EVOLUTION AND THE BIBLE 



woman. He fills up with flesh the gap left by the excision of 

 the rib. He takes the woman by the hand and brings her to 

 Adam. The whole chapter moves on a plane of imagery. God 

 molds the clay, breathes forth His breath, extracts a rib, builds 

 up a body around it. All these verbs involve imagery; is not 

 the same true of the nouns that are the objects of the verbs? 

 The dust of the earth stands for the material element in man. 

 Likewise the rib seems to symbolize the woman's human 

 nature, for she has her nature in dependence on the man. The 

 central fact conveyed by the account, at every stage of which 

 a striking picture fascinates the unsophisticated reader or 

 hearer, seems to come to this: once God had created the male, 

 He had to create the female. For the man's existence, God 

 had intervened with a special action; in the same way He 

 intervened in the creation of the other being who was to be 

 the man's associate. Perfect counterpart of the man, she 

 becomes truly his aid by her union with h:m in marriage. This 

 equality in nature, which was not appreciated in the ancient 

 Orient, even in Israel where woman was held to be inferior to 

 man, is thus clearly acknowledged. 



What is important in the biblical account is not the manner 

 of Eve's creation, but the doctrinal teaching. The circumstances 

 of the narrative are to be regarded as literary dressing and 

 symbolic setting, without corresponding to objective historical 

 reality. 



This interpretation of the text seems to be in line with the 

 wise rules of exegesis issued by the Holy See these latter 

 years. Pius XII in Divino a[[lanfe Spiritu encourages biblical 

 scholars to seek new ways of discovering the sacred author's 

 meaning. And he reminds them that they have freedom of 

 investigation in all matters that have not been defined by the 

 Church. The encyclical goes on to state that there are very 

 few texts in the Bible whose sense has been authentically 

 declared by the Church, and very few which the Fathers 

 explain unanimously or propose as pertaining to faith. ^ In 

 the present stage of biblical science it is scarcely possible to 

 arrive at a certain solution of all the problems raised by the 

 early chapters of Genesis, but some success has been achieved 



8 AAS 35 (1943) 319. 

 100 



