As a coach, the one thing that probably drove my players bonkers the most, was the fact that I would make them conduct small drills at the beginning of the season before they could move into actually playing the game. This was because I believed that when we understand the small stuff, it is easier understand the big stuff. You won’t be able to understand how to consistently field a ground ball, if you do not understand how to properly watch the ball into the mitt.
And it’s this very idea of understanding small things that brings us back to our series, where we’re looking at short form videos, published on social media sites like TikTok, that try to condense theological, historical, and biblical ideas into less than one minute. Through these types of videos, people attain their TikTok theological degrees, where now they regurgitate what they heard, as if it were true.
In our first week we looked at an individual who made the claim that the concept of eternal conscious torment and hell were not found in the Bible. We walked through the claims and found out that the concept was there. With the understanding moving forward that the reason why we participate in learning how to defend our faith is so that we may breakdown arguments and point people to Jesus, because that’s what God calls us to.
In our second week, we took time to talk about how our faith is historical and so when people challenge that history, we need to be prepared to give an answer there as well. Because of this, we looked at a video that tried to take a little bit of the truth of history and muddle it with conspiracy theories that couldn’t even get correct dates and times. In each of these cases, we looked at resources that we could use to help us wrestle the truth from the lies.
This week we are going to look at the video that prompted this whole series. This video is entitled, “How Adam’s ‘Rib’ is Mistranslated” and is by a YouTuber named Christopher, who’s channel is called “magnify.” Currently Christopher has around 564 thousand subscribers, with almost 360 million views. As of late, he is gaining around 1-3 million views per day. Often when giving his opinions, especially on word usage, he stands in front of a shelf in a library. Typically when someone does this, it’s to give more weight to their opinions, with interviewers encouraging experts to place themselves in front of a bookcase background, to give the impression that they use those books in their research.
Let’s take a look at Christopher’s video on Adam’s rib: https://youtube.com/shorts/FN4pVp6lNJ0?si=ArQj4kBeD
The claim that this YouTuber is making is that the word that we translate as rib in Genesis 2:21-22 is incorrect. The reason, he believes that the word is incorrectly translated, is because the translators are trying to perpetuate a misogynistic worldview that seeks to subjugate women. So, let’s tackle those two claims.
First on the docket is the claim that the word rib is incorrectly translated. So the first thing we need to do, is actually read the verses in question. We always need to actually read the verse, or passage, that is being discussed so that we can have it in our mind and to keep us true to the text.
Genesis 2:21-22 reads, “21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.”
The word we’re focusing on is the word that translates from Hebrew to rib(s). Christopher is correct in saying that the root word here is "tesla (tsay-law).” I know it looks like Tesla, and my autocorrect was hard to correct me, but it’s not. The definition of the word through our biblehub.com app is, “rib or side.” Tesla is used forty-one times throughout the Bible, and we can break down that usage into four categories of interpretation. The first category is what we just read, which is rib, as in human rib, and there are only two occurrences of tesla being translated in this way. The next category is as being side-by-side, and it’s used this way one time in the book of Job (18:12). The third category is in reference to rooms on the side of a building, in places like 1 Kings (6:5, 8; 7:3) and Ezekiel (41:5, 6 [3x]; 7, 8, 9 [2x], 11, 26), these occur fourteen times. The final category is when the tesla is used when talking about a type of structural support. Something like the side of the hill, or sides of a box, or sides of a door; this occurs twenty-four times in places like Exodus (25:12 [2x], 14; 26:20, 26,27 [2x], 35 [2x]; 27:7; 30:4; 36:25, 31, 32, 37:3 [2x], 5, 27; 38:7), 2 Samuel (16:13), and 1 Kings (6:15 [2x], 16, 34)
That’s a lot of information, but it does aid his argument, that it seems like the word is being mistranslated, because the other occurrences are not human ribs.
So let’s look at how this passage is translated in our English Bibles. I looked at fifty-seven translations on biblegateway.com, the other resource we pointed to two weeks ago, and out of those fifty-seven, forty-nine translated tesla as “rib" (KJ21, ASV, AMP, AMPC, BRG, CSB, CEB, CJB, CEV, DARBY, DRA, ERV, EHV, ESV, ESVA, EXB, GNV, GW, GNT, HCSB, ICB, ISV, KJV, AKJV, LSB, LEB, TLB, MSG, MEV, NOG, NABRE, NASB, NASB1995, NCB, NIRV, NIV, NIVUK, NKJV, NRSVA, NRSVACE, NRSVCE, NRSVUE, RSV, RSVCE, TLV, VOICE, WEB, WYC, YLT), five (AMPC [both words], EHV [foot note], EXB [note], NLT [footnote] OJB [both words]) translated it as “rib” with either a footnote saying “side” or a note alongside the translation with using both “side and rib.” Two of the fifty-seven (JUB, NET Bible) used only the word “side.” With the New Life Version translation being unique by translating it as, "He took one of the bones from his side…”
What’s interesting about these last three translations is their hyper-specific in who or what they are trying reach or achieve. The Jubilee Bible is an English translation based off of a Spanish translation. The New English Translation is specifically translated with scholars in mind. Finally the story behind the New Life Version, is that it came out of the missionary work to the Eskimos in the Canadian Arctic, where it tried to shrink the word use to only 850, there by making it easier for a non-English speaker to learn to read it.
