The Creation of Woman

A Psychoanalytic Enquiry into the Myth of Eve

Theodor Reik

• Éditeur: Barakaldo Books
• Année: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781839743726
• Sujet: Psychologie
• Sous-sujet: Histoire et théorie en psychologie

Theodor R??k attempts to unravel the mystery of the Eve myth he bet gins with the two conflicting versions of the creation of woman in Genesis. In one passage, Genesis states that "God created man in his own image...male and female created he them, " and in a subsequent passage that God made Adam first and then created Eve out of Adam's rib. Various interpretations offered by the rabbis, the poets, theologians, and Biblical scholars are examined, and the author shows how the statement that Eve was fashioned from Adam's rib is still unexplained despite the efforts of higher criticism, anthropology, and the comparative science of religion.Dr. Reik offers a unique approach to the problem of the creation of woman, forming his own original and exciting assumptions. Using the findings of archaeology and anthropology as well as psychoanalysis, he explores the dark world of ritual, the tribal mysteries of primitive societies in which boys at puberty were supposed to die and be resurrected before they were permitted to marry Analytic comparison of the Eve myth with primitive ritual leads to the reconstruction of the primal form of the Biblical story and to the suggestion that it was not concerned with the birth of Eve but with the rebirth of the ancestral Adam. The author also suggests the possibility if a mother goddess in a still earlier phase: of the Hebrew religion.The late Theodor Reik is the author of Listening with the Third ?ar, The Secret Self, Myth and Guilt, and Mystery on the Mountain.

PART ONE—THE MYTH AND THE MYSTERY OF EVE

CHAPTER I—THE TWO STORIES

THE CREATION of man is a theme central to the myths of most primitive peoples and ancient civilizations. Yet it was at first no enigma. It became one only after a certain degree of self-awareness was reached, when man conceived of himself as a separate part of nature. Even then, the wish to know was not urgent, and curiosity about the origin of man was only casually expressed and easily satisfied. To a native of southern Australia it was sufficient to learn that Bunjil, the eagle hawk, made man and things. The Bushman was content with the information that Cagn, identified with the mantis insect, was the creator. Among the native tribes of America, the coyote, the crow, the raven or the hare played the chief role in the creation of man.

The first myths are, it seems to me, produced by, and meant for, men. They often become, it is true, old wives’ tales, but only long after they have been contemptuously dismissed by the men of the tribe. Women are more often occupied than preoccupied with the creation of man. Their imagination is not involved with the solution to the question of how the first human being was created. This is no problem for them: they know. It could not have been very different, they feel, from the manner in which their own children are born. The myths and legends of creation, including those of the Bible, presuppose an audience of men.

As long ago as 1683, C. Vitringa recognized a dual account of the creation of man in the opening chapters of Genesis. He recognized that the first and the second chapters present a striking discrepancy. In the first chapter the Lord is depicted as creating all living beings in the water and in the air, and forming all terrestrial animals. Then, last of all, on the sixth day He created man. Fashioned in God’s own image, man is the zenith of creation. Man and woman were produced simultaneously (“male and female created He them.”) When we turn to the second chapter, quite a different picture is presented: in contrast to and in contradiction with that first account we learn that God created man initially, then the lower animals and last of all—almost as an afterthought—woman, whom he fashioned from Adam’s rib.

The differences in order and content are obvious. The chronology in the two accounts is reversed. In the second narrative, mention is made of man having been created in the image of his Creator. He is formed of the dust of the ground and God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Only then did man become a living soul. In the first version the Lord appears as a creator; in the second as a molder and mover of man.

Biblical commentators add to these differences several others: in the first version God is called Elohim, while the second version employs a combination of Yahweh and Elohim. Furthermore, palpable dissimilarities in style occur. The one account, from the first chapter to the third verse of the second, the critics assert,{4} is systematic and stereotyped, verbose and chronological. In the second chapter there is a complete change in style: it is free, poetical and picturesque.

Bible critics traced these discrepancies back to the fact that the two accounts are derived from two separate main sources: an older one belonging to the Yahwist document and a later narrative written for the Priestly report. It should be mentioned en passant that the Yahwist story itself is by no means uniform. Several contradictions and anomalies are contained in it: the Paradise is, according to 11:8, situated in the far East; according to II:20, in the West land, and according to II:16, in the North. The expulsion from the Garden of Eden is told twice, the curse upon man is repeated, and so on. The two strands from which the Yahwist draws are usually differentiated as Jj and Ye.

We shall not enter into the discussion of the definition and division of the material according to sources. Biblical scholars, quoting chapter and verse, do not yet agree about them. It is also beyond the scope of this investigation to trace the individual sources back to mythological patterns of the people of the ancient Orient. Suffice it to say that the first account was often compared to the Assyro-Babylonian cosmogony with which some striking similarities were discovered. Several attempts were made to trace the Yahwist narrative of the creation of man to one or another mythological tale of some ancient people, but to date no such comparable account has been found. There is a possibility that we may discover a common Semitic tradition from which the two cosmogonies were descended.

