ABSTRACT
It is for these reasons that the priestly community could not have produced a myth of creation such as Genesis 2 in which the first person is initially created alone (Gen. 2:7).10 It is true that in this other myth God eventually creates a human partner for Adam, authorizes marriage and apparently sexuality (von Rad 1976, 84-85; Sapp 1977, 12-16). But here God's original intention does not explicitly include sexuality or human companionship. The decision to create a human partner is the result of a process. After creating the first person, God unilaterally decides that it is not good for the first person to be alone and decides to make a fitting for the earthling 2:18). It is at this point that God creates the animals, as if they might be a fitting partner for the first person. It is only when the animals turn out to be inadequate companions that God fashions a second person from part of the first person. In this myth, then, the first act of reproduction is a kind of fission: a second person is split off from the body of the first. The first act ofreproduction thus does not involve sexuality. With the creation of the second person emerges the difference between man and woman, and this provides the basis for the institution of marriage, and presumably sexual intercourse and reproduction. While the authorization of marriage is as the climax of the some interpreters (Trible 1978, 102; Sapp 1977, 12-16), another reading is also possible, namely, that sexual intercourse and reproduction are not part of the human essence. After all, God originally created the first person alone; human companionship, intercourse, and reproduction were divine afterthoughts. Thus it is possible to construe this myth as suggesting that the human is most like God when sexual relations are renounced.
