Naked and in Paradise! Creation of man in Latin [Classical]
Channel: Found in Antiquity: Latin
Date: 2022-08-13

This is the second of two stories of creation in Genesis, read in Latin from the Vulgate (Genesis 2:4-2:25). In this story, the drama begins to unfold when God makes Adam and for the first time declares something is not good: Adam is alone, and needs a helper for his work. God parades the animals before Adam, giving the man the authority to make names for all the beasts, but none of the animals is found suitable as a helper. This seems to intensify the idea that Adam is truly alone. At last God makes him fall asleep and secretly takes a rib bone out of Adam, which he fashions into a woman. When Adam sees this woman, he seems to erupt in song. He calls her "bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh" and names her after Man, his own very nature; she is like a matching piece taken from him that he has finally been reunited with, but they are meeting for the first time. In the midst of this narrative, God gives a warning that one of the trees of the Garden should not be eaten from, or you will die; all others are fine to eat. Humanity has not yet made its fatal choice. 

The Latin Vulgate first refers to the woman as 'mulier' when God makes her from Adam's rib, a perfectly normal word for 'woman' in Latin, but when Adam names her, he calls her 'virāgō' because she came from 'vir', 'man'. In Hebrew this works a lot better as the ordinary words for man and woman sound similar. But in Latin, 'virāgō' means specifically 'a female warrior': quite a fierce image. It feels like Jerome was stretching a little to try to get a word for woman in Latin that sounded like a word for man. 

📚 You can download a free pdf of these illustrated slides at my Patreon. Read at your own pace or share it with students! https://www.patreon.com/posts/70421671

📚 *NEW* I've made a free resource for this passage - a set of reading activities for pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading, designed to help learners process the language and meaning of the text. https://www.patreon.com/posts/genesis-2-latin-73590860

⛪ If you prefer to listen to this in the Ecclesiastical pronounciation, check out this video: https://youtu.be/DhoTnibxH1k 

📜 I will also make an Ancient Greek version, to be uploaded on @foundinantiquityancientgre8010 

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