Genetic engeneering in Genesis

Genesis 2:21f
"So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man." NIV

First he puts Adam into narcosis. Then he takes out a "tsela"/rib out of Adam and "banah"/makes Eve. TSELA is the Hebrew word used for rib, and this is an interesting word indeed. Etymologically and semantically it is the exact same word as the Greek word CELL, meaning a small enclosed room in a building as in prison cell. BANAH is translated "make" in NIV, but "build" is a more exact translation.

How can you build using one single thing? And a rib? Reading this passage in Hebrew gives many possible translations. Below is an alternate translation edited by me based on the NIV text and the Hebrew source:

Genesis 2:21f
"So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took all of the man's cells and closed up the male organ down there. Then the Lord God built a woman from a cell he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man."

Not long ago scientists proclaimed that they had been able to produce sperm cells from bone cells and actually managed to produce mice in the lab. The same technique could be used to produce humans. Using skin cells scientists are now making stemcells.

Reuters on bone-cell-sperm
Washington Post on skin-cell-stemcells

[edit on 2/4/2008 by Neo Christian Mystic]

Another interesting thing having to do with genetics you will find in the Law.

De 25:5 If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family. Her husband's brother shall take her and marry her and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to her. 6 The first son she bears shall carry on the name of the dead brother so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel.

Now this is a strange custom and it is actually supported by modern science. For the males of a family all share the exact same Y chromosome, it is inherited from father to son. So getting a boy child with the brother-in-law will bring the genes and the name of the deseased brother onward.

Have you made God into a genetic designer? If so, where did the extra X-chromosome come from to make the woman. A cell from Adam's rib would make a genetically identical clone of Adam himself. Remember that females have two X chromosomes and males have one X and one Y chromosome. Please elaborate a bit more.

God took a cell from Adam's rib and turned it into a spermcell with x configuration. If you split the male genome, you get one x chromosome and one y-chromosome. I would guess that he in turn produced an egg from an empty cell and half of his own genome, the x part. Anyway it is possible to produce both female and male semen from the bone cells of a male.

reply to post by Neo Christian Mystic


Oh I see, you are saying that God took some stem cells and developed them into sperm and then another stem cell and eveloped it into an egg and then fused them together to make an embryo? Only one problem here, the egg and sperm would have to be the products of gametogenesis which involve halving of the chromosome numbers through a process called meiosis. Do you see the problem here? I am coming round to the view that reason alone is not enough and that it is faith which will reach us to understand God's plans. In other words, don't try and 'overthink' things. Peace.

You wouldn't need stem cells. You would need an egg cell and a sperm cell. Inside the egg there is half a genome, like a ladder split in the middle (after meiosis), with an x sex chromosome. Likeways the spermcell would be half a genome, also with an x configuration. Merging these two parts will produce a genome, WITH stemcells coded into the genome, wouldn't it? Or do I have to add stemcells to my future whife's egg in order to make a baby. I am not talking about cloning, since Eve was not a clone of Adam, but a genetically compatible companion to Adam.

It would make more sense that the "first" human was a woman.
However the writers of these documents were male supremists.

Why do you think that men have breasts? This is the residual evidence that they were created from a female.

There are not male and female bacteria. They are both sexes within one.

Note that in all lower life forms the workers are female.
Female is the "default" sex.

Asexual creatures are basicly female. They produce the "sperm" that impregnates themselves and then they lay eggs, and out comes more asexual creatures.

Hmmm, makes a bit of sense, are you familiar with the sacred geometry explanation of creation? Here is a link for a VERY basic explanation, www.lightnet.co.uk...

Originally posted by OhZone
It would make more sense that the "first" human was a woman.
However the writers of these documents were male supremists.

Not exactly, it would have to be a man, for a woman alone can only produce new females, while a male can produce both males and females. At an early stage the fetus is actually female no matter how you twist or turn it, then it evolves further into a male if there is a Y-chromosome present.

"At an early stage the fetus is actually female no matter how you twist or turn it,"

Thanks for making my point.

Well, not really female, you see, at that stage the foetus is neither female nor male, for none of the sexual organs have started growing yet, so one can't actually say female, but anyway. Still, the female genome lacks the Y-chromosome which allows for males to be born, while males have both X and Y-chromosomes within their genome. This makes them more suited as a base for reproduction, the biblical way.

if this translation from "rib" to "cell" is true....it gives much credibilty to alternative theories to Genesis and the Old Testament, some of which were even proposed by the Gnostics.

