Adam & Steve? – A Quick Look At Genesis 5:1-3

We gays often hear that God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. Well if God didn’t create Steve, who did? Many gays believe that we were created by God, with the same love that God created Adam and Eve.

It is my contention that it is very possible that God did indeed create Adam and Steve, and Louise and Sue, at the same time or after He created Adam and Eve. The reasons that I hold this belief are many.

First, Cain was the son of Adam and Eve, but where did Cain’s wife come from if God did not create her? If God did not create her, then she would have to have been his sister or his mother (Eve) if Adam and Eve were the only ones “begetting” – i.e. an incestuous relationship no matter how you look at it. It only stands to reason that God created more than just Adam and Eve. Just because his other “created” children aren’t mentioned doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen.

The Bible is a wonderful God-given Book, but it doesn’t answer EVERY question and it doesn’t tell us EVERYTHING that happened in the past. We can’t say something did NOT happen merely because it is not recorded. How dare we limit God’s creative works. Perhaps God only created Adam and Eve, but perhaps God also created others as well. It’s not something that we will ever know but we certainly can’t discount the possibility.

The story of Adam and Eve is not a scientific thesis, nor a manual on marriage. It is a brief explanation of PART of the creation story.

Next, I wonder about the translation of Genesis 5:1-3 from the original Hebrew. “God created men (plural) and women (plural) to be like Himself. He gave them (plural) His blessing and called them (plural) human beings (plural).” (Contemporary English Version: The Learning Bible). This indicates to me that there is a possibility that God created more than just Adam and Eve.

I am blessed to have a wonderful scholarly friend, Rabbi Justin Jaron Lewis, who was at the time of this writing, the Head of Jewish Studies at Queen’s University (update: he is now at the University of Manitoba). Justin translates the original Hebrew text for me as I ask of him. With reference to Genesis 5 verses 1-3, this is what he has to say:

This verse is very tricky to translate and there are different possibilities for understanding it. The Hebrew of Genesis 5:1-3, put into English letters, is:

Zeh sefer tol’dot adam.
B’yom b’ro Elohim adam, bidmut Elohim asah oto.
Zachar u-nekeva b’raam
vay’varekh otam,
vayikra et-sh’mam adam b’yom hibar’am.
Vay’chi adam shloshim u-m’at shana
vayoled bidmuto k’tsalmo
vayikra et-sh’mo Shet.

The word “adam” can either mean Adam, the individual, or “a human being” or “human beings” or “humanity“. In order to translate these verses you have to assume it means one sometimes and the other, at other times, and the question is when it means which. Also, the Hebrew goes back and forth between referring to “adam” grammatically in the singular and the plural.

So it’s possible to translate:

This is the book of the generations of humanity [adam] [or “the record of the story of humanity” or something like that]

On the day that God created humanity [adam], He made it in the image of God.
He created them male and female
and blessed them,
and gave them the name Humanity [adam] on the day they were created.
And _Adam_ [adam] lived a hundred and thirty years
and begot in his likeness, in his image,
and gave [his son] the name Seth…

Or you could translate:

This is the book of the generations of Adam [adam] [or “the record of the story of Adam”]
On the day that God created Adam [adam], He made him in the image of God.
He created them male and female
and blessed them,
and gave them the name _Humanity_ [adam] on the day they were created.
And Adam [adam] lived a hundred and thirty years
and begot in his likeness, in his image,
and gave [his son] the name Seth…

The way I read the Bible, here and in some other verses we have the “seams” where two different stories have been combined. One version is that God created many human beings including males and females. That’s the most natural reading of Genesis 1:26-30.

Another version is that God created one human being, Adam, and then divided it/him into two, Adam and Eve, and everybody else is descended from them. That’s the most natural reading of Genesis chapter 2.

In the first version, where “adam” means “humanity“, there were probably gay couples from very early on.