Image Details

Alfredo Dagli Orti/Art Resource, NY

With one rib (Hebrew, tsela‘) from Adam, God created woman (Genesis 2:21–22). This 12th-century C.E. mosaic in the Palatine Chapel at the Norman Palace in Sicily depicts Eve emerging from Adam’s ribcage. Or was she crafted from another part of Adam’s body? Ziony Zevit explains that the traditional translation of tsela‘ in this context is wrong and that it should be rendered instead by a word referring to a limb lateral to the vertical axis of the human body, such as hand, foot and, for males, penis. Zevit believes Eve was created not from Adam’s rib but from his os baculum (penis bone).