Some of these are from Sitchen, i.e. we were created by Anunaki, or the possibility that the God of the Old Testament is really a Demiurge, whereas Jesus came and represented thet one true God.

Originally posted by OhZone
It would make more sense that the "first" human was a woman.
However the writers of these documents were male supremists.

Why do you think that men have breasts? This is the residual evidence that they were created from a female.

There are not male and female bacteria. They are both sexes within one.

Note that in all lower life forms the workers are female.
Female is the "default" sex.

Asexual creatures are basicly female. They produce the "sperm" that impregnates themselves and then they lay eggs, and out comes more asexual creatures.

Men do not have breasts we have areolas (nipples) and the adaptation is a last resort survival trait but has absolutley NOTHING to do with "gender" in regard to reproductive organs. The default gender is niether male or female and is decided at a point in the gestation development of the fetus during pregnancy by hormones. One drop of testosterone we see male reproductive parts develop. If it were true we started out female, than you are deciding gender based on genitalia NOT true gender which is chomosomal. You can have males born with an extra y chomosome as in klinefelters syndrome and many of them have no idea.

If we it were genitalia based, we would have more than nipples left over inside us. You know like remant fallopian tubes, uterus, maybe a recurring itch behind the pubic bone above the penis from some remnant G-spot?

- Con



[edit on 6-5-2008 by Conspiriology]

Originally posted by Conspiriology
If we it were genitalia based, we would have more than nipples left over inside us. You know like remant fallopian tubes, uterus, maybe a recurring itch behind the pubic bone above the penis from some remnant G-spot?

Hehe, that just broke me up

Originally posted by dominicus
if this translation from "rib" to "cell" is true....it gives much credibilty to alternative theories to Genesis and the Old Testament, some of which were even proposed by the Gnostics.

Yes, Tsela basically means Cell. Below is a quote from a Hebrew lexicon:

Brown, Driver, Briggs, Gesenius Lexicon

Tsela`

1. side, rib, beam
a) rib (of man)
b) rib (of hill, ridge, etc)
c) side-chambers or cells (of temple structure)
d) rib, plank, board (of cedar or fir)
e) leaves (of door)
f) side (of ark)

In the KJV Tsela is translated into chamber eleven times in the OT.

I would have to add that the biological meaning of cell we use today wasn't around at the time the Bible was written, infact it wasn't used in the modern sense until the 19th century. When we develloped cellular biology they needed a word to name the "bricks" the living species are made up from, so they went to the Bible, read how God made Eve from a certain tsela, which was appropriate from it's different meanings, used the Latin equivalent cella which sounds alike and has the same meaning as Heb. tsela. Yes, it is the same word, just expressed in different languages.

In English we see the same word in words like (prison-) cell, cellar, shell, conceal, seal, skeleton, skull, wall, hall, hole and a bunch other words. They are all variants derived from an proto Indo European base *kel- meaning to conceal or cover, enclose, seal. It is an incredibly important word we find inside a myriad of words in the dictionary. Tsela has the basic meaning rib in Hebrew because the rib cage cover the heart and the longues.

[edit on 25/5/2009 by Neo Christian Mystic]

This is a very interesting take on this old story. I have to wonder though, if god was able to create Adam from the earth, why not just create a female the same way? unless it was easier with the cells already created.

How does the translation work with the creation of Adam? Is there other possible definitions which may go along with genetics versus a sort of magical angle?

I have tried with on-line translators but most of this stuff comes out as gibberish

reply to post by PowerSlave


Not unless you compare how modern designers make clay models of let's say a new car, which is then scanned by 3D scanners and vectorised. It's the easiest and best way. The appearance of the car is thus computerised and a complete CAD drawing is generated by computers, and the computers will then calculate what kind of engine could be fitted, what interior and chassis would be needed etc.

Looks like God use the same technique on species, atleast according to the Bible and similar books. He crafts a Ke or a model, like a statue, then when he is satisfied with the result, he scans the model, and his computers find out what kind of genes are needed to construct the "Temple", calculating genes for bones (chassie), skin (coachwork), sinews and muscles (mechanics), digestion (engine), brain (computer system), nerve system (bus and sensory network) etc.

I doubt he is sitting and glueing proteins together by hand. He has tools to help him out.

The name Adam means literally red clay or even red ocre. If you want to look into these texts in their original languages, with translations, find a good online interlinear bible. I use a site called www.biblestudytools.com former bible.crosswalk.com. It's worked for me for the past ten years, though it's not perfect. But it helps me on the way, giving hints and info to build on further.

[edit on 27/5/2009 by Neo Christian Mystic]