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Who was the First woman?

ZooGirl02

Well-Known Member
I believe that the first woman's name was Eve who was Adam's spouse.

Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him." So out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper fit for him. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; and the rib which the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.
(Genesis 2:18-25 RSV-CE)

The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.
(Genesis 3:20 RSV-CE)
 

Amechania

Daimona of the Helpless
Funny, its what the whole book is.


And yes only humans define good and evil.

The book is wonderful as a guide to modern Western socialization and a helpful tool In understanding ancient history, but it is not only useless In any other capacity but extremely dangerous when applied outside its intended purpose: moral assimilation.
 

Amechania

Daimona of the Helpless
The book is wonderful as a guide to modern Western socialization and a helpful tool In understanding ancient history, but it is not only useless In any other capacity but extremely dangerous when applied outside its intended purpose: moral assimilation.

And even then it is an enemy of tolerance.
 

Monk Of Reason

༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
First off I don't actually believe the bible to begin with. So I don't believe an Adam and Eve. I am going with this debate as a biblical debate (hence the location of the thread)

I believe that the first woman's name was Eve who was Adam's spouse.

Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him." So out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper fit for him. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; and the rib which the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.
(Genesis 2:18-25 RSV-CE)

The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.
(Genesis 3:20 RSV-CE)

I already posted this in the OP. Along with Gen 1 where it states he created both man and woman but then later created ....another woman from the rib of already existing man?

And I also bring in Lilith and if this was an accidentally included reference to her even though she was expunged from the cannon.
 

The Sum of Awe

Brought to you by the moment that spacetime began.
Staff member
Premium Member
Lets ask this a way you might understand.


Was there ever a first homo sapien? man or woman?



Or was a TOTAL population that slowly changed by evolutionary process????

It really depends on what specific genes are needed to be considered homo sapien. I don't believe in a sudden switch of one species to another, I am aware it is a gradual process and not sudden. But there are first organisms to have specific genes, but the problem with this question is that homo sapiens defines a species and not an individual set of genes. Only like-genes. Certainly homo sapiens differ somewhat now than they did 1,000 years ago. There is not a single set of genetics to define homo sapien, as far as I know, just certain similar genetics which came gradually themselves.
 

BSM1

What? Me worry?
Biblically in Genesis 1:27

27 So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

It seems that god had created man and woman. But Adam later in Genesis 2...

22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib[h] he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

23 The man said,

“This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’
for she was taken out of man.”

So was Eve the first woman or was she simply another woman? Is there validity to the tale of Lilith from a biblical standpoint? I know that she was omitted from the cannon. The story of lilith was from one of the earliest stories in the Babylonian Talmud.

Thoughts?

In the Creation story God "...took a man..." and placed him in the Garden. Evidently this man, Adam, was segregated from the rest of whatever existed. Eve would have been the first--and only--women in the Garden.
 

outhouse

Atheistically
It really depends on what specific genes are needed to be considered homo sapien. I don't believe in a sudden switch of one species to another, I am aware it is a gradual process and not sudden. But there are first organisms to have specific genes, but the problem with this question is that homo sapiens defines a species and not an individual set of genes. Only like-genes. Certainly homo sapiens differ somewhat now than they did 1,000 years ago. There is not a single set of genetics to define homo sapien, as far as I know, just certain similar genetics which came gradually themselves.

Which does not address at all in any way, that there was never a single female homo sapiens
 

Triumphant_Loser

Libertarian Egalitarian
I'll go with Eve from a biblical perspective and with Lucy from an anthropological perspective.

I mean no disrespect in this, but how do you reconcile these two contradicting views? It ultimately has to be either one or the other. It can't realistically be both.
 

roger1440

I do stuff
So was Eve the first woman or was she simply another woman? Is there validity to the tale of Lilith from a biblical standpoint? I know that she was omitted from the cannon. The story of lilith was from one of the earliest stories in the Babylonian Talmud.

Thoughts?
You are contradicting yourself. You are asking for “validity to the tale of Lilith from a biblical standpoint” and at the same time stating “she was omitted from the cannon”. Biblical and cannon means pretty much the same thing. Aside from that, the story of Lilith as Adam’s first wasn’t written until sometime between 700 AD and 1000 AD. The Jewish and Christian cannon were finalized many centuries earlier. The story is found in the Alphabet of Sirach.
Alphabet of Sirach - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Lilith first makes her appearance in Judaism as a demon in Jewish folklore. She is known as the taker of children and was the demon featured in the 2012 horror movie The Possession. In Islamic tradition, she slept with the devil and gave birth to the jinn. She has also found her way into Christian folklore. Lilith has a very long history that goes many directions.


