From Discovery online:
Eve Was Created From Adam's Penis: Bible Scholar
DEC 30, 2015 03:59 PM ET //
Eve was not made from one of Adam’s ribs, but was instead created using a bone in his penis, a Biblical scholar has claimed, causing much stir.
The story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2 says God made Adam from of the dust of the ground, then created Eve out of one of Adam’s ribs.
Ziony Zevit, distinguished professor of Biblical Literature and Northwest Semitic Languages at the American Jewish University in California, argues that the Biblical story has been wrongly interpreted since a mistranslation confused rib with baculum, or penis bone.
First presented in the 2013 book “What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden?” Zevit’s shocking claim has recently resurfaced in a paper published in Biblical Archaeology Review [Bravo to Hershel Shanks], causing heated controversy among outraged Christian readers.
According to Zevit, the bone of contention — literally — centers around the Hebrew word “tsela,” used in the Old Testament to indicate the bone taken from Adam to create Eve.
“This Hebrew word occurs some 40 times in the Hebrew Bible, where it refers to the side of a building or of an altar or ark, a side-chamber, or a branch of a mountain. In each of these instances, it refers to something off-center, lateral to a main structure,” Zevit wrote.
Tsela was first translated as rib in the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible dating to the mid-third century B.C.
It would have then lost its original meaning, which according to Zevit relates to “limbs lateral to the vertical axis of an erect human body: hands, feet, or, in the case of males, the penis.”
“Of these appendages, the only one lacking a bone is the penis,” Zevit wrote.
This would explain why the human penis has no “os baculum,” or bone, unlike most mammals, including primates such as gorillas and chimpanzees.
It would also clear up why men don’t have an uneven number of ribs compared to women.
In this view, the part in Genesis 2:21, in which God closes the flesh beneath the “tsela,” should be interpreted as to God closing up the flesh that exists on the underside of the penis.
Not surprisingly, Zevit’s phallic interpretation of the Biblical story has come under fire, with several readers of Biblical Archaeology threatening to cancel their subscription.
Israel’s daily Haaretz also entered the debate, arguing that ancient linguistics provide no support for the theory.
“Ziony Zevit’s theory is even more unlikely than the original story,” journalist Elon Gilad wrote.
He remarked that ribs generated life in stories predating the Hebrew bible, such as the Sumerian myth Enki and Nihursag.
He noted that tsela is still used in post-biblical Hebrew to mean rib, and has cognates meaning rib in other Semitic languages.
“That powerfully indicates that tzela meant rib thousands and thousands of years before proto-Semitic split up into the different Semitic language,” Gilad concluded.
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I am fascinated with the root meanings of words. Could it be possible that tsela, a word of Semitic origin, might be demonstrated by the ancient Egyptian god Min (ancient Egyptian is closely related to Semitic languages), a pre-dynastic god of male fertility and power and also, perhaps, the original inspiration for "knight moves" (pun intended) - see image below - from the Tour Egypt article referenced below (no attribution of the image was given in the article):
Check out this information from touregypt dot com, under "Min":
Min was always a god of fertility and sexuality. He was shown as a human male with an erect penis. In Egyptian times, he was usually an ithyphallic bearded mummiform man, standing with both legs together, an arm raised holding his symbol or a flail and wearing the same low crown with twin plumes as Amen. (The way he holds his flail might be symbolic of sexual intercourse - the flail forms the V while his upraised forearm seems to thrust inside the V.) The Egyptian paintings and reliefs on tomb walls and temples didn't show Min's other arm, but the statues of the god show him with his hand encircling the base of his penis. During New Kingdom times he was sometimes shown as a white bull, an animal sacred to the fertility god.
Notice the "L" shape made by Min's bent arm upthrust (a 90 degree angle) into the "V" formed by the flail he is holding (actually, sort of balancing on his fingertips). Notice also the "L" formed by Min's erect penis 90 degrees angled outward from his legs.
Perhaps the Creator was "killing two birds with one stone," as the old saying goes: demonstrating sexual intercourse (Min's upright arm thrusting into the inverted "V" for vagina formed by the flail), and in case you missed that allusion it is difficult to miss Min's "stiff as a bone" erect penis, the 90 degree angle that incorporates the knight's move -- and hey - could those possibly be boardgame pieces to the right of Min at approximately thigh level (located underneath Min's erect penis, reminding us, perhaps, of the origins of the slang term "boner").
Just as a reminder, here is a graph of potential moves a knight could possibly make on the chessboard - covering eight potential target squares (don't they make a lovely rosette in honor of the Sumerian Goddess Inanna):
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| From Reddit.com |
Now darlings, lest you think I am completely insane, please read this very interesting article on why there are so many different words for "penis" in Hebrew, and then you tell me why tsela should NOT be included with, for instance, the Hebrew word zayin, as just another euphenism for penis: Why Hebrew Has So Many Words for Penis, July 15, 2015, Haaretz. Also informative was Strong's Concordance on the word tsela.
