Early Church Fathers Scripture Index : Texts

Genesis 2:21

There are 15 footnotes for this reference.

Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 222, footnote 2 (Image)

Tertullian (I, II, III)

Apologetic. (HTML)

A Treatise on the Soul. (HTML)

Sleep a Natural Function as Shown by Other Considerations, and by the Testimony of Scripture. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1765 (In-Text, Margin)

... and regular exercise. For every natural state is impaired either by defect or by excess, whilst it is maintained by its proper measure and amount. That, therefore, will be natural in its condition which may be rendered non-natural by defect or by excess. Well, now, what if you were to remove eating and drinking from the conditions of nature? if in them lies the chief incentive to sleep. It is certain that, from the very beginning of his nature, man was impressed with these instincts (of sleep).[Genesis 2:21] If you receive your instruction from God, (you will find) that the fountain of the human race, Adam, had a taste of drowsiness before having a draught of repose; slept before he laboured, or even before he ate, nay, even before he spoke; in order ...

Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 223, footnote 2 (Image)

Tertullian (I, II, III)

Apologetic. (HTML)

A Treatise on the Soul. (HTML)

Dreams, an Incidental Effect of the Soul's Activity. Ecstasy. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1767 (In-Text, Margin)

... and exertion of their respective employments: there is the fight, there is the struggle; but the effort is a vain one. Nevertheless the whole procedure seems to be gone through, although it evidently has not been really effected. There is the act, but not the effect. This power we call ecstasy, in which the sensuous soul stands out of itself, in a way which even resembles madness. Thus in the very beginning sleep was inaugurated by ecstasy: “And God sent an ecstasy upon Adam, and he slept.”[Genesis 2:21] The sleep came on his body to cause it to rest, but the ecstasy fell on his soul to remove rest: from that very circumstance it still happens ordinarily (and from the order results the nature of the case) that sleep is combined with ecstasy. In ...

Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 495, footnote 9 (Image)

Tertullian (I, II, III)

Anti-Marcion. (HTML)

Against Hermogenes. (HTML)

A Further Vindication of the Scripture Narrative of the Creation, Against a Futile View of Hermogenes. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 6455 (In-Text, Margin)

... which they were contained? But this example may be an idle one as being derived from a human circumstance; I will take another, which has the authority of Scripture itself. It says that “God made man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” Now, although it here mentions the nostrils, it does not say that they were made by God; so again it speaks of skin and bones, and flesh and eyes, and sweat and blood, in subsequent passages,[Genesis 2:21] and yet it never intimated that they had been created by God. What will Hermogenes have to answer? That the human limbs must belong to Matter, because they are not specially mentioned as objects of creation? Or are they included in the formation of ...

Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 4, page 39, footnote 16 (Image)

Tertullian (IV), Minucius Felix, Commodian, Origen

Tertullian: Part Fourth. (HTML)

To His Wife. (HTML)

I (HTML)
Marriage Lawful, But Not Polygamy. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 353 (In-Text, Margin)

We do not indeed forbid the union of man and woman, blest by God as the seminary of the human race, and devised for the replenishment of the earth and the furnishing of the world, and therefore permitted, yet singly. For Adam was the one husband of Eve, and Eve his one wife, one woman, one rib.[Genesis 2:21-22] We grant, that among our ancestors, and the patriarchs themselves, it was lawful not only to marry, but even to multiply wives. There were concubines, too, (in those days.) But although the Church did come in figuratively in the synagogue, yet (to interpret simply) it was necessary to institute (certain things) which should afterward deserve to be ...

Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 4, page 53, footnote 2 (Image)

Tertullian (IV), Minucius Felix, Commodian, Origen

Tertullian: Part Fourth. (HTML)

On Exhortation to Chastity. (HTML)

Unity of Marriage Taught by Its First Institution, and by the Apostle's Application of that Primal Type to Christ and the Church. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 527 (In-Text, Margin)

For the laying down of the law of once marrying, the very origin of the human race is our authority; witnessing as it emphatically does what God constituted in the beginning for a type to be examined with care by posterity. For when He had moulded man, and had foreseen that a peer was necessary for him, He borrowed from his ribs one, and fashioned for him one woman;[Genesis 2:21-22] whereas, of course, neither the Artificer nor the material would have been insufficient (for the creation of more). There were more ribs in Adam, and hands that knew no weariness in God; but not more wives in the eye of God. And accordingly the man of God, Adam, and the woman of God, Eve, discharging mutually (the ...

Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 4, page 514, footnote 3 (Image)

Tertullian (IV), Minucius Felix, Commodian, Origen

Origen. (HTML)

Origen Against Celsus. (HTML)

Book IV (HTML)
Chapter XXXVIII (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 3849 (In-Text, Margin)

In the next place, as it is his object to slander our Scriptures, he ridicules the following statement: “And God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib, which He had taken from the man, made He a woman,”[Genesis 2:21-22] and so on; without quoting the words, which would give the hearer the impression that they are spoken with a figurative meaning. He would not even have it appear that the words were used allegorically, although he says afterwards, that “the more modest among Jews and Christians are ashamed of these things, and endeavour to give them somehow an ...

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 3, page 162, footnote 5 (Image)

Augustine: On the Holy Trinity, Doctrinal Treatises, Moral Treatises

Doctrinal Treatises of St. Augustin (HTML)

On the Holy Trinity. (HTML)

After premising the difference between wisdom and knowledge, he points out a kind of trinity in that which is properly called knowledge; but one which, although we have reached in it the inner man, is not yet to be called the image of God. (HTML)
The Opinion of Those Who Have Thought that the Mind Was Signified by the Man, the Bodily Sense by the Woman. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 780 (In-Text, Margin)

... entire soul they perceived to be a sort of excellent paradise, asserted that the man was the mind, but that the woman was the bodily sense. And according to this distribution, by which the man is assumed to be the mind, but the woman the bodily sense, all things seem aptly to agree together if they are handled with due attention: unless that it is written, that in all the beasts and flying things there was not found for man an helpmate like to himself; and then the woman was made out of his side.[Genesis 2:20-22] And on this account I, for my part, have not thought that the bodily sense should be taken for the woman, which we see to be common to our selves and to the beasts; but I have desired to find something which the beasts had not; and I have rather ...

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 3, page 399, footnote 1 (Image)

Augustine: On the Holy Trinity, Doctrinal Treatises, Moral Treatises

Moral Treatises of St. Augustin (HTML)

On the Good of Marriage. (HTML)

Section 1 (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1934 (In-Text, Margin)

... great and natural good, the power also of friendship; on this account God willed to create all men out of one, in order that they might be held in their society not only by likeness of kind, but also by bond of kindred. Therefore the first natural bond of human society is man and wife. Nor did God create these each by himself, and join them together as alien by birth: but He created the one out of the other, setting a sign also of the power of the union in the side, whence she was drawn, was formed.[Genesis 2:21-22] For they are joined one to another side by side, who walk together, and look together whither they walk. Then follows the connexion of fellowship in children, which is the one alone worthy fruit, not of the union of male and female, but of the ...

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 8, page 31, footnote 5 (Image)

Augustine: Expositions on the Psalms

Expositions on the Book of Psalms. (HTML)

Psalm VIII (HTML)

CCEL Footnote 311 (In-Text, Margin)

... be no creature that will not be put under Him, under whom the pre-eminent spirits, that I may so speak, are put. But whence shall we prove that sheep can be interpreted even, not of men, but of the blessed spirits of the angelical creatures on high? May we from the Lord’s saying that He had left ninety and nine sheep in the mountains, that is, in the higher regions, and had come down for one? For if we take the one lost sheep to be the human soul in Adam, since Eve even was made out of his side,[Genesis 2:21-22] for the spiritual handling and consideration of all which things this is not the time, it remains that, by the ninety and nine left in the mountains, spirits not human, but angelical, should be meant. For as regards the oxen, this sentence is easily ...

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 8, page 131, footnote 2 (Image)

Augustine: Expositions on the Psalms

Expositions on the Book of Psalms. (HTML)

Psalm XLI (HTML)

CCEL Footnote 1206 (In-Text, Margin)

... “I have power to lay down My life, and I have power to take it again.” “I laid Me down and slept, and rose up again.” Rage then the Jews; be “the earth given into the hands of the wicked,” be the flesh left to the hands of persecutors, let them on wood suspend it, with nails transfix it, with a spear pierce it. “Shall He that sleepeth, not add this, that He rise up again?” Where fore slept He? Because “Adam is the figure of Him that was to come.” And Adam slept, when out of his side was made Eve.[Genesis 2:21] Adam in the figure of Christ, Eve in the figure of the Church; whence she was called “the mother of all living.” When was Eve created? While Adam slept. When out of Christ’s side flowed the Sacraments of the Church? While He slept upon the Cross.…

