Early Church Fathers Scripture Index : Texts
Genesis 2:23
There are 23 footnotes for this reference.
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 1, page 6, footnote 20 (Image)
Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus
Clement of Rome (HTML)
First Epistle to the Corinthians (HTML)
Chapter VI.—Continuation. Several other martyrs. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 34 (In-Text, Margin)
... multitude of the elect, who, having through envy endured many indignities and tortures, furnished us with a most excellent example. Through envy, those women, the Danaids and Dircæ, being persecuted, after they had suffered terrible and unspeakable torments, finished the course of their faith with stedfastness, and though weak in body, received a noble reward. Envy has alienated wives from their husbands, and changed that saying of our father Adam, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.”[Genesis 2:23] Envy and strife have overthrown great cities and rooted up mighty nations.
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 2, page 262, footnote 1 (Image)
Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Clement of Alexandria
Clement of Alexandria (HTML)
The Instructor (HTML)
Book II (HTML)
Chapter X. (HTML)
... adversarios; illa vero a coitu abducta circumaguntur, et tantum non trahuntur, omnibus viribus et omni impetu tandem quasi enervata. “Parvam epilepsiam” dicebat “coitum” sophista Abderites morbum immedicabilem existimans. Annon enim consequuntur resolutiones, quæ exinanitionis ejusque, quod abscedit, magnitudini ascribuntur? “homo enim ex homine nascitur et evellitur.” Vide damni magnitudinem: totus homo per exinanitionem coitus abstrahitur. Dicit enim: Hoc nunc os ex ossibus meis, et caro ex came mea.”[Genesis 2:23] Homo ergo tantum exinanitur semine, quantus videtur corpore; est enim generationis initium id, quod recedit: quin etiam conturbat ebullitio materiæ et compagem corporis labefactat et commovet. Lepide ergo ille, qui interroganti, “Quomodo adhuc se ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 201, footnote 9 (Image)
Tertullian (I, II, III)
Apologetic. (HTML)
A Treatise on the Soul. (HTML)
As Free-Will Actuates an Individual So May His Character Change. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1654 (In-Text, Margin)
... the triple form predicated of it in “ the Valentinian trinity ” (that we may still keep the condemnation of that heresy in view), for not even this nature is discoverable in Adam. What had he that was spiritual? Is it because he prophetically declared “the great mystery of Christ and the church?” “This is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman. Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and he shall cleave unto his wife; and they two shall be one flesh.”[Genesis 2:23-24] But this (gift of prophecy) only came on him afterwards, when God infused into him the ecstasy, or spiritual quality, in which prophecy consists. If, again, the evil of sin was developed in him, this must not be accounted as a natural ...
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 2:23] 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 3, page 550, footnote 4 (Image)
Tertullian (I, II, III)
Anti-Marcion. (HTML)
On the Resurrection of the Flesh. (HTML)
The Earthy Material of Which Flesh is Created Wonderfully Improved by God's Manipulation. By the Addition of the Soul in Man's Constitution It Became the Chief Work in the Creation. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 7334 (In-Text, Margin)
... trouble. But I want you, moreover, to know at what time and in what manner the flesh flourished into beauty out of its clay. For it cannot be, as some will have it, that those “coats of skins” which Adam and Eve put on when they were stripped of paradise, were really themselves the forming of the flesh out of clay, because long before that Adam had already recognised the flesh which was in the woman as the propagation of his own substance (“This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh”[Genesis 2:23]), and the very taking of the woman out of the man was supplemented with flesh; but it ought, I should suppose, to have been made good with clay, if Adam was still clay. The clay, therefore, was obliterated and absorbed into flesh. When did this ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 687, footnote 10 (Image)
Tertullian (I, II, III)
Ethical. (HTML)
On Prayer. (HTML)
Answer to the Foregoing Arguments. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 8875 (In-Text, Margin)
They who make this concession ought to reflect on the nature of the word itself—what is the meaning of “woman” from the very first records of the sacred writings. Here they find it to be the name of the sex, not a class of the sex: if, that is, God gave to Eve, when she had not yet known a man, the surname “woman” and “female”[Genesis 2:23] —(“female,” whereby the sex generally; “woman,” hereby a class of the sex, is marked). So, since at that time the as yet unwedded Eve was called by the word “woman,” that word has been made common even to a virgin. Nor is it wonderful that the apostle—guided, of course, by the same Spirit by whom, as all the divine Scripture, ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 4, page 9, footnote 9 (Image)
Tertullian (IV), Minucius Felix, Commodian, Origen
Tertullian: Part Fourth. (HTML)
On the Pallium. (HTML)
Change Not Always Improvement. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 47 (In-Text, Margin)