With an understanding of the word and it’s translations by English scholars, let’s talk about why “tesla” is translated as “rib” most of the time and not “side.”
Reason #1 is the context of the verse itself. The Hebrew structure of the sentence reads, “in its place, the flesh, and closed up, of his tesla, one.” The word “tesla” refers to the side of something, but the sentence structure points us to something that is not simply a piece of a side or the side itself, but rather one thing very specific. This one thing was within Adam, which was why we’re told that God closed back up an opening, with flesh. So we have to ask, what one thing, from the side of a human could be taken out? For 86% of the English translators, that one thing is a “rib”.
But, we don’t just look at the context of the verse. When doing word studies like this, we have to look at how the word is used in other contexts as well. The use of “tesla" in other passages of Scripture incorporate structural aspects and not simply sides. In Exodus 25:14 it’s the sides of the Ark of the Covenant. In Exodus 26:20 it is the sides of the tabernacle. In 2 Samuel 16:13 it’s the side of the hill. Now taking those contexts of a structural approach and then applying that thought process to a person, what is structural within humans, that incorporates going into the flesh that needs to be then re-covered? Medically speaking, we know this structure as our skeleton and our rib cage keeps our organs and other vital systems from moving around, which in turn helps with function, and protects those organs from outside trauma (https://medlineplus.gov/anatomy.html).
So the idea of a rib makes sense in this case. Because a rib, can be use in speaking about something holding the side of hill in place, a boat structure, the structure of a building, and the structure of a human.
Reason #2 that “tesla” is translated as “rib” is beaus the alternative wouldn’t actually be and alternative. Christopher states, “In the Bible there’s actually a proper anatomic word for a word bone. It’s the Aramaic word ‘Ala’ and we see it in places like Daniel…” First, like Christopher mentions, the anatomic word “ala” (al-ah) is Aramaic in origin, that’s really important. This means that the word would have occurred much later in the development of language, than the word “tesla”. In fact Genesis is written around 1425 BC, while Daniel is written around 530 BC; this means that there is about 900 years of time in which language can change. Aramaic itself did come into use until roughly 1000 BC and didn’t become a common language until the 700s BC. Meaning the word “ala” wouldn’t have been available for early Hebrew writers. This not only helps understand why “tesla” is used (https://study.com/academy/lesson/aramaic-language-origin-alphabet.html#:~:text=Aramaic is believed to have,-day) Israel/Palestine).
So when the Hebrew language was earlier in it’s development, a simpler word like tesla, that incorporates other ideas and isn’t hyper-specific, would make sense. In fact it’s this very idea which is the basis for the purpose of the New Life Version we mentioned earlier. Instead of using a lot of words, the language in the New Life Version was simplified. Where in English we are hyper-specific in our words, the Hebrew language isn’t always like that.
Reason #3, and our final reason, is “tesla” is the translation of “rib” that the Greek speaking Hebrews chose to go with. The story goes that Demetrius, the royal librarian for King Ptolemy the second, around the late 200s BC, called upon the Jewish High Priest to get seventy-two elder from the twelve tribes to translate the Hebrew Scriptures in Greek for the royal library. This translation became known as the Septuagint, meaning seventy, roughly referencing the number of elders who translated the Hebrew text (https://biblearchaeology.org/research/new-testament-era/4022-a-brief-history-of-the-septuagint#:~:text=The Origins of the Septuagint,(285-246 BC).
And it’s the Septuagint translation that the New Testament writers based their interpretations on, and it became the accepted translation of the Hebrew Scriptures for the early Church.
So with all that in mind, we can begin to see why the word “tesla” is translated as rib. (1) It’s context, both in the verse and it’s use in other areas, speaks to a structural idea, (2) it’s more than likely the only Hebrew word available at that time, and (3) it’s how the ancient Hebrews and the early Church believed it should be translated.
But what about Christopher’s claim that it’s translated as rib because of misogyny? Christopher states, “But, you know if you’re interested in promoting a worldview in which women are subordinate to men, it doesn’t really help you to have an origin story where Eve comes from an equal part of Adam you kind of like the vibe of Eve coming from this tiny insignificant rib.”
