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About this book

Genesis

About this book

The Seventh Day

Chapter 2

1 The heavens and the earth were completed with everything that was in them.⁠ 2 By the seventh day God finished the work⁠ that he had been doing,⁠ and he ceased on the seventh day all the work that he had been doing.⁠ 3 God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it he ceased all the work that he had been doing in creation.⁠

The Garden and the First Humans

4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created—when the Lord God made the earth and heavens.⁠ 5 Now no shrub of the field had yet grown on the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground. 6 Springs would well up from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground.⁠ 7 The Lord God formed the man⁠ from the soil of the ground⁠ and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,⁠ and the man became a living being.⁠ 8 The Lord God planted an orchard in the east, in Eden;⁠ and there he placed the man he had formed.⁠ 9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow from the soil, every tree that was pleasing to look at and good for food.⁠ (Now the tree of life⁠ and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil⁠ were in the middle of the orchard.)⁠ 10 Now a river flows from Eden⁠ to water the orchard, and from there it divides into four headstreams. 11 The name of the first is Pishon;⁠ it runs through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 (The gold of that land is pure; pearls and lapis lazuli are also there.) 13 The name of the second river is Gihon;⁠ it runs through the entire land of Cush. 14 The name of the third river is Tigris; it runs along the east side of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates. 15 The Lord God took the man and placed him in the orchard in Eden to care for it and to maintain it.⁠ 16 Then the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat fruit from every tree of the orchard, 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will surely die.”⁠ 18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.⁠ I will make a companion for him who corresponds to him.”⁠ 19 The Lord God formed out of the ground every living animal of the field and every bird of the air.⁠ He brought them to the man to see what he would name them, and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man named all the animals, the birds of the air, and the living creatures of the field,⁠ but for Adam no companion who corresponded to him was found.⁠ 21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep, and while he was asleep, he took part of the man’s side and closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the part he had taken out of the man,⁠ and he brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, “This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh;⁠ this one will be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.”⁠ 24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and unites with his wife,⁠ and they become one family.⁠ 25 The man and his wife were both naked, but they were not ashamed.⁠

Texts in conversation

Compare Genesis 2:24 and Gospel of Thomas 11

Hebrew Bible · Nag Hammadi

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Summary

In Genesis, woman comes from man's body before the two unite in marriage. Jesus' saying about one becoming two in the Gospel of Thomas may refer to that first separation, using the creation story to ask why people are divided.

Passages

Genesis 2:24

Hebrew Bible
21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep, and while he was asleep, he took part of the man’s side and closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the part he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, “This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one will be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” 24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and unites with his wife, and they become one family.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Genesis

Gospel of Thomas 11

Nag Hammadi
10 Jesus said, “I have cast fire upon the world, and look, I am guarding it until it blazes.” 11 Jesus said, “This heaven will pass away, and the one above it will pass away. The dead are not alive, and the living will not die. In the days when you consumed what is dead, you made it alive; when you come into the light, what will you do? On the day when you were one, you became two. But when you become two, what will you do?” 12 The disciples said to Jesus, “We know that you will leave us. Who will be our leader?” Jesus said to them, “Wherever you are, you should go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being.”
135–200 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Gospel of Thomas

References

“... The Gospel of Thomas mentions Adam by name twice (sayings 46 and 85), and there is no doubt that the stories about Adam were among the sources for Thomasine theology. Nothing prevents us from assuming that there was a myth about Adam being male and female at the time of the composition of the Gospel of Thomas. In fact, there seem to be two Thomasine sayings that may allude to such a myth. One of them (Gos. Thom. 11:4) speaks about “one” becoming “two”; another (Gos. Thom. 22) speaks about “two” becoming “one.” I begin with the former passage: [...] 11:4 On the day you were one, you became two. But when you become two, what will you do? It is possible that when Jesus refers to the state of being “one,” he refers to primordial humanity embodied in the androgynous protoplast; it is also possible that his reference to becoming “two” signifies the division of the protoplast into a man and a woman. Yet since the saying is formulated in quite an obscure fashion, a wide variety of alternative interpretations can be offered. For instance, Uwe-Karsten Plisch thinks that the saying seeks to answer the following question: “What is the use and meaning of a union between a man and a woman in light of the rapidly approaching end of the world?” According to Plisch, the day of becoming two is the wedding day, when “husband and wife merge into one flesh but also establish the duality of their partnership.” In this case, the last question of the saying “has to be understood as a critical request.” I would not go as far as to insist on the interpretation suggested by Plisch; it might very well be that the author of Gos. Thom. 11:4 did intend to allude to the myth of androgynous Adam. What is fairly certain, however, is that the phrasing of this saying is intentionally vague. ...”
Ivan Miroshnikov, The Gospel of Thomas and Plato: A Study of the Impact of Platonism on the Fifth Gospel (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 94.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Genesis 2:24 and Gospel of Thomas 11

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