Symposium - AIC

Roslyn Weiss
two conjoined wholes are separated into two independent wholes, in the Genesis myth, one whole
becomes less than whole in order for there to be a second whole which contains a part of the original
whole which is no longer whole. We ought not, then, to think of Adam, who is the first human
creation, as the perfect specimen of a human being; it is in fact the woman who is most perfect. It is
she who not only lacks nothing, but even contains a part of Adam. Moreover, the woman never
experiences aloneness or lack. She never has to sacrifice a part of her body for her mate. She is born
into the world to satisfy the neediness of another; she herself is not needy.
Adam is delighted at the sight of the woman when they are first introduced to one another.
Finally, after having surveyed a host of unsuitable animals, he meets the mate who is just right. When
the woman is brought to him, he exclaims: “This one this time is bone of my bones and flesh of my
flesh; she will be called ‘woman’ because she was taken from ‘man’” (2:23). 2 There is no comparable
reaction on the part of the woman. It is not she who lacks something and is now acquiring what is
missing. She comes to man as whole, as independent, as complete—not as alone, dependent, and
missing a rib. It is perhaps not farfetched to infer from the Genesis myth that prelapsarian woman has
the upper hand. Whereas in Aristophanes’ myth there is no reason that both partners would not
equally desire their missing half, in the biblical narrative, the desire is initially decidedly one-way.
In order to appreciate the relationship between the biblical first man and first woman it may
perhaps be useful to think of the relation between a first-born child and a second, though the
comparison is not entirely apt. The first-born child is perfect, the apple of his or her parents’ eye. But
the child is alone. The parents produce a playmate for their child—a brother or sister. But all is not
rosy. Yes, the older child now has a sibling, born of the same parents, and so, automatically, someone
with whom the older child has much in common. But the older child also experiences significant loss:
no longer enjoying undivided parental affection, the child must adjust to not being the only child.
Since the younger child has never enjoyed undivided parental affection and has never been without a
sibling, he or she has significantly less adjusting to do.
One way in which a dependent and needy person might seek to ensure the survival of the
being on whom his own completion depends is by becoming over-protective. We have good reason to
think that this is precisely what Adam does. The prohibition of eating from the fruit of the tree of
knowledge of good and evil was issued to Adam alone 3 —before the creation of the woman. The
prohibition forbade eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for “on the day you eat from
it you will surely die” (Gen. 2:17). Although there were two trees planted in the center of the Garden
(2:9), both the tree of knowledge and the tree of life (2:9), the prohibition extended no farther than the
tree of knowledge. Moreover, the prohibition concerned only eating. When the woman reports the
prohibition to the Serpent in 3:3, she is able to correct the Serpent’s version of the prohibition: “You
may not eat from all the trees of the Garden” (3:1), but she herself has it wrong as well. Whereas she
believes correctly that the prohibition does not apply to all the trees of the Garden, she thinks
incorrectly that it applies to the fruit of the tree in the center of the Garden (rather than to the fruit of
just one of those trees) and that it includes a prohibition on touching it (3:3). Where could the woman
have gotten these ideas but from Adam? The woman is surely reporting what she has heard from the
man, who has apparently sought, by inflating the prohibition, to make doubly or triply sure that she
will not sin, thereby safeguarding her life on which he is dependent.
It is perhaps significant, in addition, that the woman is attracted to the fruit—not to the man.
The fruit fulfills all her yearnings: for physical pleasure, for aesthetic enjoyment, and for intellectual
fulfillment. “And the woman saw that the tree was good for eating and was a delight to the eyes and
that the tree was desirable for the purpose of becoming wise, and she took of its fruit and ate” (3:6).
One might say that the serpent cunningly directs the woman’s lust toward the fruit. 4
The difference between the equality of the two halves seeking completion in the Aristophanes
myth, stemming as it does from the wholeness in itself of each of the halves, with neither suffering a
loss of its wholeness in the separation from it of its other half, 5 and the asymmetry in the Genesis
myth between man and woman, creates a disparity in the complexity of the relationship between the
parties in the two cases. The Aristophanes myth seeks to account for why any two people are attracted
to one another, but not for why one might be more attracted than the other. The Genesis myth, by
contrast, sets for itself the task of explaining why the attraction is not even—and not simple. Chapter
2 We don’t know how Adam determined which names to assign to the animals.
3 Gen. 2:16-17. Note that after the sin, God says to Adam: “Hast thou eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee
(masculine sing.) that thou shouldst not eat ?”(2:11).
4 Certainly not to himself.
5 The equality in the Aristophanes myth appears to represent a deliberate departure from Pausanius’s speech where lover and
beloved are essentially unequal.
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