So the question arises, is this how Christians, across denominational lines, interpret this passage? Because you’re always going to have people and individual groups mishandle God’s word and try to use it for their own purposes. But how has the Church understood it and interpreted it? Looking at different Christian traditions I found one consistent interpretation.
On the website gotquestions.org they state, “God used Adam’s rib to form Eve—He used existing tissue and did not ‘start from scratch’—to show that Adam and Eve were of the same substance; she was made from the same ‘stuff’ and was a bearer of God’s image and likeness, just as Adam was (see Genesis 1:27). The woman made of Adam’s rib was designed to be a companion and ‘helper suitable’ for Adam (Genesis 2:18). Eve, formed from a physical part of Adam, was truly his complement, an integral part of who he was. As such, she was a perfect companion (https://www.gotquestions.org/Adams-rib.html).”
In Jonathan Oakes article on answering this very question, Oakes writes, “Either way, translation aside, I am not sure that there is a vast difference in meaning between the two, but scholars and theologians have tended to believe that, whether we translate it as ribs or not, the connotation of the passage is that Eve came from Adam’s side. The idea is that Eve came from the side of Adam–emphasizing their equality before God. This is a beautiful metaphor in my opinion. (https://evidenceforchristianity.org/what-is-the-correct-meaning-of-the-word-normally-translated-as-adams-rib-in-the-creation-account/)."
In an interview, Fr. Jason Charron stated, “The Hebrew word for the main support beams of Solomon’s Temple is tsela. The Temple is where the Israelites worshiped God. It contained the life-giving divine services that preserved the Chosen People’s faith. The same word is used for the sides of the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark holds within it — like a womb — the tablets of the Law, manna, and Aaron’s rod. Note that all of these are types pointing to Christ. But here’s where it gets crazy. The word tsela is used in the Book of Genesis for the rib of Adam. This means that woman is made from tsela. Scripture compares women to the Temple and Ark of the Covenant. Just think about what that says about the nobility of women! They embody the sanctuary that gives life to the whole universe. And…Mary…contained within her the High Priest, Bread of Life, and fulfillment of the Law of Moses (https://pintswithaquinas.com/why-eve-was-made-from-adams-rib/).”
In my own treatment of this passage, we have talked about the intentionality of God with the creation of both man and woman. Man is created from dirt, outside of the garden, and brought into the place that God calls peace. The woman is created out of the need of the man for companionship and help. She is created from his rib, the side of the man, not his head as if she was to rule over him, nor his feet that she should be walked upon, and she is created in the garden, where God’s peace and presence walk.
But it’s not just Christian’s who hold this perspective. In an article on the subject from a Jewish Orthodox Magazine, they state, “Irrespective of whether woman was created from a side or a rib, she was created from ‘bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh’, and in that manner differed from the rest of the creatures, over whom Adam was to have dominion. The Midrash notes that unlike all other species in which male and female were created simultaneously from the same raw material, Adam was created from raw material and [Eve] from Adam, in order to maximize their affinity for each other. The question of whether a rib or a side was used is a technicality; what emerges from the creation story is the equality of the two genders (https://jewishaction.com/religion/jewish-thought/whats_the_truth_about_adams_spare_rib/).”
What Christopher, and people like him try to do, is to take a minor translation issue and blow it up to achieve what he accuses others of doing, using Scripture as a way to perpetrate a worldview. Christopher is trying to undermine the Scriptures by calling it misogynistic, whereas the worldwide of the Scriptures is the elevation of both men and women to the image of God and exposing the sin that causes the strife between the sexes we see today.
God’s goal is to return us to a state of garden perfection, which was destroyed by our sinful rebellion. God achieves this return through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and will fully restore us to that perfect relationship between God and humanity, and man and woman, when Jesus returns and brings us fully into his eternal kingdom.
And this is the point, we will always have this conflict in our world between the sexes, because of sin. It’s only through Christ, and learning to love him and submit to him, that we will find peace and true equality. It’s when we live out the created order of the garden under the headship of Christ, that peace occurs, then words like misogyny loose their bite.
My challenge for you this week is to do a word study of your own. Seek God for a verse to grab a word from, or if you’re not seeing where God is leading, choose a verse that holds meaning to you. Find an interesting word in that verse and look it up. See where that word and the Holy Spirit leads you, and what deeper meaningful understanding you can glean. Remember you can use the biblehub.com resource we used today.
Paul in his 2nd letter to Timothy wrote these words in the second chapter verse 15, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.” Let us be a people who rightly handle the word of God, so that we may bring him glory as we share his life with others. Amen.
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