... Hercules. Where were Diomed and his gory mangers? where Busiris and his funereal altars? where Geryon, triply one? The club preferred still to reek with their brains when it was being pestered with unguents! The now veteran (stain of the) Hydra’s and of the Centaurs’ blood upon the shafts was gradually eradicated by the pumice-stone, familiar to the hair-pin! while voluptuousness insulted over the fact that, after transfixing monsters, they should perchance sew a coronet! No sober woman even, or heroine[Genesis 2:23] of any note, would have adventured her shoulders beneath the hide of such a beast, unless after long softening and smoothening down and deodorization (which in Omphale’s house, I hope, was effected by balsam and fenugreek-salve: I suppose the mane, ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 4, page 31, footnote 7 (Image)
Tertullian (IV), Minucius Felix, Commodian, Origen
Tertullian: Part Fourth. (HTML)
On the Veiling of Virgins. (HTML)
Of the Reasons Assigned by the Apostle for Bidding Women to Be Veiled. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 300 (In-Text, Margin)
... is so for a virgin. (Hence let the world, the rival of God, see to it, if it asserts that close-cut hair is graceful to a virgin in like manner as that flowing hair is to a boy.) To her, then, to whom it is equally un becoming to be shaven or shorn, it is equally becoming to be covered. If “the woman is the glory of the man,” how much more the virgin, who is a glory withal to herself! If “the woman is of the man,” and “for the sake of the man,” that rib of Adam[Genesis 2:23] was first a virgin. If “the woman ought to have power upon the head,” all the more justly ought the virgin, to whom pertains the essence of the cause (assigned for this assertion). For if (it is) on account of the angels—those, to wit, ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 4, page 32, footnote 5 (Image)
Tertullian (IV), Minucius Felix, Commodian, Origen
Tertullian: Part Fourth. (HTML)
On the Veiling of Virgins. (HTML)
The Argument E Contrario. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 305 (In-Text, Margin)
... apostle is treating of man and woman —why the latter ought to be veiled, but the former not—it is apparent why he has been silent as to the virgin; allowing, to wit, the virgin to be understood in the woman by the self-same reason by which he forbore to name the boy as implied in the man; embracing the whole order of either sex in the names proper (to each) of woman and man. So likewise Adam, while still intact, is surnamed in Genesis man:[Genesis 2:23] “She shall be called,” says he, “ woman, because she hath been taken from her own man.” Thus was Adam a man before nuptial intercourse, in like manner as Eve a woman. On either side the apostle has made his sentence apply ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 4, page 66, footnote 4 (Image)
Tertullian (IV), Minucius Felix, Commodian, Origen
Tertullian: Part Fourth. (HTML)
On Monogamy. (HTML)
From Examples Tertullian Passes to Direct Dogmatic Teachings. He Begins with the Lord's Teaching. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 655 (In-Text, Margin)
... let us see what marriage is in the eye of God; and thus we shall learn what adultery equally is. Marriage is (this): when God joins “two into one flesh;” or else, finding (them already) joined in the same flesh, has given His seal to the conjunction. Adultery is (this): when, the two having been—in whatsoever way— dis joined, other—nay, rather alien—flesh is mingled (with either): flesh concerning which it cannot be affirmed, “This is flesh out of my flesh, and this bone out of my bones.”[Genesis 2:23] For this, once for all done and pronounced, as from the beginning, so now too, cannot apply to “other” flesh. Accordingly, it will be without cause that you will say that God wills not a divorced woman to be joined to another man “while her husband ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 6, page 313, footnote 8 (Image)
Gregory Thaumaturgus, Dionysius the Great, Julius Africanus, Anatolius and Minor Writers, Methodius, Arnobius
Methodius. (HTML)
The Banquet of the Ten Virgins; or Concerning Chastity. (HTML)
Theophila. (HTML)
Marriage Not Abolished by the Commendation of Virginity. (HTML)
... and is still being formed; for it is said, “Increase and multiply.” And we must not be offended at the ordinance of the Creator, from which, moreover, we ourselves have our being. For the casting of seed into the furrows of the matrix is the beginning of the generation of men, so that bone taken from bone, and flesh from flesh, by an invisible power, are fashioned into another man. And in this way we must consider that the saying is fulfilled, “This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh.”[Genesis 2:23]
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 6, page 317, footnote 2 (Image)
Gregory Thaumaturgus, Dionysius the Great, Julius Africanus, Anatolius and Minor Writers, Methodius, Arnobius
Methodius. (HTML)
The Banquet of the Ten Virgins; or Concerning Chastity. (HTML)
Thaleia. (HTML)
Passages of Holy Scripture Compared. (HTML)
... for what reason should the apostle, calling these things to remembrance, and guiding us, as I opine, into the way of the Spirit, allegorize the history of Adam and Eve as having a reference to Christ and the Church? For the passage in Genesis reads thus: “And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”[Genesis 2:23-24] But the apostle considering this passage, by no means, as I said, intends to take it according to its mere natural sense, as referring to the union of man and woman, as you do; for you, explaining the passage in too natural a sense, laid down that ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 6, page 364, footnote 5 (Image)
