ABSTRACT
Augustine presents Adam as having a uterus, from which flows the salt sea-water which is the turbulent human race. This is disconcerting chiefly because people think of Adam as male, and of the uterus as the womb, which is a defining characteristic of femaleness. It is also disconcerting to think of the human race as fluid shed from the uterus; waters break before a birth, but the offspring itself represented as fluid suggests, if anything, miscarriage. The various pre-Vulgate Latin versions of the Bible, known collectively as the Vetus Latina, have to be reconstructed from citations in authors who may well not have verified their references, or who, like Augustine, adapt citations and merge them with their own language. Augustine, then, did mean Adam’s womb, and that must have been startling. But perhaps it should not be: perhaps it is a theological or linguistic mistake to think of Adam as male.
