Notes for Gen 2:23-24

1. Because of the frequent association between tardemah and visionary experiences, John Walton suggests that "it is easy to conclude that Adam's sleep has prepared him for a visionary experience rather than for a surgical procedure. The desciption of himself being cut in half and the woman being built from the other half (Gen 2:21-22) would refer not to something he physically experienced but to something that he saw in a vision." (The Lost World of Adam and Eve. Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate, 80). The suggestion is un-necessary, speculative and problematic. Firstly, there is no evidence that Adam did have a vision; while visionary experiences often occur in tardemah, it was not always the case. Secondly, if the act of the bone being taken from him to build the woman was merely something the man saw in a vision, the logic of the suggestion would require the woman to be only part of the vision and not physically real. Surely that cannot be.