As I was listening to the endowment ceremony, one thing struck me. Of course it is in the Bible, so I’m not sure why it took me so long to notice this. We all know that according to the Bible, Adam was created first, out of dirt. When Eve was created, however, a rib from Adam was used. Adam calls Eve in Genesis 3:20 “the mother of all living.” If Eve was created from Adam, isn’t he really the Mother of all living? What do you make of this built in contradiction?
Mormon, Mormon Belief, Science and Religion, Women
Adam: The Mother of all Living?
Wheat & Tares 
Thanks for breaking from the storm clouds of excommunication and taking us back to Adam and Eve, which is a much more beautiful subject!
In Hebrew, Eve is called Hawwah, the “living one” or “source of life.” Adam in Hebrew means “human.”
Like many of the names in the Bible, their names tell stories about their role. Adam is humankind (we consider ourselves as if we were respectively Adam and Eve). Humankind looks to it’s mother Eve, and names her “the source of life,” the “mother of all living.”
Adam is the creator of the understanding and interpretation of life, as he names the creations, including his wife. God does not teach him the names, God invites him to interpret and name things himself. He, (as collective humankind), looks back upon his creation and understands it in this way. Eve is both his mother, and his wife, and his child, as she comes from his rib. That is his understanding, both as a metaphysical symbol of human spiritual ethos, and as the mechanical father of humankind.
I don’t really understand the whole rib thing, which to me sounds like a bizarre eccentricity of some prehistoric religious understanding that found it’s way into the modern Bible. But I think people can find value in it’s symbolism: that a woman’s place is at a man’s side, that he should protect her as part of himself. But one can also find likely misogynist interpretations, which point to the innequality and inferiority of women in ancient religious understanding.
I don’t presume to understand this issue in its entirety, but I have seen the resolution of this apparent contradiction in the introduction of the forbidden fruit to Adam. Eve partook of the forbidden fruit herself, introducing her into mortality. She gave the forbidden fruit to Adam, introducing him into mortality. And, through her, all other spirit children of the Father entered mortality. Thus she is the mother of all mortals who have ever lived.
I don’t know if that is right, but it has a certain elegance to it that is persuasive to me.
At the moment Adam called her Eve and said “because she is the mother of all living,” there were no “living.” Adam and Eve had not yet had any children. We know there was a spiritual creation followed by a physical creation. Could Adam and Eve be somewhat generic names for those that are the first to dwell physically upon the earth? Could it be that Adam and Eve are a type and shadow of our heavenly parents? I don’t really know. Either way, I don’t think I would consider Adam to be the mother of all living.
Or, all of the Creation “story,” both in scripture and in the temple are an allegory and figurative. I mean dirt being cloned into a man and his rib being cloned into a woman. Let alone the problem with the missing female chromosomes…etc, etc….
If the story helps one be a better person, it can be defended as righteous, even if not truthful.
I’m not prone to taking the Genesis story too literally. The best explanation I’ve heard for the rib thing is that it symbolizes that man is not complete without woman. That’s an analogy that quickly falls apart when stretched too far, but I’m happy to say that the analogy cuts both ways, and that woman is not complete without man. A more politically correct phrasing of it might be that the two together are greater than the sum of their parts.
Beyond that, I suspect that the people being taught by Moses when he initiated this allegory would have understood that “Adam” means mankind and is as generic a name as “Eve.” I’m not convinced that they believed there was literally one man and one woman, but that the generic characters were meant to be placeholders for individuals.
“I don’t really understand the whole rib thing, which to me sounds like a bizarre eccentricity of some prehistoric religious understanding that found it’s way into the modern Bible.”
I agree whole-heartedly!
It seems to me that when Judaism was formed, most of the other “heathen” religions were goddess worshipers. Judaism, by contrast, had a male god, and the creation story was a rejection of heathen religious focus on feminine divine.
I think that if Eve is the mother of all living, it makes sense that all living come from women, but this idea that Eve came from man’s rib doesn’t make sense from an evolutionary point of view.
Alan Moore wrote in Promethea:
Justin that’s just plain cool-thanks for sharing the poem.
Adam is the physical father of all mankind-God is the creator of all souls and possibilities. We call God the father in that sense of his benevolent live and guidance, but Adam is the present father in physical form. Kinda like Joseph being a Dad for Jesus.
Eve is the mother of all mankind.
The term God denotes perfection. There can be no greater manifestation humankind than this word conveys. LDS understand that God means perfected man and woman. In other words, God is not a single man as He is often depicted.
Then there is the doctrine that Adam and Eve were brought here (the earth) as celestial beings. However, this doctrine isn’t supported in the scriptures.
Jared [#9] said:
Then what does it mean to you [I by that I mean a generic “you” — as in what does it mean to anyone reading, not just Jared] that the LDS church declares:
???
Can you still say that in LDS liturgy and discourse that:
???
Who is it that depicts “him” that way? Where is the female component to “God” in the LDS temple liturgy? Is She there?
oops, I meant to write:
Sorry.
Well, when the Brethren scrubbed the Endowment of every vestige of the Adam-God Theory that they could, they chose to leave in the line about Eve being the Mother of All Living. It is, after all, found in the Genesis account, and it seemed innocuous enough.