She also goes by the name Abyzou.
Abyzou - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“And desert creatures will meet with hyenas, and goat-demons will call out to each other. There also Liliths will settle, and find for themselves a resting place.” (Isaiah 34:14) International Standard Version
 

Katzpur

Not your average Mormon
I mean no disrespect in this, but how do you reconcile these two contradicting views? It ultimately has to be either one or the other. It can't realistically be both.
I can understand that conclusion. I'll do my best to explain my position. How successfully I'll be able to do so is another matter. I believe in evolution and in a very, very old earth. I do not believe that during a six-day period 6000 years ago, God created the earth and dropped two belly-buttonless individuals into a pretty garden and that human life began at that point.

On the other hand, as a theist and as a Mormon, I do believe that God created our universe. I believe He created it is accordance with natural laws. Thus, the entire process started several billion years ago. I believe that human beings (or, more accurately, homo sapiens) first lived on earth (in what is now Africa) somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 years ago. This is why I say that from an archeological or mitochondrial perspective, Lucy was the first woman.

While I believe that all of us are probably Lucy's direct descendants, I don't see her as having one thing that the woman Eve had, and that is a spirit that was in God's image. My feelings are that, at some point, at about the time the events in Genesis were said to have transpired, God instilled a spirit in a man (Adam) and a woman (Eve) that did not exist in their ancestor, Lucy, or in any of her descendants up until that time. Eve, unlike Lucy, was of the same species as God himself. The Bible teaches that God is the father of our spirits and that we are not only his creations but his offspring. Lucy, while having a spirit (all living things, according to LDS doctrine, have a spirit), did not have the same kind of spirit as Eve. She was, therefore, one of God's creations but not His offspring.

I should note that this is my personal belief. It does not represent LDS doctrine but it is not contrary to LDS doctrine either. The LDS Church leaves matters of this sort up to personal interpretation. As evidence of this fact, when I first visited the new Natural History Museum of Utah when it first opened a couple of years ago, I noticed that one of the significant benefactors was the LDS Church. The museum is definitely NOT a creationist museum but is as good a natural history museum as you'll find anywhere.
 
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Really? Everything has a first time. No matter what, somewhere down the line there was a being which was the first to match the standard description of female.

Actually, no.
Here we run into a problem with things not really being intuitive, but still real.
See, accumulative small changes can lead to huge changes, where you can see a clear difference between the start and the ending, but none between two individual steps.
Therefore, whatever organism you pick to be the "first woman" will have had a "mother" that was so close in its biology, that it would also count as a mother.

Compare it to a person growing up:
A person never has one day where they suddenly becomes an adult, from one moment to another. They all look pretty much the same today as they did yesterday. And yet, humans do become adults.
How? By very, very small steps that seem insignificant, but accumulate.
So, the question "Which individual was the first woman" can't be answered, just as little as you can answer the question "At what day did you become an adult".

When it comes to the bible, Eve was apparently the first described woman, although there is also the story of Lilith, which came before Eve, but was banished from the garden, I think.
Although, when it comes to christianity, I don't think she's part of the biblical canon.
 

Draka

Wonder Woman
Hera was "Mitochondrial Eve" I thought everyone knew that. :)

6290thA.jpg
 

sincerly

Well-Known Member
Biblically in Genesis 1:27

27 So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

It seems that god had created man and woman. But Adam later in Genesis 2...

22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib[h] he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

23 The man said,

“This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’
for she was taken out of man.”

So was Eve the first woman or was she simply another woman? Is there validity to the tale of Lilith from a biblical standpoint? I know that she was omitted from the cannon. The story of lilith was from one of the earliest stories in the Babylonian Talmud.

Thoughts?

This has been answered, by several posters.
The context of the two chapters should be read as an overview of Creation week with the filling in of some of the details. The beginning of chap. 2 says "Thus" all things were finished. and the begins those details---the "generations"/how things were brought together.
Eve wasn't from the dust, as was Adam, but from created Adam. She was created none-the-less.
All human beings were to product of the "being fruitful and multiply" by Adam and Eve.

The "liyliyth" of Isa.34:14 is found in that one verse only. In the KJV it is translated as "screech owl"---which fits the conditions of the LORD's vengeance.
 
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