Gregory Thaumaturgus, Dionysius the Great, Julius Africanus, Anatolius and Minor Writers, Methodius, Arnobius
Methodius. (HTML)
From the Discourse on the Resurrection. (HTML)
Part I. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2849 (In-Text, Margin)
II. Now the question has already been raised, and answered, that the “coats of skins” are not bodies. Nevertheless, let us speak of it again, for it is not enough to have mentioned it once. Before the preparation of these coats of skins, the first man himself acknowledges that he has both bones and flesh; for when he saw the woman brought to him: “This is now,” he cried,[Genesis 2:23-24] “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” And again: She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.” For I cannot endure the trifling of some who shamelessly do violence to ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 9, page 231, footnote 6 (Image)
Gospel of Peter, Diatessaron, Apocalypses, Visio Pauli, Testament of Abraham, Acts of X/P, Zosimus, Aristides, Clement, Origen
The Epistles of Clement. (HTML)
The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians. (HTML)
Continuation. Several Other Martyrs. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 4035 (In-Text, Margin)
... multitude of the elect, who, having through envy endured many indignities and tortures, furnished us with a most excellent example. Through envy, those women, the Danaids and Dircæ, being persecuted, after they had suffered terrible and unspeakable torments, finished the course of their faith with stedfastness, and though weak in body, received a noble reward. Envy has alienated wives from their husbands, and changed that saying of our father Adam, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.”[Genesis 2:23] Envy and strife have overthrown great cities, and rooted up mighty nations.
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 5, page 42, footnote 2 (Image)
Augustine: Anti-Pelagian Writings
A Treatise on the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants. (HTML)
Book I (HTML)
On the Ignorance of Infants, and Whence It Arises. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 439 (In-Text, Margin)
... still the soul of a human being,—nay, the soul of a rational creature,—not only untaught, but even incapable of instruction, I ask why, or when, or whence, it was plunged into that thick darkness of ignorance in which it lies? If it is man’s nature thus to begin, and that nature is not already corrupt, then why was not Adam created thus? Why was he capable of receiving a commandment? and able to give names to his wife, and to all the animal creation? For of her he said, “She shall be called Woman;”[Genesis 2:23] and in respect of the rest we read: “Whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.” Whereas this one, although he is ignorant where he is, what he is, by whom created, of what parents born, is already guilty of offence, ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 5, page 266, footnote 5 (Image)
Augustine: Anti-Pelagian Writings
On Marriage and Concupiscence. (HTML)
On Marriage and Concupiscence (HTML)
The Censuring of Lust is Not a Condemnation of Marriage; Whence Comes Shame in the Human Body. Adam and Eve Were Not Created Blind; Meaning of Their 'Eyes Being Opened.' (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2079 (In-Text, Margin)
... Now that their eyes were opened, their body appeared to them naked, and they knew it. If this were not the meaning, how, when the beast of the field and the fowls of the air were brought unto him, could Adam have given them names if his eyes were shut? He could not have done this without distinguishing them; and he could not distinguish them without seeing them. How, too, could the woman herself have been beheld so clearly by him when he said, “This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh”?[Genesis 2:23] If, indeed, any one shall be so determined on cavilling as to insist that Adam might have acquired a discernment of these objects, not by sight but by touch, what explanation will he have to give of the passage wherein we are told how the woman “saw ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 5, page 287, footnote 1 (Image)
Augustine: Anti-Pelagian Writings
On Marriage and Concupiscence. (HTML)
Book II (HTML)
Eve’s Name Means Life, and is a Great Sacrament of the Church. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2218 (In-Text, Margin)
Now, observe the rest of the passage in which he thinks he finds, to our prejudice, what is consonant with the above-quoted title. “God,” says he, “who had framed Adam out of the dust of the ground, formed Eve out of his rib,[Genesis 2:22-23] and said, She shall be called Life, because she is the mother of all who live.” Well now, it is not so written. But what matters that to us? For it constantly happens that our memory fails in verbal accuracy, while the sense is still maintained. Nor was it God, but her husband, who gave Eve her name, which should signify Life; for thus it is written: “And Adam called his ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 5, page 328, footnote 2 (Image)
Augustine: Anti-Pelagian Writings
A Treatise on the Soul and its Origin. (HTML)
Treatise on the Soul and Its Origin (HTML)
The Sixth Passage of Scripture Quoted by Victor. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2388 (In-Text, Margin)
