

Half Male, Half Female, Total Animal - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/13/symmetry/half-male-half-female-total-animal

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pingou
The end of the article reminded me of Chimera, a subject I find quite
interesting. [http://www.scq.ubc.ca/the-truth-about-
chimeras/](http://www.scq.ubc.ca/the-truth-about-chimeras/)

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ars
Not really the point of the article (which was very interesting), but Plato’s
Symposium is not the origin of the double body creation story, that's straight
from the bible.

God created man and woman as two halves of the same body, then split them
later. The reason for doing it that way is that when they marry and join
intimately, they recreate that original unity - only this time face to face
instead of back to back.

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blahedo
Where are you getting that? Gn 1 has "male and female he created them" with no
further detail, and the Gn 2 story has Eve being created from Adam's rib,
rather different from the double-body creation story.

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ars
The Talmud Eruvin 18a elucidates on this.

Think about it - first it says he created both male and female, yet apparently
there is just a single male. And only later does a female appear.

What actually happened is that he created male and female as a joint being,
and only later did he separate them.

The word "Rib" is a mistranslation, the correct translation is "Side". (Rib
doesn't make any sense anyway, Male and Female have the same number of ribs.)