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 8, page 607, footnote 4 (Image)

Augustine: Expositions on the Psalms

Expositions on the Book of Psalms. (HTML)

Psalm CXXVII (HTML)

CCEL Footnote 5521 (In-Text, Margin)

... Lord’s was. Look unto Him, who went before thee: for if thou heedest not Him, “it is lost labour for thee to rise before dawn.” When was He raised? When He had died. Hope therefore for thine uplifting after thy death: have hope in the resurrection of the dead, because He rose again and ascended. But where did He sleep? On the Cross. When He slept on the Cross, He bore a sign, yea, He fulfilled what had been signified in Adam: for when Adam was asleep, a rib was drawn from him and Eve was created;[Genesis 2:21-22] so also while the Lord slept on the Cross, His side was transfixed with a spear, and the Sacraments flowed forth, whence the Church was born. For the Church the Lord’s Bride was created from His side, as Eve was created from the side of Adam. But as ...

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 11, page 143, footnote 1 (Image)

Chrysostom: Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistle to the Romans

A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles (HTML)

Homily XXII on Acts x. 1-4. (HTML)

CCEL Footnote 527 (In-Text, Margin)

... notion was to be formed of one lodging with a tanner. “And on the morrow, as they journeyed, and drew nigh to the city” (v. 9.)—observe how the Spirit connects the times: no sooner than this, and no later, He Causes this to take place—“Peter about the sixth hour went up upon the housetop to pray:” that is, privately and quietly, as in an upper chamber. “And he became very hungry, and would have eaten; but while they made ready, there fell upon him a trance.” (v. 10.) What means this expression,[Genesis 2:21] ἔκστασις, “trance?” Rather, there was presented to him a kind of spiritual view (θεωρία): the soul, so to say, was caused to be out of the body (

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 11, page 487, footnote 1 (Image)

Chrysostom: Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistle to the Romans

The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on Paul's Epistle to the Romans (HTML)

Homily XIX on Rom. xi. 7. (HTML)

CCEL Footnote 1510 (In-Text, Margin)

... lang="EL">καταάνυξις lit. piercing) is a name he here gives to the habit of soul inclinable to the worse, when incurably and unchangeably so. For in another passage David says, “that my glory may sing unto Thee, and I may not be put to slumber” (Ps. xxx. 12, LXX.): that is, I may not alter, may not be changed. For as a man who is hushed to slumber in a state of pious fear would not easily be made to change his side; so too he that is slumbering in wickedness would not change with facility. For to be hushed[Genesis 2:21] to slumber here is nothing else but to be fixed and riveted to a thing. In pointing then to the incurable and unchangeable character of their spirit, he calls it “a spirit of slumber.” Then to show that for this unbelief they will be most severely ...

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 6, page 86, footnote 5 (Image)

Jerome: Letters and Select Works

The Letters of St. Jerome. (HTML)

From Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, in Cyprus, to John, Bishop of Jerusalem. (HTML)

CCEL Footnote 1267 (In-Text, Margin)

... is speaking of human bodies.” If this is so, how is it that before the coats of skins, and the disobedience, and the fall from paradise, Adam speaks not in an allegory, but literally, thus: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh;” or what is the ground of the divine narrative, “And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, made He a woman”[Genesis 2:21-22] for him? Or what bodies can Adam and Eve have covered with fig-leaves after eating of the forbidden tree? Who can patiently listen to the perilous arguments of Origen when he denies the resurrection of this flesh, as he most clearly does in his book ...

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 6, page 234, footnote 4 (Image)

Jerome: Letters and Select Works

The Letters of St. Jerome. (HTML)

To Ageruchia. (HTML)

CCEL Footnote 3269 (In-Text, Margin)

12. The creation of the first man should teach us to reject more marriages than one. There was but one Adam and but one Eve; in fact the woman was fashioned from a rib of Adam.[Genesis 2:21-22] Thus divided they were subsequently joined together in marriage; in the words of scripture “the twain shall be one flesh,” not two or three. “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife.” Certainly it is not said “to his wives.” Paul in explaining the passage refers it to Christ and the church; making the first Adam a monogamist in the flesh and the second a ...

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