... position in the fact that in the Scripture narrative which informs us that God took a rib out of the man’s side and formed it into a woman, it is not added that He breathed into her face the breath of life; for this reason, as they say, because she had already been ensouled from the man. If, indeed, she had not, they say, the sacred Scripture would certainly not have kept us in ignorance of the circumstance. With regard to the fact that Adam says, “This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh,”[Genesis 2:23] without adding, Spirit or soul, from my spirit or soul, they may answer, just as it has been already shown, that the expression, “my flesh and bone,” may be understood as indicating the whole by a part, only that the portion that was taken out of ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 5, page 328, footnote 4 (Image)
Augustine: Anti-Pelagian Writings
A Treatise on the Soul and its Origin. (HTML)
Treatise on the Soul and Its Origin (HTML)
The Sixth Passage of Scripture Quoted by Victor. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2390 (In-Text, Margin)
... has been already shown, that the expression, “my flesh and bone,” may be understood as indicating the whole by a part, only that the portion that was taken out of man was not dead, but ensouled; for no good ground for denying that the Almighty was able to do all this is furnished by the circumstance that not a human being could be found capable of cutting off a part of a man’s flesh along with the soul. Adam went on, however, to say, “She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.”[Genesis 2:23] Now, why does he not rather say (and thus confirm the opinion of our opponents), “Since her flesh was taken out of man”? As the case stands, indeed, they who hold the opposite view may well contend, from the fact that it is written, not woman’s ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 5, page 340, footnote 5 (Image)
Augustine: Anti-Pelagian Writings
A Treatise on the Soul and its Origin. (HTML)
Book II (HTML)
Victor Quotes Scriptures for Their Silence, and Neglects the Biblical Usage. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2429 (In-Text, Margin)
As for the passage which affirms that “God hath made of one blood all nations of men,” and that in which Adam says, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh,”[Genesis 2:23] inasmuch as it is not said in the one, “ of one soul, ” and in the other, “ soul of my soul, ” he supposes that it is denied that children’s souls come from their parents, or the first woman’s from her husband just as if, forsooth, had the sentence run in the way suggested, “ of one soul, ” instead of “of one blood,” anything else than the whole human being could be understood, without any ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 7, page 18, footnote 1 (Image)
Augustine: Homilies on the Gospel of John, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, Soliloquies
Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to St. John. (HTML)
Chapter I. 6–14. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 41 (In-Text, Margin)
... number, he would not have explained what he desired; for men are born of the bloods of male and female. Let us say so, then, and not fear the ferule of grammarians, so long as we reach the solid and certain truth. He who understands it and blames it, is thankless for his having understood. “Not of bloods, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man.” The apostle puts flesh for woman; because, when she was made of his rib, Adam said, “This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh.”[Genesis 2:23] And the apostle saith, “He that loveth his wife loveth himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh.” Flesh, then, is put for woman, in the same manner that spirit is sometimes put for husband. Wherefore? Because the one rules, the other is ruled; ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 6, page 86, footnote 4 (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 1266 (In-Text, Margin)
... these coats of skins represent human bodies. Among many other things, he says this: “Was God a tanner or a saddler, that He should prepare the hides of animals, and should stitch from them coats of skins for Adam and Eve?” “It is clear,” he goes on, “that he 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;”[Genesis 2:23] 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 ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 9, page 96b, footnote 13 (Image)
Hilary of Poitiers, John of Damascus
John of Damascus: Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. (HTML)
An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. (HTML)
Book IV (HTML)
Concerning Virginity. (HTML)
... abuse virginity, and the pleasure-loving bring forward the following verse in proof, Cursed be every one that raiseth not up seed in Israel. But we, made confident by God the Word that was made flesh of the Virgin, answer that virginity was implanted in man’s nature from above and in the beginning. For man was formed of virgin soil. From Adam alone was Eve created. In Paradise virginity held sway. Indeed, Divine Scripture tells that both Adam and Eve were naked and were not ashamed[Genesis 2:23]. But after their transgression they knew that they were naked, and in their shame they sewed aprons for themselves. And when, after the transgression, Adam heard, dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return, when death entered into the ...