Biblical Misinterpretations: In the Beginning

While I don’t plan on doing this series in the order in which these passages appear in the Bible, I did find it fitting to start with Genesis and the misunderstanding of the story of Adam and Eve as reason for why same sex relationships are wrong. As many of you have might know, it was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve and that is why same-sex attraction is wrong. Since we have established that as the truth ipso facto, there is no reason to continue. Ugh, gag me. I hate when people try to pull that one. If ever you wanted to sound like an uneducated person or a second grader, that is a sure way to do it. To dumb down Genesis like that is as offensive as it is absolutely wrong.
Before I go in to explaining why these thirst two chapters of Genesis speak about loving, committed monogamous relationships, we must first establish what the first two chapters in the Books of Genesis are. To do this, I will be using the theories of Joseph Campbell and his main body of work “The Power of Myth.” Applying the word ‘myth’ to anything in the Bible is not a snub to it but merely a literary means of classifying a type of story found in the Bible; it gives the reader a frame work to begin dissecting the text. When Greeks and Romans heard stories like that of the Judgement of Paris, they did not believe it was a story of historical non-fiction. According to Campbell, stories like those we now read in literature classes were a means by which morally acceptable behavior was learned and passed on to younger generations. Since the books now part of the Bible were not written in a cultural vacuum, this tradition would not have been lost on the author of Genesis. Following the model of Campbell, one of the many lenses with which we can examine the first two chapters of Genesis would be to look at it as a myth of creation (NOT Creationism).
So now that we have established what the first two chapters of Genesis is, it is time to dissect the words. Let’s look at the second story of creation because it was the first one written. English lacks the depth and complexities which a language like Hebrew has. In 2:7 we are told that God creates man. That is how it reads in english; however, there is a rich play on Hebrew words here. The word adam means ‘man,’ as in human. It sounds very much like the Hebrew word adama, meaning ‘ground,’ since God created humans from the clay of earth in this story. At this point, the human which God has created is neither male nor female in Hebrew, it is merely an androgynous being (literally soul). Skip down to verse 18 where it reads “The Lord God said: “It is not good for the (hu)man to be alone. I will make a suitable partner for him.” Again, in the Hebrew, the pronoun used has no gender and the word “partner” can literally be translated as ‘help-mate.’ So God takes a rib from adam and creates a suitable partner for the first human. It is at 2:23 that we have the first use of gender specifying words in Hebrew; it is a play on similar sounding words ishsha (woman) and ishah (her man, her husband). When we read the end of verse 24, we see that the ‘two become one body.’ The Hebrew writer here is stressing that this union is willed by God.
When God creates the first human, that adam is lonely; all of God’s creation is grandiose and wonderful, but none of it gazes back with true love and passion and equality. God, seeing this loneliness provides adam with a partner who looks on ishah the same way ishah looks upon ishsha. When God explains the reasoning for creating a partner, God does not say that this partner is for procreation only; we are not like the other animals for our partner is for companionship. The “be fruitful and multiply” verse is found in the first story of creation. Indeed, although same-sex partners cannot literally procreate, they can adopt and become loving parents, just as countless opposite-sex couples do.
In my opinion, the message of Genesis is not to say that humans are partnered solely for procreation, but rather something far more deep and far more transformative. The ability of humans to enter into monogamous, caring and meaningful relationships is that which makes us most like the Divine. Further, the creation stories say less about human sexuality than it does about God; they speak volumes about God’s love and power in the universe. The real message here is that God has placed us as the peak of creation and called us “very good.”