Man and Woman (Rabel)

Man and Woman

Now let’s go on with our discussion of Genesis. We’re now in Chapter 2, verses 22, 23 and 24: “And the rib which the Lord had taken from man and made he a woman and brought her unto the man.” And here we come to another sparkling incongruity, inconsistency. “And Adam said, ‘This is now bone of my bone.'” Now, he was sound asleep when this occurred, and he had just awakened, and he said, “This is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.” Did he have a local anesthetic or was he asleep when it happened?

Now, here’s something else; here’s another startling incongruity. I want to see if you can catch this, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife.” Where’s mama and papa around here? These are the only two people, and she’s just been brought forth, and he’s already talking about leaving mama and papa and getting married and all this. What a fast worker! See, right here you could blast the literalists apart, common sense. I’m surprised that in the Scopes trial, this is before many of your time. It took place in 1923 in Tennessee where William Jennings Bryan had a courtroom debate with Clarence Darrow, because the State of Tennessee made it illegal to teach the Darwinian theory, because it did not go along with Genesis; and so the case was brought to court, and William Jennings Bryan defended the literal factualism of the Bible; and Clarence Darrow tore him apart, just made a public ridicule of him; and still he lost the case. Tennessee still forbade the teaching. Nevertheless, I’m wondering why Clarence Darrow didn’t zero in on this, and there are some more that we’ll come to. But when you realize what the writer of Genesis is attempting, then this kind of incongruity doesn’t bother you.

We know that Adam is the basic ability to think; and from this basic ability to think, the Lord God or the Lord of our Being has extended or expanded another dimension of the ability to think, and it is now woman, or the ability to feel. These two components shall cleave together and become one. We call that one factor that these two components form, thinking and feeling—Consciousness, the self-conscious individual. So, they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed, meaning that in our basic, primary thinking and feeling natures there is nothing to be ashamed of, or, all is good. Primarily, basically, essentially all of your thinking nature, all of your feeling nature is good; there is nothing to be ashamed of, yet.

Transcribed by Bill Nelson on 01-12-2015