The German scholar Gerhard von Rade recently compared the whole biblical account of the creation to a structure based upon two powerful mythological columns which we call the Yahwistic and the Priestly. Yet the same scholar has warned us not to overemphasize the definiteness of the traditions as they have come down to us.{5} He says that however late one dates the Yahwist editor, measured by the tradition included in his narrative, his written report “marks an end for that material which had already had a long history behind it.”{6} It is this old oral tradition much more than the actual Biblical text that interests us here.

A few remarks on the relation between the two sources from which the two editors took their material is necessary. Biblical scholars assume that the Yahwist, or the group of writers to whom they have given this name, is the older editor. His text was probably written about 850 B.C. in the Southern Kingdom of Judah. The Priestly document was written in the sixth century during the exile. The older narrative is richer in folklore and offers, as J. G. Frazer remarks, “more points of comparison with the childlike stories by which man in many ages and countries have sought to explain the great mystery of the beginning of life on earth.” Most scholars concluded from the age of the Yahwist editor that he has preserved many features of primitive simplicity which the later Priestly document has effaced. Yet the fact that the Yahwist has retained those features does not necessarily mean that the saga material he used is itself older and more primitive than that of his later colleague.

It is quite possible that the Yahwist (although he comes at least two hundred and fifty years earlier than the Priestly editor and is simpler and more primitive in his treatment of sagas) could have drawn from younger story material than the other, who dealt with the tradition in a more “modern” manner. We are inclined to forget that both editors were primarily story tellers, and that their chief purpose was the preservation and transmission of traditions which had lived for many hundreds of years in the Hebrew tribes and which had been told at campfires and in tents.

The age in which a writer lives and his manner of writing are not the only factors decisive in determining the period to which the subject matter belongs. Shakespeare wrote the story of Richard the Second, who reigned not so long before his time; and our contemporary poet, Richard Beer-Hofman, wrote a verse tragedy about King David. In other words, it is conceivable that the Priestly editor, although he lived so much later, used older material than did his predecessor. The Yahwist, in dealing with the same general material—for instance, with the creation of woman—might have chosen a much more recent version of the oral tradition of the people for his account in Genesis.

In order to clear the deck, another aspect of the question of the two main sources must be considered. It immediately brings us close to our special subject. The discrepancies between the two Biblical accounts were, of course, noticed very early. The rabbis of Talmudic times reflected upon them often and tried to harmonize the contradictory narratives. So did the church fathers and their successors, the Christian theologians. Some commentators of our age have also made desperate, if futile, attempts at reconciliation in this direction. While modern Biblical criticism is content to state the differences of the versions and to trace them back to their origin in the two main sources of tradition, rigid defenders of the unity of the Bible either deny the existence of any disharmonies or casually rationalize and minimize them.

In restricting ourselves to the treatment of our subject, which is the myth of the creation of woman, we shall sketch the main answers that have been given to the questions raised by the two contradictory versions. Folklore itself found an ingenious way of bringing the two accounts into agreement: if, in the one version, God created man as male and female, and, in the other, woman was fashioned from Adam’s rib, our earliest ancestor must have been a widower or a “divorced” man when the Lord led Eve to him. Or did Adam have two wives at one time? This might bring the two Biblical narratives into harmony. Some legends tell us that there was another woman in Adam’s life before Eve appeared. Her name was Lilith. The figure of Lilith is perhaps originally that of a Babylonian night-demon. Lilith was supposed to have been Adam’s first wife, created out of earth just as he was, and together with him. According to the legend this first wife of Adam remained with him only a short time and then left him, because she insisted on enjoying full equality with him. She flew away and vanished into thin air. Adam complained about this to the Lord, saying that his wife had deserted him; the angels then found her in the Red Sea. Lilith, however, refused to return to her husband and lived on as an evil demon who injured newborn babies.{7} This saga, to be found in the Zohar, has been retained by some Jews in the ghettos of the East. Older sources already speak of a “first Eve.” In some legends Lilith appears as male and female.

The other way in which the discrepancies between the two stories of the creation were dealt with was to deny their existence. Rigid defenders of the fundamentalist view put forward all kinds of sophistic and misleading arguments, based on unsound reasoning, but persuasive for the believers. Thus, it has often been stated that the second chapter of Genesis does not present a new narrative of the creation, but simply sets forth in greater detail the story of the creation of man.

It was argued that the scholars who insist on different sources make an arbitrary assumption and create a contradiction where none exists. From this point of view, the second chapter is not a duplicate but a sequel to the first, whose content it duly regards. The story of the creation is not told again; the intention of the author was not, as modern critics maintain, to treat the same subject again and in a different manner. According to this argument the narrator did not invert the chronological order in which the creation took p...

Table des matières

• Title page
• Table of Contents
• DEDICATION
• Introduction
• PART ONE-THE MYTH AND THE MYSTERY OF EVE
• PART TWO-THE SOLUTION
• POSTSCRIPT