Symposium - AIC

Split Personalities in the Symposium and the Bible:
Aristophanes’ Speech and the Myth of Adam and Eve
Roslyn Weiss
Of the many points of comparison between the Aristophanes myth in Plato’s Symposium and the
myth of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2-3—both are tales of how human beings came to yearn for one
another; both are ultimately tales of disobedience on the part of human beings and retribution by the
god(s)—I will be focusing my attention on their accounts of (1) why there is attraction between
people and (2) how the gods figure in the matter of human attraction. The two myths offer radically
different perspectives on the first of these questions, and hence suggest divergent visions of the
relationship between the human and divine realms.
I. Why There Is Love between People
Both these myths presuppose that there is something special about the connection between human
beings that requires an account, some element in the human longing for one another that cannot be
reduced to a reproductive instinct or even to the biologically based love of parent for child. In neither
of these myths do the peculiar beginnings to which the relations between human beings are traced
apply to other animals. 1
In fulfilling his charge as a speaker in the Symposium to compose an encomium to Eros,
Aristophanes provides an account of human beings’ yearning for one another. In the myth he presents,
human beings begin as composites, but are subsequently split apart from one another, so that forever
after they seek to recover their lost completion. Once they find their missing half, they do not wish to
separate from their complement; promiscuity results only from the unsatisfied search for wholeness.
In the biblical myth of man and woman, man begins alone. The initial condition of the man,
of Adam, is not one of self-sufficiency but one of lack or need. Something is missing, but not
something he has already had. The only way he can be made whole is via union with a being who is
separate from him from the start.
Separate from him, but not entirely so. Woman is made from Adam, from part of him. (There
is a debate among biblical scholars as to whether tzel´a means side or rib, but I am inclined to believe
it means rib, insofar as the textual expression is: ahat mitzal´otav, one of his tzel´aot, suggesting that
there are several, and it seems odd to suppose that Adam had several sides.) A part of Adam is
removed from him, flesh is added to it to complete the new being, and breath is breathed into that new
being, woman.
Let us draw out some of the implications for the nature of human attraction from just these
bare outlines of the two myths. In both, a person is missing a part of himself. But the nature of what is
missing is significantly different in the two cases. In the Symposium myth as recounted by
Aristophanes, the original human being was composed of two wholes. Although the human being’s
power is diminished by being divided in two, nevertheless, each half is on its own complete. The
situation is comparable, perhaps, to that of conjoined twins, who, when separated, can each, at least in
some instances, have all the organs and limbs necessary for independent existence. Nevertheless each
twin profoundly misses the connection with his or her twin. These siblings are indeed often, though
paradoxically, described as “inseparable.”
In the Genesis myth, unlike in the Aristophanes myth, Adam and the woman do not start out
as two complete human beings conjoined with one another. At first there is only Adam, only a man.
The sole being who can complete Adam is not even envisioned. Adam’s situation is bleak, perhaps
even dire. He has power and intelligence—he is smart enough to be entrusted with naming all the
animals—and he is placed in charge of the Garden, “to work it and to protect it” (Gen. 2:15). But he
has no human connection, no one who is his mate. None of the animals that God fashions will do. In
Genesis 1 we are told that God created man—male and female. But, at least according to Genesis 2,
the creation of male and female proceeds in stages.
In the Genesis myth, Adam cannot have a mate without sacrifice on his part—the sacrifice, in
fact, of a part of his body. His body must be rendered less than whole in order for him to become
whole; he welcomes as his mate someone for whom he has yielded his bodily integrity.
One important consequence of the creation of woman out of the rib of man is that male and
female are not equals; the relationship is not symmetrical. Unlike in the Aristophanes myth in which
1 Animals as well as plants experience love according to Eryximachus (186a).