But, yes, earlier generations of Mormons who were raised on the Adam-God theory understood that line to mean that the exalted female character who is the Mother of our immortal spirits condescended to leave her heavenly home for a time and come to this earth, become mortal for a time, and beget mortal, physical tabernacles for some of her spirit children. it was the original Genesis Project. In this role, she assumed the name-title Eve.
That may or may not be true — and various LDS may or may not agree with it — but the fact remains that an “exalted female character who is the Mother of our immortal spirits condescended to leave her heavenly home for a time and come to this earth, become mortal for a time, and beget mortal, physical tabernacles for some of her spirit children” is simply a person’s extrapolation into oral canon of the temple liturgy and the written canon of the standard works.
If a “heavenly Mother” was such an “obvious doctrine” [as some seem to suggest that LDS theology says that She is], then we wouldn’t need to hunt-and-peck for Her — here-or-there among this-or-that randomly quoted source. If SHE is God, then She should be as obvious to us as God the Father or Jesus Christ are. You shouldn’t have to say, “Oh well, if you lived in Utah in the 1850s” or “If you paid careful enough attention to the true meaning of the endowment“, etc.
If we’re a church with legitimate “modern revelation”, then Brother Thomas [or his predecessors] should have been able to make this whole issue immediately obvious to everyone by declaring a revelation from heaven stating whether or not women exist as “God” in the heavens and [given that] what their role is to look like here on earth.
Jared, thanks for commenting. I hope you enjoy these types of posts more, and I hope you continue to offer your well read opinions.
To all, if Jared is rights in that “LDS understand that God means perfected man and woman”, is it unreasonable to assume that the Holy Ghost is female and an active member of the Godhead? I mean why wouldn’t Heavenly Mother be a part of the Godhead? And whether she is the Holy Ghost or not, why is He/She a personage of spirit? Perhaps that indicates more than anything that the Holy Ghost is not God’s wife, but I think Heavenly Mother being absent from the Godhead is strange if God has a wife.
Hence, if God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost are all male, it is easy to ask why Heavenly Mother is so absent from all of scripture. (I don’t buy “God is protecting her” justification, just FYI.) If She is God, why is she so absent all the time?
I thought the whole “rib” thing was a play on words- a pun among the author and fellow scribes. Apparently, Genesis is full of this kind of thing that we just don’t have the cultural context to pick up on. I don’t remember the details, but David Bokovoy was talking about it on the Mormon Matters Genesis podcast.
I am trying to figure out what it all means, that women are supposedly co-creators with God as our divine purpose, yet here at the creation of humankind we have women doing no creating whatsoever.
Sorry to be simple but…no gestation = no mother.
You could probably say that God did more of the effort/creation than Adam as well.
Also, if you extend the concept Eve would be his daughter and that makes things a tad bit weird.
Justin, perhaps you are not aware that one of President Monson’s predecessors DID try to make all this clear. I recommend to anyone interested on the subject to read brother Rodney Turner’s master’s thesis: The Position of Adam in Latter-day Saint Scripture and Theology. On page 21 of the Thesis, an entry from the journal of L. John Nuttall is quoted. It was these words of Brigham Young’s that were used for a lecture at the veil of the temple for a few decades after President Young passed away. I am not saying that Adam-God was widely believed. I am saying that – for Mormons who attended the temple during those years – it was difficult to NOT BE AWARE of the teaching.
I am not advocating belief in the Adam-God Theory; merely sharing historical tidbits.
Very respectfully.
Noah’s daughters slept with him, and the Bible doesn’t call that weird. (But I get what you’re saying.)
Well, at least one person gets it. A +1 to Richard. We do not teach the Adam-God Theory, We teach the Adam-God Doctrine. Brigham Young was sustained Prophet, Seer, and Revelator by all members and even all the Apostles while he tried to teach the truth. What is called the Theory is man’s erroneous interpretation of BY’s words. The Doctrine is what is taught in the Temple. Adam knew Eve was the Mother of all Living because she was. Not she was going to be; and she was not the mother of elephants or any other creature, either. Adam is a title. Eve is a title. The Temple is not about the past but about the future. Adam was not the first man. Think ETERNITY folks. Think Eternal Progression.
To Mormon Heretic #14. ” If She is God, why is she so absent all the time?”
Maybe because there is more than one Heavenly Mother.
I often wonder this – if I’m taught over and over again that a woman’s “role” is creation of life . . . why are women absent from the portrayal of creation of life? BRM taught women were amongst the noble and great ones who created the earth . . . be nice to have that represented.
Justin, the reason we shy away from directly teaching Adam-God is the same reason the higher teachings were taken from Israel and given in it’s place the Ten Commandments. Line upon line, precept upon precept. When we are ready we will be taught.
Hold yer horses! We all know Adam was the first? Not true!
When we’re in the temple, we need to pay attention to specific words, namely create vs. organized. They are not the same and that distinction will help to clarify this.
Hugh Nibley also explains that Adam was not the first in his paper Patriarchy and Matriarchy: “So who was the more important? Eve is the first on the scene, not Adam, who woke up only long enough to turn over to fall asleep again; and then when he really woke up he saw the woman standing there, ahead of him, waiting for him.”
Finally, the 20th comment here, that’s a really terrible thing to throw out there. Comments like that have the potential to hurt, deeply hurt women to the point of suicide even. Don’t do that. Please.