Texts in Conversation
In Genesis, God creates the first human as male and female. Rabbinic tradition in Genesis Rabbah echoes Greek mythology, interpreting this as a single androgynous being with two faces, later split apart into two separate bodies.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Genesis 1:27
Hebrew Bible
26 Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness, so they may rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move on the earth.” 27 God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply! Fill the earth and subdue it! Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every creature that moves on the ground.”
Genesis Rabbah 8:1
Aggadah
Rabbinic
... R. Jeremiah b. Leazar said: When the Holy One, blessed be He, created Adam, He created him as androgynous for it is said, ‘Male and female created He them and called their name Adam’ (Gen. V, 2). R. Samuel b. Nahman said: When the Lord created Adam, He created him double-faced, then He split him and made him of two backs, one back on this side and one back on the other side. To this it is objected: But it is written, ‘And He took one of his ribs, etc.’ (Gen. 1, 21). ‘Mi-zalothaw’ means one of his sides, replied he, as you read, ‘And for the second side (zela‘) of the tabernacle, etc.’ (Ex. XXVI, 20)....
Date: 500 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
... The view that Genesis 1:27 is about gender complementarity, so prevalent today, is only one possible interpretation among many, and a relatively new one as well. From the perspective of late-antique Jewish rabbis, the phrase “in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them” refers not to the creation of two complementary sexes, but one. As Rabbi Samuel bar Nahman explained in Genesis Rabbah, a verse-by-verse commentary on Genesis compiled in the mid-fifth century CE, “When the Holy One, blessed be he, created the first man, he created him with two faces. Then he split him and made two bodies, one on each side, and turned them about.” In other words, the first human being was androgynous, possessing the genitals of both sexes, but then in Genesis 2, when God took the adam’s rib—interpreted here as one of adam’s sides—God cut the androgynous being in two. This reading deals with the problem of the two creation stories by positing two steps in God’s fashioning of humanity ...
Knust, Jennifer Wright
Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire
(p. 51) HarperOne, 2011
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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