see from reading the Doctrine and Covenants, that God tends to wait for Joseph Smith to ask a question before he gives a revelation.  Joseph asked what church he should join, God gave him the first vision.  Joseph asked about the communalism practiced by the Campbellites, and he got the law of consecration.  Joseph asked about the "plain and precious things" that were taken from the Bible, and he got (over a period of years) the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible, including the book of Moses.

I think that the Egyptian papyri caused Joseph to ask something.  The pictures on the scroll made him think, and he went to the Lord with a question. Maybe the facsimile reminded him about when Abraham was almost sacrificed by his father and he asked about that. Once he asked, the Lord was able to reveal to him the Book of Abraham which contained important information about our pre-earth life and the order of heaven that had been lost from the Hebrew Bible, and, indeed, from all the scripture that Joseph Smith had access to. It was important information Joseph Smith and the Church needed to know, and once Joseph asked, God told him about an interaction he had with Abraham that contained the information. Joseph Smith wrote it down and now we have it.

I might be totally wrong.  There might have actually been an account of Abraham on the papyri that was destroyed in the fire.  We will never know. To me, it doesn't matter if there was or was not.  What matters is that it was a revelation from God, first to Abraham, and then to Joseph, and now to us. 

Happy Anniversary

 I started this blog five years ago in January 2021. That was when I decided that I wanted to learn Hebrew so I could do a deep dive into the Old Testament in 2022. I studied Hebrew all of 2021, and in 2022, I wanted to teach Gospel Doctrine so much that I asked the Bishop for the calling.  He didn't give it to me, so I vented my pent up "scriptorian" energy by posting on this blog. 

Now it is time to study the Old Testament again, and this time I am teaching Sunday School  I am not teaching Gospel Doctrine to the adults, but instead I am teaching 15-year-olds. This is a fun an interesting challenge.  How can I make the Old Testament engaging and understandable to that age group?

I taught my first lesson today.  It was an introduction to the Old Testament. I started off talking about memes.  I found three memes, printed them off and showed them to the class.  The first was a picture of Justin Bieber looking ticked off at the camera.  The second one was of Taylor Swift and her fiancé at a football game looking rapturous. The third was a Star Wars Yoda joke. Some of the kids understood the memes right away, and were able to explain why they were clever.  Others didn't understand them.  I asked them what they needed to know to understand each meme.  Then I explained that the Old Testament gives us the information and cultural background to understand key symbols and incidences in the Bible, New Testament, and even the Doctrine and Covenants. If we don't understand the story of manna in the wilderness, we can't really understand why Jesus called himself the "Bread of Life." If we don't understand the sacrifice of a sheep during the Passover, we won't understand when John said about Jesus, "Behold the Lamb of God."  

I will try to make this second round of commentary on the Old Testament fresh and worthwhile. I hope the two or three of you who actually read my blog will find it interesting. :-)