The random stuff from X thread

bigdaddysaints said

means that people are taught what the church wants to teach them. Do you think there is a difference between Eve being created from Adams rib and Eve Being created form equal parts of Adam? Do you think that coveys a different message?
When i was growing up, until i was in middle school and took a little biology, i believed that man really had one less rib than a woman because of this story that was taught in Sunday School, and a lot kids i knew thought the same thing. lol

were they spare ribs?

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I think to quibble over it is entirely too myopic for the genesis creation story.

I was never taught that the rib was literal or that if it were it was to suggest that a woman was somehow less. Then again, I was always taught that the fulfillment of Eve, in Mary, is the highest and most beautiful of all of God's creation. She is the mother of God and was given to me by Jesus to be my own mother in the order of grace.

I can see if you grew up in a Protestant or especially southern American variant of it you might have a more literalistic interpretation. It would be necessarily closed to any of the larger understandings of the text due to a much more constricted and minimalist view of Mary. This would be in contrast to the early thinking of the Church. We can see in second century writings the connection between Eve and Mary aligned with Adam and Jesus.

I guess it's possible to say that English translations intended a condescension toward woman by using the word rib rather than side. But there's lots of stuff like this where English doesn't quite get the full meaning without necessarily contradicting. I'm just not sure it's fruitful or accurate to read into it cynicism.