Adam and Eve: The Human Clay
06. Sep, 2009 
7 Comments
Gen 2:7 And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth: and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.
According to this verse, God made man out of moist earth and His breath of life. This is to be compared with the Atra-Hasis epic, written in Babylon before 1600 BC:
They slaughtered Aw-ilu, who had the inspiration, in their assembly.
Nintu mixed clay with his flesh and blood.
That same god and man were thoroughly mixed in the clay.
For the rest of the time they would hear the drum.
From the flesh of the god the spirit remained.
It would make the living know its sign.
According to the Babylonian legend, lesser gods were tired of the heavy chores they had to do. They revolted, slit the throat of one god and mixed his blood with clay: they thus created man to complete their chores.
This pessimistic account is completely different from the optimistic perspective of the Holy Bible. For the pagans, man was a slave created to alleviate the burden of lesser gods. For the Hebrews, man was created by a good and living God to serve Him, and this God loved him. This a a very new message at the time of the writing!
This account was not intended to be a factual description of the science of creation. It was a profound reflection on the WHY man was created in the first place. It is not contradictory with evolution, since the story of Adam and Eve is not a scientific hypothesis: it is a philosophical writing.
Note that Eve was created out of Adam’s side, according to the Genesis:
Gen 2:22 And the Lord God built the rib which he took from Adam into a woman: and brought her to Adam.
God did not take part of Adam’s head, for the woman to dominate him, nor did He take part of Adam’s foot, for man to dominate woman. In this account, God created woman from the side of man, meaning that both are to be “equal”.
I have placed equal between quotes, since it does not mean that man and woman can interchange roles: by equal I mean none of man or woman is a lesser form of humanity. The woman, in the account was created to be a companion for man; his “equal”, his “a help like unto himself”; not to be compared with the companionship of a mere animal pet!
Hmmm interesting…I kinda agree with your definition of 'equal'…I actually loved it! Kudos my friend…
Around which time is all this supposed to have happened?
@Wez Thanks a lot
@Sanjay The reason why you ask this question is that you have not read my previous posts!!! The answer is already there. This is just a story, which is timeless. The story itself was written around 1000 – 950 BC.
There is a beautiful story about woman being man's missing rib…
There has always been controversies concerning Adam and Eve being the first man and woman on Earth. First because these two only could not have given rise to so many different blood groups.
Anyway…
ah Reena
Thx for the comment, but just like Sanjay, you did not read the other post on Literary genre and you did not understand anything about the context of the story …
ur post topics are very different. i like ur blogging theme about past of human beings
really nice article