"The Lord said, also, it is not good for man to be alone; let us make him a helpmeet for him." We naturally expect that the Lord is about to bestow on him a wife; but first he conducts before him all the various tribes of animals. Perhaps the copyist may have committed here an error of transposition.
"And the name which Adam gave to every animal is its true name." What we should naturally understand by the true name of an animal, would be a name describing all, or at least, the principal properties of its species. But this is not the case in any language. In each there are some imitative words, as "coq" and "cocu" in the Celtic, which bear some slight similarity to the notes of the cock and the cuckoo; tintamarre, trictrac, in French; alali, in Greek; lupus, in Latin, etc. But these imitative words are exceedingly few. Moreover, if Adam had thus thoroughly known the properties of various animals, he must either have previously eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, or it would apparently have answered no end for God to have interdicted him from it. He must have already known more than the Royal Society of London, and the Academy of the Sciences.
It may be remarked that this is the first time the name of Adam occurs in the Book of Genesis. The first man, according to the ancient Brahmins, who were prodigiously anterior to the Jews, was called Adimo, a son of the earth, and his wife, Procris, life. This is recorded in the Vedas, in the history of the second formation of the world. Adam and Eve expressed perfectly the same meanings in the Phoenician language—a new evidence of the Holy Spirit's conforming Himself to commonly received ideas.
"When Adam was asleep God took one of his ribs and put flesh instead thereof; and of the rib which he had taken from Adam he formed a woman, and he brought the woman to Adam."
In the previous chapter the Lord had already created the male and the female; why, therefore, remove a rib from the man to form out of it a woman who was already in being? It is answered that the author barely announces in the one case what he explains in another. It is answered further that this allegory places the wife in subjection to her husband, and expresses their intimate union. Many persons have been led to imagine from this verse that men have one rib less than women; but this is a heresy, and anatomy informs us that a wife has no more ribs than her husband.
"But the serpent was more subtle than all animals on the earth; he said to the woman," etc. Throughout the whole of this article there is no mention made of the devil. Everything in it relates to the usual course of nature. The serpent was considered by all oriental nations, not only as the most cunning of all animals, but likewise as immortal. The Chaldæans had a fable concerning a quarrel between God and the serpent, and this fable had been preserved by Pherecydes. Origen cites it in his sixth book against Celsus. A serpent was borne in procession at the feasts of Bacchus. The Egyptians, according to the statement of Eusebius in the first book of the tenth chapter of his "Evangelical Preparation," attached a sort of divinity to the serpent. In Arabia, India, and even China, the serpent was regarded as a symbol of life; and hence it was that the emperors of China, long before the time of Moses, always bore upon their breast the image of a serpent.
Eve expresses no astonishment at the serpent's speaking to her. In all ancient histories, animals have spoken; hence Pilpay and Lokman excited no surprise by their introduction of animals conversing and disputing.
The whole of this affair appears so clearly to have been supposed in the natural course of events, and so unconnected with anything allegorical, that the narrative assigns a reason why the serpent, from that time, has moved creeping on its belly, why we always are eager to crush it under our feet, and why it always attempts—at least according to the popular belief—to bite and wound us. Precisely as, with respect to presumed changes affecting certain animals recorded in ancient fable, reasons were stated why the crow which originally had been white is at the present day black; why the owl quits his gloomy retreat only by night; why the wolf is devoted to carnage. The fathers, however, believed the affair to be an allegory at once clear and venerable. The safest way is to believe like them.
"I will multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children. Thou shalt be under the power of the man, and he shall rule over thee." Why, it is asked, should the multiplication of conception be a punishment? It was, on the contrary, says the objector, esteemed a superior blessing, particularly among the Jews. The pains of childbirth are inconsiderable, in all except very weak or delicate women. Those accustomed to labor are delivered, particularly in warm climates, with great ease. Brutes frequently experience greater suffering from this process of nature: some even die under it. And with respect to the superiority or dominion of the man over the woman, it is merely in the natural course of events; it is the effect of strength of body, and even of strength of mind. Men, generally speaking, possess organs more capable of continued attention than women, and are better fitted by nature for labors both of the head and arm. But when a woman possesses both a hand and a mind more powerful than her husband's, she everywhere possesses the dominion over him; it is then the husband that is under subjection to the wife. There is certainly truth in these remarks; but it might, nevertheless, very easily be the fact that, before the commission of the original sin, neither subjection nor sorrow existed.
"The Lord made for them coats of skins." This passage decidedly proves that the Jews believed God to be corporeal. A rabbi, of the name of Eliezer, stated in his works that God clothed Adam and Eve with the skin of the very serpent who had tempted them; and Origen maintains that this coat of skins was a new flesh, a new body, which God conferred on man. It is far better to adhere respectfully to the literal texts.