Annotatio XLV

”For Adam there was not found a helper like unto him.” — Genesis 2:20

Francis George [Francesco Giorgio], in the first volume of the Problems, so explains this passage that he asserts man was, from the beginning, created androgynous — that is, a man in whom two bodies, namely of male and female, were joined around the back.¹ For he writes thus, in Problem 29: “Man was, from the beginning, twofold [geminus] — that is, male and female together — created; and, as Plato teaches, male and female were joined in him by the back, and afterward cut, so that they might be joined face to face for procreating offspring. And in this Plato was taught by the most upright philosopher Moses — which Scripture also teaches, where it is had that, the side or rib of the protoplast being cut, the woman was formed; for צלע (tsela) signifies both, namely rib and side. The section therefore being made, the woman was the help of the man, namely as one standing face to face, as the Hebrew truth has it — for which the common edition [Vulgate] has ‘like unto himself.’” St. Augustine refutes this opinion, in the third book On Genesis to the Letter, chapter 22, saying:² “Again, lest in man both sexes should be thought to be — as in those whom they call Androgynes — he subjoined in the plural, ‘Male and female he created them.’” Strabo [Walafrid], agreeing with Augustine, rejects this same opinion among the condemned fables of the Jews, in these words: “‘Male and female he created them’ — not because he first created and established Adam himself in both sexes, as the stupid Jews fable, but because he distinguished the human race by both sexes, and willed it to subsist in a twofold person.”